The Myth of Unworthiness

Hi friends,

Welcome to the April edition of How Humans Flourish, a research-informed newsletter exploring the ways we thrive—individually and collectively.

A powerful question emerged in The Wisdom Room—an intimate virtual circle I host every Sunday evening, where we gather to explore the sacred, the psychological, and the social. On one particular evening, we were exploring the threads of nervous system patterns—those automatic responses our bodies develop in reaction to stress, safety, and connection—and the deep ache to feel whole. Amid our shared contemplation, someone asked the following question:

When did we start hating ourselves?

Not in the superficial sense of disliking our appearance or doubting our intelligence. A deeper hatred—a quiet, corrosive suspicion that our worth must be proven. That the self must be subdued before it can be loved.

The following is my attempt at a response—because this is not a modern neurosis. It is a historical inheritance. And like all inheritances, it comes with paperwork.

I. CIVILIZATION’S PRICE: FREUD, AUGUSTINE, AND THE ROOTS OF INTERNAL WARFARE

When Sigmund Freud published Civilization and Its Discontents in 1930, he offered a sobering thesis: the very act of becoming “civilized” requires the suppression of our instincts. In order to live together in society, we repress our aggression, our desires, our animality. But repression has consequences. What cannot be expressed outwardly becomes internalized. We begin to punish ourselves. Freud called it the superego—the inner critic that watches, judges, and wounds.

Freud was giving scientific language to something theologians had long intuited. Augustine of Hippo, the early Christian philosopher best known as Saint Augustine, argued that humans were born flawed. That we inherited sin simply by being born. The body became an object of suspicion. Pleasure, a potential betrayal of God. In Augustine’s framework, suffering was not just inevitable—it was noble.

Over time, these frameworks took hold in the subconscious architecture of Western culture. The result? A worldview in which self-denial is equated with moral strength. To long for more—to enjoy beauty, rest, or pleasure—becomes suspect. And so we internalize the judge. We turn on ourselves. We learn to fear our own joy. Self-hatred, then, is not a flaw. It is a feature of a worldview that exalts repression as righteousness.

But other traditions offer different maps.

Compare this to ancient Egypt before the fall of Alexandria. There, the body was not an enemy but a sacred instrument. Pleasure, rhythm, adornment, fertility—these were cosmic alignments. Ma’at, the Egyptian principle of truth and harmony, was not about suppression, but balance. The sensuous was not separate from the sacred.

Likewise, in many pre-colonial African cosmologies, pleasure was not condemned but honored. The Yoruba concept of ashe speaks to a life-force that flows through beauty, music, and embodiment. The Zulu notion of ubuntu—"I am because we are"—roots identity in relational belonging, not performance or productivity.

And in the East, Buddhist psychology teaches that suffering doesn’t stem from original sin, but from attachment—our tendency to cling to people, outcomes, and identities in search of permanence. Wholeness, in this tradition, isn’t about controlling or possessing, but about releasing. And from that release, compassion arises—not as sentiment, but as a state of freedom.

These embodied frameworks don’t eliminate suffering—but they don’t pathologize our aliveness, either. They offer a way to live in rhythm with ourselves, rather than in resistance. A way of relating to the world—and to our longings—that cultivates reverence rather than repression.

I grew up hearing a popular African proverb: Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.

It taught me early that the stories we inherit—the worldviews, the cosmologies, the truths we’re handed—are often shaped not by what is most just or most wise, but by whoever gets to tell the story. Whoever holds the microphone. Whoever writes it down first.

But here’s an even more liberating take: we have options. 

We can choose which ancestors to listen to. We can hold reverence for the philosophies that shaped us—Greco-Christian thought included—while also recognizing that no single tradition holds the monopoly on wisdom.

We are allowed to remix.

To question without discarding.

To revise even the ideologies once carved in stone—reshaping them to fit our needs, honor our integrity, and reflect the inner specifications of a life well-lived.

There is a multiplicity of ways of being. Other frames of flourishing. And we are not betraying our past by exploring them. We are simply being faithful to the vastness of our potential.

II. THE SHADOW WE NEVER LEARNED TO LOVE

Enter Carl Jung. The father of analytical psychology offered a powerful concept: the shadow. The parts of ourselves we repress, deny, or disown—not because they are evil, but because they are inconvenient.

We exile our anger. We suppress our desire. We bury our sorrow. And yet these are not flaws; they are fragments.

The shadow does not disappear simply because we ignore it. It waits. It simmers. It emerges in the form of self-sabotage, of numbing, of chronic perfectionism, of dissociation. In work or home settings we may confuse it with laziness or lack of motivation. But more often, it is grief disguised.

Self-hatred is not always loud. Often, it is a subtle hum beneath our choices. A quiet refusal to let ourselves be whole. We don’t just fear failure—we fear our own fullness.

To heal, Jung tells us, we must not eliminate the shadow but integrate it.

III. THE FIRST MIRROR: THE STORY OF THE BODY

If Freud and Jung gave us the architecture of the mind, Stephen Porges brought us back to the body.

It is estimated approximately 85% of adults and adolescents worldwide have low self-esteem. We are not just anxious—we are chronically misattuned to our own worth.

