Why Fixing Your Self-Worth Will Fix Your Attachment (And the First 3 Steps)

All right, gentlemen, welcome back to the ManTalks Show. Today, I wanna dive into self-worth and attachment and how your early attachment will have had an undeniable and unquestionable impact on your sense of self-worth. And the real reason why so many men struggle to develop self-worth is because it is attachment work. There's no way around it. A huge piece of what will have created your sense of self-worth is your early attachment to your caregivers. So we're gonna dive into that. I'm gonna give you some real-life examples. I'm gonna tell you why it really breaks down your sense of self-worth. And I'm gonna give you some specific direction that you can begin to do in order to repair that sense of self-worth and some of the pillars that actually go into it. So let's dive straight in. Don't forget to man it forward and do not forget to like and subscribe wherever you are at because man, The algorithm is getting flooded with AI content and is becoming harder and harder to reach you. So if you're receiving this, please like, share, subscribe. Makes a huge, huge difference. All right. With all that said, self-worth, let's just define what builds it very, very quickly. Self-worth is something that begins early on in your initial attachment. So the simple version of this is that what creates secure attachment is also what's going to create the foundation of your self-worth. And there's some core pieces that go into this. So this, you're gonna get, you're gonna get both at once here. You're gonna get self-worth and you're gonna get attachment all in one go, okay? So the truth about what creates secure attaching and secure relating is a couple core pieces, a couple core pillars. The first thing is that you can go through a hard time with your caregiver, with your parents, and come out the other side okay. The second is that you can express your needs or wants or desires and that those needs, wants, and desires will be met on a consistent and regular basis. Now, if either of those two things are interrupted, it is going to start to chip away at your self-worth for one main reason. When you are a kid, right? When you're a baby, when you're a toddler, when you're a little kid, you don't have a differentiation in the sense of being able to understand mom and dad are having a bad day. You know, they're just irritated. Them yelling at me has nothing to do with me. You know, they're just having a hard time or they're just, you know, they're just being an asshole right now, whatever it is. So what ends up happening is that when you ask for something that you need, when you want something as a kid, when you desire something as a kid, you wanna play, you want mac and cheese, you wanna, you know, go shoot your slingshot outside, whatever it is. And your parents meet that need with punishment, with criticism, with shame, as a child, that is internalized as something's wrong with me. Because as a kid, you are your needs. As a child, you are what you want, you are what you need. There isn't a lot of differentiation and distinction between that. So if you grew up in an environment where every time you asked for something or you needed something, and when I say need something, I don't just mean you needed food, you know, you needed to go play. I mean, you needed a place to throw a tantrum without getting hit. You needed a place to express sadness without being shamed or punished or criticized or made fun of. He needed a place to be a little angry and upset. You know, even this morning, my son was like, "I'm angry with you." And I was like, "That's okay." And he looked at me and he was like, "Really?" And I was like, "Yeah, you can be angry with me. That's totally fine." And then 2 minutes later, it was done. It was fine. But if he said, "I'm angry at you," and I was like, "What's wrong with you? How could you be angry? You don't get to be angry with me. You're not allowed to be angry with me." Then what he learns is how I feel, which is another version of, this is what I am, this is who I am, right? How I feel is not okay. And what I need to express anger, to express frustration, to express sadness is not okay. How it's internalized is something's wrong with me. And self-worth, the lack of self-worth is basically that. Something's wrong with me. I feel broken, I feel defective. I feel like something's missing. I feel like something's off. Something's wrong with what I want, something's wrong with what I need, or something's just fundamentally wrong with me and I have to locate it and fix it and solve it. So when we are growing up to produce that secure attachment, what we're really looking for is a place for our emotions to be okay and to be received, to be understood, to be held, to be all right. The majority of the time, it doesn't need to be every single time, but it does need to be probably 50/50. We need our needs to be met. So when we say, hey, I wanna go play, we need a parent that sometimes comes and plays with us. I want you to come to my games. We need a parent that sometimes comes and plays with us. I wanna know that you love me. We have a parent that expresses and makes it clear that they love us and they choose us. And when those things do not happen, it starts to crack the foundation of our self-worth. So if you grew up in an environment where, you know, you just couldn't get dad's attention, no matter what, no matter what you did, he just seemed to be disinterested in your life, or nothing was ever good enough, or anytime you got any type of emotion, he would shut down, he'd go cold, he'd walk away, he'd ignore you for a day, he'd punish you, criticize you, make fun of you, shame you. What you really started to learn at your core, at your foundation about your worth is something's wrong with me. That I can't get this basic need met. Because the truth in reality is that attachment is fundamental for you as a human being. Attachment is fundamental. Human beings are wired for attachment. We are wired neurologically, we are wired in our nervous systems and our body, and we are wired psychologically for attachment. So secure attachment produces Okay, secure attachment produces the foundation of self-worth. Insecure attachment of any kind— avoidant, insecure, etc.— is going to lay the brickwork for insecure self-worth or fractured self-worth. So as you go through developing some of these skills of being able to securely relate, your sense of self-worth is going to be reinforced. Why? Why is that? Because what you're going to ultimately be doing is saying, my needs matter. I matter in relationship, and therefore I have inherent value. I have inherent worth. People care about me. People care about my needs. People will meet my needs. I can express how I feel, what I think, and what I want, and that will be okay. So I'm going to give you a couple pillars to close things off of that you can specifically work on to start to build your sense of self-worth. Self-worth in a way that coincides with also building secure attachment, okay? Step number 1 is going to be what I called autocorrect. And this one is more personal to you, okay? It's more personal to the, you know, how it shows up for you. But autocorrect is really the process of catching yourself lying and beginning to correct it real time in the moment. Now, why is this important? Because every man that I've ever worked with, and myself included, I was notorious for this, who has had low self-worth and