Whenever something really bothers me in my relationship with my fiancé, I have come to recognize that it is usually a reflection of something that is going on in me.
For example, I was sharing with a friend how a specific behavior made me feel like “I don’t matter” when she kindly pointed out that my self-worth issues might lie at the root of this dynamic.
She noted that how you value yourself is often reflected in how you experience certain aspects of your relationship – both in how you allow yourself to be treated and how you interpret specific actions and interactions.
The more you value yourself and your actions align with your sense of value, the more those around you will reflect that sense of value.
What is Self-Worth?
Self-worth refers to your internal sense of being valuable and deserving of love, respect, and consideration.
Your sense of self-worth relates to valuing your thoughts, feelings, opinions, interests, and goals. It can also affect how you allow others to treat you.
Unlike self-esteem, which may correlate with confidence or external achievement, self-worth is most often associated with an internal sense that you matter and deserve to be treated with dignity, respect, and kindness by others and yourself.
Symptoms of Low Self-Worth
A sense of low self-worth might present as negative thought patterns, including:
- Feeling invisible, unworthy, or like you don’t matter
- Hypercritical of yourself: Your inner voice may be intensely critical, undermining, or self-blaming.
- People-pleasing tendencies: Going out of your way to make others happy, often at your own expense. They struggle to say “no,” fear rejection or disapproval, or tolerate disrespectful behavior to avoid conflict.
- Perpetual busyness: Constant motion, achievement, multitasking, or frenzied action to avoid having to feel or express your true feelings.
- Perpetual pursuit of self-improvement: Achievement fueled by angst of feeling not good enough.
- Difficulty accepting compliments: You may struggle to receive praise, celebrate your achievements, or downplay compliments, feeling unworthy of recognition.
- Hypervigilance: An exaggerated sense of alertness and a constant scanning for threats, leading to anxiety and difficulty relaxing.
- Judgment or excessive fault-finding in others: This may help you distract from your pain or flaws.
- Trouble asking for what you need: Suppressing personal needs or struggling to ask for what you need because you feel that you don’t matter and your needs don’t matter. You may not prioritize your desires, so you struggle to identify or assert what you want or need and accept help.
- Emotional numbing: If you feel like you don’t matter, your brain shuts down as a protective response to keep difficulty expressing feelings
- Poor Boundaries: If you don’t feel you matter, you may have difficulty respecting your space, time, or energy.
What Contributes to Low Self-Worth?
Feeling like you don’t matter is often a result of difficult experiences, such as rejection, abandonment, or emotional trauma that usually starts in childhood.
- Childhood Trauma: Self-worth seems to relate to criticism, neglect, abuse, or lack of support from family, caregivers, or other authority figures (like teachers or coaches) in childhood. If you grow up with a Disapproving or overly critical caregiver who shows you that you are not valued and respected, you may grow up feeling like you do not matter.
- Bullying or harassment: Negative attention at school, work, or other social settings or experiences of taunting, bullying, or ostracism can undermine self-confidence and lead to feelings of inadequacy.
- Grief or loss: Experiencing trauma, grief, or significant loss can damage your sense of self-worth.
- Unhealthy relationships: Relationships with friends, families, peers, or partners marked by emotional, verbal, or physical abuse can lead to feelings of powerlessness and diminish your sense of self-worth. If your safety depended on pleasing others, you might need to reduce your own needs to survive.
- Shame, Self-Blame, and Guilt: Unworthiness is a feeling that comes from shame, which is defined as the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that you are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.
Essential Oils for Self-Worth
Essential oils support overall mental health and mood, helping to inspire confidence and self-esteem.
Whether inhaled or used topically, essential oil compounds influence the chemistry of your brain and body by activating your olfactory receptors located in the nose or through skin absorption.
Your sense of smell connects directly to the part of your brain that regulates the release of hormones that impact your mood and emotional state.
Essential oils travel through the nasal passageways to the brain, binding to olfactory receptors. From there, they reach the emotional center of the brain— known as the limbic system— where they can stimulate the release of neurotransmitters, like serotonin, which can influence your neurochemistry, helping to enhance confidence and bolster self-esteem.
Research validates this, noting that “inhalation of essential oils can communicate signals to the olfactory system and stimulate the brain to exert neurotransmitters (e.g., serotonin and dopamine), thereby further regulating mood.” Additional research shows that essential oils can significantly impact the brain, calming emotional states and decreasing blood pressure, heart rate, and skin temperature, which indicates a decrease in autonomic arousal.
Citrus oils, for example, are known to lift moods as their chemical composition of monoterpenes like limonene may help lift moods, calm anxiety, alleviate depression, and make you feel lighter. Citrus trees and their fruit are the embodiment of sunshine. Growing in the warm climates close to the equator, citrus fruits absorb the sun daily and bring us their fruit in winter, just when that lightness is most needed.
Research on the Effects of citrus fragrance on immune function and depressive states found that “citrus fragrance was more effective than antidepressants.” Similar animal research found that lemon essential oil reduces anxiety.
Lung Support™
Your lungs contribute to a sense of self-confidence by maintaining your physiological boundaries. Lungs in harmony provide for optimism and are our source of self-respect.
Feelings of grief, bereavement, regret, loss, and remorse can obstruct the ability of the lungs to accept and relinquish, impeding their function of “taking in” and “letting go”. Grief that remains unresolved can become chronic and create disharmony in the lungs, weakening the lungs’ function of circulating oxygen around the body. Vibrant Blue Oils Emotion Support Lung Support™ was designed to help overcome grief and let go of negative experiences.
Lung Support™ contains citrus oils like Bergamot, which is known as a potent antidepressant. The relaxing properties of bergamot have been shown to boost confidence and reduce stress hormone levels in the body and prohibit the release of adrenaline by the body, which helps promote self-acceptance, self-love, and self-approval, which support your sense of self-worth.
Similarly, Orange essential oils help to clear stagnant thoughts and grief, strengthening focus toward positive thoughts and increased confidence. Red Mandarin helps switch off an overactive mind, promotes relaxation, connects with the inner child, and releases long-held grief and sadness.
Lung Support™ also contains Rose essential oil, which is known to help relieve stress and support feelings of self-worth.
This blend works best when topically applied over the lungs or around the ears. It can also be deeply inhaled, and allowing yourself to gently release intense emotions with your exhale is a powerful strategy to enable you to micro-dose emotional release.
Consider speaking the following affirmation out loud:
“I matter. What I do matters. What I say matters. What I think matters.
What I feel matters. What I experience matters. What I want matters.
I have value, and I matter.”
