From "I'm worthless" to "I'm worthy" — why the opposite of your problem is probably NOT your solution.

When something hurts, the instinct is obvious: aim for the opposite. 

Feel worthless? Aim for worthy. 

Can't trust anyone? Commit to trusting everyone.

It sounds like progress; like the right step forward.

In this episode I unpack why that instinct rarely works — why the healthy version of where you want to be is unlikely the polar opposite of where you are now, and what to aim for instead. 

There's a simple ways to determine whether what you're aiming for will actually work, and most of the goals and paths people set for themselves accidentally fail it.

If you've been led astray by the promise of the 'opposite', listen now.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hello, I'm Helen Billows, and this is the Trauma Nerd Podcast. I'm a registered psychologist, EMDR therapist, and I work exclusively with trauma. This podcast is for people who want psychologically sound explanations without pop psych shortcuts, toxic positivity, or excuses dressed up as empathy. We'll talk about trauma, responsibility, relationships, and recovery, backed by nuance, honesty, and of course, actual evidence. Let's get into it. Hello and welcome to the 11th episode of the Trauma Nerd Podcast. Um, I wasn't meant to be doing this episode. I was meant to be doing a different episode, which I have now delayed. So I actually am going to just stop talking about what episodes I'm doing, because by the time I finish the podcast, I've changed my mind. Um, so what I'm talking about today is a common hiccup, a common trap that people fall into when they're trying to identify sort of a healing path for themselves or um the trajectory they're aiming for, their goal state. Okay, so when we're trying to work on our healing or we're on a self-improvement, self-discovery recovery process, we often, well, you probably have a sense of where you want to be. So if you feel, if you have a problem feeling worthless a lot, then you're probably gonna aim to be feeling worthy. Um, if you feel powerless and out of control a lot, you're probably gonna be aiming to feel empowered and in control. So I so some other examples of this that I had written down that I think are quite common. Difficulty trusting others. You might go, okay, I'm gonna be really trusting and open. I'm gonna really make an effort to be open to others. Um, maybe you've had scary, angry partners in the past. Okay, I'm gonna pick somebody who never gets mad, never raises their voice. Um, now these sound like a path to progress. They sound like a path in the right direction. But there is actually a common thread here that you might have noticed. You're aiming for the opposite. In my experience, that is a natural instinct. Um, and I've done that too. Um, so I can understand why I think it's quite a natural instinct that we just we go to the other end, right? The other spectrum. And while it does sound like progress, in my experience, generally, you're overcorrecting and just causing another problem. Um this shows up constantly in trauma therapy. And I think aiming for the opposite is your emotional brain still trying to solve the problem. And I think when we really look at these opposite ends of the spectrum, when we overcorrect, so you know, I have difficulty trusting people, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna be really trusting and open. Trust the universe, you know, we go from one extreme to the other. Because being extremely trusting and open almost without any discernment, like I'm just gonna trust and having that be sort of your commitment that you're gonna be trusting is actually just as dysfunctional and unhelpful as not trusting anybody. Because some people are not trustworthy. Some people are deceptive, some people are acting in bad faith. Not everybody deserves your trust. Trust is earned. It's it's almost like the middle of the spectrum that you're aiming for, the middle ground, as we would say in DBT. I know DBT is a bit unpopular at the moment, but anyways, um, I like it. So you are kind of going for the middle ground as opposed to the extremes, but trusting nobody is dysfunctional and unhelpful and it's going to cause you problems in your life. Trusting everybody is going to be just as harmful, but in different ways. Um it's we're actually just going to the same, to the other extreme of the same problem. So you've got your problem theme, and you're over here, and you go, well, this is a problem, I'm aiming for here. When actually that's probably just another, it's the other extreme, it's another dysfunctional version. It's sorry, it's another dysfunctional pattern of the same issue, if that makes sense. So if we're looking at trust and you don't trust anybody, and then you go, I'm gonna trust everybody, they're both problematic. Okay. So they're just different flavors of the same problem. Now, I will note this is not always the case. I don't think this is a blanket rule. Sometimes the opposite does actually work. Um, like if you feel like a fundamentally bad person and you would like to feel like a fundamentally good person, which you are because that is your true nature as a human being. Um that is that sounds pretty good to me. However, I think you might run into some issues, which I'll talk about in a moment. So I'm gonna help you with some rules that are gonna guide you to uh as to how you can identify where you want to go with things instead of just picking opposites, okay? A way to identify your goals and desired states that is actually going to work. So what we're actually