Skip to main content

Low Self-Worth. How to Heal?

What should we do if we have low self-worth? I don't have confidence in my answer to this question, but I think it's worth chewing on. In a previous post, I said that God designed us (and all life) to thrive, and in another post, I said that low self-worth is the most persistent barrier to thriving. The difficulty with self-worth is that, if you don't have it, you don't think you're worthy of it... It's a tragic cycle. 

Part of the answer is that some people who struggle with acting poorly towards others have enough self-worth to put some effort into having more self-worth, once they're aware of how self-worth functions and relates to their happiness.

But for those who don't believe they're worth improving, even for their own sakes, I'm a bit lost. My hope is that by showing them love, even if they're too self-absorbed (ironically) to love others, that someday, sometimes, that love will break through and show them that they are worthy.

I believe that essential human worth is a theological idea. Why would people be valuable apart from divine origin and purpose? It seems to me that basic moral principles as understood in American culture (and practiced generally by Atheists) are a Christian idea. 

If someone is willing to work on themselves to improve, where should they focus their efforts?

I love the RULER acronym. Marc Brackett recommends it in his book "Permission to Feel". RULER stands for recognize, understand, label, express, and regulate. If we're willing to put effort into seeing ourselves as worthy, I think this is the way to do it: To value and accept our emotions as part of us.

In the 4th step – express – we're encouraged to tell someone how we feel, whether that someone be a journal, a confidant, or a small group. I think the default for most people is to suppress rather than express. Suppressing emotions doesn't make them go away. In my experience, it just forces the emotions to be expressed when we don't want or expect them to be expressed, and they boil over in the form of toxicity toward people we dislike. Unfortunately, the people we're most likely to dislike in any given moment are the people closest to us, when they inevitably annoy us or fail to live up to our unrealistic, unspoken expectations of them. Following RULER actually gives us the capacity to live with both more grace and more boundaries with others, and, here's the key, more grace and boundaries for themselves, too.

As I continue to grow in my ability to recognize, understand, label, express, and regulate my emotions, I pray for greater ability to show love and respect towards people who have a hard time accepting their own intrinsic worthiness. 

You are worthy of love. God designed you in your mother's womb (Psalm 139:13-14) and has good plans for you (Jeremiah 29:11). You are worthy of love. You are worthy of respect. You are worthy to be in the room. You are worthy to speak and be heard. You are worthy to take up space and consume resources. You are worthy to be seen, understood, accepted, and loved. You are worthy of pursuing happiness. May you come to truly see and understand your infinite worth. Life will be better for you and everyone around you. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Purpose of All Life is to Thrive

Genesis 1:28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number..." We typically think of "being fruitful' as having children, but it means more than that. Plants can only bear fruit when they have sufficient resources. In the Bible, bearing fruit is a sign of thriving. Consider these examples: Psalms 1:3 says the righteous is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers. Psalms 92:12-14 says the righteous will flourish like a palm tree and still bear fruit in old age. Proverbs 12:14 says from the fruit of their lips people are filled with good things.  Jesus says in Matthew 7 that we can know men by the type of fruit they produce, “by their fruit you will know them.”  In Mark 11 Jesus cursed the fig tree because it would not bear fruit.  In John 11, Jesus encourages his disciples to abide in the vine, so that they will bear good fruit.  In the Bible, bearing fr...
Post a Comment
Read more

Just Trying to Cope - how personality disorders are attempts to compensate for broken self-worth

 I was thinking about narcissism and how I had heard that narcissists are overcompensating for their self-doubt. I also considered my own pathological tendency to be a “people pleaser”. In therapy, a counselor asked me why I tend to walk on eggshells around people and tried too hard to be liked. I realized I’m a people pleaser because I have a desire to be liked by everyone, and that in some key ways I derive my sense of self-worth from the approval of others. With this in mind, a new realization started to form in my mind: Personality disorders (like my people pleasing) are misguided attempts to cope with our insecurities. I ran this idea by my Ivy League-educated neuroscientist, and he confirmed my suspicions. More than that however, he told me about many personality disorders I didn’t know about or hadn’t named, and showed how each of them relate to self-worth. I basically only knew about narcissism and people pleasing, and I had a vague idea what being histrionic was, but that ...
Post a Comment
Read more