A Session With A Therapist To Fix Your Self-Worth Issues
These are a set of questions I want you to ask yourself before reading each answer
This is based on what I learned during therapy. Like I mentioned before, my therapist was great; she had divided my months on the basis of goals. During this particular month, we were working on a very difficult one: reframing my suicidal tendencies.
During this time, she also worked on my self-worth as an individual.
Question 1 – What is the definition of self-worth? It can be defined as how we think of our own value or worth as a person.
Question 2 – What defines it? (I want you to think about this deeply before reading further.)
My answer during therapy: A person’s accomplishments and how productive they are or even how useful they are to people.
Therapist: So according to you, someone who hasn’t accomplished much in life is not worthy?
Me: Of course not. [My grandmother was a confident and strong woman. She didn’t have a lot of accomplishments, being a woman from an older generation. I can’t even count her accomplishments as a mother, as her trauma over losing 13 children to diseases made her distant towards the children who survived.]
Therapist: What about productive? How do you even describe this? How much work does a person have to do? What if they are sick or burnt out or just have a bad day? Are they not worthy on those days? What about stay-at-home parents, they don’t have external accomplishments…?
Me: *So stunted that I can’t speak.*
Therapist: How useful you are to people… How do you measure that? And how do you find people in need? So you’re basically saying helping people all the time regardless of how you are feeling? What about “your” health and safety?
Me: I don’t know. [All I could think of was, some of my friends are shy; they are not keen on helping people because most of the time they don’t get the cues… One of my friends barely had any interaction with outside people as her parents didn’t allow her to meet people or do anything social outside of her home.]
Therapist: *Being her coy self, waiting for me to realize things on my own.*
Me: Okay, so this is the definition for me specifically!
Therapist: How’s that working out for you?
Me: *I shrugged.* [We both knew how that was working out for me. I was pushing myself to do things for others, barely taking care of myself, pushing my body to accomplish housework. Before marriage, my worth was in my academics – I was a perfectionist – and now like before, I had so many to-do lists and schedules that I was driving myself insane. Even after doing all this, a moment to catch my breath where I wasn’t doing anything, I felt like I didn’t deserve to be alive. I wasn’t worthy enough. No matter how much I did, it wasn’t enough.]
Therapist: Don’t you think it’s a double standard to have a strict definition for yourself and none for others?
Me: I don’t know. [People hate it when I say that. And what she was saying was true, I impose harsh standards on myself that I would never extend to another human.]
Therapist: *Takes a deep breath.* Okay. How do you know someone is worthy to be alive? What makes them worthy and not you? You used the word useful. What about the teenagers or even adults who cause a lot of trouble to everyone around them? Do they deserve to die? What about handicapped or senior people or even babies?
Me: Every life is important.
Therapist: What about yours?
Now take a deep breath: you matter simply because you exist. Your life has inherent worth and value, independent of what you can give or accomplish.
The unconditional compassion you have for others. Give it to yourself as well.
Negativity serves no one – it stems from pain and feeds more pain. This includes judgement and comparison.
Authors note: I will be writing more on self-worth.
