Rooted in Worth: Understanding Self Worth and How to Honor Ourselves

We talk with counselor and researcher Donna Daniel about why self-worth is a steady foundation, not a moving target, and how to build it with awareness, respect, esteem, and confidence. We unpack counterfeits like importance, explore trauma-sensitive steps, and offer practical ways to make worth your base for growth.

• difference between self-worth and self-esteem
• pillars of worth as awareness, respect, esteem, confidence
• importance as a counterfeit for worth
• building blocks we share in relationships
• culture and systems that deny or affirm worth
• balancing being and becoming without burnout
• trauma-informed grounding before narrative work
• boundaries that protect dignity in hard moments
• deciding from a worth-based frame
• resources for learning worth conscious theory

Visit understandingself-worth.com. 

Transcript

Welcome And Show Purpose

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to What Would Sabrina Say? I'm Sabrina Gong and I'm excited you're joining me today. In this podcast, I dive into mental health topics, topics on relationships and overall well-being. With over 20 years of experience as a licensed clinical social worker, I share insights and invite expert guests who are passionate about making a positive difference. I started this podcast because I was frustrated with the often misleading or recycled information in social media involving self-help and the mental health field. My goal is to provide you with genuine, useful content that's educational and informative. Thanks for tuning in. I hope you find our conversations both enlightening and empowering. I'm glad you're here. Hi, welcome to What Would Sabrina Say?

SPEAKER_01 0:46

I'm your host, Sabrina Dong. And today I have with me Donna Daniel. And she's here to talk today about self-worth, what it really means. And such an important topic, I think, in just understanding what the self is, how do we achieve self-worth? Donna, if you'd like to share about yourself.

SPEAKER_03 1:05

Yeah, I'm um a licensed professional counselor. Um I've been doing this for about a little over 20 years, and uh also co-author of um an article that was in the Sage Journal of Theory and Psychology in 2023 on uh self-worth, specifically worth conscious theory. And then uh just recently co-authored a book, Understanding Self-Worth, that is also on worth conscious theory. And uh I've I've spent the better of 10 years doing research on self-worth, but specifically um how it can be therapeutic and how it can be foundational to wellness.

Self-Esteem vs Self-Worth

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Great, thank you. It was so interesting to learn about worth conscious theory and how self- self-worth is it's something that we have. And just wondering where you'd like to start in talking about self-worth for those of us to kind of understand it a bit deeper.

