Are You Struggling with Low Self Worth?

Hello everyone and welcome to Wellness Wednesday. This is a new series that I'm starting mostly to keep myself accountable and actually create content to release on a specific day of the week, week. But also because I— that's really it. That's the main reason, right? I want to keep myself accountable. I want to actually create these videos. I got so much support and love from my last video called Loneliness and Social Media, and I realized that You know, if I have something to say, usually the thing that gets in the way is a question of self-worth, right? It's like, do I have anything valid to say? Is anyone going to want to listen to these or watch these, etc.? And I have one friend in particular, shout out to you, Sarah Matthews, who said like, please keep making these videos. I really enjoy listening to them, you know? And even just that, like, it's not necessarily validation seeking of like, tell me I'm good at what I do, but it's mostly like, Oh yeah, sometimes I just need that face-to-face interaction, mask to mask, FaceTime to FaceTime, where someone says, hey, I got something out of what you did. And another friend of mine texted me and said, wow, I've really been struggling with exactly what it is that you've been talking about, another Sarah in my life. And she said, I felt like this is exactly what I needed. And again, this wasn't so much something that built my ego up, like, wow, I have the capacity to really touch someone., but it reminded me of the passion that I feel from having purpose and meaning to life. And when she texted me this and shared a little bit of her own experiences and struggles with me, it was kind of like, wow, you know, I want to get back into this. I want to get back into making videos that hopefully people can relate to or want to hear. And if even one person is like, wow, thank you, because I thought I was alone in this, job complete, right? Mission done. So I'm going to keep doing it. So welcome to Wellness Wednesday. Today I really wanted to talk about self-worth. If you saw the title to this video, which I think I'm going to name, "Do you have low self-worth?" or "Low self-worth?" It's a little clickbaity, but like, "Yes, come watch this." Then part of you doesn't feel good about yourself in some capacity, right? And I say part of you because we're all made up of these different parts. And excuse me while I say "um" a lot or pause. I have no idea what I'm going to say. That's how I like speaking. I don't like planning anything. I don't like having bullet points. I don't like knowing the content. Some people may say, "Well, it's better to be prepared and blah, blah, blah." And they're right. That's not my MO. And because this is my YouTube channel, I'm going to do things the way I want to. Bah-ha. So I hope this mic isn't too loud. Okay. Self-worth parts. We all have different parts of ourselves. I was in therapy years ago. I'm still with the same woman. She's phenomenal. Shout out to Wendy. She really introduced me to the concept of parts work. And parts work is about reconciling the different parts of us, essentially. Now, we can have, like, the rebellious part, the entrepreneur part, the creative part, the passionate part, the self-destructive part, right? Fill in the blank. But we can also attach those parts to specific times in our lives. So, when I think of— and she really helped me with this— the rebellious or self-sabotaging part of myself, that part is very distinctly 13, 14. And so, there's a part of me that is, that has been in the past stuck in that 13, 14-year-old self, sees life the same way, et cetera. Now it's not all of me, right? And so that gets confusing emotionally. It's like, well, part of me knows that this is irrational. Like cognitively, I know this is irrational, but my emotional experience is telling me that this is real and I need to sabotage my whole life, et cetera. And it's really important to understand and bring awareness to and start having conversations with as in nurturing and welcoming and honoring our emotional experiences from all of these different parts. Now you might be like, what the fuck are you talking about? But I'm going to tell you. Self-worth, again, like I started to say and then got sidetracked, if you clicked on this video, there is a part of you, whether that's a big part of you, a small part of you, all of you, a microscopic portion of you, that questions, doubts, or lacks self-worth. Self-worth can be self-efficacy, right? I believe I can. It's kind of like the Little Engine That Could, like, I think I can, I think I can. Self-efficacy, poor self-image, right? Like I don't like my body, I don't like my face, I don't like the way I look. That is incredibly common and almost universal, especially in America and just more like Western cultures. Western or Eastern? I'm looking at a map. Western, yes. I always get those two mixed up even though I literally studied abroad in China studying Eastern thought. Lol. Okay, so poor self-image, self-efficacy. I'm thinking of other self. We may struggle with self- Self-forgiveness. I have a whole video, by the way. If you like go, if you click on my YouTube channel and you click videos, there's a lot of them, but there's one that's called Self