Overcoming Unworthiness: Understanding and Healing Childhood Trauma

The main takeaway is understanding the origin of unworthiness and reclaiming self-worth through healing childhood trauma and changing subconscious beliefs.

### Understanding and Overcoming Feelings of Unworthiness
* 🔍 Dr. Gabor Mate's model helps us explore the root causes of unworthiness, starting with **five questions to analyze our emotional reactions to others' behavior**.
* 📖 The speaker shares a personal story from his second marriage to illustrate these questions, showing how our perceptions often stem from **childhood trauma**.
* 🧠 The automatic nature of feeling unworthy in challenging situations highlights the **subconscious programming we carry from childhood**.
* ❤ Recognizing that our conflicts are designed to lead us to ourselves, the speaker emphasizes the importance of **self-compassion and healing past traumas**.
* 🎁 Viewing these challenges as **learning opportunities and gifts** is crucial for **reclaiming our worth and authenticity**.
* 🌱 The three steps to regaining worth involve **reframing problems as learning opportunities**, **acknowledging childhood trauma**, and **choosing to heal these subconscious messages**.
* 💬 The speaker's personal journey of **letting go of control and finding self-compassion** serves as a **powerful example** of this transformative process.
* 🌟 Ultimately, the message is to **embrace the journey of self-discovery and healing**, recognizing that our worth is **inherent** and not determined by external circumstances.

- Welcome back. In today's video, I'm going to talk about where that sense of unworth comes from, what it teaches us about ourselves, and finally, how do we turn that around? How do we develop that worth that we all crave and deserve? Now, to do that, I'm going to have to be in full disclosure here. This process I'm going to lay out, I really stole from Dr. Gabor Mate. He and I are kindred spirits. I talk about all of these things, but in a different way, and when I listen to him talk, I'm like, god, I wish I'd thought about laying it out that way. It's just beautiful and elegant. So if you've never heard of Dr. Gabor Mate, I urge you go become an expert in his stuff. He's just beautiful and elegant with everything he does. So while I've talked about all of these concepts, I'm going to use his model.

because ultimately, whether it's me or somebody else, what matters is you get great information, and so I'm going to share that with you. Now, before I get started, I'm going to read a quote. This is from a teacher that he follows that has meant the world to him, and I'm going to start with it because I want it as a frame of reference before we get through anything else, because it'll help you observe kind of the depth of what I'm about to discuss, and make it more palatable, and help you resonate more deeply with it, and actually put it into place in your own life. This is a quote from A.H. Almaas, who he considers one of his greatest teachers, and the quote goes like this. Your conflicts, all the difficult things, the problematic situations in your life are not chance or haphazard. They are actually yours. They are specifically yours, designed specifically for you.

by a part of you that loves
you more than anything else. That part of you that loves
you more than anything else, has created roadblocks
to lead you to yourself. You're not going go
in the right direction, unless there's something
pricking you on the side saying, 'Look here, look this way.' That part of you loves you so much, that it doesn't want
you to lose the chance. It will go to extreme
measures to wake you up. It will make you suffer
greatly if you don't listen. What else can it do? That's its purpose. See, that ties in with my whole belief that any problem in our
life, we've set it up, we've created it, and
there's proof of that. Any so-called bad situation is a gift, but he just says that so much
more beautifully than I do. So now that we have that
as a frame of reference,

that we've brought all this into our life to teach us about ourselves. Here we're going to start off with the five questions that will help us discover where this unworthiness comes from. The first question is, think back to a recent time where you were upset with someone. Number two, what was your emotional reaction to their behavior? Number three, what does it mean that this other person wasn't willing to do those things? Number four, are there possible alternative reasons as to why they wouldn't do them? And number five, what does this teach us about ourselves? Now, to illustrate these five questions, I'm going to bring up a story from my life. I think that's the easiest way to do it, and the story that popped into my mind that would fit this model, every story does, but would really resonate with you, is from my second marriage. I talk about this in my book. We were going through some difficult times.

and my ex-wife had started
a business in Seattle, and she developed an emotional affair with her business partner. So, I made a request that we go talk to it about it with our counselor. And as I laid it out, my
thoughts and feelings, and I made the request,
look, I need this to end, this has to stop. And she said, Well, this is your issue. You have to get over this. This is co-dependence, and
you're trying to control me. I'll do it for six months, but if you're still struggling
with it, that's on you. Well, what was my emotional reaction? Rejection, hurt, anger, frustration, felt invisible, abandoned,
neglected, unheard, unseen, every imaginable reaction
we could have, all right. Question number three, what does it mean that they
didn't do these things for me? Well, what it meant to
me was I was unlovable.