Worth As Foundation And Pillars

SPEAKER_03 2:07

You know, I think maybe a a little history for what I have been seeing as a clinician. So there are other modalities I've been trained in and have loved using. I love acceptance and commitment theory. Um, I've used transactional analysis, I've used some CBT. I liked uh Albert Ellis' REBT concepts. And in using those to help clients manage different pain points in their life, I kept seeing a reoccurrence of self-worth as a sticking point and as a much heavier like mental emotional weight that when a client was managing that or avoiding even dealing with it, it's like other things just wouldn't move into healthier space as easily. So there there seemed to be this psych ache that was specific to feeling unworthy. And um, I borrow that term from um some research from suicidal ideology, where they talk about psych ache being a kind of mental-emotional pain that's um more like more serious or more um challenging for somebody to overcome. And I found that feeling unworthy fits in that space. And so I started looking fairly early in my career. I was looking for, well, what attends to this? And there are self-worth models available, but some of them have overlap with self-esteem. And the more I looked and read and tried to differentiate between self-worth and self-esteem, I saw a distinct difference. I saw that self-esteem was something that can go up and down. And the way I talk about the differences, like growing up, like especially as a teenager, I would sing in the shower. And my stepdad sometimes would enjoy standing in the hallway because he could overhear, and he'd have this little private concert of me just singing all the pop songs from the 80s at the top of my lungs. And I had high self-esteem for my voice in the shower. Because most of us sound better, better acoustics in there. But when I would go out and let's I went with a friend and tried out for our choir in high school, um, I wasn't, I didn't have as high of self-esteem for my voice in that setting. And so I found that I sounded better in a group where my voice could mingle with others. Another event that kind of lowered my self-esteem around my voice and my singing ability is um I was gonna do a talent for a talent portion of a show. And I had grown up dancing, so I felt really capable dancing. So I had two options, but I loved singing, right? So I sang this song for it, it was a teacher at my high school that was helping out with this program, and she goes, Donna, maybe dance. That was her advice meeting Donna, maybe, maybe dance. And I was like, Oh, okay. So I could have high self-esteem in one place and lower self-esteem in another place. And as I was working with clients and thinking about my own experience with esteem going up and down, depending on setting, I was like, well, but worth doesn't. Worth doesn't, and in my opinion, shouldn't go up and down. It's more solid and I would even call it foundational. And so what we look at is if self-worth is foundational, it actually is the base for awareness of that worth, respect for that worth, your esteem can be based in that worth, and then your confidence can be based in that worth too. And if all these things work together, you get to realize self-worth over a lifetime. So you get this before you know yourself, you develop these pillars of self-worth because you have this, and then you can have realized self-worth over your lifetime, and that's directly from the book. So if we look at self-esteem in regards to that, my worth didn't diminish because some people were unimpressed with my singing. And so I didn't like it. So when we look at self-esteem, it's kind of what we like, what we like about ourselves. So I didn't like that my shower singing voice didn't translate to the world.

SPEAKER_02 6:41

Right.

SPEAKER_03 6:42

But it didn't mean that my worth diminished with that talent. I still had worth just because I existed, I still had worth that I could rely on that and I could also comprehend and handle that I wasn't gonna like everything about myself and I wasn't gonna like every experience I had in the world, but that would not take away my ability to feel worthy as a person.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Right. So I I do find it's used interchangeably about self-esteem, self-worth, because sometimes people think like, oh, to build self-worth, I need to do these skills, or do you think so like myself, or do you hear a lot about self-compassion and that importance? And the example you gave, it's so clear around with having a strong foundation of self-worth, your self-esteem isn't impacted because of one person's judgment, opinion, view of your singing in that moment in time.

Importance As A Counterfeit

SPEAKER_03 7:39

Yes, yeah, or anything. It could go the other way that I could have high self-esteem and lots of things. It doesn't make my worth higher. My worth stays solid and foundational and it grounds me. So one of the other things that we talk about in the book is there's a substitute for worth in some systems, and this isn't just family systems, it can be larger systems as well. That importance becomes the substitute for worth. And so if you have to be the smartest or the most talented or the most beautiful, it can buy you temporary importance in certain systems, but those things don't make a person feel more worthy. And um, let me see if I've got that. We talk about that in the book too, that if conditions replace self-worth, and this you might recognize this from Carl Rogers talked about conditional worth. So if conditions replace self-worth as a foundation, you have awareness of the conditions in your system. You learn to respect those conditions. Your esteem comes from those conditions. And one of those conditions can be, you know, be the smartest person at school. So you can have esteem and being smart, then your confidence comes from those conditions and they uphold a counterfeit. And the counterfeit can just simply be make our family look good. Or another counterfeit that's less exciting is that uh don't be a failure.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Right. Yes, I think that's a um a big narrative that people can hold on to is feeling like a failure or not being good enough. And so having an understanding of self-worth and like so that foundation that had throughout your life that can really help with these pillars or be that that marker.

