self-worth

There is a kind of chaos that doesn’t just interrupt your life
it becomes your life. It’s waking up already tired. It’s carrying invisible weight.

It’s surviving day after day while quietly wondering when it will finally be your turn to breathe.

And somewhere in that chaos, many of us begin to believe a lie:
that our worth is tied to how well we’re coping. But worth was never meant to be proven by perfection.

“I learned how to survive before I learned how to live,
how to stay quiet in storms I didn’t create.”

When Chaos Becomes Your Normal For many of us, chaos isn’t new. It’s familiar. It’s what we adapted to as children, what we endured in relationships, what trauma taught us to expect. When chaos becomes your normal, peace feels uncomfortable. Stillness feels unsafe.

Healing feels like something you’re not quite allowed to have. So you keep moving. You keep showing up. You minimize your pain and tell yourself you’re “fine.”

“I wore strength like armor,
even when it was cutting into my skin.”

But survival, no matter how impressive, was never meant to be your final destination.

The Lie Chaos Tells You About Your Worth

Chaos has a voice. And it’s cruel.
It tells you that because your life is messy, you must be broken. That because you struggle, you are weak. That because you’ve fallen before, you will always fall again.

But struggle is not a flaw — it’s a response to pain.

You didn’t lose your worth when you became overwhelmed.

You didn’t give it up when addiction, trauma, or heartbreak entered your story.

You didn’t fail because healing isn’t linear.

“I thought being strong meant never breaking, but breaking was how the light finally got in.”

Your worth doesn’t disappear in chaos — it reveals itself there.

You Are Worthy Even Here
Even if:

1.You’re rebuilding your life again

2.You’re in recovery and some

days are heavier than others

3.You’re parenting while healing wounds no one ever tended

4.You look put together on the outside but feel fractured within

You are still worthy.
Worthy of rest.
Worthy of gentleness.

And if you need to hear this today, let me tell you:

You are worthy of help without guilt.

“I am learning that rest is not weakness, and asking for help is not failure.”

Healing doesn’t ask you to be perfect. It asks you to be honest.

Finding Your Worth in the Middle of the Storm.

Finding your worth in chaos doesn’t mean waiting until life settles down.

It means choosing to see yourself clearly while the storm is still raging.

It looks like:

1.Setting boundaries instead of explaining your pain

2.Choosing self-compassion over self-punishment

3.Letting go of the version of you that only knew how to survive

4.Believing peace isn’t something you have to earn

“I stopped waiting to be worthy,
and started believing I already was.” Your worth is not the reward for healing. It is the foundation healing stands on.

Rising Above Your Norm

There was a time I believed chaos was all I deserved.
That peace was reserved for other people — stronger people, better people.

But rising above your norm doesn’t mean erasing your past.
It means refusing to let it define your future.

You can honor the part of you that survived without forcing yourself to stay in survival mode forever.

“I am no longer just surviving
I am becoming.”

And if you need to hear this today, let me tell you:

You are not behind.
You are not broken.
You are not failing.
You are finding your worth —
right in the middle of the chaos you live in.

Choose Yourself, Even Here

If you are living in chaos, let this be the moment you stop believing that pain is the price of your existence.

Stop waiting to be healed before you believe you are worthy.

Stop shrinking your needs to make others more comfortable.

Stop convincing yourself that survival is all you’re allowed.

Choose yourself — even here.
Even tired.
Even unsure.
Even in the middle of the mess.

Speak up.
Ask for help.
Set the boundary.
Take the first step toward support, recovery, or rest.

You do not have to do everything alone to prove your strength.

You do not need to earn compassion — you deserve it.
And you are not weak for wanting more than survival.

If this piece spoke to you, let it move you. Share it. Save it. Sit with it.

But most of all — act on it.
Because healing doesn’t begin when life becomes quiet.
It begins when you decide that your life matters — now.

BigmommaJ
#Selflove #selfImprovement #Selfworth
#MentalHealth

Depression and feelings of low self-worth can have an impact in many areas of your life. Typical daily activities such as getting out of bed or going to work can feel daunting. Socializing and leaving the house can feel overwhelming, motivation can be hard to come by, your relationships may fall out of sync, etc. When feeling depressed, it's common for self-worth to also be compromised (and vice versa, low self-worth can feed depression. A vicious cycle).

Feeling Undeserving of Good

When experiencing low self-worth, it can feel like you're not deserving of the good things that come your way. For example, if your self-worth is low, you may on a deeper level feel like you don't deserve love, care, intimacy, success in career, a supportive relationship, respect from others, even simply good feelings, and more -- even when you crave it. When you're feeling undeserving of the good, it can be very difficult to know how to both see it when it's there, and receive it.

People generally desire good things in life. You likely want things that will make you happy and fulfilled. However, when your self-worth is struggling or you are feeling depressed, it can actually be incredibly tempting to unconsciously fall into patterns of pushing the good away.

The Impact of Trauma and Hurtful Experiences on Self-Worth

Self-sabotage patterns are quite complicated. It's not easy to convince somebody deep down that they deserve intimacy, to be loved, cared for, et al, especially if growing up they experienced bullying, harsh punishments for supposedly being "bad", abuse, neglect, loss, abandonment, trauma, and more.

For one example, it can be really unsettling to be cared for or close with someone else because maybe you're just waiting for them to find out how un-good you are. How long before this other person (or job, etc.) realizes that you're not worthy of their attention or effort? This is part of imposter syndrome. How long before people realize that you're not worth the good they're providing and therefore take it away? How long before you lose the good, whatever it may be?

