Building Self Esteem: Remembering Your Intrinsic Worth

Here’s a sneak peek into one of my sessions -

I have had this same conversation with so many clients.

They come because they don’t feel ‘good enough’ — they don’t like themselves, they give themselves a hard time over every mistake, they are anxious in new relationships as they assume eventually their new partner will find out how inadequate they are.

They blame it on their appearance, or an aspect of their personality, or that their life isn’t where they thought it should be by now.

(I get it. I truly empathise, I have absolutely felt this way before. When you feel like this, it seems without-a-doubt, unquestionably true. And it’s awful and exhausting and leads to bad choices and playing small and lost sleep and low energy).

So then I ask my clients where a child gets their worth from, what makes a child ‘good enough’. They usually look at me blankly.

A child just is worthy, they say.

Oh! I say. Well, how would we make one child worth more than another child? Or worth less?

The client looks at me like I’m a monster.

You can’t! They exclaim, horrified.

Huh, I say. Well then. Where did yours go?

At what point did your worth change?

Was there an age at which the fundamental worth you had as a child was taken off you and you had to start earning it?

It’s a simple thought exercise, but it’s true. We can’t make a person more or less worthy than another. The intrinsic worth we hold just by virtue of having been born into this world is unchangeable.

It’s not like on your 18th birthday the Universe suddenly says “That’s it! Your intrinsic worth has expired. Now, off to university/work/the gym with you, let's see how you do! Go earn your worth!”

But what about the crappy things I do? My clients might ask. I was thoughtless to that friend of mine, or I don’t call my mum enough, or I can't find a good relationship, or I keep changing jobs. I’m useless.

Quite honestly, the type of people who usually come to me because of low self-worth are not doing anything really terribly crappy. I don’t have megalomaniacs or mass murders sitting in my office feeling bad about themselves.

I usually have wonderful, caring, anxious humans who, like all humans occasionally make a misstep, or have an aspect of being a human that they find difficult, and then beat themselves up terribly. Or they have a sense that everyone is doing better than they are, happier than they are, got-it-together more than they have (thanks social media).

True self-esteem and self-worth is a sense of your own fundamental, unchanging goodness, despite the blunders we all make from time to time.

Holding yourself in that place of acceptance makes it easier to recover from these blunders too – if you know in your heart you are generally a decent person much of the time, it is easier to acknowledge when you make a mistake and to apologise or rectify it without defensiveness. You can have healthy self-esteem and also hold yourself to account when you've done something wrong or you've taken a wrong turn. There’s a sense of internal stability that makes it so much less threatening to correct course when we inevitably veer off from time to time.

Good self-worth also helps us to use healthy boundaries with others. If you have a strong sense of your own value, you are more easily able to discern which feedback will be helpful to take on and which won’t, say no to requests, and set limits on how it is acceptable for others to treat you.

A self worth practice

Remembering your own worth (because it never left you) can be a process that takes time and effort. It’s hard to just suddenly decide that you are worthy and good enough after all and live happily ever after. However, beliefs like this can be changed through a process of deliberately thinking and behaving differently and then seeing different results.

Practice noticing where you think or act from a belief you are less worthy than others, or that achieving something will increase your worth. Observe how many times that shows up per day or per week, and what kinds of situations set that off for you. Is there a pattern?

Notice how believing that you are less worthy leaves you feeling, and how that makes you want to behave. Most people find themselves feeling low, frustrated, ashamed, and wanting to hide away. Some people unconsciously over-compensate, speaking or acting in ways that seem boastful to make sure no-one sees the insecurity. However it comes out, it is hardly the energy from which we can bring forward our best selves.

Imagine instead, just for a moment, that your worth is the same as all humans and has been there all along. Just for now, pretend that you have as much right as anyone to take up space, to make mistakes and be imperfect, and to experience good things and to make a good life for yourself.

Really sit in this feeling, let it permeate a little.

Then, from this space, how would you think and behave instead in this moment? Try it out, act as if you really understood your self worth was equal and unchangeable. Who would you be, how would you show up right now if you believed that?

If it’s hard to figure out, bring to mind a friend, family member, celebrity, or character who you think embodies steady, healthy self-worth and consider what they would do or say to themselves in this moment.

If you feel a lot of resistance to this exercise, I always tell clients that if you try it out for a while and it’s awful, you always have the option of going back to the old way. You can always go back to believing that you aren’t worthy and the ways of being associated with that.

'Acting as if' usually feels counter-intuitive for most people. Often we think that first we must have better self-esteem, and then we will act differently. "I'll start speaking to myself better when I know I deserve it", or "When I'm more confident, then I won't give myself such a hard time." But doing this is what guarantees the persistence of poor self-image. What you'll actually find is that the behaviour must come first, and the belief comes after. When you start to show up differently, speak to yourself well, treat yourself well, the self-worth and confidence will follow. So just for now, try this as an experiment and see what happens.