"Nobody Cares About Me" - How to start healing SELF-WORTH. Part 1

“I'm stupid,” “Nobody cares about me,” or “I'm bad at this” 

We have thoughts like these every day.

Self-worth is the most common thing talked about in therapy. We all grapple with it.

There are lots of reasons for this. So, here I'll introduce you to what self-worth is, and how a lack of self-worth occurs. Understanding this is such an important part of recovery from comfort eating or depression.

Another podcast for you: How Do I Stop Self-Criticism?

Citations
Some ideas here were inspired by a Nicabm training. You can buy your full training programme here

Transcript

Hi, this is Shelley Treacher from the Binge and Overeating Recovery Podcast. Today I'm going to be talking about self worth and self confidence, but first I have a little bit of feedback from my podcast editor. One thing I'm really enjoying is that the people who help me to produce these things are getting involved with their opinions, which is such a compliment to me and I'm so grateful, so thank you.

So he said that he was a little bit sleepy after listening to the podcast. Now this may be something to do with his own life and whether he was tired or not. But I myself actually felt a little bit overwhelmed too. The podcast was actually a lot longer to begin with and I kept reducing it and reducing it because each time I listened, it made me feel overwhelmed.

So, but if you found it soothing or overwhelming or felt tired, it's possibly because you were starting to access a different channel in your human experience. I mentioned last week that my clients often feel tired during the session when they're asked to reflect on their internal experience. This may be because they realise that they've been in a hyper alert, adrenaline fuelled state and they're starting to relax.

This can make them realise just how exhausted they really are. So that may be what's happening here. It's a whole new world accessing the unconscious through the body, and it takes time, and at a much slower pace to let it unfold. This is often contradictory to the fast paced thinking lives that we lead.

So don't think that you're abnormal if you felt tired or overwhelmed. It happens to the best of us. I also want to read you something that I think you'll relate to. Somebody has sent this to me, so she says, I have in five minutes eaten a big bag of Maltesers, and I'm struggling to understand why I have.

I have feelings of numbness and not caring, but also guilt. I'm getting worse. I feel greed is a big thing, as I've been greedy since a child. I just want to stop. I feel sad when I read this because I can feel the desperation, the confusion and the frustration that this person feels with themselves. And I'm guessing that most of you who are listening to this can relate to that.

I also see that the important things here are that the person feels numbness when they eat whilst at the same time accusing themselves of being greedy. The two cancel each other out as far as I'm concerned. Numbness causes greed and is also a result of it. I've talked about greed before as a judgement.

Greed could be described as the act of seeking pleasure from eating gone out of control. Using the word greed in our respective cultures implies that there should be shame for doing this, which is certainly going to make this person feel worse. So, you can see the relentless cycle of shame eating numbness so clearly here.

This person may have eaten that bag of Maltesers for a whole host of reasons that we can't see. But we can see that at least one of those reasons was feeling bad about herself in the first place. In the background of her mind is the judgement, I'm greedy. What would your response be if someone said you were greedy?

Would you be happy about it? No, you'd most likely be angry or depressed. I know I would be. If someone told me I was greedy, I'd instinctively feel ashamed or angry. I would, of course, be able to reason with them that I'm not, now, and that the word greed was a really derogatory term to use that probably said more about their judgmental attitude than anything about me.

But I would also still wonder, on an unconscious level, whether I was greedy. That's just normal. It's a direct path to shame. Remember that shame comes about when we are afraid that we don't fit in with people. So pretty quickly, we have a whole host of feelings that are difficult to manage, which is when you'll turn to food.

This leads so well into today's podcast about self worth. So thank you so much to the person for providing that comment. You are not alone. Self worth. Self worth is the most common thing talked about in therapy. We all grapple with it. As I've talked about before, these kinds of thoughts happen to all of us on a daily basis in the unconscious.

Things like, I'm stupid, or I'm awful, are really common. I know I have these sometimes. Like when I need to take my time over something when I'm talking and I can't think quickly on my feet. This happens in these podcasts. Sometimes I talk really fast because I think I have to entertain you. And I wonder if I'm talking too slow for people, but often I think the opposite is actually more true.

Something I help people with social anxiety through is allowing themselves to take their time and focusing on themselves and what they're really trying to say from their own heart, from their own being, rather than what others are thinking of them or what they think others want them to say. Often what you're dealing with here is the core belief that I'm not good enough or I don't belong.

