The Three Lies We Are Told About Overcoming Unworthiness
I used to think that worthiness was something people just "got" at some point in their lives—perhaps after reaching financial security, achieving career milestones, or ticking off important bucket list items. I believed that once these external achievements were met, a sense of worthiness would naturally follow, leading to a life of contentment and belonging.
However, even after reaching personal milestones—being featured in prominent publications and seeing my name on television—I didn’t feel any more confident in my inherent worth. In fact, sometimes I felt even less so, as if the more I achieved, the more fraudulent I felt. The same pattern emerged with my clients—high-achieving women who, despite overcoming significant obstacles and accomplishing incredible things, still felt like something was missing.
That "something," I realized, is what I now call the worthiness wound. Over the past few years, I've dedicated myself to exploring what it is, how it forms, and how we can begin to heal it.
Recently, out of curiosity, I Googled "how to overcome unworthiness" and was bombarded with advice that I found to be misleading or superficial. So, I want to break down the three biggest misconceptions for you, incorporating a psychoanalytic perspective to deepen our understanding of this complex issue.
1. Worthiness Comes with the Right Mindset
The popular belief is that if you repeat the mantra "I am worthy" enough times, you’ll start to feel worthy, and the feeling of unworthiness will disappear. However, in practice, this approach rarely brings about lasting change.
From a psychoanalytic standpoint, our unconscious mind plays a far greater role in shaping our sense of self-worth than our conscious thoughts do. While positive affirmations can help shift our mindset temporarily, they often fail to address the deep-seated, unconscious beliefs that drive our feelings of unworthiness. These unconscious patterns were often formed in early childhood, as we internalized messages from our caregivers and society about our value and place in the world.
Mindset work, while useful for observing and challenging our inner dialogue, can become counterproductive when it bypasses the deeper emotional work needed to heal these unconscious wounds. In a culture that prioritizes intellectual understanding over embodied experience, true liberation lies not in the head but in the body. The body is the gateway to our unconscious mind, where these wounds are stored, and reclaiming our connection to it is essential for true healing.
2. Feeling Unworthy Is Counterproductive
There’s a prevalent idea that feeling unworthy is a waste of time, that it doesn’t help us achieve anything productive. But this perspective is flawed on multiple levels.
Firstly, it implies that feeling unworthy is a conscious choice, when in reality, it’s often an automatic response rooted in our unconscious mind. Secondly, it suggests that emotions only have value if they contribute to productivity, which is a dangerous and dehumanizing notion.
Take the example of Cathy (name changed for privacy), a client who had spent her life measuring success by how much money she made and how many accolades she collected. She meticulously curated her internal landscape to allow only the emotions that kept her focused and driven. Yet, despite her external success, Cathy was miserable. Through our work together, she began to understand that by suppressing the emotions she deemed "unproductive," she was also cutting herself off from joy and fulfillment.
In psychoanalytic terms, this suppression of emotion is a form of self-abandonment—a survival mechanism developed in childhood to cope with the fear of rejection or unworthiness. But as adults, this mechanism keeps us stuck in patterns that limit our capacity for joy, creativity, and true self-expression. Healing the worthiness wound requires us to reclaim these disowned parts of ourselves, to feel deeply and fully, and to recognize that every emotion has inherent value.
3. The More Power You Give Your Unworthiness, the More Havoc It Can Cause
There’s a common belief that focusing on our unworthiness will only make it grow, that by giving it attention, we’re somehow feeding it. However, psychoanalytic theory suggests the opposite: that what we repress or ignore gains power in the shadows of our unconscious mind.
Ignoring feelings of unworthiness is akin to ignoring a physical wound—doing so doesn’t make it disappear; it allows the wound to fester. When we bring our unworthiness into the light, when we explore it with curiosity rather than fear, we create the conditions necessary for healing.
There’s often a fear that if we "give in" to our unworthiness, we’ll be stuck in it forever. But when we have the right tools for inner exploration, what begins as wallowing can transform into a process of incubation, where we create the space necessary for transformation and growth.
Psychoanalytically speaking, this journey into the depths of our unworthiness is essential for stepping into the center of our lives. It’s not just about feeling good or achieving external success; it’s about reclaiming the parts of ourselves that have been relegated to the shadows. It’s about becoming whole.
No matter how many self-help books you’ve read or workshops you’ve attended, if you haven’t begun the journey of exploring the parts of yourself that have been disowned, your healing will remain incomplete. This work is the foundation upon which true empowerment is built.
To survive, we often dim our light and suppress our true desires, creativity, and talents. But now, it’s time to move beyond mere survival—it’s time to thrive. As we create a new relationship with ourselves and our unworthiness, we begin to create a new world for ourselves. This is the greatest adventure we can embark on, and I invite you to join me on this journey.
