WRITTEN BY RENEE BRUSH, Ph.D. AND LINDA E-F

One of the most difficult but important things that needs to happen in healing from trauma is to develop self-worth. You have to know you are worthy. You need to be able to say “I am enough” and BELIEVE it.   

When I was eight years old, my family lived next door to a girl one year younger than me. This girl was one of the few people that I hung out with at the time since she lived next door. But she also was not very nice, and she called me “four eyes” (I had just started wearing glasses earlier that year) and “buck teeth” (I needed dental work) and other things that I no longer remember. But, for a second grader who did not feel very good about herself, this girl’s comments were devastating to my ego. I remember standing in the kitchen crying while I was telling my mom about the things this girl had said to me that day. Back in those days (mid 1970s), schools did not teach children to read until the first grade. But, as a smart child, I had learned to read prior to the first grade. But the girl next door, being in the first grade, was having trouble learning to read. As I was complaining about the mean things this girl said to me, in an attempt to save some ego, I said, “At least I can read.” My mother stopped what she was doing, turned and looked at me, and said, “Renee! Go get the dictionary and look up the word ‘conceited!’”

 That memory went repressed for many years, most likely as a survival technique. Even without remembering that moment, I can look back over my life and pinpoint decisions I made that were skewed because of that fateful combination of a bully in friend’s clothing and a parent who was more concerned about humility than helping her hurting child. Like the time in the 8th grade when I shared my low opinion of myself to a person who I thought was my friend. I confided in her that I needed help. But, instead of supporting me, she ended up becoming the teenage version of a “bully in friend’s clothing” and she spent the next three years using my low self-worth to control me and to keep me away from other friends. She would say things to me that led me to feel good about myself and would tell me awful things our mutual friends said to her about me, making sure I know how she defended me or didn’t agree with that person. By the end of those three years, there were not many other friends in my life, because she had driven a wedge between me and them. I didn’t realize it until much later, but she had become my main source of validation. Something I needed so desperately and, because of my mom, needed to get it from someone else so I would not be perceived as conceited. Unfortunately, that also meant that I was unable to see the red flags. And I certainly could not tell our mutual friends what she said about them because I fully and naively believed this girl. It wasn’t until the friendship ended (for other reasons) that I learned that she had been lying to me all of those years about EVERYTHING.

Why Is Self-Worth So Difficult After Trauma?

That friendship is only one example of how my low self-worth affected my life choices. Since then, I have had two unhealthy marriages and took a detour in my career path that meant I did not start the job I always wanted to have until I was nearing my 50s. In addition, there were numerous smaller decisions that I made almost daily because I did not believe I was good enough.

But why is it that being able to “recognize how special you are” is so difficult? How many times have you heard that comment and felt a little queasy inside, a bit of discomfort, or maybe a humorous “yeah! Right—not me(!)”? It sounds simple enough, but it validly seems so impossible. There is no one answer, no magic component, but rather a variety of components combined together, making it so very difficult to see and feel self-worth. Did you know you cannot help it? Trauma rearranges the brain, its functions, and your neurochemistry.

In terms of neuropsychology, “neurons that fire together wire together.” To understand this a little better, let’s take a look at the 150-year-old wagon train tracks. The images below are pictures of the ruts left behind by millions of people traveling westward on the Oregon Trail or cattle routes. Like our brains, though, these tracks are not merely formed by use alone. Social and environmental conditions determined whether these tracks became deep ruts, embedded in rock, or washed away with weather, wind, and time. When large groups of settlers passed some points in heavy rain and the soil conditions were just right, a cement-like mixture was formed. Days of constant sun baked those ruts until they became more like stone. This pattern was repeated again and again and again. Similarly, repeated abuse and neglect create the conditions for developing “stuck” neuropathways.

Wagon Train Tracks and Ruts from Over 150 Years Ago

A substantial amount of research conducted on the interactions between infants and parents reveals that the nature of a caregiver’s responses can affect and guide how the child will feel and behave in the future (Epstein, 2021). One type of interaction examined are misattunments, which are moments when the parent does not respond to the child’s emotions accurately or compassionately, creating a loss of rapport. For example, when a child is crying, a parent might respond, “Quit crying or I will give you something to cry about!” According to Epstein, such responses can initiate fear or confusion which then can lead to bouts of shame. If misattunements are how the parents consistently respond to their child, the child could eventually develop defensive behaviors, such as suppressing the emotion or directing the emotion to other people or events (e.g., children who misbehave in school). Epstein warns, “repetitive and accumulative absence of empathetic responses or ‘micro-moments’ of accumulative grief never seem to go away… and continue to generate a sense of insecurity and shame in the growing child and be preset into adulthood.”

