The Missing Ingredient: Self-worth
I’ve been working with many people over the years in shelters, treatment facilities and now through online and coaching sessions. In the field of recovery, relapse is the big buzz word as people focus on “not drinking” as their means of coping. I knew early on that my substance use was merely a byproduct of deeper healing that needed to happen inside of me. Hence, the reason I don’t call myself an alcoholic. I’m not an alcoholic. I’m a spiritual being having the human experience of drinking and drugging. Once I learned, “I am a spiritual being” it changed everything. It gave me a reason to see myself divine, innately good and most importantly, worthy. I had always attributed worthiness to what I do. With that thinking, my worthiness was low because I was using substances, having mental health issues and really bad at relationships. If worthiness came from what I did, then I was nobody. I wasn’t “winning” at life. With this framework, I was losing and therefore thought of myself as a loser. One of the biggest paradigm shifts in my journey was learning that I’m a spiritual being having a human experience and therefore always worthy. Worthiness comes from being not from doing. That shift in perspective lead me to devoting myself to who I was being in this world. Without resolving this conflict of worthiness we stay stuck in thinking that holds us hostage as a victim to life and the world. I’ve been there, it’s a no win battle that just had me deepening in mental health issues and poor relationship with myself, others and the world. Worthiness is certainly the key. If shame, limiting beliefs or other people stand in the way of your worthiness, then that is the work that needs to be done. Once you are connected to worthiness, you make better choices naturally because that is who you are. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being I feel very worthy, where do you rate yourself and why?
A 7, maybe. I’m still not fully connected with worth being derived from being. I fully buy into that concept intellectually and I’m in a process of trying to actualize it but it’s an ongoing process and I don’t feel like I’m always living in that space of feeling worthy just because I’m a spiritual being, which is also a truth I only intellectually understand and connect with. But, also, I’m not really sure I know what it means to “actualize” the truth that I’m worthy because I’m a spiritual being. I should be a 10 if that’s the case.
What barrier would need to be removed for you to connect with worth and spiritual being beyond the intellectual level?
I think that questions tie into what I brought up in your forum questions: shame in my humanness but I’m not clear on why I hold the judgments I do and why I hold them as strongly as I do.
Good news is that it doesn’t really matter why, it just matters to resolve it if that’s what you want to do.
I’ll have to figure out whether I do. I’m thinking it’s not something I want to change. And I’m hoping I don’t have to in order to actualize my goals.
Just curious, how does shame support you in self-actualization?
Not especially well I’m guessing
We each have our unique path. I though maybe you had reasons around the shame being a support to you and I wanted to hear more about that. “Who am I without shame,” may be a good thing to explore. Perhaps there may be misbeliefs about who you would be without the shame and that could be holding you back from letting go and really connecting with your authenticity and Higher Self.
I guess the shame is a support to me although I don’t understand how exactly. I just know I’m inwardly proud that this shame differentiates me, but only inwardly proud. The fact that I say I don’t know how it supports me shows that I hold resistance to exploring it. It’s like I somehow wouldn’t be special if I didn’t hold this shame. I’d be human, and I’ve never been comfortable with my humanness. Even as a young child, I didn’t identify with being human. Not that I identified then with being spiritual but I did identify with vaguely feeling I had to have a purpose that being human wasn’t consistent with.
Really acknowledge you for allowing yourself to explore the shame right now. In my perspective, your connection to shame is your humanness. That’s just my understanding though I know you see it differently. Wanting to be different or special is ego. No judgment in it, just is…Seems as though your identity is connected to shame. You get to decide what you hold in your consciousness. I’m just wondering if this belief is working against you?
I’m surprised I wrote that about being special since that’s not something I try to be. My identity is connected to shame. I think you’re right about that. I’ll let my feelings about it be enough for now and try to bring consciousness and awareness to how this belief either serves me or works against me. I can revisit it later. Thanks for sticking with this thread for this long. Its helped : )
THANK YOU for sticking with it Wes. It’s all being worked out now. Stay connected with your intentions, and I have no doubt you will see movement while focusing on intention.