Forgiveness Love Worth or something like that. And I, and I talk kind of about the intricacies of these different parts of self. But basically self-worth is comprised of so many different things. Have you ever experienced imposter syndrome? I'll come back to that in a second. Have you ever gratitude shamed? I'll come back to that in a second too. Have you ever questioned, why is this person with me? That's a lack of self-worth if you're questioning that. Have you ever settled for something because you believe, a part of you, all of you maybe, that you couldn't do better or that you don't deserve more, right? The concept of deserving and worthiness is also really, really relevant here. So going back to imposter syndrome really quickly, if you're wondering what that is, and chances are you're not wondering and you're like, yes, I've experienced that. Specifically in the workplace, although we can experience that as new parents, not even new parents, just parents, as I don't know what else, but I'll talk about in the workforce basically, where you feel like you're an imposter. That's it. It's kind of like that game. Oh, what's that game that just went totally like viral throughout the pandemic? Among Us? Yeah. It's like, who's the imposter? I think. If you don't know what I'm talking about, that's cool. It's a game and you have to find out who the imposter is. So imposter syndrome is basically like, for example, when I was working at Ashley Addiction Treatment and I was a counselor and all of my patients were older than me and I didn't have so much experience, I had maybe a year or two, I had imposter syndrome. I was really struggling with that. And imposter syndrome created narratives, right? The part of me that doubted myself created narratives about myself. And those narratives said things like, you don't know what you're doing. You know, if anyone really knows that you're 24, 25, et cetera, like you're gonna be found out. They're not gonna trust you. That didn't happen, by the way. You know, how can I have something to share with or help another person with? Oh God, how do you be a therapist? All other therapists know what they're doing and I don't. Right? Imposter syndrome not only tells us I'm a fake, I'm a fraud, but it compares our insides to everyone else's outsides and says everyone else knows what they're doing. And I don't, which is one of the greatest cognitive distortions or common misconceptions out there is that other people have it all together or have it more together than me. And as now a private practice therapist, let me tell you, no, they don't. No, they don't. Everyone struggles with different things. We know this in theory, but putting it into practice and actually internalizing it is difficult. And so what happened, and I talked about how this is exacerbated in social media or by social media in my last video, is that we are looking at other people's lives from the outside, or maybe our friends and even our family or people in our lives have the mask, right? The thing that blocks us from authenticity more than anything else, which blocks us from actual authentic connection, which blocks us from feeling like we belong, which leaves us feeling isolated and other is the mask, right? I need to look like I have it all together. That's the narrative. Um, some of us grew up in super dysfunctional households. I'm grateful that I didn't. Grow up in this kind of household that says, as long as everything looks good on the outside, you're fine, right? Like, let's ignore the fact that you are depressed or that there is divorce, da da da, like all this stuff. As long as it looks good, you're fine. And I talk about this with my clients often. It's like this notion of, um, basically don't let them find out, you know? Like, again, yeah, as long as you all think that I'm doing well, I'm doing well. Social media is like a cesspool of this, right? Like, I'm dying inside, but let me post all these pictures about my glorious life. This is so common. This is so common and it's isolating. And so imposter syndrome is exacerbated by comparison. And I have talked about comparison in prior videos. I think I have a whole video called Comparison or like How to Stop Comparing Yourself to Others, which is more of like an explanation rather than a how-to. But that's huge. So imposter syndrome, et cetera. Gratitude shaming. Again, I have a whole different video about this. It's an interview with a radio host. I hear my dog barking. He's okay. A dog walked by the window. That's for sure what just happened. And gratitude shaming is this term that I created. Maybe other people have said it too, but I've never heard it, where we essentially minimize our own emotional experience, shame ourselves for being upset or frustrated or stressed by saying, "I should be grateful." I talked about this in that podcast I did recently about vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue. For those of you working in healthcare or working with literally anyone, like other human beings where you hear hard things, you should listen to that podcast. It's on my website. And that's HannahEliseRose.com. Easy to remember. And basically we'll shame ourselves into this faux gratitude, right? Like gratitude is not this useful tool unless