SPEAKER_03 9:26

I found it to be vital to uh the recovery process for several of my clients, which is why developing this model became so important to me as a provider. I was looking for what will add to the healing process and also what was missing. And I felt like the conceptualization of worth and that overlap with self-esteem and some of the models that were available was confusing. And so I I wanted to look at, well, if we really look at self-worth as something that contributes to wellness, how does it do that? How can we talk about it in the simplest of terms? Um, another, these are just my most basic things that I share with clients, but I just talk about these building blocks. These are what build the pillars. And so, you know, what are we aware of? What do we respect? You know, what do we have esteem for? And and also where does our confidence come from? And when I look at these basic building blocks, they're blocks that we share with each other. Right now, I am sharing some awareness blocks with you and you're sharing some blocks with me as well as your, I feel like uh one of the blocks is respect because you're listening, right? And then you shared back. Oh, I heard you, Donna, I heard you say this, and then you added something. So we're actually sharing blocks right now. And I I see that we're doing that all the time, but we can only share the building blocks that we have available to us. And so some systems have limited building blocks, and these are the blocks we need to build our pillars. If we have limited availability of building blocks that support self-worth, then my pillars are going to be those imitation pillars that I held up that are kind of wonky, that seem a little more um, you know, in danger of falling over.

Building Blocks We Share

SPEAKER_01 11:24

Uh, really, you know, like this this one line stood out for me when we talked before about Western mindset becoming better doesn't always include feeling worthy. And I think there's so much about achieving success or status, doing better, being better at some things. And it feels fleeting because, like you're saying, it doesn't mean that you'll feel worthy. Like it helps with that self-worth if the foundation wasn't there, right? So that really stood out for me.

SPEAKER_03 11:56

Yeah, I think I remember when we talked on the phone about that, that I shared that I I look at Eastern culture as being focused on being, and western culture can be really focused on becoming. And straddling those two things can, I think, be difficult until we understand that there can be a balance between them. So I find value in both things. And I love the idea of being worthy just because we exist and that we actually can give that to each other. I do believe there are not just systems, but whole countries that have not fostered the worth of every member of that country, and that treating some as less than unfortunately has trickled down generation after generation. And so there are whole cultures that have, because they were denied worth at some point, let's even say thousands of years ago, could still be struggling with feeling worthy just because they exist. And in modern society, we have the ability to look at why something has happened historically and make a decision about it that anything that interferes with human dignity may not have been the right answer, even though it's been something that's been happening for generations.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

Right. And yeah, such an influence our cultures can be, right, without us always knowing at a conscious level. So I'm wondering about, you know, for listeners who want to work on self-worth and feeling worthy, what does that look like? Where where do can people sort of start?

Being And Becoming In Balance

SPEAKER_03 13:38

Places I start with clients is I'm listening for what building blocks they have, how aware are they of themselves, how how much do they respect themselves? Do they esteem anything about themselves? What amount of confidence do they have? And it may not be in their whole self, it could be in a skill or a capability. As I'm listening for who they are, what they know, which building blocks they're already using, then I start to um you know help them look at the difference between each moment, like think of those building blocks being available in each moment. The ones that use either take them towards being self-conscious or can take them towards being more worth conscious. And so that's what we have right here is is where the where the building blocks come into play. It's specific to self-worth. Am I aware of my worth as a human? Because there's human worth available to all humans, and then there's self-worth that we can realize. But if human worth that's available to everyone isn't available in a specific system, I believe it's harder for self-worth to show up for the people in that system.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

Right. So I was going to touch on how therapy can help. So self-education, understanding about the pillars, understanding what self-worth is, maybe even difference between self-worth, self-esteem, where a client can maybe get some support around building their self-worth. And I'm wondering how much environment can sometimes play on our self-worth as well, too.

SPEAKER_03 15:15

I think environment is the original place that we either have our worth affirmed or denied. And we talk about that in several different chapters of the book, that when self-worth is denied, a person can develop their own lost worth story and believe their worth is lost. That's the, those are the hardest situations that I see come into my office or scenarios where a person's really believing that they've lost their worth, they don't know how to get it back, and they hide that. They'll even hide it in therapy until something triggers them and they come in. And then I see in a session where this finally shows up, I see how distraught they are. And they are fearing that they don't have worth as a person. And so they're so afraid to even say it in session because they're afraid that somebody else is going to say, Well, you don't. It's how powerful that fear is. And as a therapist, not that I ever did this, but what I learned about how deeply rooted a lost worth story can be is I can't just say, I believe you're worthy.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

Right. Person's still not going to believe it.