Wow! That’s a real ray of sunshine! All right, maybe not, but it is important for us to understand why feeling better about ourselves is so difficult!

Can We Develop Self-Worth After Trauma?

Fortunately, the good news is that something called neuroplasticity (say that ten times as fast as you can!) makes it possible to erode away those old negative neuropathways to form newer, healthier neuropathways. Entire books have been written on neuroplasticity. For now, the Oxford Reference (2022) offers this definition for neuroplasticity: “the ability of the brain to develop new neurons and/or new synapses in response to stimulation and learning.” Additionally, Puderbaugh and Emmady (2022) define it as the ability of the nervous system to reorganize its structure, functions, and connections after injuries to the brain such as a stroke or traumatic brain injury. What that means for us is that there are things we can do, either through thoughts or behaviors that will allow us to create new connections between our neurons that, with time, will allow us to feel better about ourselves and our history.

Nature will eventually wear away those wagon tracks left by the early travelers. In the same way, our old neuropathways can give way to new ones. If you have ever caught a tire in a rut while riding a bike, you know it takes concentration and a decided effort to get out of those ruts, but it is possible.

So How Do We Develop Self-Worth?

Individuals with trauma, especially complex trauma, have been programmed not to be able to see how special they are, but that does not mean they are not special. Let’s take a brief look at how a child develops self-worth. Healthy and emotionally-mature parents will shower love on their child, telling their child that they are special in so many various ways. These parents will reliably attend to the child’s needs, getting them food when they are hungry and hugging them when they are upset. When the child misbehaves, the parent will talk about how the child is good, but the decision was not and then teach the child how to make a better choice next time. If the child fails at something, the parents will encourage them, letting them know it is human to make mistakes and helping the child to figure out a better way. In other words, these parents will show the child unconditional love, support, and acceptance and will work to resolve conflicts with compassion, compromise, and instruction. These actions repeated again and again over 18 years helps the child to learn that they are special and they have value exactly as they are!

If you are reading this blog, chances are you did not grow up in such a healthy family. My heart goes out to you. But, the manner in which a child develops self-worth is also the way WE develop self-worth as adults. With one exception, we do not rely on our parents or anyone else to do this. But you might ask: “Why not? Children learn it from their parents?” This is true. Think of parents as the original settlers traversing the country on their wagons, making those trails in the pictures above. Once those trails become hardened into stone, a different method needs to be used to reverse the damage. In fact, the story of my high school friend is a clear example of why we cannot seek this out externally as adults. Once self-worth is developed - either high or low - then we have to use a new solution to repair it. And, unfortunately, if we rely on others to validate our self-worth, we are more likely to end up in another unhealthy and perhaps hurtful relationship.

Instead, we need to do the healing work ourselves. We need to change how we think about ourselves. And we need to remember this will take time since we are reprogramming our brainwashed brains from years of misinformation.

Here are steps you can take to start building your own self-worth:

1. First we have to identify that the negative self-critical thoughts that hold us back are the voices of our parents or society who have told us we are not good enough. These are not thoughts that you came up with yourself; they are thoughts that you internalized. It is ok to disagree with these thoughts. Each time a negative thought comes up, you can say repeatedly, “I don’t agree with this!”

2. Next, we have to replace the self-critical thoughts with more positive ones so we can start feeling self-love, self-acceptance, and self-compassion. Some examples to get you started are shown below this list.

3. Obviously there are things we want to improve about ourselves, so the next step is to compromise. What about a certain behavior or trait do you not like? Then decide how you would want to behave so that it feels good to you.

4. Remember it takes time to build a new habit, so have patience if you fall back to “old ways” and gently remind yourself to return to the new behavior.

5. Lather, rinse, repeat. Pick one thing at a time you would like to improve. Otherwise, you are at risk for overwhelming yourself. In the meantime, accept your other traits until you have a chance to change them.

Remember how self-worth develops in children - parents treating their child with love, respect, acceptance, and support consistently and over time. Your own self-worth will also come from you treating yourself with love, respect, acceptance, and support consistently and over time. And you will notice that, soon enough, you won’t have to work so hard at it!

References

Epstein, O. B. (Ed.). (2021). Shame matters: Attachment and relational perspectives for psychotherapists. Routledge.

Oregon Trail [Photograph]. (n.d.). Pinterest. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/445715694348964228/

Oxford University Press. (2022). Neuroplasticity. Oxford Reference. https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100230276

Puderbaugh, M., & Emmady, P. D. (2022, May 8). Neuroplasticity - StatPearls - NCBI bookshelf. National Center for Biotechnology Information. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK557811/

Stump, J. (2006, August 25). Round Rock, TX [Photograph]. City-Data.com. http://www.city-data.com/picfilesc/picc20008.php