I was unworthy. That if this person really cared, if I really mattered, they would change, they would be different for me. Now number four, are there
other possible reasons that she decided to respond that way besides me being unworthy and unlovable? Well, of course there are. She had her own needs and wants. She had spent her life
in childhood, in poverty. This was an opportunity for her to get everything she wanted. What are other possible alternatives? She was seeing that her
morals and values had changed, that maybe she wanted to move
in a different direction. Do you see, I could go on and on with all these other
possible alternatives, and not a single one of them
has anything to do with me. See, that's what happens, whether it's a friend who doesn't
show up on time for dinner or a child who doesn't come over and say, I love you, Mom. Whatever it may be, a relationship
where there's an affair

or an addiction or something that's always more important than us. The reasons that they're
doing it almost always have absolutely nothing to do with us. And so we've picked this pain, this situation to teach
us about ourselves. So here's seven questions
to help you navigate what it might be teaching
you about yourself. The first one is, do you see that in all of these situations, we're reacting out of our
perception of what reality is, not what reality is? See, my perception was I'm
unlovable, I'm unworthy, I'm being neglected, all
these terrible things, but the reality was,
my ex-wife was correct. I was being co-dependent. I was controlling and saying,
You need to be what I want, otherwise I can't love you. Also, the reality is, she was
just pursuing her own morals, and values, needs and wants, negotiables and non-negotiables.

She gets to do that. She was meeting her own needs. The, my perception of the
reality was completely wrong, and it was all based on what? My sense of feeling no worth. That's number one. Number two, do you recognize that in every one of these situations, we always choose the
worst possible outcome, and we always choose an outcome
that says we are unworthy? Have you noticed that? Think through all of
your hurtful situations and how we always ascribe
that they're doing this because I'm not good
enough, I'm not worthy, or we go the one-up power position, go, well, they're bad,
which is false empowerment. We make it about them, but we're still choosing
the wrong reality. We're choosing a perception
that makes us unworthy. Do you recognize the third
thing this teaches us, that this process is
automatic for all of us? We didn't even think about
it, it just happened.

The minute the word
come out of their mouth, or we see the action, we immediately choose I'm unworthy. We immediately choose I'm neglected. I'm abandoned. I am. I am somehow unworthy of this situation. That is trauma. That shows us what I talk about all the time, that 95% of our life, we aren't even present in our life as an adult. The science shows that. Do you see, that's a traumatic reaction from our childhood where we were sent these messages that we aren't worthy, and we brought it right smack into the current situation? That shows how detached from reality all of us are, and how all of us are reliving the subconscious, painful programming that we never healed from our childhood. Do you see what this is teaching us? Number four, this also means that we still believe we're not worthy, or that we're not worthy of being cared for. That still brings up that sense in childhood.

when our parents couldn't be there for us, when they were perfectly imperfect. We are still stuck in that
sense of unworthiness. Number five, it shows a lack
of compassion for ourselves. Do you see how we are the ones who are taking a reality and turning it into a perception that shows complete unworthiness? Instead of me looking at my
ex-wife's decisions and going, wow, she's telling me about herself, I made it about me, and do you see there's no compassion in how I made it about me? I rejected both of us in that moment. That's a complete lack
of compassion for myself. Number six, no matter
how unworthy we feel, do you see that this also
shows we still have access to our true nature, our authentic self? We all can recognize as
I go through this that, oh my God, my authentic self knows that I'm the one doing this to myself. That means I can heal it,
I can recover from it.

I'm not stuck. I'm, you know, people will say all the time, I never want a relationship again because of all this. Well, that's all that lack of compassion. That's how they're telling themselves they're unworthy. They're stuck in the perception of that. None of that's true because we are creating the problem for ourselves in the way we've been conditioned through our subconscious, our trauma from our childhood has brought all of that forward, and none of it's true. We are not in reality. We are stuck in the perception that was placed into us in childhood, that we are unworthy. And then finally, number seven, it shows us that the problems in our life are there to heal us. I'm going to read the quote again. Now with that new understanding, think through the situation with my ex-wife. Your conflicts, all the difficult things, the problematic situations in your life

are not chance or haphazard. They are actually yours. They are specifically yours, designed specifically you, for a part of you that loves you more than anything else. That part of you that loves you more than anything else has created roadblocks to lead you to yourself. You're not going to go in the right direction unless there's something pricking you on the side saying, 'Hey, look here, look this way. That part it of you loves you so much that it doesn't want you to lose them chance. It will go to extreme measures to wake you up. It will make you suffer greatly if you don't listen. What else can it do? That's its purpose. Do you see the whole reason I picked my second wife was to break me. The divorce and the withdrawal, because it really was a dually addicted relationship, almost killed me, I almost lost my life.

It was pricking me in the side. Hey, look here, look this way. This part of me loved me so much, it didn't want me to lose this chance. It was willing to go to extreme measures to wake me up, to make me suffer greatly because I was unwilling to listen. Because what was ultimately killing me in my life? Growing up with an alcoholic mother, emotionally distant father, and all the myriad of traumatic things I went through, the one thing I'd never been willing to let go of was control. You see, I was trying to control her in that office. It's what we all do. We try and demand that our sense of unworthiness, you fix it. It's not their job. And so what I realized was the only way I was ever going to survive and couldn't kill myself, as I'd have to let go of control. I'd have to wake up. I talk about, I remember the day.

