Feelings of worthlessness

It always saddens me when someone I know to be a gorgeous person of value and worth struggles with feeling worthless. I know the territory well myself. At times I have felt I was worthless, was made to feel that way by what others said and because I did not ever truly as a child get to build a secure foundation of worth from within myself. Like a lot of us I thought my worth depended on what I did or how I appeared or was accepted not who I really was implicitly, a divine child of creation. And often I struggled on alone blaming myself.

That’s not to say I am super ‘special’ or unique because all humans share common attributes but I do think its true when recovery writer John Bradshaw writes that we are human beings, rather than human doings. And surely we have worth just because we ‘are’. Should we have to earn it or prove it? If we feel this don’t we just become subject to other’s definitions of us? Cant we lose ourselves this way? And how many of us blame ourselves for not coping when actually we are dealing with too much or are lacking true understanding or support?

I was also nearly brought to tears by a post I read on someone whose mother tried her very best to abort him as a baby, she loaded all her own feelings of worthlessness into her son.

I remember reading in Marion Woodman’s book Addiction to Perfection in early sobriety that even the thought of being a mistake or unwanted as a baby can be passed on cellularly without words to a child, in utero.

I was actually a ‘mistake’ but I was lucky my parents used to say I was ‘the best mistake they ever made’, though my Dad made it clear he wanted a son not a third daughter. I still carried feelings of insecurity and worthlessness because I was not held much in childhood and by this I don’t mean only that I was not cuddled, (which happened more rarely after my older sister and surrogate Mum left home when I was only 3) but that there was often no one there at all with me after school from a young age apart from my 8 years older sister who often resented me and was left alone herself.

I didn’t have that loving gaze either from another adult or a lot of attention as my parents were very busy working to make a secure financial life and in adolescence when a lot of trauma hit I was not given any support at all. My parents loved me for sure. I know this now but it was not until I read the book Running on Empty about Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN) a few years ago that I really understood how you can be loved and still neglected and deprived emotionally and how then, as a child, you turn that all around on yourself and blame yourself. This is then a set up for co-dependency in that you learn to revolve around others needs or wishes in order to be seen and them may so often end up giving yourself away or becoming subject to the will and projections (especially negative ones) of someone stronger.

Anyway back to a fellow blogger who carried this terrible sense of abandonment and others who just feel worthless, it just breaks my heart to hear this of others who really deserve to know how special and loved and talented and unique they really are, even if this is not always reflected back by those around us and who I also know so often have struggled with early trauma, loss of someone they loved or lack of a secure foundation.

I know for myself therapy on a one on one basis has been essential for me to begin to build up this sense of a foundation or feeling of worth within, a slightly less rickety platform to stand upon. I was thinking yesterday how so often I don’t feel like this, often I feel that I am standing on quicksand and the tide is rising up to take me down. It happened the other day when things were breaking down around my house, the one my Mum forced me into at auction 8 years ago. I had the repair man here and the plumber and Scott texting me demanding to know why I hadn’t sent money to him and I literally felt like I was drowning. Discussing it with my therapist yesterday she said that when this happens (things breaking down) I feel like I am breaking down because as a child I learned to project value onto how well I did things or coped and of course its a symptom of unmanageability for me when I over do it or don’t have good boundaries but the truth is I struggle to know at times where to place my attention with so many balls up in the air and at times I just am literally dealing with so much.

Like everyone here I learning to accept that I am doing my best on every day with the level of self understanding I have. Life is about progress not perfection, as we so often say in the fellowship. I also feel so sad to hear of others feeling so worthless. Going back to AA meetings last week I sensed this theme running like a litany under many of the stories. Many of us use alcohol or other substances to shore up a false sense of self or just to find relief from the pain of living at times or the pain and confusion of how others over time made us falsely believe we have no worth or value.

I was shown in a dream many years back in my first therapy that I used the bottle like a weapon to hit myself over the head and silence all the unbearable feelings I never got help to manage growing up. With these feelings running round inside me in an undifferentiated form I can feel crazy. Its taking a lot of therapy and inner work and insight and understanding my body to find out what the feelings are, along with healthy ways to express them as well as integrate all the pain of difficult choices I made struggling to recover in the past 40 years. I am getting some help with this from the book on Everyday Narcissism I am reading currently and want to share a post on this later on.

Anyway for anyone out there struggling today with feelings of worthlessness, it has been recommended by some to get a photo of yourself between the ages of 3 and 5 and just recognise your own innocence at that age. At one time you were this vulnerable child all alone in the world and relying on the big ones around you to help you grow, evolve and express. How much help did you get? Who was there to help or hold or encourage you when you were scared, sad or angry? Were you allowed to have these feelings and given tools to manage them or did you have to find ways to numb them out or distract yourself?

Maybe some of those ineffective coping strategies sometimes keep you feeling worthless but you can always find healthier ways. You can begin to give yourself love and stop feeding the critical voices inside or introjected into you by others and instead speak to yourself with love and en courage ment. You can remind yourself of the progress you are making and that mistakes are for learning from.

Please do it today. Its never too late to begin to find a balanced sense of your own value and find those who help you too. Don’t let those who want to drag you down or put their shit into you do it. Put up a big stop sign and just say “NO, this is not mine. I am not taking it on board.” Please do yourself a favour and do it today. Truly you are worth it. xoxoox