it's authentic. I cannot stress that enough. Also for my people in recovery in 12-step programs, I know it's like, "Just be grateful." And it's like, Father Martin, who was the founder of my former workplace after the addiction treatment, said that an ingrate cannot stay sober, right? Like someone who is not grateful ever cannot stay sober. True, true, true, true, true, true. But forcing gratitude in an inauthentic way and almost putting this positive silver lining on our experiences also doesn't keep us sober, also doesn't make us more grateful, right? Sometimes I have to force gratitude until it's authentic. Like, ah, I really wanna be intentional about being grateful. Otherwise I take things for granted. That's true. But if I'm walking through something painful and I say, well, this person has it worse, that doesn't actually make my emotional experience better. I'm just still feeling shitty. And then I'm feeling shittier for feeling shitty because someone has it worse. And then I'm shaming myself. That is gratitude shaming. It is not helpful. Next time someone's struggling and you are trying to be a good friend or family member and say, you really should be grateful that you even have a job, or you should be grateful, take you should be grateful out of your fucking vocabulary. It's not helpful. Okay. Imposter syndrome, gratitude shaming. So self-worth, right? Essentially, like, I'm looking at an email I just got. Yes! A client of mine just sent me an egg substitute. Really quickly, I'm just gonna say I like to input things that I'm going through and walking through. I'm currently reading this book. I'm very new in my choosing not to eat meat anymore. I also— I'm just gonna be really blunt. I don't know why I ever think that I shouldn't be. I'm going to be really blunt. Here is a tangent. When I got sober at age 20, not drinking is deviant, right? It deviates from the norm. And so what I've experienced over the last upwards of a decade is people getting really defensive about their drinking when they find out I don't drink. Now I'm here to tell you as lovingly as possible, I don't give a fuck what you do. I don't give a fuck how much you drink. And so anytime it's come up in conversation, that I don't drink, it immediately becomes this thing where the person on the other side gets defensive about their drinking patterns. This doesn't always happen, but it happens more often than not. And then will just kind of gratuitously tell me about their drinking. Listen, as long as you're good with it, I'm good with it. And if you're not good with it and I'm not that close with you, I still don't really, you know, I'm not taking that on as a responsibility. If you or someone you know needs help and wants to talk to someone that's actively in recovery, what's up? I'm here. I also have a lot of resources for you, but I don't need to know your drinking habits just because I don't drink. I'm not judging you. I'm not blaming you. I'm not trying to control or change you. Okay? Leave me out of this. What I've noticed in my literal like one full 2 days of being like plant-based and week or so of thinking about being plant-based is that there's a really similar reaction. People will say things like, and this is relevant to self-worth by the way, because we can often question our self-worth by comparing ourselves to others. This is all part of it. Whether you're the one who is deviating from the norm or you're the one questioning yourself, either way, there can be self-worth stuff. So if I say, "Oh, like I'm just not eating meat," automatically it's kind of either an attack of like, "Well, you shouldn't do that. You're not gonna get enough protein," which is also false. You just have to be intentional. And/or, "Why?" And not in like the curious way that some people have said like, "Well, why? I'm really interested to know. Like, that's really cool. Great." People will just like share their relationships with meat like a lot. And I'm like, I don't care. I don't care. So as a side note, if someone, if you or someone you know is like doing something lifestyle-wise that deviates from the norm, if someone you know is doing that, like they don't need to know all about you and you don't have to change them or try to control them or tell them why it's a good or bad idea and vice versa, right? I'm also not gonna be, I'm really trying to be intentional about not being the kind of person that's like, "No one should eat meat and here's why." I live with someone who is still eating meat and I am fine with that and I've had to make a point while reading this book specifically of not stopping every 2 seconds and telling him really horrible truths about the meat industry that we all know, right? We all know it. Like, oh, those documentaries. Like, oh God. Oh, those books. Like, I know it's happening but I don't want to know. I'm purposefully trying not to put that all on him because that's also not fair. Fair, right? So that's my side note about that and that's an update about my life. Anyway, there's this egg alternative called Just Egg. So pumped about it. Anyway, that's the email I got and that's why I just went off. Self-worth. Let me try to get back to what I was talking about. I just turned the volume down on this mic so that you didn't