Tatiana Khodakova
“Therefore, I want your focus to switch to that level of being in eternity where I am… I am the Value” (Yu. Vladimirova)
Self-esteem is the most important condition for a happy life. Without it, nothing will work. “You are worthy!” I tell you. But no matter how many times you hear this phrase from someone, it is not enough. It is important that you give yourself permission to feel your value. That you let your self-esteem into every cell of your body. Dignity is something that does not need to be shown and does not need to be proven, dignity must be chosen. Dignity is the value of yourself, the value of your life.
What is the value of your life? The value of life is the value of your body and the time spent in it. We came to this life in our body for some time (a certain number of years), and our life is the time spent in this body. Thus, dignity is the value of the time allotted to me, which I will spend in my body. And if a person values his body and his time, then he broadcasts his value to the world, and he does not have to somehow specifically show or prove that he deserves better. A person can love other people, but he must love his body and time more and, choosing between being “good” for someone and being “good” for himself, make a choice in his favor. If you are tired, but at the same time you value your body, then you will choose rest instead of serving the “whims” of another person. If you value your time, then you will not waste it on useless chatter just because someone called you out of boredom. There is a constant choice between one’s own dignity and a contact with another person.
Every child is conceived with an all-encompassing self-worth, but then throughout his life, he “accumulates” traumas that “wound” their dignity, i.e. the child comes into this world valuable, and then deepens to a constant search for balance – either “me” or “relationship with people”. The child has to choose between being himself and being in contact with other people. And often he has to sacrifice himself (his desires, needs, ideas) for the sake of contact. The younger the child, the more often he will choose another person, and not himself, since he is dependent on the contact with adults (parents or people replacing them).
There is innate dignity (by the fact of conception) and restored (returned). We come into this world with innate dignity, but it happens that even during the period of intrauterine development, the dignity given by the fact of conception begins to be wounded. For example, a mother may think that if it weren’t for the pregnancy, she could have done a lot of things, and other unpleasant experiences during this period can “hurt” the child’s self-worth. And then, for the first 13-14 years of life, the child is forced to make constant choices between dignity and contact. And most often, to give up dignity in favor of contact. When choosing between himself and his mother, a small child chooses his mother, because he is totally dependent on her, he has no other options. As he grows up, there begins to be some room for maneuver in his choices.
In the period up to 13-14 years, many “scars” appear on the self-worth: in trauma, the child chooses to survive, agreeing with the “aggressor” (with the one who traumatizes). Survival decisions are always agreement with the one who is bigger and stronger, because this agreement allows you to survive. Not to live, but to survive.
Then gradually, in the process of working through traumas, in the process of realizations that occur when a sufficient level of resource appears (including bodily resource), the healed dignity returns – access to one’s dignity, given by the right of birth, is restored.
In the process of growing up, a person loses contact with his dignity, exchanging it for contact with another. And then, through psychological processing of traumatic experience, in the process of realizations, in the process of the emergence of other conclusions, he can regain the value of his body and the time spent in it.
Allow yourself to feel that your body is valuable and the time you spend in it (your life) is valuable too.
Now look back at your various choices made in the past, and you may discover that they were made in favor of someone, i.e. in favor of contact – “just don’t leave me, I’m ready to offer my body and time for your use…”
If now you can feel and realize that your body is valuable, and the time spent in it is valuable, and the quality of time spent in the body is valuable, then you will make further choices differently. Because between contact (being “good” for someone) and being valuable for yourself, you can already choose yourself.
But it’s always a balance! If you live only from the state of being valuable for yourself – it will be imbalanced. Because sometimes we rejoice when we become the cause of joy for someone else, when we become the cause of positive changes for other people. It’s always a balance. And in this balance, you need to feel and experience acceptance of your dignity.
There are many spheres in our lives, but when we designate one of them as the main one, other spheres can “sag”. And only when we restore contact with dignity, put it in first place, all spheres “pull up”, and an incredible channel of resource opens, where there is a lot of energy and love. When we are in contact with self-worth, we make life choices based on our own dignity, and all spheres of life rise to a worthy level.
Photo by Artur Voznenko
Translated by Maria Zayats
Read also:
Love is unconditional, relationships are not
Love is not a need or a cold shower for the mind
Татьяна Ходакова
Практический психолог
Интегративный подход
