Self-worth is challenging to define other than a feeling of “worthiness.” Worthiness cannot be durably created by outside things such as a new hairdo, achieving a particular goal or award, or receiving a compliment. While these may occasionally help boost your self-esteem, self-worth goes much deeper.
Today’s article is essential for many in this community because, after abuse, you may feel your self-worth has been seriously compromised.
Self-worth is the deservedness and capacity to generate and receive a life that grants you value. For example, having relationships that add to your soul’s truth, life, and goals rather than subtract from them. Also, having the confidence to expand, grow, succeed, and break out of old comfort zones into new territories while being solid enough to exhibit kindness, honesty, transparency, humility, morality, courage, and strength.
Before, during, and after toxic relationships, the topic of self-worth requires addressing if we don’t wish to stay limited, traumatized, and stuck in patterns of living without our true potential gifts.
I’d love you to hold my hand as we take this self-worth journey together today.
Self-Value and Being Valued
The first ‘self-worth’ topic I want to discuss is anchoring into the necessary self-value to be valued by others.
Even when dealing with good people, they are not mind readers. They don’t know your likes, dislikes, and preferences unless you speak up and express them. This may be difficult for you if you feel sensitive to other people’s energies and unsure of your own.
If your childhood caregivers were uninterested in your needs, wants, and preferences, you may have struggled to identify those things for yourself and, much less, asked for them. Or when you tried to, you may have experienced feelings of rejection, humiliation, or being dismissed. You could have decided early on not to share your needs and look after them yourself. Possibly, when you did accept support from others, the consequences suffered were being manipulated for another person’s agenda.
The sad truth is many empaths, even before suffering narcissistic abuse, have a suppressed ‘self’ unable to express needs healthily because of the fears of CRAP (Criticism, Rejection, Abandonment, or Punishment.)
If this is you (and understandably so) in a relationship with anyone, they can’t see ‘you’ to serve and love ‘you.’
Who are you? Who is there to love?
No-body. Because you don’t share who you are.
It seems you are not valued, but there is no ‘you’ to be seen as valued. Bonding hormones are released within those who serve others. It creates oxytocin, fondness, connection and love. You deny people this ability to connect with you if you don’t allow them to ‘see’ you, ‘know’ you, meet your needs, and serve you.
Now, let’s take this up a notch with toxic people. They absolutely don’t value you. They have no interest in ‘you’. They don’t care about your feelings or who you are as a blood, flesh, soulful human being.
Their only interest in you is what they can get from you. Ego gratification, money, sex, and stuff. Not only are you not valued, but you are objectified – the ‘thing’ that delivers what the narcissist seeks. You are devalued and dehumanized.
After this level of relationship abuse, you absolutely feel more worthless than ever.
But please take heart because this is an incredible opportunity to heal these old core wounds that have been on repeat in your life. Then, you can rise above feeling like your self-worth depends on others.
To be recognized, you must first ‘see’ yourself. To be met, you have to show and share yourself. Prioritizing the healing and development of your self-worth is vital to do this.
For many of us who have experienced narcissistic relationships, valuing ourselves was always something we needed to look at and heal. I hope what I have shared with you above helps bring some awareness to you about this. There is more to come below.
This is a powerful mantra to help you anchor self-value into your Being:
“I can live aligned with my values. By sharing my values and preferences, I invite collaboration, love and trust with others.”
If you are a NARP Member, I suggest using the Goal Setting Module with this statement:
“I can take up space and express my needs, wants and preferences to create partnership, collaboration, success and expansion. It is now safe to be myself.”
Boundaries – Self-Worth in Action
Ultimately, self-worth and feeling worthy of all the good stuff in life cannot be achieved by yourself.
At first, after suffering from toxic abuse, it’s vital to self-partner, go within, and heal. This alone time is powerful and essential. Even after this hiatus, you may like your own company, yet you will notice your soul is calling for ‘more’—more connection, expansion, and experiences with life and others. Of course, this can be terrifying, but it is vital for self-worth. Self-worth won’t stand the test of time in solitude.
Connection with life and others is essential for creating greater love, expansion, and success than can be achieved alone. Suppressing this truth diminishes one’s self-worth. Communion and connection are synonymous with self-worth and can be navigated safely.
This is where healthy boundaries come into play.
The key to understanding is that self-worth is never defined by what other people do or do not do in response to you. Self-worth comes from your ability to interact with people, no matter who they are.
Let me explain …
If you try to interact with people in a way that will hopefully make them ‘pleasant’ to be around, that means telling people what they want to hear and shying away from necessary honest conversations. Trying to avoid uncomfortable feelings in this way eventually destroys your self-worth. People say, “I don’t want to hurt their feelings.” But if they are honest with themselves, they don’t want to hurt their own.
There is a good reason the expression “the truth sets you free” exists. Authentic friends, partners, colleagues, and family members speak up if they love themselves and, therefore, can love others. They offer opportunities for greater understanding, collaboration, growth, and improved connection – rather than saying nothing and causing disconnection just to save their potentially uncomfortable feelings.