hear me like swallowing water obsessively, like intensely. So self-worth, here's the fact about self-worth. Most human beings that I have ever met, so I'm not going to say most because I can't possibly know. Almost every person I've met, if not everyone I've ever met personally and professionally, has struggled at some point in their life or in some way or currently with self-worth. Worth. This concept of deserving and worthiness is really important to navigate. What has helped me personally is a myriad of things, including therapy, including seeking things that help my self-worth. People like Brené Brown who write books about shame. God, gosh darn it, I'm getting a call. Let me just— eh, thank you iPhone for telling me it's potential spam. Oh no, I wonder if the audio just cut out. I wonder if the audio just cut out. I'm gonna keep talking, and if the audio just cut out, I'll deal with that later. Oh God. So anyway, I hope you're working. Um, most people, right? And so I think that's the first step in deconstructing— one of my first videos is called Deconstructing Shame, I think, from like 2019. But one of the first steps in identifying and working towards deeper self-worth is acknowledging, A, how much of you struggles with self-worth? Does it change day to day or time of day or what's going on in your life, right? Like, if you get a job promotion on that day, the part of you that questions self-worth might be smaller. If you get fired, the part of you that struggles with self-worth may eclipse the part of you that does love yourself. And so know that it's not this finite concrete thing. It's fluid and it moves. And so identifying the things that affect our self-growth Or self-worth. Actually, I would say that's level 2. Level 1, let us first identify if we struggle with self-worth. Level 2, internalize— this doesn't have to go in any particular order— truly internalize that everyone else struggles with the same thing. It manifests differently, but we are all questioning our worth, whether it's messages we've received in childhood, whether it's trauma, whether it's relationships, jobs, etc. Level 3, what is our self-worth most contingent on? Have you ever asked yourself that? Of all the things in my life, when do I feel best about myself and/or what is my self-worth most contingent on? Do I only feel good about myself when I'm receiving praise from others? Just notice that. Our job here is not to judge ourselves. It's to basically take this inventory. Thank you, 12 steps, for giving me that term of where our self-worth is. So before doing a lot of internal work, which has been painful, and sometimes this comes up and I struggle with it. Way less than I used to, but it still comes up because I'm a human being. Again, I hope this audio didn't cut out. My self-worth was very largely tied in with validation from others. So social media enabled that. That's important to know. Approval from my parents, without a doubt. Recognition maybe. So it's all like validation, right? Validation and approval seeking, et cetera. I can't lift this finger without lifting my other ones. How well I was doing at work, which was usually measured in praise, right, or critiques. What I look like, what I looked like. I'm sure there's more there, but my self-worth was most contingent on and enmeshed with approval, validation, being seen by others and what I look like, which again was mainly validated by what others said. Sometimes by the scale, sometimes by how I thought I looked, but mostly on what other people said. So your self-worth may be contingent on how much money you make. That was never, for some reason that wasn't like a big, like if I make more, I feel more worth. But I know a lot of people struggle with that. What kind of clothes you wear. Again, this is from Amazon. Woo. Also like if you can't tell, I used to dress professionally for these and like Now I don't give a fuck. Thanks, COVID. And I'm also wearing sweatpants. My partner's sweatpants, actually. And there's holes in them from my dog. But for many, you know, what you wear— and if you value clothing and designers and that kind of stuff, awesome. I am not putting that down. But I am wondering— obviously, this is a rhetorical question— how much of your worth is wrapped up in how much you can flex on other people, basically? You know, like, okay, you may have all these nice designer expensive clothes, but in COVID, if you were isolated at home and not posting on social media, would you still value those clothes? And if the answer is yes, like, cool. How much of it is wrapped up in essentially at the end of the day, when we boil it down, what other people think of you? What curated image are you giving to others? How much of my worth is based on my things? What I have? I guess that was a big one. Maybe not my worth, but my like contentment. Like, I just want a thing now. It's like I want to be a minimalist and I'm like struggling. I got to watch that Marie Kondo thing on Netflix and be like, this doesn't bring me joy, I'm gonna throw it out. I want to do that. Um, how much of your self-worth is wrapped into what others think of you, how much money you make, material things? I'm sure there's other like subsets, but so, so we need to identify— that's level 3, right? Like, where