A note on Unworthiness. Per the previous post, ‘Are you Unworthy’. Brian asked, “How does one fix that?”
Chadely, I totally agree with you. “Fill your hole with love.”
There is no other way around it. You have to believe, beyond any doubt that you are loveable, and you cannot fundamentally believe that if you don’t love yourself.
Try looking at it this way and see if it helps. You have to be your own best friend. You need to be your own confidante, muse, shoulder to cry on and parent. You need to be your own lover and companion. That doesn’t mean you cannot have other people to be these things for you as well, but ultimately, if you cannot provide these things for yourself on your own for the majority of your needs, you will look to others to fill them – this is where the crux takes place…
If you are looking, for more than say, 25/30 percent of those needs to be met by other people – you are at the mercy of their acceptance. What becomes a necessity to your fulfillment of the vacancy within – you believe can only be achieved from the “granting” by another person and if they are withholding in any way (whether they are tired, busy, or just not interested) it leads someone who is in need of this down a path of : (I’m not good enough, they don’t love me, is it the way I dress? Talk? Look? Maybe if I give more, they will love me. Maybe if I were skinnier they would be attracted to me? Maybe…)
You see the problem? And that’s just the start! Once the foundation is put down that you fundamentally think you are not worthy for one individual… it somehow spirals and rockets to an entire gender, or family, or group of friends! And the more you come off to people with a vacancy in your center or give off an aura of “need acceptance” the less likely you are to get it. It is simply human nature to avoid the complication of the internal self-loathing – probably because we all have our own self and worth issues to confront, other people’s makes us uncomfortable.
This is the catch, the moment you stop wanting approval or acceptance or justification from an outside source – you very often get it.
This has been ridiculously hard for me sometimes. My breakthrough came in Junior High when I was teased mercilessly for being fat and as one kid put it, “Ugly enough to make people cry in pain.” The tragedy was that I was 5’8 in 7th grade and weighed only 130 lbs. I was too poor to dress stylishly so I didn’t fit in and one “friend” asked me to wear her jeans one day before going to the mall because she didn’t want to be seen with me if I was wearing Lee’s. I was for lack of a word – a complete outcast. The more I wanted to fit in the less I got it and the more I was ridiculed.
My freshman year of High School I moved to Alaska, and in the 9 days it took us to drive there I decided. I just didn’t care anymore. Kids are cruel. People can be god-awful to each other.
When I arrived in Valdez, I got out of the car and thought from now on – I don’t care if everyone thinks I’m ugly – I’ll just be ugly and that’s okay.
In fact, the first time I think I met Chadely, he walked into the choir room and gave me a genuine compliment and I turned around and said, “You want me to bend over so you can blow some more smoke up my ass?!”
We’ve been Champion and Lady ever since.
I guess what I’m getting at is there is a wholeness of being, a headspace that can only be achieved by knowing – your survival and happiness does not depend on the giving of love or acceptance from anyone but yourself. When you have that, it’s like the freaking holy grail and you can heal yourself eternally with it and the love that comes from others to you – becomes a bonus. Your life changes from walking through a desert and running at mirages – to swimming in the ocean while it’s raining.
This is how I learned to love myself and give myself the things I needed to be whole.
Learn to spend time alone and LOVE my company. People who are uncomfortable alone are generally harboring a sense of unworthiness.
I learned to go out to movies alone, eat out alone, go on road trips alone. I learned to be creative alone and go off into the woods and camp alone. Not because I don’t have people I would love to go with, but because I want to spend time with Athena, and let her know I care about what she has to say, feel or need.
Only when I am full do I have plenty to give and never need it back. When I am feeling unworthy or “trying too hard” I generally go away for a time and cave to re-establish my inner well so I can be a better person/friend/lover.
I don’t know it this helps. Everyone has to find their own way to fill themselves or determine their own worth. It’s a process. Some days are better than others.
My advice is to be SELFISH. If you don’t give yourself what you need – you will expect/need/ache for it to be given to you by someone else – and in that moment – you will be making the choice to let their opinion of your value determine your level of fulfillment… that is, until you take your power back to yourself.
Does that make sense? Am I totally off the mark here?
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God, sister, that is exactly what I needed to hear and it needed to be exactly today that I heard it. How’d I get so lucky to get these siblings? And what did you do in the past life to get stuck with us? Love ya.
