Put the self in Self-worth

Ruthless Compassion Institute 
Too many people make it the responsibility of someone else to give them self-worth. Of course, this doesn't work. How can another person validate our existence? Yes, when we're little, our parents have this job, but however well or poorly they did it, and however good or fragile our self-esteem is today, no-one in our adult life can do now what our parents were supposed to do, back then. It's up to every individual to take responsibility for their own sense of self. No-one outside of us can compensate for low self-worth. The things we do to get people to approve of us only backfire. We end up being used, abused, disrespected & made to feel even worse than before. Being a people-pleaser, a care-taker, a rescuer, or just awfully nice can't bring us love or make us feel good about ourselves. Developing self-love, self-acceptance, self-compassion, self-trust & self-validation are the real answer. 

I enjoy reading Dr. Sirota's post on facebook.  If you are not a fan of facebook, this is her link to her web page: http://marciasirotamd.com/ 

I store many partial posts with the idea of completing them at a later date.  Sometimes I notice that I put off certain posts because I feel inadequate in addressing the topic.  Self-worth is one of those topics.  I asked a fellow blogger to share his ideas on self-worth you can check out Evan's post at http://www.livingauthentically.org/2012/07/self-development-and-self-worth/

May be triggering for some people.

I remember many conversations with KavinCoach about how to feel happy and the core of happiness is a feeling of self-worth.  Repeatedly, I read about the ideal situation of gaining self-worth was from your parents.  Didn't happen.  I was born to parents that wanted all boys and weren't overly concerned about telling me.  I was an epic fail from birth.  My parents moved into a neighborhood with a resident pedophile.  Neglected and out on the street by age four to play outside on my own I was an easy target.  Nothing special there.  It wasn't in my counseling that I started to believe in my self-worth, it was actually years before.  From my mid-teens, I had odd spells that caused me to pass out, sometimes for minutes other times for hours.  When I first started having them, my parents told me that I was exaggerating or just trying to grab attention.  Reality denied, so I ignored them.  I still had them but not too frequently.  Married and six children later, I wrecked our van coming home on a country road.  I only needed to drive another 1/2 mile when I passed out and went off an embankment.  Fortunately, it was only 4 feet but it destroyed the van and put me in the hospital with minor injuries.  I passed out again in the hospital.  Amazing how short my waiting time in the emergency room when I passed out.  After this experience, I dug my feet in and started having medical tests.  MRI, glucose tolerance test, blood test, I was inspected, detected and injected so many different ways.  The test revealed nothing remarkable in my physical makeup.  The doctor suggested I get counseling.  I asked him, if it was all in my head, why did my body hurt so much?  He had no answer for me.  No internet then that I could have turned to.  Instead, I stopped seeing any doctors.  My health deteriorated until I could be up only 20 minutes a day with passing out once or twice a day.  I still remember one afternoon laying in my darkened room wondering why I still existed.  Raised in a home where all measurement of worth was based on what a person did...I did nothing.  I had prayed for a solution for years, no answer.  In my moment of darkest fear with no hope of ever being better, I begged my Heavenly Father to let me die.  All these years of praying and never had an answer.  In the darkened room, He answered my prayers, "NO, you will not die, you will live a long life."  I was totally dismayed at the thought of living a long life as a slug, barely able to crawl some days.  Interesting thing that came to mind was a tax lawyer my parents visited who lived his life in a wheel chair.  Did he have this profound feeling of worthlessness?  He became a lawyer after he broke his neck in a swimming accident.  At the time, a quiet understanding came to my mind that I had value and worth to my Heavenly Father even if I became totally incapacitated.  Other people, not so much.  In that darkened room, a tiny seed was planted.  It became an unbreakable thread that kept me going when I pealed away my forgetfulness and remembered my childhood.  Filthiness from my past would flood my mind, I would hold to that precious thread.  I have value to my Heavenly Father.  I am learning to put the self in self-worth.  I have value to me.

A new dawn