Porges’ Polyvagal Theory showed us that the nervous system—not the conscious mind—is often the true narrator of our lives. The vagus nerve, a core part of our parasympathetic system, determines whether we feel safe or threatened. And from that state, we make meaning.

Most of us, particularly in high-performing cultures, are living from a state of dysregulation. Our decisions are not guided by intuition or clarity, but by the need to avoid threat. Even rest can feel unsafe. Even love can feel like a risk.

This is why self-hatred is not simply psychological—it is physiological. We cannot will ourselves into self-acceptance. A body that does not know it is safe cannot orient itself toward self-love. It will interpret it as danger.

The Role of Cortisol, Dopamine, and Internalized Punishment

Neuroscientifically, many of us are unconsciously reenacting a constant, painful loop of punishment and reward. Here's how:

1. Cortisol (the stress hormone) gets released when we feel we’ve done something wrong.

2. We then perform—overwork, overgive, overexplain—to reduce the threat.

3. This results in a dopamine hit—a brief reward when we’re praised, validated, or deemed “good” again.

Over time, the body learns: Stress → Self-punishment (or Self-abandonment) → Dopamine.

The brain encodes this as a habit loop. So self-worth becomes conditional. Safety becomes performative. And joy feels suspicious.

This is why so many of us distrust ease. We have literally trained our brains to associate worth with strain.

IV. THE MACHINERY OF SHAME

To understand how this became normalized, we must name the systems that benefit from our self-doubt.

Max Weber, in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, showed how Calvinist theology shaped modern work culture. Labor was no longer just economic—it became moral. Productivity became salvation. Rest became suspicious. The self became a project to be optimized.

In today’s landscape, 76% of employees experience burnout at least sometimes, and nearly 1 in 4 feel burned out "very often or always," according to Gallup.

Unfortunately, you cannot add self-acceptance to your task list.  

You cannot time-block your way to tenderness.

James Clear can’t help with this one.

There is no bullet journal that will deliver you back to yourself.

Because this isn’t about discipline.  

It’s about worldview.

V. THE SELF THAT CANNOT BE MANAGED

In Internal Family Systems (IFS), the Self—with a capital S—is not a behavior. It is a state of being. It is the core of who we are beneath trauma, culture, conditioning, and performance.

The Self is calm. Curious. Clear. Courageous. Confident. Compassionate. Creative. Connected.

Think of it as your wisest self—the part of you that doesn’t have to prove or perform. The part of you that knows, even in chaos, that you are whole.

For high achievers, this may sound poetic but impractical. But let me reframe:

Self-leadership is the most advanced executive function.  

It’s the capacity to respond rather than react.  

To discern rather than defend.  

To move from clarity, not control.

It is Self-sovereignty.

At break*through, we’ve woven Internal Family Systems work into our core curriculum. It is—without exaggeration—the most transformative inner work I’ve ever done. For myself. For those we support and walk alongside.

IFS teaches what many traditions already know:

The Self—calm, curious, confident—does not need to be built.

It is already here. Waiting to lead.

VII. THE WISDOM IN THE ROOTS

There are traditions that remember what Western modernity has forgotten.

In Buddhism and stoicism, suffering is not a punishment but a teacher. Liberation is not through denial, but compassion.

In African epistemologies, the self is never isolated. Identity is relational. Wellness is communal. Healing is ancestral.

In American Indigenous teachings, to heal the person is to heal the land. To recover joy is to honor those who came before.

In Kabbalistic mysticism, the soul is seen as carrying a divine spark—a fragment of the infinite—and the task of life is not to earn worth but to reveal it. Desire is not an enemy, but a sacred force meant to be refined. The path is integration: to gather what has been scattered, to hold light and shadow, and to return to balance.

These and many other traditions do not ask us to optimize.  

They ask us to remember.

VIII. THE INVITATION TO BEGIN AGAIN

So when did we start hating ourselves?

Maybe when we began to chase achievement without anchoring in connection.
Maybe when we were taught that softness has no place in strength.
Maybe when we learned to perform before we ever learned to feel.

And let me be clear—this is not an indictment.

We don’t need to abandon our ambition, our excellence, or our devotion to craft.

What I’m saying is: we can do it differently.

We can build, strive, and lead in a way that expands us rather than depletes us—a way that aligns with our nervous systems, honors our joy, and allows us to flourish.

The Human Flourishing Program at Harvard found that fewer than 15% of people worldwide report high flourishing across domains like happiness, purpose, relationships, and health.

Fifteen percent.

With all our data, innovation, access, and intellect—fewer than 2 in 10 people feel whole.

(There’s a longer essay—perhaps even a novel—to be written about the global exportation of Calvinist work values and the colonial legacy of internalized inferiority: how entire cultures were forced–often violently–to distrust their rhythms, their bodies, their languages, their joy. But for now… let’s just sit with that stat.)

It’s almost absurd that we can split atoms, map genomes, land spacecrafts—and yet still forget how to love what we are.

But the body remembers.

The soft, quiet wisdom of the Self remembers.

And if you’re ready to let that remembering rise…

Come sit with us this Sunday in The Wisdom Room.

See you there,

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