April Newsletter

Dear Clients,

Worth is a concept I have been thinking about deeply in recent weeks, both personally and in my work with clients. It is a topic that is not well covered in our field; I haven't found many resources beyond a few oversimplified worksheets and there is limited research and text on the subject. It has always seemed to me an important and overlooked topic. It is, I suppose, a vast existential and philosophical question: what is human worth after all?

There are many ways to answer this question. I will start with what I mostly see in the people that I work with. Some, tend to nominate people into "good and bad" actors. This is typically something that starts in childhood from stories of "you are a good girl" or "you are a naughty boy" and tales of good and evil. We also learn as children that we live in a 'just world' where good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people; of course, the real world and human behaviour is much more nuanced. Some people externalise this and believe that those around them are in the wrong and the cause of all of their distress. Others tend to internalise and believe that they themselves are bad and deserve to be punished. This self-loathing is ultimately a protective mechanism—if you are mean to yourself, you are less likely to be disappointed or hurt by others.

This leads me to the idea of shame, particularly toxic shame. Shame in itself is not inherently bad. We need shame in our society to prevent people from behaving in awful ways to each other. But when the self-hatred is all-encompassing, when you believe you are responsible for all the hardships in your life, and it is hopeless and irredeemable, you are simply stuck in a vortex that may be familiar but ultimately extremely unhealthy and unproductive. It is important to know that toxic shame is not the same as love, and by abusing yourself, you are not helping another person in any way. In essence, you are keeping the attention still on you, which is not the same as empathy. A more helpful and healthy perspective is focusing on actions that you regret or even feel guilty about. Shame is about you as a whole person; guilt is about a specific behaviour from which you can improve from now on. Terence Real writes in his book "Us": "To me, healthy self-esteem means exactly what it says: it is our capacity to esteem ourselves—to hold ourselves warmly, tenderly—in the face of our screw-ups and imperfections."

Shame is also typically something that someone has passed onto you. We are not born ashamed; you may notice that babies are quite unashamed and self-interested. It is something that we absorb from people around us, close and far away. It is a devaluing of you as a person. Many people feel that there is an imaginary jury constantly watching them, telling them how one should or shouldn't be, narrating who is up, who is down, what is right and how it should be. This jury doesn't actually exist, but we carry it in our heads as if it were real. Often, this internalised jury is created by people who themselves believe that they don't matter much. That they can disappear from the world, and it wouldn't much matter. In a truly existential debate, sure, perhaps our lives don't matter. But this is not true when you exist in the world as a relational being and recognise that your existence is irreversibly intertwined with many people, even if that is hard to see. I still think of the 15-year-old boy who lived next door to me and died by suicide. We never spoke, and we didn't share anything more than a bus ride, but his death affected me deeply, and I often think of him, all these years later.

The other type of devaluing I regularly see is on appearance. Many people believe that there is something inherently wrong with them or defective. They may feel abnormally disfigured and focus on some aspect of their body to justify that. This experience is much more common than you imagine. You may feel undesirable and unloveable and compensate in some way (avoidance, covering up of flaws, attempting to present as perfect) to avoid being fully seen by others. This stems, like most of our distress, from a fear of ending up alone. In our species, that equates to death. If this is the case for you, I want you to know that your perception is an exaggeration and once again a protective mechanism, as it gives you the illusion of control. We come in all shapes and variations that fall within the bell curve of normality, and it is easy to focus on something that you perceive as an outlier whereas I can guarantee you, it falls within normality. Interestingly, when we do judge others or are concerned about their appearance, it tends to be less about specific features and more because they appear not to be taking care of themselves (think unwashed hair, obesity etc). If you struggle to cope with this sense, you can ask yourself, what would a person with healthy self-esteem say to themselves right now?

Finally, as a general thought, the primary concern I see is the idea that worth is not stable, that some people are below and some above others. In order to have a healthy mindset, let alone to function in relationship, it is important to believe in the idea of sameness: that as living beings on this planet, we all share the same inherent worth, regardless of our circumstances or achievements. Consider how animals and plants exist without questioning their right to take up space in the world. They simply are. This natural confidence is within us too, though often buried beneath layers of social monetisation and comparison.

As I work with this theme, I notice there is a shift in client's perspective. When people begin to truly accept their intrinsic worth—neither inflating nor diminishing it—they don't become exceptionally self-indulgent or narcissistic as you might fear. Instead, they grow more peaceful, humble, and genuinely connected to others. They learn to take up appropriate space in the world, find their authentic voice, and walk more lightly through life. There's a particular kind of ease that comes with releasing the exhausting work of constantly proving your value or hiding your perceived deficiencies.

This journey often involves learning to trust others' perceptions of us. As Esther Perel notes, "It's about letting others love us even when we feel unlovable because their version of us is often kinder than our own." Sometimes, the people around us can see more clearly what we struggle to recognise in ourselves—not because they're adding worth to us, but because they're simply witnessing what was always there.

Warmly,

Katerina Nemcova

Clinical Psychologist