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Building your self-worth in recovery is an important part of your healing process. If you're in the early stages of recovery, your sense of self has probably taken a beating. You may have engaged in behaviours that didn't align with your values, or neglected important relationships and responsibilities. This can leave you feeling worthless, guilty and ashamed. Recovery is about more than just abstaining from the use of substances and addictive behaviours, it's about rediscovering who you are and learning to value yourself again.
As you start to make positive changes and commit to your recovery, you can begin to rebuild trust in yourself. This newfound self-worth becomes a powerful motivator to stay on track and continue growing. It's essential to remember that you are so much more than just your addiction. Developing self-esteem takes time and practice, and it's an integral part of creating a sustainable, fulfilling recovery.
We are all fairly familiar with the terms self-esteem and self-worth which Dr Christina Hibbert defines as,
“Self-esteem is what we think and feel and believe about ourselves. Self-worth is recognizing ‘I am greater than all of those things.’ It is a deep knowing that I am of value, that I am loveable, necessary to this life, and of incomprehensible worth.”
The website, Positive Psychology, lists these areas as to how people most often measure self-worth:
How you look which includes weight, dress size, height, and age.
How much money you have, whether it comes from your family, marriage, or your business successes.
The people you know, and connect with, both personally and professionally, in your organisations, communities, and congregations.
What you do for a living including the company you work for, the profession you engage in and your position in your organisation.
What you have achieved in the various endeavours in your life whether it is of a business or personal nature.
Most people seem intent in measuring themselves by some random set of ideas and in a world bent on selling us whatever it is that will make us younger, stronger, thinner, smarter, healthier, more successful, better parents, and perfect partners. It’s all become a bit like a cat chasing its tail or the proverbial hamster on the wheel.
So, what if you didn’t measure your worth in amounts, like money, weight, financial success, the value of your material possessions, including the area you live in, the cars you drive, and the schools your children attend?
What if you “measured” yourself differently?
There are certain metrics that some of you just can’t hit and may not really want to. What if you stopped comparing yourself with things around you, and started measuring our worthiness by what’s inside you. So, rather than what you surround yourself with and the obvious metrics you use to measure worth, you started looking at yourself and your contribution differently? Why do you continue to measure yourself using metrics that are not as important to you as maybe the other people in your life? Or even people you don’t know, care about, or love?
What if your kindness, generosity, compassion, and courage are how you’d like to be seen and feel in relation to others? It’s not about how much volunteer work you do in comparison to your friends and family, but rather how you feel about what you bring to the world through your actions, words, ideas, and contributions in a way that can’t really be counted and measured.
What if instead of trying to determine your worth you focused on your worthiness? Worthiness is uncountable! You simply can’t measure yourself against others then. You’d potentially develop an innate knowing about what you bring to your world, from a place of self-acceptance and -love. You can't really measure your compassion, kindness, and integrity and then use that measurement to compare yourself to others. The problem with comparison is that we generally don't look at the people we consider to be worse off than us, but rather those who seem to have it all figured out.
Take a moment to think about how you determine your self-worth and -worthiness?
By doing this you are giving yourself more space to feel okay when the world around you changes. If you are overinvested in the areas that most people commonly measure their self-worth, you are connecting elements of your “enoughness” to the actions, decisions, control, and behaviours of others. Getting caught up in the comparison game never makes anyone feel very good, and often contributes to the experience of feeling like you are "not enough".
You will potentially lose your youthful looks, your ideal body, your partner, job, friends, drive, and fortunes. Not always through any fault of your own. Does that then mean that you are not worth anything? These things are all dynamic, and they are going to change and shift over time. If you are too attached to them, they have the power to take your ordinarily delicate self-worth with them.
If you consider yourself in terms of the difference you make in peoples’ lives, the compassion, care, and kindness you share, how connected you are to yourself and the world around you, surely these are evergreen ways of considering your worthiness, regardless of the everchanging metrics? It’s really all about our feelings of “enoughness” and the value of who, not what, you are.
Brené Brown’s book “The Gifts of Imperfection” explores this idea in much more detail; looking at the reasons that you don’t feel like you are enough. It’s simply a matter of which lens you are looking at your life through, and you can choose how you want to see yourself in the world.
Before moving forward take a moment to reflect on these questions:
What does self-worth mean to me?
How do I measure my self-worth?
When do I feel my most worthy?
What elements of this are healthy, and which are unhealthy?
How does the idea of self-worthiness resonate with me?
In terms of worthiness, what do I bring to the world?
If I saw myself from a place of worthiness, rather than worth, what would this be like for me?
How can I detach from some of the metrics of worth and lean into my worthiness?
Of course, just because you choose to refocus how you consider your worthiness, doesn’t mean that the idea of self-worth falls away. It is important to develop healthy self-worth as part of your ongoing recovery and wellness process; just be careful who and what you measure yourself against. It all goes back to being cognisant of what you do and don't control.
You will also want to focus on creating a strong self-esteem. Positive Psychology says,
“Self-esteem is what we think and feel and believe about ourselves. Self-worth is recognizing 'I am greater than all of those things. It is a deep knowing that I am of value, that I am loveable, necessary to this life, and of incomprehensible worth.”
The short, animated video “How to Build Self-Esteem – The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem by Nathaniel Branden” is worth watching. This 6-minute video on self-esteem outlines what author sees as the “Six Pillars” of self-esteem:
The practice of living consciously: Be aware of your daily activities and relationship with others, insecure reflections, and personal priorities.
The practice of self-acceptance: This includes becoming aware and accepting the best and the worst parts of you and the disowned parts of ourselves.
The practice of self-responsibility: This implies realizing that you are responsible for your choices and actions.
The practice of self-assertiveness: Act through your real convictions and feelings as much as possible.
The practice of living purposefully: Achieve personal goals that energize your existence.
The practice of personal integrity: Don’t compensate your ideals, beliefs, and behaviours for a result that leads to incongruence. When your behaviours are congruent with your ideals, integrity will appear.
However you choose to measure yourself in the world is going to impact your feelings of self-worth and self-esteem. You don't have to buy into the ideas that are sold on social media about how you should look, feel and act. You are free to choose to see yourself differently to how our materialistic, consumerist economy wants you to. After all, if you don't feel like you are enough, you'll buy the products and services that promise to make you richer, thinner, smarter, younger and more beautiful. If you're fortunate and well resourced those are privileges to be grateful for, but remember you are not the car that you drive, the house that you live in, or the labels that you wear.
You can make the courageous choice to see yourself in terms of how kind and compassionate you are, how generous you are with your time and wisdom, how you show up with honesty and integrity, and the way you treat yourself and others. As you continue to recover and rebuild your sense of self, think carefully about who you want to be. Consider how you want to show up and then focus on creating a sense of self based on what's most important to you in your life.
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