It does make a kind of sense. I fear however that I may be so far out the other side that I need to find my way back before I can make a difference. No that doesn’t make sense. What I’m trying to relate is that you said we need to be selfish. We have to love ourselves before we can love anyone else. Well, I’ve got the selfish thing down pretty good these days. I’ve become a total hermit. I spend my life totally alone. Once I leave work no one interferes with my routine. I have no friends here in town to cause any interruption in my hermitism. I’m not likely to find any new friends while I am a hermit either. I’m also the youngest person in my office by about 15 years so I don’t relate much with my coworkers. As soon as I leave the office the artificially happy face goes away and I begin to exude “piss off” vibes like crazy. I don’t know how or why, but I have been informed that I come across as a very intimidating and mean seeming person. Now none of my close friends would agree, nor are they likely to even be aware of this, because when I’m with close friends I am very different. But I digress. This is your blog, and I am rambling on a bit more than I intended. Athena you just keep spreading your knowledge and experiences and all your friends will chip in with theres. Who knows maybe some of us will learn something from all of it and become better people. It couldn’t hurt right?
SummitSummit,
Being selfish is not about being alone, it’s about taking care of your happiness. Being selfish is about ignoring other peoples demands and expectations and following your passions. What you’re currently doing is obviously not making you happy. You should make a simple list of what you need to be happy and then pick one thing to change that will improve your happiness. Athena has issued a 90-day challenge. I think you should take her up on it.
Sum,
there is nothing wrong with being a hermit. I hardly leave the house, i was lucky enough to get a great job that allows me to work from my home. But you still have to love yourself. friends…they come and go, i have no friends around here, well besides fiancee and kids, but no true friends. They all live thousands of miles away. I have embraced my hermitic life, But its not for everyone. for me, it helps that i hate people. But you have to remember, nothing can make you happy. Nothing can make you sad. You choose to allow things to make you happy,sad,mad,fearful. what i use to do, i would go to the bathroom, stare into the mirror. and i would talk to myself, and ask myself, “Who am i really?” “What makes me happy” it sounds wierd, but it helped me. Of course, dependant on who you ask, i am a wierd fella.
You are definitely making sense! The only danger with that advice is to become too selfish. The trick is to be selfish enough to take time and space when you need it, and to be able to be an entire person on your own, but not be so selfish that you have a sense of entitlement or expectation of people. That can lead down the same road as needy people, but for the opposite reason, you hold yourself -so- high that you expect people to do for you, instead of holding yourself so low that you need people to do for you. It’s all about the balance..but sometimes that balance is a pendulum swing or an existance at both extremes at the same time..being utterly selfish in some circles/ways/times and utterly selfless at others..
Admiral Fubar, I love you, little man. I will catch up with you soon about what’s going on.
XOXO
SummitSummit,
The hermit life is a valid way of being for some people, but what you are describing sounds more like fear. What are you afraid of?
People are naturally pack animals. A healthy balance of socializing and solitude is necessary for most people just by their very nature. You can do this. You can have a social network and a solitary life and be fulfilled.
If the life you are living right now is working well for you and you are happy – Great! More power to you. But if it is not… what can you do about it? What do you have to lose?
Reading about you being made fun of in Junior High reminded me of my childhood to my teenage years. I was made fun of brutally for being so skinny. “Skeleton!” was my nickname in some circles. “Do they feed you at home?” I heard this question more often than I care to remember.
But something happened when I was 14 years old. I decided, “You know, I can neither change my metabolism nor my genetics. If I don’t like myself and everyone else makes fun of me, this life will suck. I won’t have that.” So, after years of avoiding shorts, skirts, or anything that showed my skinny legs, I decided to cast caution to the wind, and begin living.
Ironically, two years later I ended up in a nation whose idolatry of skinnyness is absurd. Thank goodness I learned to love Cynthia as she was in a culture that screamed otherwise, before coming to one that told me that my life is bliss because of my weight! Bunch of crap!
I love who I am. I never want to be anyone other than who I am. I love who I am because I know God doesn’t create junk, and if He wanted me to be someone other than me, He wouldn’t have made me. A verse from the Psalms comes to mind, “I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”
Cynthia,
You are awesome
That was a fabulous comment, Thank you for adding it!!
Amen, Sista!
I think it’s easy to get stuck on words that are usually used with another connotation or meaning. I remember debating the absolute necessity of selfishness to my mother when I was in high school. She couldn’t answer my questions or respond to what I was saying, she could only disagree with me and state her own ideas because she truly couldn’t “hear” me when I explained my definition of selfishness. (Same reason why I HATE politics. No one ever listens!)
A big part of being “selfish enough” to love yourself, to me, is slowing down enough to digest the context and true meaning of an idea. Simply learn to listen. If you can listen to yourself, you can listen to other people.
The only minor point that I would add is that when you’re not giving enough to yourself, I think people are turned off/ driven away not only because they don’t want your problems, but because as you said, a lot of times we just have stuff we need to figure out on our own, and there’s very little another person can do for us. Sometimes the work is just your own.