Accepting Self-Worth

The challenge of accepting unconditional self-worth is what it involves. Consequently, you must confront the same childhood experience where neglect or abuse led you to believe you were unlovable, broken, and not good enough, explaining a sad and lonely childhood. This voluntary self-punishment upheld the false belief that parents were good people, allowing the illusion of attachment security to persist.

When you face the fact that all this negative self-talk is nothing more than a coping mechanism that no longer serves its purpose, there’s nowhere to hide from the plain truth — your childhood was a shit show, and your parents didn’t do a very good job, if at all. Why is this thought so hard? Because it comes loaded with grief over the love and care you didn’t get. It requires somber silence for what’s lost, what never happened, and what never will.

It takes radical acceptance and generous forgiveness to prevent burnout from the raging fire of anger. It happened, and it has shaped you. There’s nothing you can do now but learn from it and move forward. The most important part of “moving on” is having the courage and faith in yourself to stop speaking and thinking negatively about yourself, and to stop downplaying your achievements and thoughts when sharing them with others, even in the face of inevitable criticism and disapproval.