Ep 11. From "I'm worthless" to "I'm worthy" — why the opposite of your problem is probably NOT your solution.
You feel worthless, so you aim for worthy. You can't trust anyone, so you decide to trust everyone. Sounds like progress, right?
It's usually not. It's over-correcting. Your emotional brain sprints to the other end of the spectrum, and the other extreme is just a different flavour of the same problem.
In this episode I break down what to aim for instead: the healthy, adaptive alternative, and the two rules every healing goal has to pass before your brain will actually accept it. It has to be realistic, and it has to be believable to you.
Spoiler: this is also why "I am worthy" hasn't been landing. There's nothing wrong with you. The goal was wrong.
If you've ever felt your whole body push back against a lovely statement about yourself, this one's for you.
Hello, and welcome to the 11th episode of the Trauma Nerd Podcast. 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'm going to just stop talking about what episodes I'm doing, 'cause by the time I finish the podcast, I've changed my mind.
What I'm talking about today is a common hiccup, a common trap that people fall into when they're trying to identify a healing path for themselves, or the trajectory they're aiming for, their goal state. When we're trying to work on our healing, or we're on a self-improvement, self-discovery or recovery process, you probably have a sense of where you want to be. If you have a problem feeling worthless a lot, then you're probably going to aim to be feeling worthy. If you feel powerless and out of control a lot, you're probably going to be aiming to feel empowered and in control.
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 going to be really trusting and open. I'm going to really make an effort to be open to others." Maybe you've had scary, angry partners in the past. "I'm going to pick somebody who never gets mad, never raises their voice."
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. I've done that too, so I can understand why. I think it's quite a natural instinct that we just go to the other end, the other end of the spectrum. And while it does sound like progress, in my experience, generally you're over-correcting and just causing another problem.
Why the opposite extreme is just another version of the same problem
This shows up constantly in trauma therapy, and I think aiming for the opposite is your emotional brain still trying to solve the problem.
When we really look at these opposite ends of the spectrum, when we over-correct ("I have difficulty trusting people, so I'm going to be really trusting and open, trust the universe"), we go from one extreme to the other. Because being extremely trusting and open, almost without any discernment, and having that be your commitment, 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 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 anyway, I like it. So you're going for the middle ground as opposed to the extremes. Trusting nobody is dysfunctional and unhelpful and is going to cause you problems in your life. Trusting everybody is going to be just as harmful, but in different ways.
We're actually just going to the other extreme of the same problem. You've got your problem theme, and you're over here, and you go, "Well, this is a problem. I'm aiming for over there." When actually, that's probably just another dysfunctional pattern of the same issue. If we're looking at trust and you don't trust anybody, and then you go, "I'm going to trust everybody," they're both problematic. They're just different flavours 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. 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), that sounds pretty good to me. However, I think you might run into some issues, which I'll talk about in a moment.
What to aim for instead: the healthy, adaptive alternative
I'm going to help you with some rules that are going to guide you as to how you can identify where you want to go with things, instead of just picking opposites. A way to identify your goals and desired states that is actually going to work.
What we're actually aiming for here is not the opposite end. It's the healthy, helpful alternative. In EMDR, we seek the adaptive belief, the adaptive feeling, the adaptive behaviour. That's a clinical term, basically framing it as: what way of feeling, thinking, behaving and 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.
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.
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). Either way, you're kind of trying to jam a square peg through a circle hole, and you're going to waste your time. And much worse, it's going to make you feel really bad about yourself, because it's not going to 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?" But there are fabulous reasons why. There's nothing wrong with you at all.
Rule 1: Your healing goal must be realistic
Let's cover realistic first. Sometimes people will say things like, in terms of setting their intention, what they want to achieve, where they want to get to: "I want to not feel anxious around other people. I want to feel good about myself and confident," and so on. 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 going to feel anxious sometimes, in some circumstances socially, and in any situation, depending on what's happening. 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.
