Unlearning Unworthiness
One of my personal growth projects has been repairing my self perception after years of abuse and neglect. Let me tell ya nothing is worse for your wallet than conditioning that trains you to believe you are a burden for existing.
Childhood taught me that my life was a burden. This conditioning was then reinforced by a marriage to someone who believed my job was to destroy myself for their pleasure. Finally, my training was finished with a a nice marinating in a religious culture that taught me to see my life as an offense to god. Fun times.
It’s Expensive To Live Like An Apology
If you’ve been marinated in any flavor of this type of programming you’ve likely inherited what I call a “somatic apology”.
With this term I am borrowing from Pat Ogden’s concept of the “Somatic Narrative”. The somatic narrative is the history of your life written in your body language, posture and how you take up space with your actions.
When your mind is constantly fed ideas that you are unworthy and your body does not get to experience feeling worthy you can take on an unconscious “apology” stance simply for existing. This is an expensive way to live. You may find yourself:
Undercharging + accepting pay your unsatisfied with
Being terrified of asking for financial help
Feeling intimidated by leadership or visibility
Being uncomfortable promoting yourself
Feeling like you need permission to spend money on things you enjoy
Over-explaining your prices, process, or credentials before anyone asks
Feeling guilty for what you charge and discounting preemptively
Are You Unworthy or Unwelcome?
I have a philosophical gripe with the concept of feeling “worthy”. I think when we speak about the experience of feeling or being perceived as worthy we are using the word worth to denote something more fundamental…cellular even.
My position is when we discuss “worthiness” we’re often talking about the feeling of being welcome to the human experience and allowed to participate in it fully, freely and without apology.
Worthiness is a proxy word. What humans are usually pointing to is a felt existential welcome to the human experience. Think about when someone made you feel welcome to their home for a dinner party or event. What followed was an embodied expectation that you were allowed to be there, to want, to receive, to contribute, to take up space + take home a plate too.
Some of the most selfish, incompetent and untalented people I know navigate the world like it owes them something. You know what that tells me? This feeling of being allowed to take up space has precisely NOTHING to do with morality, intelligence or “deservingness”.
Mind Over Money
In a world that treats money like a god, your relationship with money can tell you a lot about your relationship with yourself. Your spending habits can show you what you value. How you price your work can show you your beliefs about worth. How you relate to wealth, luxury or poverty can show you ancestral patterns you may not have even realized you inherited.
It is worth examining your relationship to money closely. I created a tool for this called Mind Over Money This is a coaching course with brain trainings that help you update negative beliefs you inherited about money + customize your mindset.
TL;DR: If you were trained to experience your existence as a burden, your body learns to apologize for being alive and that quietly wrecks your money, your visibility, and your right to take up space.