These are the people who have real and solid relationships. They magnetize other people who wish to be honest with each other. Transparency is not a weakness that leaves people susceptible to others. It offers protection. It is a great strength. Most of all, it creates a genuine connection—with self, others, and life—the juice of self-worth.
The tendency to not speak up and have difficult conversations with people is programmed into us from a very early age. When enmeshed in toxic relationships, despite our initial intuitive fears, we kept the peace, hoped for the best, and told ourselves stories to justify and explain away the personal violations we started to receive.
When you spoke up and thought you were laying boundaries, you may not have realized the power of a true boundary. We believed it was about calling out bad behavior, making someone else see what they were doing wrong, holding them accountable, and changing them.
Which usually went very badly. We became more out of control on this incorrect boundary crusade of trying to control another’s character and choices.
You never had the power to change another—only yourself. The real boundary is anchoring into your self-worth, stating your values and chosen life truths, and then observing whether or not people meet you there and letting them go if they don’t.
An actual boundary is not reliant on someone else—who certainly may never accept your boundary—getting it. It only requires you to get it, which you potentially always can if it is embodied in your self-worth.
A great mantra for this is:
“By knowing and stating my truth, I conjoin with those who share these values and detach from those who don’t. You either are or are not my reality.”
If you are a member of the Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Program (NARP), this goal set is powerful:
“I express my values calmly and clearly. Those who agree are those I journey through life with. Those who don’t simply are not my people.”
In Conclusion
If you lack self-worth, you are in a painful and precarious position because another person can easily take away your love and affection, leaving you feeling like you have nothing left to go on with or maybe even live for.
Before healing these unconscious underlying programs and beliefs, we can live in constant fear of love being taken away in any relationship because we do not yet know how to grant it back to ourselves. This leaves us believing we are unworthy of everything we desire, especially being seen, heard, held, and loved.
The great news is this can be directly addressed, healed, and reversed, and I am thrilled to host the Thrive Membership Program every year. This is an exclusive 10-week online Live boot camp to help get you on track with your Self, life, and others after abuse.
What I covered today—creating self-worth and self-value and learning healthy boundary setting—is addressed in the Thrive Membership Program, which offers powerful workshopping and life-changing specific Quanta Freedom Healings™.
As well as … going free from toxic ties to abusers, dissolving away your abuse symptoms, releasing self-sabotage, learning how to attract and generate healthy relationships, and so much more.
Here is what some of our Community Members said about their 10-week Thrive experience.
Thrive Testimonies
“Thrive was the lifeline I needed. I was in pure shock and couldn’t find a logical next step. Thrive popped up, and I knew I had to sign up. It was so much more than I ever expected and took my healing to a cosmic level. Melanie and the MTE team have provided such a priceless gift to the world – the kind of freedom you could never put into words. Melanie is a remarkable teacher, wise, funny, and honest – guiding us to practice the most profound self-love on our own terms. If you do this program, you will be surprised and ecstatic at the results.”- Ramona.
“Working through the Thrive program has been a transformational and life-changing experience. It has enabled me to expand my understanding of myself and the incredible power of connection with Source. I am grateful to be part of a support community sharing in this wondrous journey, allowing me to further appreciate and reinforce the blessing of Source in my life.” – Joy.
“I was so painfully triggered at the thought of being replaced by my ex’s new girlfriend. With the help of the healings in Thrive, I could not only shift these blocks and pain out of my body but also fill myself with an expansive sense of love and peace in their place. It’s unmissable.” – Bee.
“Thrive genuinely helped me to cope with a difficult past by guiding me through the process of going no contact with my abuser while also teaching me how to recognize and let go of the blocks in my life that were preventing me from healing. If you’re searching for a way to heal emotional pain in the past or present, this program is for you. The profound gains in understanding it will offer have no equal in therapy. In short, Thrive saved my life.” – Bianca.
“Thrive is an amazing program that shifts toxic energy from the body, allowing you to live your best life! I’ve had the privilege of being in the Thrive community and saw myself freed from my debt cycle. By the end of the ten weeks, I had paid off all my credit cards, much to my surprise and delight! Mel’s passion, drive, and care for helping others find inner peace and reach their best self make Thrive an incredible program I highly recommend. If you want to transform your life, I urge you to try it – I promise, you won’t regret it!” – Della.
The Thrive Membership Program is open to you if you are a NARPer wanting a supportive super-boost breakthrough, a non-NARPer desiring more personal coaching with their healing journey, or if you are a past Thrive student being called to Thrive again into an even greater, healthier and happier life trajectory.
The Thrive Membership Program starts September 12th, 2023.
Be quick to claim one of the limited spaces remaining.
I hope today’s article has given you some vital keys to your abuse recovery. As always, I look forward to your comments and questions below.