aiming here for, aiming for here, is not the rather than the opposite end, it's the healthy, helpful alternative. In EMDR, we seek adaptive belief, the adaptive feeling, the adaptive behavior. Um, and that's a clinical term, basically framing it as what way of feeling, thinking, behaving, existing will be the healthiest and most functional for you. And in my experience, the healthy healed alternative is rarely the polar opposite of the problem. It's more nuanced than that. So two things, two things have to be true for your goal state to work. One, it has to be realistic, and two, it has to be believable to you. Doesn't matter what other people believe, it's your belief. You need to believe it. So if we are neither aiming for something that is realistic nor believable, we're trying to force ourselves towards something that is either unachievable because it's not realistic, or just not believable to us because we're not there yet. So, either way, you're kind of trying to jam a square peg through a circle hole, and you're gonna waste your time, and much worse, it's gonna make you feel really bad about yourself because it's not gonna work, and you're going to wonder what is wrong with me? Why isn't this working? Why can't I just feel and think what I'm trying to? Um, but there's fabulous, uh, there's fabulous reasons why. There's nothing wrong with you at all. So let's cover realistic first. Sometimes people will say things like, in terms of setting where their intention is, what they want to achieve, where they want to get to. I I want to not feel anxious around other people. I want to not feel I want to feel good about myself and confident and da-da-da-da. That's actually a really nice goal, but it doesn't work as a blanket rule because never feeling anxious in a social situation is not realistic. Anxiety is a normal emotion. You are gonna feel anxious sometimes, in some circumstances, socially, and in any situation, depending on what's happening. Um, and it doesn't mean anything is wrong with you or that you're broken or abnormal, but aiming to eradicate anxiety is not a realistic aim. Okay, so in a, if we're dealing with a social anxiety kind of thing or an anxiety kind of thing, rather than saying, I want to feel confident and calm in all of those situations, your brain's not going to be able to integrate that properly and really buy into that because it's gonna go, well, but what if this happens? And what if this happens, and what if this happens? And it's gonna be giving you situations that are totally possible that are stressful and they are gonna be genuinely anxiety-provoking. So there's gonna be a push, there's gonna be resistance in your body and in your mind when you try to force yourself to believe something like that, because it's just and the the pushback is valid. Your brain's going, hey, this doesn't fit. Um, I would suggest in a situation like that, a better goal is to that I can trust my judgment that if a situation is concerning, I can be concerned. And if it's safe, I can feel comfortable and confident. Okay, so this is where the nuance comes in. Control is the same. So if you've lived through something where you felt powerless, out of control, no saying what happened to you, it is really human and natural to want a lot of control and to feel a lot of power sometimes too. Um, but the reality is people often people will say, I wanna, I wanna be in control. I have control. I want to believe that I have control. But your brain's never gonna buy that fully because it's not true. Nobody has control of everything. Um a better statement might be I have the same amount of control as the average person of any average human. I don't have less control, I don't have more. I mean, you might if you're the prime minister or something, but you know, make it realistic. So it's important that your statement is realistic, okay, because you can't you can't just give yourself faff and expect your brain to take it in. Okay. Um, this is kind of a similar point, but I think it deserves its own space. The believability. Now, a lot of people get stuck on this one, especially with worth issues. You a lot of people really want to tell themselves I'm worthy, I'm important, I matter. And I know that's a fact about you. Because, like I said before, you're a human being and we all have inherent worth and all have inherent importance. Um but that doesn't do you, these statements don't do you much good if there's not one cell of you that even remotely believes that, if there is zero buy-in. So if you have I mean, I don't want to, I don't encourage you to um give up on that or anything, but what I would recommend is that if you are trying to convince yourself of a belief, or you're trying to convince yourself of a goal state, you're trying to force yourself into something, I would let it go. Not necessarily forever, but just until we can build a bridge towards there. Forcing it's not gonna work. And again, it's gonna make you feel really bad about yourself because you're gonna feel like a failure for not being able to believe it. Um, and you, if you can't believe it, you can't believe it. You know, there's that's all there is to it. And sometimes it can be frustrating because logically, you know it's true, but emotionally it just doesn't feel true. If it doesn't feel true, it doesn't feel true. That's you're not gonna buy into it. Okay. So my recommendation would be to climb down the ladder a few rungs. Pick something, pick some kind of goal that you can genuinely buy into right now, even if it's not the ideal dream version. So, as opposed to I am worthy, I quite