who has a fractured or insecure sense of attachment cannot, and almost not cannot, but has a hard time with being honest in their life. Honest about what they want, what they need, how they feel, honest about who they are, what they think. And so what you end up doing is you end up lying to try and get your needs met. You end up lying to try and create safety. You end up lying to try and produce a kind of pseudo-secure attachment, right? Maybe if I don't tell my wife that this happened, things will just be okay. Maybe if I don't tell my girlfriend how I'm actually feeling or what's not all right with me or what's a boundary with me, everything will be okay. But what that does is it continues to eat away at cut your self-worth off by the knees, because what it reinforces internally, psychologically, is something's wrong with me or my needs, my wants, my desires, or how I feel that I have to lie about them. So the process of autocorrect does a couple of things. Number 1, it's confronting. So you start to do something that's hard. You start to create these little micro hard times, right? Where you're like, ah, shit, I just omitted some details about the other night when I went out bowling with my buddies, you know? And you say, you know what, I forgot to mention, this woman walked up to me and, you know, she started flirting with me. We had a good conversation. She asked me for my number and I said no because, you know, I'm in a relationship with you. And you start to bring forward more truth, even if and even though it might create a little bit of a hard time. So you stop lying. You catch yourself in the act. Of making shit up, of embellishing things, and you just say, "Oh, you know what? Actually, that's not entirely true what happened. I kind of embellished a little bit there. Here's what actually went on." Or you say, "You know what? I forgot to mention this one part," and you start to autocorrect the details, okay? You cannot lie a whole bunch and create secure attachment or self-worth. Okay? Lots of lies is going to, it's like pouring acid, you know, onto your paint job, sulfuric acid onto your car and expecting the paint to survive, right? It's just not gonna work. So if you want to develop secure attachment and you want to develop self-worth, you have to start to tell the truth. You have to start to honor your word. And I know it might sound simple, but for some of you, this is going to be hard work. For me, it was brutal. It was so brutal because I had really learned to lie, manipulate, coerce, chameleon, turn myself into whatever else, whatever I thought people wanted. I was your classic shapeshifter. So I would become whoever I thought that person wanted me to be so that they would like me and maybe meet my needs. And, you know, I'd be okay with them. So part of this, step number 1, tell the truth, autocorrect, use autocorrect, catch yourself in the moment. Step number 2 is you are going to want to start to bring forward your needs. So that simple version of this is, what do you want and what are you not okay with? And you want to start to express some of those things. So when things go wrong in a relationship, maybe your significant other says something to you that's maybe demeaning, demeaning or disrespectful and you don't like it, you say, hey, I really didn't like that. That wasn't okay with me. That didn't feel good for me. Like what you just said, that's not all right. Please don't do that again. And you start to express what's not all right for you. And you start to express and reinforce what you really do like. Hey, you know what? That dinner that you made us last night, that was phenomenal. I'd love for you to make that next week again. Would you be open to that? And you start to really express what it is that you want. You start to express your needs, because remember, people with insecure attachment or fractured, fragmented attachment of any kind, whether it's anxious or avoidant or fearful, what ends up happening is you negate your needs. You pull your needs out of relationship because your needs got hostility in the past. Your needs got you punished, they got you ignored, they got you stonewalled, they got you shamed, they got you criticized. And so people with insecure attachment and people with low self-worth do not bring their needs into relationship. They don't bring their wants, they don't bring their desires into relationship. So the second part of this is you really start to express Hey, I loved that. That was great. I wanna do that again. Will you take care of that for me? Will you, you know, I wanna go on this date to this restaurant on Friday night, come with me. And you start to really bring more of yourself into the relationship while also setting the parameters of what's not okay. And this is the final piece. People with low self-worth and people that have grown up in an environment that produced insecure attachment, they were not able to articulate or to express that something wasn't okay. And so what ends up happening is that you end up having very, very porous boundaries. You end up letting people walk all over you. You end up shutting down very quickly. You end up building contempt and animosity for someone, even though they don't know that they've done something wrong. So you never really express that wasn't all right with me. Because for whatever reason, the family system that you were in was teetering on the edge of if you told the truth, the whole thing would come falling down like a house of cards. Or if you did say, hey, that wasn't all right, I didn't like that, you'd get punished, you'd get shamed, you'd get criticized. And so you learned that when something's not all right with me, I'm not allowed to express that., and in doing that, you never really create a hard time for you and the other person to go through. And this is the challenging part with secure attachment and with self-worth. People that have genuine self-worth are okay saying, "That wasn't okay with me. I really didn't like that. It's not all right for me when you speak to me like that. It's not okay for me that you just ignore." me when this happens, or whatever it is. I'm just giving examples. And so you have to be willing to create a hard time. And that hard time can be you asking for your needs, wants, and desires, 'cause that's gonna feel confronting for many of you, right? To be like, I really like that, do more of that. I really want this. And then the other hard time is expressing, that's not okay with me. I don't like that. I do not want that. In my relationship. It's not okay to speak to me like that. It's not all right for you to do this. I'm not okay that this is happening. And as you do that, you're creating this hard time that reinforces that you have enough worth and value to express what's not okay with you. Okay? So those are the 3 things that I will give you for right now. There are many more pieces, but this is the starting gate. So comment below, let me know about what you thought, what you took from this video about the connection between self-worth and attachment. And which step are you going to focus in on for the next 30 days? Make a commitment to do this for the next 30 days. For me, I had to commit to the autocorrect for like 6 months, because lying, omission, leaving parts out, embellishing things, it was so strong in my life and in my identity and in my psyche that it took me a long time to just flush it out. So comment below, Don't forget to man it forward. I'll see you next time.