SPEAKER_03 16:32

No, it's not going to be able to counter it.

unknown 16:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:36

So the psychoeducation piece, letting them know there's a model available that includes the capabilities they already have. It includes perspective taking that they're already able to do. Um, and then shifting from a self-conscious frame of reference over to a worth-conscious frame of reference takes practice. And that's where the being and becoming thing can come into play. Because being is wonderful if what you're taught about being includes worth as a person. But being unworthy is horrifying. It's the absence of wellness. So then we have to look at becoming and how do we become something when we don't know how to be the thing we're trying to become? And so that practice has to include some things that are novel to that individual, realistic. So they might be new, but as long as they're grounded in that person's reality, they can be doable.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

It's really helping to understand narratives, reality, helping to challenge that belief. I mean, it's interesting how that's an example of words can hurt and be ingrained, and then words can just not mean anything.

Systems, Culture, And Denied Worth

SPEAKER_03 17:46

Isn't that fascinating? But it's it's how often the person has heard the words and how those words made them feel. Also, the people with positional power that use those words that makes a difference. I had a client once, this was early in my career. I I'm gonna guess it was in the first five years of my career because I was pretty young. And she said, You have to say nice things to me because I'm paying you. And I thought Yes, I've heard that before. Yeah, have you? And I thought, oh, she just like caught me off at the knees there, right? Like, how how do you respond to that? And I sat with her for a minute. I invited her to explore that more. I said, Well, if if that was true, what does that mean to you? If you thought I was only saying things to make you feel good because you're paying me. And, you know, she immediately recognized it meant that nothing I said was of any value.

SPEAKER_02 18:45

Right.

SPEAKER_03 18:45

Yeah. And when we look at somebody with that orientation, I didn't know how to say this then, but now what I say is that tells me you you know what it feels like to have nothing of value come out of your mouth, right? That she can conceive of that. And and I usually, when I get into that space with someone, I'll get this look like, whoa, I'm like, I know, well, but I know that too, right? Like, unfortunately, in the society that that we're currently in, that's still a possible life experience that someone is going to disavow anything of value, anything of value that can come out of your mouth. And you have to sit and not know what to do with that experience. And then you can start to believe, what if there's truth to that? What if what comes out of my mouth has no value? And until we look at human worth and individual worth differently, we can do that to people. They can be telling us their story, which at the most basic level, it has value to them. But in a transaction, in an interaction, and if you think of those building blocks being exchanged, their story could have value to someone else as well who just needs to hear that story. So through our life experience with others who could care enough, like like you're doing today, I said it earlier, you're just taking time to listen. That's the simplicity of valuing somebody's story is just taking the time to listen to their story the way they need to tell it. And when we, let's say, have parents that don't do that, maybe they don't have time. Maybe they've both got three jobs. And so someone can grow up believing that the words coming out of their mouth or the building blocks they have to share have no value. And when that happens, sometimes they're going to project that same experience or ideology onto someone else, like that happened in session. Like if you're being paid to tell me something, it has less value.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

Right. It's it's trying to kind of just find a way to dismiss that.

SPEAKER_03 20:56

Yeah, it's dismissive, but where do we learn to be dismissive? Usually because we've been dismissed.

SPEAKER_01 21:04

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 21:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

We're protecting ourselves, learn behavior.

Starting Points For Listeners

SPEAKER_03 21:10

Yeah. Yeah. I didn't think it was a bad thing, but it told me a lot about her not knowing how to trust, not knowing how to assess something as trustworthy.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Right. We sort of talked about rewriting the story of a traumatic event and how to integrate with trauma and self-worth. I think, you know, a lot of times when experience being violated, abuse, neglect, it affects our self-worth. And I'm not sure sometimes if that's addressed. We talk about shame, guilt, but just wondering, you know, when you're using worth conscious theory or using these pillars, like can it help with understanding self-worth and trauma?

