What really happens when you stop undervaluing yourself?

What do you think would really happen if you stopped undervaluing yourself, first name? Do you have a vague sense that if you could stop undervaluing yourself, you would feel more confident and things would surely go better for you. But (and we’re talking about a BIG, stumbling-block but) you don’t really believe that not undervaluing yourself is a real possibility?

If that sounds like you, I get it, that is a normal – even inevitable – consequence of living in abuse world.

But maybe your situation feels even worse than that.

You might be laboring under the delusion that you are not undervaluing yourself. Rather, you might believe that you and your abuser know something awful about you that most of the world does not. So, you have to do whatever it takes to hide the deplorable truth about yourself from the world.

Impostor Syndrome

That, my friend, is the hallmark of Impostor Syndrome.

Most of the world, barring abusive people, see you in a certain way because of qualities and abilities that they have witnessed.

Most normal people will judge you on the evidence of how you show up in their lives.

Unfortunately, you feel obliged to disbelieve them, and invalidate yourself, on the  grounds of how the abuser in your life has judged you.  And never forget that an abuser has a vested interest in invalidating you, to prove how smart and universally excellent they are.

Abusers spend months and years, even decades, brainwashing you into seeing yourself through their judgmental eyes. In the end, the woeful devaluation of your allegedly nearest and dearest becomes your norm.

Thus, I find that, even when a new client knows how excellent they are in one area of their life, they still firmly believe that:

1. they are worthless in most all areas of their life and
2. b)whatever excellence they have achieved is a mere fluke.

The Narcissist’s calculation

Grossly undervaluing yourself is, of course, a massive obstacle to healing. It works exactly the way that your abuser intended it to work.

Are abusers really that calculating? you might ask.

You better believe that they are. They habitually target a certain kind of person, specifically, an open-hearted, empathetic person, because they know exactly how to play them.  They know what works to keep you emotionally attached to them them – at least until you finally recognise that are fighting for your emotional and spiritual survival.

Survivors leave their abuser not because they can envision a wonderful life without them but because they finally realise that staying will mean having the life crushed out of them.

We emerge from an abusive, narcissistic relationship seemingly dispossessed of everything that matters to us.

The Narcissist’s strategy

Even on the way into the relationship with you, the Narcissist always knew that they likely would, one day, take you for everything that they possibly could.

Narcissists leave the relationship when – as they see it – the benefits of being without you outweigh the benefits of being with you.

When they reach that point, they do their best to dispossess you of:

• Your heart
• Money, assets and possessions
• Reputation
• Friends
• Family
• Self-worth
• Certainties
• Self-respect and sense of self
• Hopes and dreams
• Faith in people, yourself and in the future

So, at the end of a narcissistic relationship, you don’t start over at ground zero. Rather, you see an acceptable future as getting to Ground Zero at some, unspecified point in the future.

In other words, you unconsciously set the bar for what your life will be like without the abuser in it, incredibly low. Distressingly low.

What would be different if you valued yourself?

If you hadn’t been taught to undervalue yourself so profoundly, what  do you think would be different?

Actually, EVERYTHING.

You might well look 10 years younger.

You likely would lose or gain weight, as appropriate, and be able to let go of some harmful habits that you acquired in your attempt to keep yourself afloat.

But that is just the start of it.

You would become someone that you like, care about and treat as well as you treat others.

You would finally matter to yourself.

How would that look:

• You would know your mind and feel confident to voice what is in it.
• You would cease to fear other people’s judgement and instead be curious as to what their judgement tells you about them
• You would cease to be plagued by anxiety and uncertainty.
• You would stop blaming yourself and regretting the lost time.
• You would truly believe that you have the resources that you need to figure out your world and your situation successfully.
• You would feel safe in your world
• You would be able to manage your emotions and get yourself back on track when faced with challenges
• You would know how to stay in your own power in difficult situations
• You would laugh a lot and feel happy in yourself more often than not
• You would love life and know you have the power to create a life to love
• You would enjoy better relationships in all areas of your life.
• Establishing trust and healthy boundaries with people would become second nature to you.
• You would turn into your evolving, growing best self.

Does that sound fanciful to you, in terms of where you feel that you are now?

If it does, it shouldn’t.

Who would you be if you truly valued yourself?

I urge you to think about who you would be if you were not still carrying all the inadequacies and limiting beliefs that your abuser has instilled into you.

Because you can still be that person. And more.

That is the effect of healing.

You see, despite what you might believe, you are not irreparably broken.  You are wounded, hurting and stuck in old patterns, for sure. But irreparably broken, not at all.

Since you are here now and still have not entirely given up on yourself – or you wouldn’t be reading this now – you can still heal.

What it takes is putting one foot in front of the other and thereby expanding your comfort zone and the space that you occupy in your inner and outer world.

If that sounds weird, let me tell you how that worked for Kaye.

One woman’s story

When I first met Kaye, she was desperately unhappy. She had an elusive, part-time partner who was an exceptionally primitive and uncharming Narcissist. In her professional life, she did a great job. But in her private life, she was barely able to cope. She was so wounded, hyper-anxious and unable to manage her own feelings that, many nights, she would sleep on the floor of her closet.

A few years on, Kaye is a happily married wife and mother. She has the resources to take all the challenges that her life has thrown at her over a few roller-coaster years and still come up smiling.

Kaye would never have believed that any of that was possible for her.  She had no faith in herself or belief in her self-worth. Still, out of sheer desperation, she was willing to take a punt on healing.

Healing is the magic that empowers you to transform into the best – constantly evolving – version of yourself.

My belief is that you only live this life once. So, it would be too tragic not to enjoy the good things and good times that you can still have.

It would be too sad to let a Narcissist rob you of your future.

Don’t let undervaluing yourself get in the way of having a life worth living.