I knew I had to wake up the next day, letting go and not knowing what was going to happen. I remember walking down that hallway, going, Tomorrow, I'll be a different person. Tonight, tonight is the death of me. And I woke up the next day, and I walked out of my bedroom, and I stood there at the entrance to my family and dining room. I just started to cry. I'm like, what am I supposed to do? 'Cause I was always like, I got to do this, I got to do that, I got to, always trying to make it happen. I finally had to sit in the I don't know. And I stood there, just crying, tears pouring down, going, what am I going to do? And for the first time in my life, my brain was quiet, nothing, no thought, just tears. I sat there for three to five minutes, and then eventually I heard a voice say:

Go sit on the couch, so I did. And after crying there
for a while, I heard, Walk to the gym, and I did. And I just kept following that voice. I let it come, I gave up control. I gave up the power. Now, do I still shame myself, do I still? Look, just the other day, I tried to set up dinner
with a buddy of mine. He didn't get back to me for several days, and I went right into this. He doesn't love me, he
doesn't care about me. Man, I got to pick better friends. I went on, and then I paused, and I'm like, oh, wait a minute, what's
another possible alternative? Well, his business is going great. He's busy as heck. He has stuff with his wife's father died. Like, there's so much
going on in his life. It had nothing to do with me.

and there I was choosing
the victim position, having a lack of compassion for myself. See, the journey never ends, ever. We don't want it to end. Just like this, me asking
my friend out to dinner and him not responding was
the prick in the side to say, Kenny, have some compassion. Look, when are you just go love yourself? When are you just going to accept that you're perfectly
imperfect and you're okay? That's why we pick these people. That's why these things
happen in our life. They're bringing us back to our worth. So what are the three
steps to regain our worth? We have to stop seeing all
of these things as problems, and instead start seeing them
as learning opportunities. They are the path to reclaim our soul. They are the gift we all deserve and need. Number two, recognize that
whenever we feel unworthy, it's just the trauma from our childhood.

And now most people, Oh, I didn't have
trauma in my childhood. Well, we've all done this. All of us have suffered trauma. Get out of denial, please. Start being compassionate with yourself. Your denial of your childhood
trauma is killing you. It's not loving to you or
your parents or anyone else. It robs you of that love for yourself and feeling of self-worth because it's all trapped back there. It's all trapped behind that pain. Number three, make a
choice to learn how to heal our childhood pain and change those subconscious
messages that are replaying, that in every one of these situations, we turn it and victimize ourselves and make ourselves the
problem and unworthy when none of it is ever, ever true. It's just a perception
based on unhealed trauma that was placed into us, but we can all access our authentic self. We don't have to carry that anymore.

So there you go. I hope that helped you. If you think it'll help
others, please share it. Leave me your comments. And if you haven't
already, please subscribe. And as I always say, enjoy the journey.

How To Increase Your Self-Worth, Self-Esteem & Self-Love

Kenny Weiss

Understanding and Overcoming Feelings of Unworthiness

The concept of unworthiness is going to be discussed, along with its origins and what it teaches us about ourselves.

The process of turning these feelings around and developing the worth we deserve will also be explored, with inspiration drawn from Dr.

Almaas is used as a frame of reference to deepen the understanding of the discussion.

Uncovering Feelings of Unworthiness: A Personal Story

The speaker discusses five questions to explore feelings of unworthiness, using a story from their second marriage to illustrate.

When the speaker made a request regarding their ex-wife's behavior, they experienced emotional reactions of rejection, hurt, and frustration.

The speaker realized that their ex-wife's actions were not necessarily a reflection of their own worthiness, considering alternative reasons for her behavior.

Learning from Painful Situations: A Path to Self-Discovery

Painful situations often teach us about our own perceptions of reality and self-worth, leading to a deeper understanding of ourselves.

We have a tendency to automatically choose an outcome that reinforces our feelings of unworthiness, stemming from subconscious childhood trauma.

These experiences show that many of us are not fully present in our adult lives, still carrying unresolved pain from the past.

The Impact of Childhood Trauma on Self-Worth

Childhood trauma can lead to a sense of unworthiness and a lack of compassion for oneself in adulthood.

This perception of unworthiness is a result of conditioned subconscious beliefs, but it is not the reality.

Problematic situations in life are actually designed to lead to self-healing and self-discovery, as a manifestation of self-love.

Letting Go of Control and Embracing Change

The speaker realized that letting go of control was the key to survival and a new life.

This realization came after a history of trying to control everything, stemming from a traumatic past.

By surrendering control, the speaker was able to quiet the mind and follow inner guidance, leading to a transformational change in perspective.

Regaining Self-Worth: A Journey of Compassion and Healing

Seeing challenges as learning opportunities is the first step to reclaiming our worth and soul.

Recognizing and being compassionate towards our childhood trauma is crucial for overcoming feelings of unworthiness.

Making the choice to heal our past pain and change subconscious messages is essential in accessing our authentic selves and letting go of unworthiness.