The worthiness wound isn’t loud and doesn’t like to make itself known. It’s silent but powerful. Most of the decisions you make will be subconsciously based on how you view your self-worth. You rarely know you’re doing this. Your brain won’t string it together that easily. 

People like to say, “know your worth,” though it is important to know your worth, there is a massive difference between knowing your worth and believing in your worth. 

Believing in your worth is the foundation for achieving your goals and manifesting your desires. You can do everything right, have all the skills, have an extensive resume, and reputable recommenders - but if you don’t believe you’re worthy of having your dream job, it’s going to be really hard to get it. 

All you need to do to have everything you want in life is feel worthy of it - it’s so simple yet painful. 

This is why cultivating and nurturing your self-worth needs to be your top priority. When you genuinely feel deserving of everything you desire, life has no choice but to give it to you.

It’s when you feel unworthy or not good enough that there are contradictory beliefs:

You know you want something and know that you deserve it, but your subconscious believes you don’t deserve it because of past situations where you felt unworthy. Therefore, unworthiness is its default setting. 

The Source of the Worthiness Wound

The worthiness wound is a wound that started in childhood with a situation(s) that made you feel as if you weren’t good enough for something or someone. 

It most likely happened when a parent, caregiver, or teacher said something to you or treated you in a way that made you feel less than. 

An example could be that you’re an older sibling, and when your little sister or brother was born, you felt like your parents weren’t paying enough attention to you. So then you had to find ways to get attention. This could’ve been by acting out or being really good and following all the rules to get praise. So once you realize that you can misbehave to get attention or behave really well to please your parents, your subconscious takes note of this. 

Your subconscious now believes that you have to do these things to get attention and feel seen and heard. This is engraved in your subconscious and translates itself into adulthood. 

This wound can show up in your career, finances, friendships, and romantic relationships as an adult. It weaves itself into different aspects of your life. You’ll start to wonder why things never work out for you in love or why you can’t seem to make a certain amount of money.

Not achieving your goals has nothing to do with your capabilities or level of intelligence or experience. You are capable of doing anything you want in your life. The only thing holding you back is these feelings of not feeling worthy, deserving, and good enough. It may not show up clearly because your brain can’t process it that quickly, but that’s the reason. 

That’s why telling people to “know your worth” isn’t sufficient. You can consciously know your worth. Of course, you deserve to find a love that makes you feel like you’re living a dream. And have a career that you’re so passionate about and you know is your purpose in life. But if you subconsciously believe that you can’t have it or put your dreams on a pedestal because you don’t think you’re good enough to have them, that’s where things get tricky. 

Knowing your worth and believing in your worth are not the same. 

How The Worthiness Wound Shows Up 

Feeling unworthy can be as obvious as not feeling “smart enough” to get into grad school or not being “qualified enough” to apply for your dream job. But sometimes, it shows up in more quiet and subtle ways. Here are some ways that the worthiness wound manifests itself:

People pleasing 

If you are overly nice, too giving, or reserve your opinion or voice to keep things calm, you might be a people pleaser. I resonate with this because I used to do this all the time, especially around family. If people have expectations for you, you might alter your behavior to keep them happy. You don’t want to ruffle any feathers. But this is because you felt that you needed to be nice and over-extend yourself to appease others. You believe that if you set boundaries or voice a conflicting belief, you won’t be liked anymore. This is a way of getting attention from people. It makes you feel important because people are giving you attention for acting in a way that isn’t authentic. 

Self-sabotage

This one is sneaky because you probably don’t even know you’re self-sabotaging until later. Self-sabotage can look like you picking fights when things are peaceful because you’re used to chaos. Or accidentally forgetting to go to a job interview for your dream job because you subconsciously don’t feel like you’re not qualified for the job. Or Consistently going to sleep late and getting up late because if you have a healthy sleep schedule, you’ll have more energy to pursue your passions, which you subconsciously are scared to do. 

Self-sabotage is your way of “messing things up” so that you keep yourself from achieving your goals and being successful. It’s not that you secretly don’t want to pursue your dreams, but you’re scared about what will happen if you do. Your subconscious will do everything in its power to keep things safe, and sometimes your big dreams don’t seem safe to your mind. 

Procrastination

This is a form of self-sabotage. Procrastination doesn’t mean you’re lazy or incapable of finishing your tasks on time. It’s deeper than that. When you procrastinate, this is how your logic goes: 

“I don’t think my work will be good enough, so I’ll push it back until the last minute. Then if people don’t like it, I can say that I didn’t put much effort into it, and that’s why it’s bad.”

Your mind thinks it’s safer to not put much effort in and have your work be subpar rather than putting a lot of effort in and people not liking it. It all comes back to not feeling good enough and people not liking what you did. 

Negative patterns in significant relationships 

Have you noticed that there seem to be similar patterns in your relationships? Maybe your partners always cheat, or they don’t make you feel like a priority. Maybe in your friendships, people were disloyal and fake. You attract these types of relationships because you don’t believe you deserve a healthy relationship. Your relationships reflect the relationship you have with yourself and the relationship you had with your primary caregivers. Your subconscious will try to recreate situations it experienced in the past because it believes that will keep you safe and comfortable. It’s not that you aren’t worthy of a healthy relationship or that there aren’t any good men or women left in the world. It’s that your mind is trying its hardest to keep you safe. And to the mind, safe doesn’t always equal happiness; it usually means familiar. 

Your worth cannot be defined by your achievements. Your worth can only be defined by your being. 

The fact that you are alive and breathing is the only thing that makes you worthy. You are inherently worthy of everything you want. Nothing is out of reach for you. Sometimes life can be cruel, and people can treat you in ways that make you feel less. They may put expectations on you, and if you don’t live up to that standard, they label you as not good enough or not smart enough, or not talented enough. 

Your only job is to heal and grow from your hurt. If you feel like you don’t deserve something, I want you to know that it’s a lie. People have lied to you, and you have been lying to yourself. Your worth cannot be proved from something outside of you. You are worthy because you are. Plain and simple. 

Love,

Sangeetha

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