We all have these beliefs and thoughts. There are lots of reasons for this, but one is the way our brains are wired. Neuroscience tells us that the reward system in the brain and the parts relating to the sense of self relate very strongly with the self esteem parts in our brain. Also, brain imaging shows us that, left idle, the brain tends to go towards shame, the self critic, and judgement.

And we can't really stop that unless we're conscious of it. It's also bound up in our culture. Normal everyday life can invoke this kind of belief or thought. We're often thinking that we could do better. So, for example, in keeping a child safe or happy, we unconsciously tell ourselves that we could always do better at this job, partly out of protection and also from fear.

There's a belief we must be the best in our culture. It's also in our physiology to aspire to being dominant for survival. This can lead to all kinds of self deprecation if we're not. As I've talked about in my podcast on shame, the fear of not belonging can come from shame, where the function of shame is to keep you quiet so that you fit in.

It comes from needing to belong in community to survive. Shame shuts the system down, it's numbing, and it makes us wonder if we are inadequate. But to add to that, we've also got the media and social media. These are full of the message that we aren't good enough. Passively using social media, following, scrolling, liking, etc.

provokes social comparison and envy or approval seeking. But also the current trend for articles like the seven things that will fix you in some way. These inherently make us feel inadequate and unable to receive any help when those seven things don't actually fix us. Being human is just not as simple as that.

Sharing positive posts is possibly a more positive way to engage with social media. You're very welcome to check mine out. I try and keep them positive all the time. But culturally, this is a common sentiment that we often hear. I'm good because I ate this way and I weigh this much. Or, I did something bad, therefore I am bad.

So, it's a good idea to start distinguishing between what you are and what you do, rather than equating being a good or bad person with the good or bad you did for your body. That's really all it is. We also think it's our excellent qualities that produce love, but that's not actually the truth of it.

It's more complex and instinctive than that. Like I said, human beings are a bit more complex and a bit deeper. Feeling inadequate in some way is a reactive feeling. We never ever stop wanting to be validated and to fit in. That's just survival. And of course, it may be that you learnt to feel bad about yourself from an early age because of the conditional love of your primary caregivers.

You may ask yourself, how old were you when you first thought you weren't good enough in some way? If your story is chronic, it's likely that this feeling came first when you were very young. The body brings back memories into the present over and over again, triggered slightly by anything similar. You could have interpreted not being good enough and not fitting in from different events in your history, from the perceived rejections of childhood and even birth, from any criticisms or ideals that you felt you had to live up to, or from any of your relationships.

From the look of disapproval or disappointment on your mother or father or partner's face, the dynamic between you and your siblings or your work colleagues, it becomes registered inside of us and internalized. We can never get enough approval. I know that in my life, my birth and my early life affected my self esteem.

When I was born, I had to be in an incubator for five days with very little contact with my mother. And then when I did live with her, she was a hard worker. She was a self employed single mum. She adored me when she was around, but I would have had such a lack of attention from her, that any child would crave.

That set a template for me. Feeling not worthy of attention. But knowing that script has helped me to rewrite it. I've done a lot of work on knowing I am enough and do belong. I've found people that I fit in with and I work to change that belief every day. Gradually, more and more in my life, I've been allowed to have more self worth.

By me. In daily life, when your self esteem takes a hit, you will usually find it in the family. When you see people who are married to someone disapproving, you might wonder, did their mum or dad value them? Often behind an affair will be something similar, seeking approval for ancient lack of care or attention in the family.

Thinking we are not good enough comes from trying to adhere to other people's values, either historically or in the present. We try to please others. Self esteem, like any other human feeling, is fleeting. Who really has the power to judge us? It's not our doctor, or our teacher, our parents, our partners, or even our boss.

It's really only us. And that's something that has to improve if you're to stop eating in response to low self confidence. So next week, I'll be talking about ways that you can improve your self confidence and feel more worthy. But in the meantime, if you want to help with improving your self esteem, you know that you are welcome to join my support group.

I'd really love to hear your comments and questions so please do keep them coming in. Everything you tell me is kept confidential so please be in touch, no matter how small. Everything that you tell me is useful to someone. Thank you very much for listening this week. I'll see you next Wednesday.