is my self-worth? And it like, get out a piece of paper and make a freaking graph. Make a, uh, not a line graph, I don't— bar. Yeah, school bar graph. Make a pie chart. I used to do this with one of my clients. Every time we had a session, I'd say, all right, pie chart. What parts of you are most active today? And they would say what percentage was the perfectionist version of them, what percentage is the self-care authentic part of them, what percentage is the self-loathing part of them. And I have like notes for months of them checking in and saying, "All right, let's do the pie chart." Super helpful to just get a feel for where you're at. Do a bar graph on where your self-worth lies. I guess you could do a pie chart too. Like self-worth and then circle. Now make little percentages, slices of the pizza pie. I haven't taken math in a long time. Of how much of your worth is wrapped into different categories. I think if I were to make a self-worth pie chart today, right now, it would be— part of it would be feelings of efficacy with my clients, right? I've been taught, I've been told, I've been taught, I've tried, I've been mentored on how to detach from outcomes quite a bit. Because if every patient that I had when I was working at Ashley died, eroded my self-worth, I wouldn't have any. But if my self-worth is also contingent on every patient that's still sober today, I would have a lot. But both coexisting is very confusing, right? Also, I can't manage outcomes. And I used to say this to my patients in rehab all the time. My only role here is to provide the tools, and whatever you do with those tools is on you. Um, and I had to say it so much until I believed it. Anyway, so I'd be lying if I said I'm totally detached from outcomes, right? If I'm meeting with a client for over a year and they're really struggling, there will be a part of me questioning my efficacy as a counselor. Um, and that's a part of my identity. Now, at the same time, if for whatever reason I got— I can't get fired. If I lost my license to counsel, people ask me this all the time, like how much of my worth, but also identity is wrapped up in being a therapist. And I, today at least, right? It changes. Today, if I lost my license and I couldn't practice therapy, um, I would still know who I am. I know that I have worth outside of that because it's who I am. That's why I do what I do. I don't do what I do to make me who I am. It's the other way around, and I know that I'm very fortunate to know that. Yeah. So I would say my self-worth can sometimes— self-worth can sometimes be wrapped up in that. It can still absolutely sometimes be wrapped up in like approval or validation from certain people. However, being off social media for the last year has also like cut that part out of my life like 98+ percent, which is incredible. So my self-worth has been able to like incubate and grow on its own in the absence of social media, and that's been really, really amazing. Um, and then most of my self-worth, I would say today and most days, is, is very largely wrapped up in knowing that I have inherent worth just for existing. And I mentioned that last time, but that's something that, um, a mentor of mine has, has told me numerous times, and it's really started to sink in, is that I don't need output. I don't need to produce for anyone to feel good about myself. And so that's why for most of quarantine I haven't been doing videos, because for a while I would, you know, I'd kind of check how many likes, how many subscribers, how many views, you know. And like, now that I'm not on Facebook, my YouTube videos don't get a lot of views because it's just the people who subscribe or people on LinkedIn. And, um, and I'm okay with that. But it was a big barrier, right? I can't stress enough how if we identify the things that our self-worth is most wrapped up in and we actively try to detach from those things, we will feel like a dip and then kind of a plateau. And my experience is then we will feel this self-worth growing within us, just for us, within us, around us, for us. And it's very fucking cool. So this video is already 24 minutes. I'm hoping half of it doesn't have no audio, but if that happened, I will sigh and re-record the second half. Um, I don't know why I'm telling you this because if this is muted, you don't know. And I just realized that I'm incredibly hungry. So I'm gonna eat now. I can talk about self-worth and just process self-worth for like hours and hours and hours, but I, I wanted to just get a video out there about self-worth and tell you that if you are struggling with self-image in any capacity, worth efficacy, deservingness, worthiness, you are not alone. And I know that is like hokey and corny, but like it's true. I can't stress enough Most people are isolated to an extent in their own feelings of inadequacy. And the more we talk about it and bring light to it, the more we can actually connect with others. And, um, yeah, I think that's it. I think that's all I have. Um, if you want to read what I'm reading, follow me on Goodreads. The link to my Goodreads account is in my last video, but this book is called Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. For— who also writes other books. Eh, eh. And, um, have a great day.