Recognizing something is just a step in the process. Unfortunately, I've had the tendency to stop there, as if recognizing something means that I've dealt with it.
Sort of like realizing that I'm walking on the train tracks means that now I won't get hit by the train. Definitely a false premise there.
After realizing the depth of my feelings regarding the questions around the source of my worth as a person, it's like a flood gate has been opened on my insecurities. It's really darn annoying, but it does make sense. Realizing that I'm insecure about something that core to my identity means that now I have to deal with it. If I don't deal with the issues, then insecurities are going to reign supreme.
I'm reminded of a question that Caroline Myss asked in her Self-Esteem series: Where am I getting my sense of worth? That seems like a great place to start! It's also a question that every person should address with a very serious mind.
Where do I get my sense of worth? In what instances so I feel confident in myself? What makes me feel valuable?
It's that last question that allowed a couple of answers to come forward.
One answer was "I feel worthwhile when I'm needed." That's a very common answer, but it felt like a surface answer to me. While poking and prodding it to find out what it was covering, I realized that "to be needed" was also a means of being indispensable. A means of guaranteeing that my presence would also be wanted. It's a co-dependent answer on which my sense of worth relies more on being accepted by others than on a true sense of inner worth.
The second answer was "I feel worthwhile when I'm serving others." That's another exceedingly common answer, but that one felt just as hollow to me as the first one. More poking and prodding yielded the awareness that serving others has more to do with being recognized for my service, for being recognized as a good person, than from a place of empowered service. Again, it's a co-dependent answer which indicates that my sense of worth comes from outside my Self rather than inside.
True self-worth comes from inside. Validation is nice, but it's not a source, and both of my answers are exterior validation answers. I feel worthwhile when my presence is wanted and when I'm recognized as a good person.
Hrm. Throwing out those answers, I have to look deeper. Where DO I feel like a person with interior value??
Going to sleep with that question active in my mind, I had a dream in which I was competing with a bunch of quilters for a cash prize that would allow for the creation of the greatest quilt we were capable of. Another person there was a gifted woman, but she was starving. I knew her history and every time she got even a dime she'd buy food. I actually hoped she wouldn't win the prize because then she's use the money to buy food, and the wonderful design she had would never get made. I ended up winning, but in the after party I approached her with another woman. We were trying to get the starving woman to consider teaching because she was clearly talented but just needed a break.
I think, in the dream, the starving woman was my sense of self-worth -- using every penny that I'm given (external validation) to feed myself (false worth) at the cost of long-term gains (true self-worth), yet ignoring the gifts and talents I was born with (the ingredients of my self-worth). In the dream, my approaching her to encourage her to develop her skills is rather like me asking the question of where do I find my value.
I still don't have a conscious answer to that question, but that in the dream the contest was for a quilt not yet made is rather telling. I'll keep pursuing this question, and share the journey wherever it takes me. Afterall, a Lioness has no question at all as to her own worth!
- Lioness (in training)
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