Written by Jess Picco
It’s 7:30 am, and you’ve just woken up and rolled over. Sleep in your eyes, throwing a hand at your phone to silence its alarm. To silence it, you open your phone, and it lights up. Several notifications start to roll in, a few from Instagram or Facebook Messenger, as usual. You peek at Instagram, scrolling through a few reels and notice pretty people doing pretty things. A few likes notify you in the app of the picture you posted yesterday; it makes you feel good for a moment, and then you’re back to looking at the pretty people. These people have a partner and own a house – oh, look! Someone’s getting married, started a new job, and is travelling the world. Those likes you received just a moment ago no longer feel so good or so pretty. From the minute you wake up to when you go to bed, there’s a dial of experiences, turning us towards or away from our relative measurement of success, productivity, beauty, and intelligence. Essentially, our measurement of self-worth.
Self-worth affects everything we do.
Self-worth affects everything we do. How we interact with the world and others and measure these interactions are all decided by and filtered through our self-worth. Think of self-worth as a dial which brings us closer or farther from who we are and who we can be. Having high self-worth means that we view ourselves positively, and the opposite is true for low self-worth; this evaluation is produced from our self-esteem and can be increased through self-compassion or decreased through self-criticism. Self-worth is a constant battle, a conversation, a string of experiences and overall, a set of micro or macro evaluations that lead us to measure ourselves on this scale from unworthy to worthy.
Self-worth is crucial to fending against and grounding us amidst systems that profit more as our self-worth withers. We need context to understand the self and the worth we attach to it. The funny thing is that often, the context itself is what prevents us from improving our self-worth. Thus, counselling, focused towards exploring self-worth, can become an environment in which the systems that break us down have less room to do so, and we can spend this time understanding their tricks to leave the therapeutic space more resilient and feeling worthy.
So, how do we actually improve our self-worth and sustain it? With a consistent stream of media at our fingertips, comparing us to others through a systems lens where worth is measured by money, appearance, and social status, it’s challenging to discover our worth. In an interview with Venturous’s Clinical Counsellor, Parveen Boyal, we’ll explore the meaning of self-worth as it is connected to our context and the criticism or compassion we bring to our understanding of self. We will also look at terms relating to our self-worth to better understand it and to expand our space of worth. To pull this information into action, we will leave you with a worksheet on values to positively challenge the lens through which you view your worth.
What does our self-worth look like in context?
The micro evaluations we do to justify our self-worth come from the messages we receive from family, friends, media, and society. Our worthiness has been contextually determined by society’s spoken and unspoken rules, and unless challenged, often leads us to review ourselves negatively. Boyal (2024) expressed that “…messages from parents, family, wherever that’s coming from…gets so ingrained and then impacts our self-worth.” And when these contextual messages are part of us, it’s difficult to believe in another measurement of worth.
“…messages from parents, family, wherever that’s coming from…gets so ingrained and then impacts our self-worth.” – Parveen Boyal, 2024
To understand self-worth, we need to understand its opposites. Self-hate, its direct opposite, means we evaluate an experience as unsuccessful, unproductive, ugly, and unintelligent. But how do we get to the point of self-hate? Park and Maner (2009) explain self-threat as the experiences in which self-worth is challenged against the typical measurements we give to our worth. With the participation of 100 undergraduate students, these authors compared the pattern of social behaviours that follow self-threat in individuals of high and low self-esteem (Park & Maner, 2009). Park and Maner (2009) found that individuals with high self-esteem reached social support for comfort, while individuals with low self-esteem moved towards isolation and sought to fix the part of themselves they believed to be ‘broken.’ From their research, we can understand that our response to self-threat may increase or decrease our self-worth.
How do you respond after looking at the pretty people purchasing a home, getting a new job, or making more money than you? To understand the intricacies of our self-worth, we can start by acknowledging our responses to self-threats and the context in which these threats arise. Parveen (2024) said, “…you can’t just remove yourself from context.” In seeking external approval, we feed our context, and our self-worth slowly becomes built from the opinions of others and society.
“You can’t remove yourself from context, right? That’s just there. And so much of it is so deeply ingrained we don’t even realize that it’s there because it’s like just the way it’s always been.” – Parveen Boyal, 2024
Adams and colleagues (2017) noted that self-threats are “…contingencies of self-worth” (Adams et al., 2017, p. 176). This means that what we consider a threat impacts our self-worth. Read that again. What we consider a threat is built in context and creates a pattern of responses. We see pretty people, and on some or most days, we feel doubt, failure, worry, or sadness. So, what if we no longer consider those pretty people a threat? What if we value the efforts we are putting in now and align our feelings of worth to the values we actually have? To genuinely seek resilience and higher self-esteem, we must address where our context and values align or are misaligned. It’s a messy formula of understanding our responses to self-threat, the context in which we measure self-worth, and ultimately, how to move to our values to measure and maintain feelings of worth more authentically.
