297. Hidden Ways Low Self-Worth Shows Up in Dating (And How to Change It) w/ Dr. Marisa G. Franco

Another thing you talk about is self-worth as a practice.

Yes.

What does that practice look like?

So, like, what I'm really encouraging people to do here is to stop pushing parts of themselves away and to be really open to emotions that you have, even ones that you don't feel like you should be having, right? Like, "Oh, why am I taking this rejection so negatively? Why am I getting so angry, upset?" Or, "Why do I feel so bad about myself," right? Often we feel like we need to escape that or we should feel differently, or it's not okay that we feel as badly as we do.

And I'm just saying, you have to start by acknowledging what's true, [laughs] which is you do feel badly.

And o- we can only regulate or heal from what we acknowledge.

So we really have to start there, acknowledging all of our emotions, even if they're negative, even if they're, quote-unquote, "irrational." Like, it's, it's okay.

Like, it's okay for you to feel whatever you feel because you're feeling it.

That is only, the only merit of validity.

And so, um, it starts with something called sensitivity, which is being more aware of your emotions that you're experiencing and being aware of when you push emotions away.

So when I interviewed someone secure, they said that they would wave their hand over their day to see where their emotional energy lied.

It was almost like they were looking for their triggers, and I found that fascinating 'cause I try to be fairly self-aware, but I'm not looking for my own pain.

[laughs] But this secure-ish person really saw it as, "This is a part of me that I don't want to abandon, so I wanna know where my pain lies." Like, this sort of embracing your own pain.

And then when you are sens- when you have s- practice, when you practice sensitivity and you're more realizing your own emotions, even the small ones, um, you also practice responsiveness, which is acting on behalf of those feelings and the information that they give you.

Now, this is, I, I just wanna mention, sometimes when you're like, "I'm so angry," it's like, is responsiveness me sending a very angry text? But often when we turn towards our emotions and feel them, they transform, and so you actually might be a lot less angry.

And then responsiveness might look like you sending a text that's far less angry, but just like, "Hey, I'm looking to, like, seek some clarity here over how things went down between us." So it's that continuous process of sensitivity and responsiveness, acknowledging our feelin'- feeling and doing, I guess you could put it.

And that all comes from the research on attachment styles.

Securely attached kids, their parents are doing that for them when they grow up, and so they begin to internalize that within as well.

Got it.

So you're saying practicing self-worth is embracing what I think a lot of people would say they have been taught not to embrace, which is sensitivity.

Like, if you hear, "Oh, you're so sensitive, you're sens- you're so sensitive," it's, like, seen as a bad thing, but you're saying that no, this is actually how we build self-worth.

But why does paying attention and giving our emotions, like, the real space and attention that they deserve, how does that translate to self-worth exactly?

Yeah.

Well, you're engaging in a continuous practice of treating yourself like you matter, [laughs] right?

Mm-hmm.