Choose Your Own Self-Worth

Stop believing the lies you tell yourself about your worth.

Photo by Lucas Sankey on Unsplash

When I talk about the burnout that I experienced six years ago, a recurrent expression I use is, “My self-esteem was on the floor.” And it was. I viewed my burnout and the bullying that precipitated it as a personal failure on my part. I couldn’t cope, I wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t valuable enough, I wasn’t likeable enough… Why else would I be bullied? Why else wouldn’t I be able to thrive?

I saw myself as I thought others saw me, as a replaceable therefore worthless person. But bullies don’t pick on worthless people, they pick on people with low self-worth, people that will let them get away with their worse behaviour. I was too respectful of authority to question or report such behaviour, but worse still, I had internalised the pernicious belief that I was worthless.

To those who think that if your self-esteem is on the floor, you just need to pick it up, you are absolutely right but people with low self-worth need encouragement and words that make sense to them. They are eager to find the way back home to a healthy self-worth. They just don’t know how.

Self-esteem vs self-worth

I am not a psycho-therapist but this is how I understand the difference between self-esteem and self-worth, two separate concepts although…