If we're dealing with a social 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 it, because it's going to go, "Well, but what if this happens? And what if this happens? And what if this happens?" It's going to be giving you situations that are totally possible, that are stressful, and they are going to be genuinely anxiety-provoking. So there's going to be resistance in your body and in your mind when you try to force yourself to believe something like that. And the pushback is valid. Your brain's going, "Hey, this doesn't fit."
I would suggest, in a situation like that, a better goal is: I can trust my judgment. If a situation is concerning, I can be concerned, and if it's safe, I can feel comfortable and confident. This is where the nuance comes in.
Control is the same. If you've lived through something where you felt powerless, out of control, no say in 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. Often people will say, "I want to be in control. I want to believe that I have control." But your brain's never going to buy that fully, because it's not true. Nobody has control of everything. A better statement might be, "I have the same amount of control as the average person. 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.
It's important that your statement is realistic, because you can't just give yourself faff and expect your brain to take it in.
Rule 2: Your healing goal must be believable to you
This is kind of a similar point, but I think it deserves its own space. The believability.
A lot of people get stuck on this one, especially with worth issues. 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 inherent importance. But these statements don't do you much good if there's not one cell of you that even remotely believes them. If there is zero buy-in.
I don't want to encourage you to give up on that. 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 is not going to work, and again, it's going to make you feel really bad about yourself, because you're going to feel like a failure for not being able to believe it.
If you can't believe it, you can't believe it. 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. You're not going to buy into it.
How to climb down the ladder to a believable belief
My recommendation would be to climb down the ladder a few rungs. Pick some kind of goal that you can genuinely buy into right now, even if it's not the ideal dream version.
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." Most people can get behind that one. I haven't had many people push back on that too much, because it's a very basic statement to buy into. It's also realistic and factual.
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, or a goal state, that you can buy into a little bit, even if it's down a few rungs of the ladder, 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 tippy-toes, and 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 normalise this: 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 the goal you're trying to get to just doesn't feel true, what is likely happening (I'm not telling you what's going on with you, because I've never met you and I don't know 100%) is that your brain is grappling with many years of data consisting of evidence that this nice, lovely statement is not true. Your brain's going, "Well, what about this?" We're not going to effectively combat that by force-feeding you nice sentences. It's just not going to 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. What I would recommend, though, is pick the strongest and most self-empowering statement you can believe. Climb as high on that ladder as you possibly can. Don't undersell it and go a bit lower, because you need to be on a growth edge. You need to be stretching yourself.
So to reiterate: 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 won't be achievable, so you're also going to feel like crap because you're going to feel like a failure. And it needs to be believable, for all of the same reasons. 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's not going to help. Climb down the ladder a few rungs.
Examples of realistic, believable adaptive beliefs
I've got a few examples here that I wanted to share. These are all beliefs, but you can apply this to whatever you need to.
Instead of wanting control all the time, or wanting to feel powerful: you don't have control all the time. If I say "I have control" right now, my brain goes, "Well, yeah, of this, this and this, but not of this, this and this. And what if the roof caved in right now?" You don't have control over that. Not everybody thinks like that, thankfully. But instead of wanting control all the time, better goal states, better beliefs to aim towards, are: "I can choose. I can trust myself. I can learn to trust myself. I can trust my judgment."
Instead of "I am worthy," like I said: "I deserve basic kindness and/or respect. I can learn to feel my worth."
This is another common one, people saying things like, "I want to be able to protect myself. I want to stand up for myself, and I'm not going to let people mistreat me." Often that's actually quite a hard thing to do. 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."
Taken all together: realistic, believable, achievable, empowering, and the strongest, most powerful version that you can buy into.
The take-home message
I think that's about it for today. I hope that was helpful. But do remember the take-home message: be wary of any situation where you're 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," and going straight to the opposite. It's probably not where you're aiming for. It's a different flavour of the same problem. Be wary of that and think it through. Make sure it fits with all the criteria we've discussed today.
Thank you so much for listening, and I'll talk to you next time.