like I deserve to be treated with basic kindness. Or even I deserve to be treated with basic respect. I haven't, most people can get behind that one. I haven't had many people push back on that too much. Um, because it's a very basic statement to buy into. It's also realistic and factual. Um, and it yes, this does mean that you will probably need to temporarily abandon the lovely statements that you have about yourself that you don't believe at all. Because a statement that you or a goal state that you can buy into a little bit, even if the statement is not, or the goal is pretty, you know, the down the rungs of the ladder, down a few rungs, that is much more helpful to you than something at the top of the ladder that you can't reach. Like you're jumping, you're on your TV toe, that you just can't get there. There's no point. It's just wasting your time and making you feel bad about yourself. I also want to normalize. It's okay to not be able to believe that you are worthy or any positive statement about yourself that you're just not able to believe. And I want you to think of it this way: if you have that problem where there's some where the goal, where you're where you're trying to get, you just can't believe. It just doesn't feel true. If you have that problem, what is likely happening? I mean, I'm not telling you what's going on with you because I've never met you and I don't know 100%, but I think what is often happening is your brain is grappling with many years of data that in of consisting of evidence that this nice lovely statement is not true. Your brain's going, well, what about this? Okay. We're not going to effectively combat that by force feeding you nice sentences or forcing something, okay? It's just not gonna happen. So climb down a few rungs until you get somewhere that is believable to you that you can really buy into, no matter how fundamentally basic it is. Like I said, a very basic statement that you can believe even a little bit is much more helpful to you than a fancy one that there's not even a glimmer about. Um, what I would recommend though is pick the strongest and most self-empowering statement you can believe. Okay? Climb as high on that ladder as you possibly can. Get as high as you can. Don't undersell it and go a bit lower, because that's you need to be sort of on a growth edge, right? You need to be stretching yourself. So, to reiterate, like I just said, we want the strongest, most self-empowering statement you can buy into, but it must be realistic or your brain won't accept it and your body won't accept it. And it well, this won't be achievable, so you're also gonna feel like crap because you're gonna feel like a failure because you can't do it. Um, and it needs to be believable because it for all of the same reasons. And if you don't believe it, you don't believe it. Stop trying to force feed yourself something. Even if the nice statement is true, if you don't believe it, it just doesn't, it's not gonna help. So climb down the ladder a few rungs. Okay, so um, I've got a few examples here that I wanted to share. These are all of beliefs, um, but you can apply this to whatever you need to. Um, so instead of wanting control all the time or wanting to feel powerful, or you know, I have control, um you don't have control all the time. So that's depending on that what that what that statement means to you, if you're taking it literally, I do. I can't convince myself by if I say I have control right now, my brain goes, Well, yeah, of of X, Y, this, this, and this, but not of this, this, and this, and what if the roof cafed in right now? You know, you don't have control over that. Um, but not everybody thinks like that, thankfully. Um so instead of wanting control all the time or having power, um, better goal states or better statements, better beliefs to aim towards are like I can choose, I can trust myself, I can learn to trust myself. I can pardon me, I'm getting creaky. I can trust my judgment. Um, instead of I am worthy, like I said, I deserve basic kindness and/or respect. I can learn to feel my worth. Okay. Um, if there is, this is another common one, people saying things like, I want to be able to protect myself, I want to be stand up for myself, and I'm not gonna let people mistreat me. Um, but often that's actually that's actually quite a hard thing to do. So, some nice goals there. I can learn to stand up for myself. I can learn to understand my limits, I can learn to understand my boundaries. Okay, so taken all together realistic, believable, achievable, empowering, and the and the strongest, most powerful version that you can buy into that you could that is realistic and believable. Okay. So I think that's about it for today. I hope that was helpful. But do remember the take-home message: be wary of any any situation where you are like, I don't want to be like this, I don't want to feel like this, I don't want to think like this. Be wary of going straight to the opposite. It's probably not where you're aiming for. It's a different flavor of the same problem. Okay, be wary of that and think it through. Make sure it fits with all the criteria we've discussed today. Okay. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll talk to you next time. That's it for today's episode of the Trauma Nerd Podcast. If you felt validated, yay! If you felt challenged, double yay. If you found this useful, you can follow or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. If you're interested in trauma focused therapy or resources, you can find more information at my website. Thanks for listening and bye for now.