SPEAKER_03 21:55

We have a chapter where we talk about trauma-informed care. Conscious theory isn't specifically a trauma tool, although feeling unworthy can be traumatizing. So it would depend on like the level of disruption that the person is experiencing. I believe there may need to be some more trauma-specific tools pulled forward to help the person regulate their nervous system, to help them feel grounded in their sense of self in order to do some of this worth conscious work. I am concerned that if somebody moves into doing like a rewrite of their lost worse story, they could get triggered. And if the clinician doesn't have training in the trauma-informed modalities, they might not know how to help ground that person before continuing on. So I have found that anytime we get into the space of talking about self-worth, some of the deepest heartache shows up, things that can really trigger like a trauma reaction. Trying to think of who talks about it. It's like this hypersensitivity that causes fear, and then the person is like automatically reacting rather than processing. So you would have to help them do some breath work, maybe do some somatic work around where they're holding pain in their body before proceeding.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

Okay. I was also wondering if you could talk about forming a new frame of reference. You called it the lost worth story.

SPEAKER_03 23:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:33

I just I wasn't familiar with that. Yeah, and I was wondering if you could share.

Environment And Lost Worth Stories

SPEAKER_03 23:37

We coined that term. That's one of the most heartbreaking things that I have seen as a clinician is let's say a client comes in and they're talking about feeling sad, and they're sad all the time. It doesn't matter if they get a promotion at work. It doesn't matter that their their best friend invited them, you know, to go maybe do something fun on the weekend. They're like, I just have this lingering sadness. Sometimes what shows up down the road as they start to feel safe in the uh counseling process is this fear that they aren't worthy. One of the early techniques I use is when somebody says, and this takes time, by the way. They don't come in in a first session and say, I feel worthless. It's after they feel safe, they will finally say, I feel worthless. And what shows up in that session is just this emotional context that they're doing everything they can to hide and to control because they're so afraid it's true that they're worthless, that they want to hide that from the world, but it's exhausting to keep a facade up. And so I'll take my hand and say, let's pretend your worth is here. And here are the conditions that you were raised to believe. And they slid right in there over the top of the worth. And when you look down for your worth, all you see is the conditions. And there could be like four or five, six conditions stacked on top of that worth. So your worth is still there, but your view is obscured from your own worth as a person because what you've learned to survive in the system is these conditions. This does get at uh Gabor Mate's work on, he calls them the two basic needs, and it's attachment and authenticity. So uh he talks about the tension between having to choose between attachment and authenticity. What I believe is um before we know ourselves, and and in Erickson's psychosocial model, it basically takes up to, I think he said by age 18, it's intimacy versus isolation. That's where you'll go pair off and share who you are with someone. So between birth and age 18, we're getting to know who we are. So authenticity comes in stages. If you look at if you believe in Erickson's psychosocial model, I find it to be a useful model. And so we can't even choose our authenticity until we have some of it online. So the first few years of life, and I'd say the first three to five, we're choosing attachment and getting a kind of a trickle of authenticity happening. Like who am I? And so when we have to choose between one or the other, that can be traumatizing. With this model, what we're looking at is people will choose conditional worth to keep attachment, even though it infringes on their authenticity. But they may not fully comprehend that infringement or even the denial of authenticity, depending on, we talk about in the book the difference between acquired values in the system and inherent values that develop in the person. And so if they have to choose the acquired values in the system to belong, which are imbued with conditions, and they don't get to honor their inherent values, which tell them who they are, that's traumatizing.

