You are not worthy: Says who?

6 min readApr 23, 2020

Some of the personality attributes that we often experience are more common than we acknowledge. One of them is our need to be positively accepted by others.

It starts early on, from our childhood, when we build new traits and characteristics, by seeking acceptance, from our parents and elders:-

We understand what is right and wrong, by the reactions we acquire for an activity.
We tend to become happy when we are rewarded.
We tend to drop an idea or activity when we are punished.

All these life attributes and other common experiences are rigorously studied in the field of psychology, including:-

How we learn
How we internalize individual traits
How we tend to experience the world around us
How we process thoughts and experiences and many more topics than I can mention here.

CONDITIONS OF WORTH

One of these topics brings forth a concept, which psychologist Carl Roger termed as Conditions of worth. The concept was developed after observation of a common phenomenon that leads to distress, emotional and mental problems.

According to the definition, and I quote “Conditions of worth are what we develop when we take on board other people’s values and ideas about how we should be”.

MEET RIYA

Let’s try to detect this concept in a real-life example. Here’s a small story-

“Riya was a very sharp kid. She always received accolades and rewards in school and college for her brilliant in-class and extracurricular performance. As we would infer, Riya ought to have a bright future.

And nothing unexpected, she went on to pursue her studies and research in a renowned university. She was very confident and knew that she is going to be successful and collect more accolades for herself in terms of all that she wishes to own and all that she wishes to do.”

From the above anecdote, no doubt Riya has everything sorted in her life. And she is absolutely on the right track, according to what she desires.

“But then something unexpected starts happening. Riya now has everything that she always wanted. Money, respect, ideal life, and her dreams are all in place. But she still seems to feel distressed often, she is unable to sleep at night, she tends to lash out frequently. However, she is unable to understand the reason behind any of this.”

Okay, so where might the problem be? Riya went to seek help and got to know something that took her by surprise.

The problem was, what Riya incorporated for the definition of happiness and success was what:-

She thought success was supposed to be.
It was what she was expected to undertake as an obvious expedition, without the scope for doubts or questions.
She simply internalized the hopes and ideas of those around her without ever realizing that the thoughts were not her own.

This contradiction between our own values (that we often fail to even acknowledge) and those given to us by society creates distress by being highly conflicting in nature.

Riya’s case is that of, most of us today. We easily tend to think we know what we are doing or we supposedly are quite clear of what is right and what is wrong in terms of our life decisions. And in the process, we miserably fail to realize our own ambitions and keep moving away from the path that would bring solace to our soul.

WAIT THERE’S MORE

Apart from this, conditions of worth state something more - As the name suggests, the conditions that we are allowing to be put upon ourselves (aware or unaware of) calls upon a question, on our worth. As a result, we find ourselves worthy of respect or any pleasure only when we meet these criteria.

For example, if Riya after being highly awarded for her competencies would have wanted to roam around and paint, the thought itself would have given her a sense of foolishness(something which is not even considerable), to begin with. These ideas that we introject in ourselves of measuring our worth(as belonging to us), like our own, create the conditions of worth.

Let’s take a more relevant example from our own lives. Have you ever felt like running away from everything around you and execute some offbeat ideas that might be revolving in your head for a while? But instantly stopped yourself, thinking about:-

How you would be a failure and a disappointment in the eyes of everyone around you.
How it is not a good idea
How it is risky, and not sane to be going down that lane.
How this might not be a smart thing to do
How this might lead us to a path ridden with failures.

The intensity of the problem is such, that all these ideas of right and wrong, are so well engraved in our heads, that we never doubt them to be our own. Those suppressed ideas and feelings that authentically belong to us, only reflect themselves as distress, anxiety, and depression. This is the most crucial thing for us to understand.

IS THIS ALL NEW?

History has the proof for this. Did any good ever come from conventionally? No invention or discovery has ever been made, without confronting the revulsion from most people around.

Could Columbus have found America, if he would not have believed in his idea of the existence of some other world, which nobody could have been able to even fathom at that time? What if, he would have considered the knowledge they then had as complete, and be okay with it?

Not one, we have multitudes of such examples. Wright brothers, Albert Einstein, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and everybody who we remember today for their contribution to the world. Had they integrated the conditions of worth in their lives as we do, we would still be living in an unimagined era of humanity.

Now well, you can surely throw the argument that is the most common- “But these were only one in a million. What about the people we don’t know today. What about those who never succeeded”?

However cliche my answer may sound, the ultimate goal here is. not to be famous or known, the goal here is to stay true to yourself and live a whole life. I would say those million who never succeeded might still have gotten off much better if we were to measure life satisfaction with the relevant attributes and values. I would still say that an adventurer who loves exploring the deep of forests and mountains without earning any incentives for it, may still be better of, than a lot of us working for acknowledgment and acceptance.

CONCLUSION

It all boils down to the concern, that we went really wrong somewhere, in the middle of growing and developing as a species. And as a result, we have so well summoned ourselves to the atrocities, that it is nothing but normal.

There are a lot of people putting efforts, for example, mental health professionals, philosophers, humanitarians towards helping us to realize our own self and the related worth. But you see, there is this major mindset that we are living with, which runs at a community level.

The wider shift will take some time to come in place, but again we have to start with ourselves today, one step at a time, one person at a time. And as we do we are going to be closer to ourselves, others and will be able to solve a lot of problems.

It’s a drastic change, but not impossible to bring about.