There’s an unusual type of frustration that comes from standing in front of a mirror, shouting positive things about yourself and feeling zero difference. For some, it’s the words feel silly or it’s the voice that underlines the concept: is any of this even true? Affirmations have made themselves a staple tool for self-worth issues but it’s not uncommon for people to ask why it’s not working for them.
But affirmations aren’t useless. They just need a little extra support on an inner level to really help people build their sense of self-worth. If that support isn’t present, it’s a struggle against the subconscious programming of low self-worth to begin with.
Why They Don’t Work For Many With Self-Worth Issues
Affirmations aren’t going to undo years of experiential learning where the negative teachings probably outweighed the positive simply by telling yourself you are worthy when everything you’ve ever experienced says otherwise. The brain learns in safe spaces with positive experiences.
Many people who struggle with low self-worth are not just dealing with negative cognitive patterns. Often, they’ve received a repeated message throughout their lives — often from family dynamics, patterns in previous relationships, criticism during when people were at their most vulnerable and even throughout years spent in conditioned environments where they felt like their worth was only contingent upon certain things.
These learned messages and experiences do not disappear because someone found the right affirmation to say in the morning.
The problem with affirmations that are offered as a DIY solution is that they only address the surface-level issues where affirmations work really well. Self-worth issues often run deeper than that and people might have battles that are ongoing since long before they’ve ever stepped into a therapeutic environment.
How Therapeutic Work Changes The Game
It’s only when people are working with therapists and confidence coaches that the game changes. Confidence therapy in Denver services, and those similar, ask people to do more than just say things. They need to think about the relationships in their lives and the events that have made them feel unworthy or less than.
This is not about getting stuck in the past. This is about acknowledging how those moments created a negative feedback loop that still follows them today. A therapist will unveil certain situations that surround them, where they feel unworthy or undeserving.
This can be in certain dynamics, when receiving feedback, during interactions, conflicts, socially or just when they’ve made a mistake. Once these moments are surfaced, people can then work with triggers instead of just feeling bad about having them.
Through therapeutic interventions like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), people can relearn how to change and break down the thought patterns that cause a loop of low self-worth. This takes time, because the brain needs plenty of practice to get it right. But it can be done by creating new thought patterns that become habitual with repetition and time. Once people also learn how to do things that are in line with their values, their sense of self-worth is built over time regardless of what any critical inner voice tells them.
Unlike affirmations that are just a cognitive exercise, following these values create a track record of how people are capable and deserving. A voice that once told them they were not worthy has no option but to acknowledge the track record that reminds them of how capable and worthy they are.
Where Affirmations Fall Short
As much as affirmations can be combined as a passive form of work, they say little about doing the active work when it comes to building a sense of self-worth. This is what separates active and passive work.
Passive work involves continuing to practice affirmations, but this takes less work than when people actively do things that are in line with their sense of worth.
This can mean simple tasks like saying no to opportunities that come their way if it doesn’t feel in line with who they are or what they value. Speaking up when something matters instead of keeping quiet. Reminding themselves of times in the past where they’ve dropped the ball, made a mistake or felt insecure yet still made it through.
Trying new things even if they are not perfect on their first attempt. Then building a track record of these moments over time so the voice once critical now has no other option but to celebrate their accomplishments.
When people repeatedly show up for themselves over a series of “small” tasks that feel overwhelming to accomplish but can also reaffirm or deny their sense of self-worth, it gets harder to deny their worthiness over time than it is to acknowledge it.
So while affirmations alone do not build a sense of self-worth, actions do — especially when combined with other elements in a therapeutic process.
Self-Care Builds Worth
Building self-care activities into daily schedules (even if this means tiny mundane tasks) build a sense of worth over time. It also reminds people that they are only human and limits mistakes rather than an object that is expected to perform at all costs to still be “worth something” (as opposed to a mundane act just being enough).
Self-compassion when mistakes are made instead of ripping people apart for messing something up reminds them that they are human. Nowhere does it state that perfect performance makes someone a worthy human being. It’s just being human that is enough.
The goal here is not to be perfect but to learn how to fail without feeling shame or without feeling like they don’t deserve a second chance. People realize they’re not perfect and that it does take time to build a sense of self-worth just like it takes time to master a skill instead of just setting a goal.
They learn to practice consistently instead of only practicing when they get to therapeutic environments by themselves. They learn not to avoid discomfort but lean into it by using creative ways to get out of tight spots instead of avoiding discomfort by manipulating environments. They learn to give themselves credit for trying even if they fail instead of beating themselves up when things don’t go as planned.