Trauma Sensitivity And Grounding

SPEAKER_01 27:04

So we've sort of touched on the difference from being and becoming. I think sometimes that that's hard for me to wrap my head around. I'm just thinking other people have I know, you know, mindfulness you talk about where human beings are meant to just be, but that becoming piece is that about who you strive to be or attain or achieve? Or what would be the difference for you between being, and maybe I'm just seeing it from a mindfulness theory or perspective, which is kind of where it's confusing me, but I like the conceptualization that you are being right now.

SPEAKER_03 27:40

You are being you, I am being me. And we can sit in that, and and with mindfulness and mindfulness-based meditation, just sitting and being with myself should be peaceful. It should be calming. Becoming, I and I think being is good, but becoming then is about what do I want? And that can be a million different things. You're going to want some different things than I want. And it's in the pursuit of becoming, we can even get addicted to an outcome. We can need an outcome and then get ourselves in trouble as we strive for something and maybe have difficulty getting it. Um, our self-esteem goes down, our confidence can go down. But our the awareness, the respect, the esteem, and the confidence can be about the thing we're trying to do and can stop being about our worth as foundational. So we can get this separation of self where being, um, and I I've seen this in John Cabot Zen's work, being is supposed to be grounding and help you be okay with who you are exactly the way you are right now, which inherently has some worth in it. Like you're okay just the way you are is a statement of worth. And then becoming can be about, I think, in a the most positive way, becoming healthier, focusing on wellness, becoming a more whole version of myself, uh becoming an adult or a professional. There are lots of positive ways to focus on becoming. But if there isn't this balance of being and becoming, um, I think that if we if we don't get back to the being, like we can get stuck in this hamster wheel of becoming and never being enough. Does that make sense? So being enough would add to becoming, yeah, in a healthy way.

SPEAKER_01 29:45

I thought it'd be worth touching on about feeling worthy about therapy, would be helping you to do the work, honoring the worst you have already. So it's really understanding, like you said, it's something you're born with, it's something you have already. So you're doing the work to honor that, it's there. Yeah. And so that just really stood out with me about it's something that we all have, and we're just working towards understanding that.

Rewriting Narratives Safely

SPEAKER_03 30:11

And unfortunately, in the understanding of it, we can find out that the the people that raised us didn't have knowledge of their worth. So they didn't know how to honor our worth. And so the gaps in having self-worth, again, they can be multi-generational.

SPEAKER_02 30:31

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 30:32

Some family systems have this frame of reference where you work for worth, you're only worth the work you're able to do in the home, outside the home.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

Right. It's measured by something with conditions.

SPEAKER_03 30:46

Yeah, or doing. It's measured by doing rather than being. So if we want to get back into that thinking. And so the original worthiness, when it's rooted in us just existing and our just being, and we let that be foundational, what we do can be connected to that worth rather than reaching for something that makes us important or makes us seem like we've risen above failure, like family failure, but that it's never enough because it it never makes us feel worthy. Importance doesn't end up making people feel more worthy.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

I think Yes. You see it with, you know, famous people or people have achieved something and it's just they keep wanting more, right? Like that empty bucket. So importance just doesn't help with that.

SPEAKER_03 31:34

And that's where that becoming and becomes that hamster wheel. So, well, I need to do another movie. Well, okay, that didn't make the difference I thought it would make. So I need a better role, you know, in a higher grossing movie. And so that there's this chasing of something that could just be accepted and believed. Yeah. There are lots of counterfeits for realized worth because you can realize lots of things, you can become lots of things.

SPEAKER_01 32:05

Right. And I think too, it's not always authentic to that self.

SPEAKER_03 32:10

Yeah, that one of the pivotal elements to the theory is that worth and truth belong together. And that might be out there somewhere in the world. I don't my assumption is everything's been said by now. I don't believe that this has never been said, but I I looked for it and I couldn't find it in the places I was looking. And I was like, oh, I really think worth and truth are need congruency. I believe they need to develop together. Um, so that as you figure out who you are, you're always worthy. And um, that is missing for a lot of people.

