What is a worthiness wound?
A worthiness wound is the deeply held and often unconscious belief that we are broken, inadequate or less valuable than others. We often adopt this belief through experiences in our childhood, most often with a primary caregiver, that left us feeling rejected. As children we don’t have the ability to rationalize the bigger picture, and not take the rejection personally. Instead, we internalize these experiences as our fault, thus building our framework for our sense of self worth. Often, these wounds come to the surface when we enter into romantic relationships in adulthood.
Our quest for love.
Many of us are on a quest for love. We are sold that a person will complete us, in movies, songs and fairytales and find ourselves aching for this sort of love. However, single, married or dating, often our relationship status doesn’t fix the ache. Ultimately, we as humans want love in order to be seen and known and celebrated. Our quest for love is often the quest for someone to truly see brilliance inside of us.
A worthiness wound tunes us to our failures
The funny thing is, often our person tells us regularly, but we are deaf to it, with the worthiness wound in our subconscious, we have selective hearing, only hearing the words that confirm our framework from childhood. Have you ever noticed that you rememberWe have trouble believing their words are true, and this is not the fault of our friends, or partner. It’s as if our mind is tuned to another station on the radio, one that remembers all of our faults and shortcomings. Our brain registers love for a moment and then automatically rejects the compliment, the kindness and the embrace. We find joy out of that fleeting moment but then it’s gone, and we again feel the ache for more.
Healing the worthiness wound opens us up to love
There is so much freedom to experience when we make the decision that we are innately worthy of love and choose to extend this love to ourselves. As a good friend told me, “LOVE is the absence of judgement”. This kind of love is not selfish, instead, it allows us to finally receive the love that others have been sending our way.
The best gift we can give to another person is to love ourselves. Then, we can truly receive their love. To agree with it. Gone are the days of playing small, of false humility, of rehearsing our flaws. It’s time for us all to lean into our brilliance. We are all worthy of love.