How does self-worth affect our mental health?
“A lot, there’s no better way to put it…” (Boyal, 2024). We don’t need research to tell us that the better we feel about ourselves, the better our mental health is. But sometimes, we forget how connected our self-worth and mental health are and how we can protect this relationship. Boyal (2024) spoke again of the daily reminders from society telling us we aren’t meeting the expectations of our gender, age, culture, ethnicity, or other sociocultural grouping. Without a way to ground ourselves against these expectations, our self-worth will suffer and, subsequently, our mental health.
“When you’re not fitting into those norms or expectations that you think you need to fit into because of what society expects, that impacts mental health.” – Parveen Boyal, 2024
For about 15 years, and even now, I struggle with my acne. Most social media, films, books, and family and friends’ comments commend beautiful, flawless skin. They approve of having perfect skin yet accomplishing it effortlessly. They pressure women to always look youthful, have soft, smooth skin, and wear an ‘appropriate’ amount of makeup. They expect, yet reality tells us that about 20% of Canadians experience acne (Canadian Dermatology Association, 2024). My acne is normal. Now, when I struggle more with my skin, I ground myself in the context 5.6 million Canadians, not one perfect picture on Instagram.
How can we improve our self-worth in counselling?
Knowing how to improve self-worth can be challenging, which is ingrained in us and supported in context. We must find spaces to break down self-measurements as they connect to our context. Counselling and personal reflection are two ways to do this.
In these spaces, as removed from and aware of context as possible, we can assess our responses to self-threat, pushing us closer or farther from self-worth. Boyal (2024) shared that bringing in self-compassion “… doesn’t mean that there’s not room to grow and learn and do different things.” Instead, Boyal (2024) explained that bringing in self-compassion can actually ease “…[the] pressure we put on ourselves to figure things out.” To build resilience against self-threat, we can start by responding to negative feelings or feelings of comparison with compassion and perspective.
Boyal (2024) acknowledged that most of her clients encounter self-worth challenges, and building self-compassion is usually a part of the therapeutic process. Improving self-worth through self-compassion increases flexibility and resilience, and the ability to appreciate how much we’ve grown and where we are headed aligns with our values. More specifically, Boyal (2024) suggested using a values assessment talking about one’s values in relation to context to understand the difference between measuring feelings of unworthiness with societal expectations versus the values we hold true.
What next for you in your self-worth exploration?
In our modern world, where every scroll through social media can feel like a comparison game, nurturing our self-worth becomes essential for our mental wellness. Our sense of worthiness affects how we navigate life’s challenges, and counselling offers a powerful tool to strengthen it. Through introspection and compassionate guidance, we can unravel the layers of societal expectations and rediscover our authentic selves.
If you find yourself struggling with self-worth, know that support is available. Reach out to counselling services like Venturous Counselling or Prospect Counselling to better understand your evaluations of self-worth through organizations that break down context with anti-oppressive and justice-oriented focus.
And don’t hesitate to use resources like the values worksheet by Russ Harris (2010) called ACT values activity (you can find this with our free resource database) to deepen your understanding of what truly matters to you.
Let’s continue the conversation on self-worth. Share your experiences and questions in the comments below. We can uplift each other toward greater self-worth and well-being.
Parveen Boyal, MCP, RCC (She/Her)
Registered Clinical Counsellor, Sensorimotor + Expressive Arts Practitioner
Parveen is a big proponent of accepting and experiencing the whole spectrum of emotions and developing more compassion towards ourselves. Counselling is a collaborative process where maintaining your autonomy is the most important part of our work.
References
Adams, K. E., Tyler, J. M., Calogero, R., & Lee, J. (2017). Exploring the relationship
between appearance-contingent self-worth and self-esteem: The roles of self-objectification and appearance anxiety. Body Image, 23, 176–182. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2017.10.004
Canadian Dermatology Association. (2024). Acne: Facts. Canadian Dermatology
Association. https://dermatology.ca/public-patients/skin/acne/ – :~:text=Acne affects 5.6 million Canadians,per cent of the population
Park, L. E., & Maner, J. K. (2009). Does Self-Threat Promote Social Connection? The
Role of Self-Esteem and Contingencies of Self-Worth. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(1), 203–217. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013933
Harris, R. (2010) A Quick Look at Your Values. www.actmindfully.com.au