Attachment, Authenticity, And Conditions

SPEAKER_01 32:50

That's true. Yeah, I always in my office I had this little quote that helps with that and and my own goals and self-worth about from George Bernard Shaw about life is not about finding yourself, it's about creating yourself. So again, about you're not lost, you're not discovering or finding something to feel of worth or value. Like it's life is about creating it. It's exciting that you have choice and get to be what you want. So that I always I had that always sitting up in my in my office to look at every day.

SPEAKER_03 33:25

That's cool. So it's about creating yourself. And then like if if I can borrow that, if you don't mind, like think of building those pillars, be as creative as you want with those building blocks and build whatever you want to build. Be aware of whatever makes you excited about something, respect the thing you're excited about, let it enhance your self-esteem, become confident in the thing that you're building, you know, whichever way you want to build it. But that foundation has to be that birthright self-worth. Because then whatever you're building is on a much more solid foundation than the conditions that are available.

SPEAKER_01 34:04

And what I like in talking about the foundation and pillars is that, you know, it's something you can build, but you can reconstruct, right? It's not like, oh, you missed this milestone, you're younger, or this is learned and you can't undo it. Um, this is about something that you can actually build on and grow from.

SPEAKER_03 34:24

Yeah, I that's what I love about being a therapist is I like to think of my office as full of building blocks that will benefit people. I just don't know who needs what. And so as I sit and listen to them and get a sense of the building blocks they currently have and also what seems to be missing that's making them miserable in their transactions with other people. Then I'm like, hey, I'll kind of like, I don't do it exactly this way, but in my head, I'm like, hey, have you heard of this block? There are some people that really find this one useful. You're like, we'll talk about maybe it's self-respect. And within the concept of self-respect, of course, boundaries. One of the ways we talk about self-respect, and it's this is a unique way of looking at it, is that respect protects worth. What do boundaries protect? Well, if they're not protecting worth, what are we doing wrong? Because they could. Boundaries could always protect self-worth. Some people haven't been allowed to use the self-respect building blocks to protect their worth in a system that's not recognizing human worth as available to everyone, like a system where there's favoritism.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

Yeah, and I I've talked to clients about sometimes honoring your acknowledge that that's happened. You gave an example. When you have the self-worth, you can find ways to manage those situations um and still have your self-worth coming out of it.

Mindfulness, Being, And Motivation

SPEAKER_03 35:54

Yeah, I I um found myself. This was in my adult life, I found myself dealing with a situation with another adult that was in a professional building I was in. And I my goal is to practice this to the best of my ability. I do not believe in perfect practicing, right? Just like our best effort to feel our worth, but when I feel mine, I'm gonna honor yours. And that's one of the beautiful, elegant balances to this model is that when I'm living from mine, I'm less likely to move against yours. And so I found myself in an interaction with an individual that went sideways. And I don't like to be discourteous, but I was feeling pushed into a corner, was so grateful of the words like, I'm not interested in having this conversation right now. It was a boundary. I didn't want to accuse this person, I didn't want to demean this person, but I needed a firm boundary. And the the words came out of my mouth more than once. I'm not interested in having this conversation right now. I'm not interested in this. And the tone was stronger than this right now because I was feeling on the defense. And I also felt like I didn't know how to get out of this space. So you know that feeling when you're somebody like catches you off guard, like yeah, and yet we do get to say something, and we don't have to be aggressive if we don't want to be. It's not my style. If I don't honor my worth in that moment, what happens to my pillars? What do I become aware of? I'm afraid to honor my own self-worth. I don't respect my own self-worth. I don't want to give that message to myself, but I also don't want to move against this other person's. I have no idea exactly what caused all of what was happening. I didn't know if there was a misunderstanding. I I don't know this person's childhood. There are a myriad of things that could have been going on with that individual. There had been some gossip going on. So who knows what was said about who to whom. So destroying another person, I have zero interest in. So we just invite these pauses, like, let's kind of figure out, maybe go back to our corners, figure out what's really going on, and see if we can come forward again in a more constructive way. I believe constructive conversations are available to us and that we've got to prepare for them.

