Self Worth

We all have intrinsic worth. All of creation is a manifestation of the energy and the intelligence of Spirit, of God. Everything has value. You have value. You know this and you act on your own behalf. You don’t act on your own behalf as well as you would like, but then, who does. I certainly don’t. We struggle with knowing and not knowing our own value.

We have nothing to do that is more important than taking care of ourselves, but we don’t. So then the question is not, “do I have value?” but “why do I devalue myself?”

If something of no worth gets damaged it is no big deal. If something we value very much gets damaged it causes us anguish. Thus we can protect ourselves from anguish by making sure the things we value aren’t harmed. If we can’t protect things from harm, then all we can do is to not value them. The devaluation of ourselves comes from our awareness that we can’t protect ourselves from harm. We will protect our feelings by not caring.

Except that we do care. We each know that we have value. So we construct a barrier between our caring and our awareness. We each have a part named “I don’t care” who simply says, “whatever” whenever hurtful things happen so that we don’t hurt. We can’t allow ourselves to value ourselves because then the hurt would be too great.

It is hard to talk “I don’t care” out of devaluing ourselves because then we would be flooded with hurt and we are afraid we will be overwhelmed. We are afraid the hurt would never stop. The paradox here is that, while the hurt will never stop, the hurt becomes less overwhelming when we allow ourselves to feel it. It is the flinch, the constriction in the face of the hurt which causes us to tense up, and so the blow does more harm. When we learn to trust that “it is just a feeling” and we can feel our way through it, then we can relax and, like the drunk in the car crash, fare better by being limp.

Once we know that we are resilient and that this hurt will not harm us, and might even make us stronger, then we can allow ourselves to more and more fully know our own worth, our own value. It is our confidence in our own competence to care for ourselves emotionally that allows us ultimately to know fully how beloved we are.