Another example is if you've been bullied, abused, or neglected. The internal deeper feelings may be reluctant to become too close or vulnerable, to let your guard down, let someone in, or to trust care from others, especially if the people who were supposed to care for you growing up (and/or others) had a hand in making you feel hurt, or afraid, or actually did physically hurt you. It may be hard to trust that you're really ever safe being close to people.

Self-Sabotage and the Shame of Having Needs

The shame of having needs (and having them met) is a significant piece of self-sabotage patterns. The fear of losing something you need, or being hurt by your needs in the past can make it hard to want to need at all now. Why bother trying to have your needs met if you see the greater and intolerable pain coming, often becomes the narrative. When you're anticipating the pain, shame, or other deeply upsetting and maybe intolerable feelings, this is where self-sabotage patterns start to take over. Perhaps a part of you may feel like the shoe is eventually going to drop -- you're going to be hurt (physically, or otherwise), lose the good, be found out, etc. When you've been through deep pain before, it can become almost a form of torture just waiting for it to happen again. The longer in this unknown space of good being offered to you, in one way or another, or the more vulnerable you start to feel, the less in control of that eventual pain you may feel, and it can become scary.

In this space, the fear of the bad starts to take over. These deeper fears can actually show up unconsciously, and you may not realize fully that they are there. But your actions and feelings towards any of the good starts to shift from wanting it to fearing it. It's in this space where the self-sabotage takes over. You may start pushing people away, or repeat dynamics that serve to prevent success, intimacy, supportive relationships, love, anything you feel you emotionally need and would also be too painful to lose, be disappointed or rejected by, or be potentially hurt by.

Making the World Validate Your Worthless Feelings

Essentially, when struggling with low self-worth, it actually can become instinctive to assist the world in validating feelings of worthlessness, rather than taking in when the world is showing you the good that you so desire. Instead, if people are there who are trying to offer you the good, you might reject it or keep it at bay or arm's distance. This is a common pattern in relationships that struggle with intimacy. (I discuss this more in my Grass Is Greener Syndrome book and articles). Avoidance is a common characteristic in sabotage dynamics. Avoiding connection, intimacy (physical and/or emotional), etc.

Opening up to vulnerability, intimacy, care, success, and anything good may feel too scary, overwhelming, and simply too risky. Instead, it's almost an instinct to reject or destroy the good with self-sabotage dynamics and self-fulfilling prophecies (though, in your defense, they don't tend to happen by conscious choice). You may be offered exactly what you need and are seeking, but it's more safe and comfortable in the comfort zone where you can't be hurt, abused, disappointed, or left in pain in any other way.

In this mode, people unknowingly curate the world around them to match their feelings of worthlessness -- people push the care away in this state, and then become even more pained by being alone and feeling that no one really cares. In this particular fear-based state, this can be the comfort zone and where it feels the most safe, even if it means isolation keeping away the good. It's a harsh "damned if you do, damned if you don't" -- and it makes it harder to break out of depression, as well.

Testing Boundaries and Sabotage

It's also worth mentioning that part of these self-sabotage patterns actually shows up in "testing". When in these untrusting and vulnerable emotional states, it is quite common for people to test their partners or others to see where the boundaries are. Almost a sense of, "How much of myself can I be, or how far can I push before they will turn away from me and leave or have enough of me? Where is too far?" While this may be a form of testing for safety, it unfortunately often becomes the self-fulfilling prophecy. Pushing someone far enough away where the other becomes in some way put off in response. This often serves to create the painful arm's distance, or setting up the disappointment, loss, abandonment that is so greatly feared.

Moving Forward From Self-Sabotage and Increasing Self-Worth

Self-sabotage validates and perpetuates low self-worth, and vice versa. It is possible to break out of this cycle and increase your self-worth. It starts with acknowledging the patterns and seeing them starting to play out without having to act on them, and getting to know on a deeper level what is feeding them. It is common in fact for the patterns to be played out in the therapy, which gives us a chance to respond to them in real time. The first step is simply knowing you want to move forward from these patterns.

#Depression #MentalHealth #Selfworth #selfsabotage #Trauma #Anxiety #Abuse #neglect

I have been a big, generous supportive friend and group leader of more than 1 group for years now on The Mighty and I hope 🙏 that our Mighty family is truly inclusive and a safe place for Jewish people as well.

I want to think that my Mighty friends on here would not think different or less of me for being Jewish.

I don’t want us to have to feel afraid or unsafe to be, say, express this part of who we are.

But, I have been seeing with deep hurt and sadness that we have been hiding, in the shadows, and this is obviously not helping with the same #MentalHealth that we too deserve.

Happy Hanukkah needs to be freely expressed too, and as well supported as Merry Christmas, for one example.

I refuse to have #Anxiety over being fully genuinely me.

And, I will not allow it to cause any darkness and isolation that is dangerous for my amazing progress with my healing journey and with my #Depression #MajorDepressiveDisorder

#ChronicIllness #MyCondition #WarmWishes #Jewish #Jews #MightyTogether #ChronicFatigue #ChronicFatigueSyndrome #Mindfulness #Selfcare #worth #Selfworth #Selflove #resilience #Selfharm #SuicideAttemptSurvivors #SuicidalIdeation #SuicidalThoughts #Suicide #ComplexPosttraumaticStressDisorder #PTSD #MyalgicEncephalomyelitis #PostTraumaticStressDisorder #Trauma #PersistentDepressiveDisorder #MoodDisorders