SPEAKER_01 38:35

Yeah, that's understandable. I mean, we don't expect people to push our boundaries like that, um, maybe done in such a way or a different setting.

Boundaries That Protect Worth

SPEAKER_03 38:44

Well, and again, when a system supports gossip or it supports maligning, you know, this person or that person, um, and again, these are all adults, that something is already wrong in that system where stories are being passed around that are unpleasant for for just one person in in the space. And um, you know, who champions that person? And do they have to step up and champion themselves? And, you know, why aren't there fail-safes in systems? Like I'm thinking of corporations, I hear about it all the time. One little gossip campaign can cause somebody to quit their job.

SPEAKER_01 39:24

Right. That's true.

SPEAKER_03 39:26

And think of that in the context of worth, they're not being treated as worthy. No, do the other people know how to feel worthy and broach that subject. Hey, let's not do this. How do we get in that space?

SPEAKER_01 39:42

Right. And I was wondering too, when we talk about self-worth, I think sometimes we have low self-worth. We might not be sure what our goals are, our values are, right? So when we're honoring our self-worth and we understand you you talked about, then that's a little aligned with your your goals, right? With for yourself. Yeah, it's becoming. And I think it's a line more for, you know, doing more of that internal work. Like we talked about back to success. That really stands out for me too here. When we think about so many people feel stuck or in limbo or unsure about things, or not feeling satisfied with some achievements, this not and maybe not aligning with those goals.

SPEAKER_03 40:27

Yeah, this might be too simplistic of uh an answer, but I I will get into the space with clients. I'll say that if you were worth-based, how would that change that decision? If you were feeling rooted in your worth right now, would it change anything about the decision that you're wanting to make? Like, would it change the outcome a little bit even? It's interesting what a perspective shift worth becomes because there's what's acceptable in the system, there's what is acceptable to people that we have probably wanted to impress since we were little, like a parent or aunts or grandparents, siblings. And then when we invite that, there might be nobody to impress, you know, what if there's nobody to impress? And what if this is just based in your worth and your truth? And so if you rooted in that, how how would you look at your future? And some people say, I wouldn't kill myself trying to get ahead of so-and-so. I might be less competitive, you know, I I might not put so much pressure on myself. But it's not that worth takes our motivation away. I, you know, I find it's highly motivating, but it motivates from a different place.

Gossip, Systems, And Safeguards

SPEAKER_01 41:47

Right. I think, yeah, that's a great way at articulating it. It's coming from a different place. Yeah, just find so much around self-worth, so fascinating to learn about. And I think it'd be so helpful for many people to learn. Just wondering, you know, where people can learn more about you or maybe about self-worth in their own journey, whether to seek you out for counseling or learning about any of your resources that might help them.

SPEAKER_03 42:17

Yeah. Um, my practice is currently full. So part of writing this book was making this theoretical model available to more therapists. And I would have anybody invite their therapists to get the book. I work work with them through the book. I I don't want clients to do the book alone because it's written for mental health professionals. And so having a guide to work with through the material, I think is really responsible and important to do that.

SPEAKER_02 42:48

Yes, definitely.

SPEAKER_03 42:50

We have a website with an individual support page that has some material there. The website's understandingselfworth.com. It's self-worth.com. And it there's a lot of free material on there as well.

SPEAKER_01 43:05

Great. I'll be sure to attach that to our podcast so people can access it. You know, it's such helpful information. I'm looking forward to incorporating your work into my practice um and learning about it. So I just really appreciate your dedication to helping clients and building on their self-worth. I think it's so important for people on their journey, no matter what stage in life they are, to build on it, to feel hopeful that it is something that you can work on. So I just really appreciate you being here today. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. And congrats on your publications as well.

SPEAKER_03 43:40

Thank you so much.