I Am A Worthless Person. Devaluing Yourself: How To Stop Collapsing

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

The ability to devalue something - ourselves, others, our own and others' actions, results, achievements - this is the kind of psychological defense that we use to stop inside various complex experiences that we can face.

In general, any psychological defense is designed to stop some kind of actual experience, since the psyche regards it as damaging its integrity.

Devaluation protects us often from imaginary dangerous states and feelings that were once, in childhood, really difficult to bear. Now this may not be the case at all, but the psyche works as before.

How we learn to devalue ourselves

Of course, we are taught this. Parents, reputable relatives, teachers. All those people who there and then seemed to us knowledgeable, right, strong. In general, we believed them, because someone had to believe, it was necessary to find some kind of coordinate system for life.

It just so happens that in childhood we do not choose authoritative people - they somehow themselves are selected. Here is such a mom and such a dad - you have to believe them.

And so often such a depreciating mom or such a depreciating dad gets. Those who say, they say, “you don’t need to turn your nose up”, “I also got an achievement, I got an A”, “and Zoya Petrovna’s daughter knits so well, but what have you done?, you are not a very smart girl with us "or" you are a weak boy, you have nothing to go to aviation. " And how can this little boy or this girl not believe dad or mom, even if it's all very sad and offensive, will have to take it for granted, because there is simply no alternative - children are too young to be critical of the words of their parents … not ripe.

And there is another situation, when no one seems to say anything like that, but all the same, inside there is a feeling that I am some kind of small, worthless … “Well, what if I'm dancing … everyone is dancing, and much better than me! And they sing better … And in general, I'm so worthless. Yes, it would be better if I was not in this world! . Such thoughts and feelings suggest that parents could non-verbally, that is, wordlessly, broadcast such a devaluating position to their children. Like, you are superfluous, it would be better if you really didn’t exist, only troubles … Mom walks and thinks: her daughter is not so beautiful she was born, as her mother wanted, and not so clever … An ordinary girl, but how much strength is in her have to invest. And such a mother experiences disgust for her own child and anger, for example, or resentment. But often, he cannot help but say about it - it will sound somehow strange. But only in her automatic behavior, facial expressions and gestures that cannot be controlled, and will her attitude be manifested. And the child will catch this, clearly read this information and feel ashamed, offended, lonely, unnecessary.

Often clients at a psychologist's consultation say: they didn’t tell me anything like that, that I was unworthy of something, and my mother was always friendly, and my father was normal, but I feel, for some reason, small, invaluable, superfluous …

Because there is a verbal way of communication - in words, and there is a non-verbal way - gestures, facial expressions, behavior. And nothing, in fact, can be hidden from your own children.

Gradually, as we grow up, the assignment of parental attitudes and parental attitudes towards us occurs. We ourselves become such parents as we had. If they depreciated us, then we become the same depreciating in relation to ourselves.

How depreciation works in adulthood

I have already said that depreciation is a defense mechanism of the psyche against intolerable feelings. Once upon a time, these feelings were experienced by parents next to us. They were, for example, ashamed of us - when we recited this rhyme so clumsily or clumsily tried to portray this dance. They were ashamed in front of other relatives who came to see, and their parents tried to drown out this shame: "Well, that's it, Dasha, you won't be a singer, there is nothing to do with this." "Petenka, why do you need this, get off the stool."

Or jealousy, for example, was intolerable. And my daughter, what a beauty has grown, not the same as I was in my youth! And golden curls, and a thin waist. Hmm … So what of that? There is nothing like that, ordinary to myself, like everyone else. And my mother says: "You are like everyone else, ordinary." Or "Look, Lyudka has a fifth size, but such a neckline does not suit you, take this dress off!"

This entire external picture, if we grew up in it, becomes our internal one. And now this grown-up girl considers herself to be sloppy reading poetry, clumsily dancing and an ordinary "gray mouse". Although, they can tell her something completely different, admire her recitation abilities, celebrate her beauty and uniqueness. But that's all to her - if only henna, she doesn't believe! And who does he trust? … Of course, that mom and that dad are in the past.

We protect ourselves from our own feelings, which seem intolerable to us, as our parents once tried to stop them in ourselves. We are not aware and cannot be long in shame, or in envy, or in disgust. It seems to us that we cannot bear it, because our parents could not bear it there and then.

How to stop devaluing

What I have described, in adulthood, works unconsciously and in an automatic mode. Devaluation just works like some kind of valve and "bam" - we are already in an unpleasant state for us, we do not want anything, we are not striving for anything, and we cannot find a place for ourselves. There is no us and that's it. And there is no value in us either.

In the course of therapy, you can gradually unwind this tangle of unconscious processes, make them obvious, try to look at them with adult eyes, perhaps by rechecking whether these automatisms are outdated, by chance?

Am I really worthless? Am I really a worthless person? Or maybe I can do so many interesting and useful things? After all, I came up with this program that people use successfully, because I wrote the book that people enjoy reading. It is with me that those and those people are friends, entrusting me with their time, their thoughts, feelings and emotions and treating me attentively. It is I who paint pictures so charmingly and so sincerely love that man (that woman) over there and we have such wonderful and talented children!

All this will be impossible if, for example, you forbid yourself to experience the joy and pleasure of what you have achieved. If you are afraid to appropriate today's achievements, fearing in the future you will not be able to “keep your brand” and thus fall into your toxic shame. If you're in the habit of comparing yourself to someone all the time, they'll definitely have something better. If devaluation of yourself is so automatic and ubiquitous in your head that even now, after reading these lines, you think: “Well, yes, it's easy to write it all like this, it's all understandable! And try to do it, change!.

And this is what we do during individual or group psychotherapy - not quickly, gradually, but with a guarantee: that which is realized and can be experienced, because it no longer controls us.