The knowledge of one’s worthiness is crucial to a person’s ability to feel a sense of love and connection. In 2010, Brene Brown did a TED talk on how impactful being vulnerable is to our ability to feel belonging and connection which received over 40.5 million views. She explains that the soul of her work as a researcher is to study, predict, and control phenomena, but through her research, she discovered that the best way to live is to cease predicting and controlling and get comfortable with vulnerability. This revelation caused a life-changing breakdown for Brown, triggering her pursuit of learning to live whole-heartedly and vulnerable. She found that to feel vulnerable is what it means to be alive and gives us the ability to create, belong, and love.
The main factor that keeps us from feeling connected to those around us is a fear that maybe we do not deserve that connection. We are all afraid that there is a quality we unfortunately have that makes us not good enough, but we must learn to embrace our imperfections. Some may find it easier to feel self-worth than others. For those on the hunt for higher life satisfaction, many options can help such as therapy and understanding positive psychology. The key to discovering the feeling of self-worth is to overcome shame, guilt, and fear with vulnerability, humility, and forgiveness.
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Some personality traits can make it easier to be vulnerable and self-accepting. The Five Factor Model is a grouping of five personality traits that describe the fundamental dimensions on which people differ from others. These traits are Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. A rating higher in Openness and Agreeableness may be seen as a tendency to appreciate a wider array of ideas, morals, and emotions, and have more helpful and forgiving behaviors. Lower levels of Neuroticism are represented by more self-secure, self-satisfaction, and lower irritability. People on both ends of the spectrum for Conscientiousness and Extraversion have reported both high and low self-esteem suggesting that these traits do not affect one’s self-worth. All of this being true, not everyone on the planet has these exact traits which is great because it allows us to have a more rich and diverse population. However, it also means that some people may have more trouble experiencing self-worth than others.
For those, like Brown, who are seeking a whole-hearted and vulnerable life, therapy is an option. One form of therapy that may be particularly helpful for self-esteem is humanistic/person-centered therapy (PCT) in which the therapist adopts the role of passive guide, also known as unconditional positive regard, by conveying understanding, sympathy, and warmth while being free of praise or criticism. This environment encourages the patient to be comfortable searching within themselves and recognize their self-worth. PCT is highly favorable with patients with most finding the supportive environment very gratifying. However, this kind of therapy uses similar strategies for all clients and may not be the right fit for everyone.
Fortunately, there are other types of therapies such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). The theory of this model of therapy is that thoughts generate feelings that cause behaviors, and then those behaviors bolster those original thoughts, working in a cycle. The basis of CBT is reappraisal/cognitive restructuring in which the therapist identifies the patient’s untrue maladaptive thoughts for the patient to dispose of such thought patterns or adjust them to something more adaptive. This type of therapy uses therapist-assigned homework to work on in-the-moment behavior goals in between sessions. More work and effort is required of the patient in this therapeutic design because of its present-focused style, CBT has the greatest empirical backing for its effectiveness and is found, consistently, to be better than other therapies. This treatment method can take negative thoughts and turn them into positive ones of self-worth, self-acceptance, and a sense of gratitude for life as it is.
Positivity is extremely important to our well-being. Positive Psychology is the methodical study of what makes humans flourish with the three key strengths being gratitude, humility, and forgiveness. Practicing gratefulness improves life satisfaction by increasing positive conscious thoughts of pleasant life experiences. Humility also contributes to life satisfaction because it involves accurate self-appraisal of one’s strengths and weaknesses causing a sense of self-acceptance and openness to diverse experiences of ideas, new information, and receiving advice. Humility is important to holding a positive perspective of one’s capabilities. Lastly, forgiveness is the source of inner peace. Holding resentment towards oneself and others is what leads to hate and self-loathing. Forgiveness is imperative to overcoming feelings of shame and guilt, and for holding onto harmony within relationships. Forgiveness is an extremely powerful action people can take, both internally and with others, to improve their ability to be vulnerable and connect.
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