What do you do on those days where you just want to hide? When you're feeling insecure? When you're feeling ashamed and not so confident? The answer is probably opposite of what you want to do. Listen in on what it means when you feel like hiding, what to do with that information, and how to build self-worth (even when you're not feelin' it). Learn a quick hack for moving from the Worthless Cycle to the Worthy Cycle on moments like these. Learn four simple steps to build self-worth when you feel like hiding.
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Today I wanna talk about self-worth when you just feel like hiding. You know those moments where you just are feeling insecure or ashamed, or maybe just not so confident? Maybe it's not a moment, maybe it's a day, maybe it's a year. Maybe it's a whole decade. Doesn't matter how long this lasts. But it does matter how much it impacts your self worth and how it can keep you in a loop and keep you stuck in this worthless cycle.
Shame and Toxic Guilt
So first, let's really name that feeling when you want to go hide. It's called shame. It's an emotion. And there's a lot that's been said about shame and about guilt, but for the purposes of our work, I kind of group them together. Shame and guilt, because you might call it. This guilty feeling, or it might feel like toxic guilt, or you might call it shame, regardless of what you call it, whether it's shame or guilt.
The function is basically to help you know that you're getting off course in a relationship and human connection. Guilt is a reaction to doing something wrong or bad, and shame is the feeling of being or having innate qualities. That are wrong or bad. So shame comes up when you feel that you are something bad wrong, not enough.
But these two feelings kind of feed off each other because you can start to tell yourself that you did something bad because you are a bad person who does wrong things because you are wrong, starts to spiral. People often misunderstand that shame slash guilt, thinking that this is a feeling of worthlessness.
However, when you allow yourself to experience the natural course of the emotion, shame or guilt, they offer valuable feedback and that will help guide you back into the worthy cycle. So shame and guilt evolved to help forge social bonds. When you repress this information, you'll fail to hear the important message embedded in this emotion.
Shame and guilt want you to repair a lost connection. Shame and guilt want you to reach out, connect and repair your social bonds. If you're in a distracted state, that keeps you isolated, lonely, and disconnected. And what I mean by a distracted say is like if you're hooked into your phone, if you're overworking, if you're drinking, if you're using drugs, whatever that is, where you're not able to even connect into this moment, let alone to other people.
What You Should Do With Shame
Those kind of reactions keep you stuck in a worthless cycle. So to honor shame and guilt, you have to take actions to repair the bonds and you honor your need for connection. And you show respect to your true self in your body. Shame and guilt feel like a pit in your stomach. It's slow. Painful. It's not a great sensation and often feels like you're being to, uh, torn or punched in the gut or like you're burning on fire.
When shame and guilt unconsciously fuel your behavior, you can end up doing the exact opposite action of what it wants. So rather than connect, you, disconnect and this puts you in a spiral where you're not connected to yourself and you can't connect to that worthy. Part of you, you can't connect to your true self, let alone to other people, and it just starts spiraling downward.
So what I want you to hear is that if you're feeling like hiding the actual emotion that's coming up and the message behind it is the opposite of what you're feeling like doing, shame actually wants you to reach out. So the worst thing you can do in that moment is to isolate and believe me. I know how you want to isolate.
I want to do it too. I want to hide. I want to hide from myself. But the worst thing that we can do when we're in that is just feed that cycle. The second worst thing you can do is to settle for artificial substitutes of kind of quasi connections. So maybe you like throw out a text or maybe you go on Instagram or something like that and that actually speeds into that feeling of not being connected because it's not grounded in reality.
The Worthless Cycle
So let me just review the worthless cycle. The worthless cycle is a circle composed of three points each leading to the next. The story, the behavior, and the resulting reinforcement of the story. At the core of the worthless cycle is your valuation of the ideal image over true self in this case.
It would be the story, something like I want to hide the behavior withdrawal. And reinforcement. So when you believe I want to hide, you behave by withdrawing. It reinforces I'm alone and hiding. And I'm a more ashamed because I'm ho alone and hiding. And then you get more of the story of I want to hide, and you get more of the behavior withdrawal and you go round and round the worthless cycle.
Now where this is actually focused on ideal. Image is you wouldn't want to hide if you weren't thinking about the ideal image. Your true self doesn't wanna hide. It's the belief that you should be better or in some way different in order to connect to others that's driving that cycle.
The Worthy Cycle
Now, on the flip side, the worthy cycle works just like the worthless cycle, but.
Goes in the opposite direction. So rather than spiraling downward toward worthlessness, the worthy cycle is a circle composed of three points, the story, the behavior, and the resulting reinforcement of that story, the build self-worth. So at the core of the worthy cycle is the valuing of your true self over ideal image.
It starts with a worthy story, any story that demonstrates that your true self is worth your own time, energy, and effort. However, I did write that that is in the Worthy project, but when you're feeling like hiding, sometimes it's really hard to find a worthy story. And so this is where you can kind of hack the system.
You can get yourself over to the worthy cycle without having to come up with some fancy thought that makes you feel better or makes you feel worthy. So instead of trying to go for a story, you can. Move straight over to the worthy cycle by changing your behavior. So if the worthless cycle's behavior was withdrawing, you're looking to do the opposite.
Look for Real Connection
You are looking to move to the worthy cycle. So the behavior would be connecting. But you might be in that worthless cycle because you don't think you have anybody to connect to. You might not feel like you have a real friend. You might not feel like you have an actual community. And I know a lot of us feel that way.
We've had a couple hard years, guys, so if that's you, there's still a way to do this, even if you live alone, even if you don't have very many friends, you know, ideally you want to connect in real life with someone, and if you can't connect to a person, connect to an animal. Connect to nature itself. You can't discount how powerful it feels to be in nature and to know that you are connected to it.
Like to remind yourself I am part of this scene around me. So yesterday I had kind of a moment like this, which. You know, I go on a hike every day with my husband and, and it was just one of those days where you don't expect it to be as pretty cuz it was kind of cold, a little bit windy, but when we rounded the corner, the ocean was just sparkly and beautiful, even though it was cold.
And so, we're walking and we're with our dogs and we're talking, and all of a sudden both of us see out of the corner of our eye, these whale down below, and we could see the mama whale and we could see the baby whale and there was a whole bunch of 'em and they were going north up the coast. And so even in that moment, just that recognition of, I live on this planet and there is like this massive creature in the ocean really close to me.
That I don't even know. I don't really, I just get the opportunity to see it, but it gives me that connected feeling when I'm grounded in myself, when I'm able to just take that in. Even if I was just looking at the sparkles on the water, whatever that is, that's the feeling of connection that you're looking for.
So even if you feel like hiding, and maybe you can't go find a whale, but you can find a tree, you can find beautiful rocks. You can, you can find beauty in nature and this feeling of connection all around you when you start to look for it. So instead of hiding away and withdrawing from life and maybe kind of checking out and distracting yourself, you wanna change your behavior.
So you are connected to yourself, you're connected to the moment, you're connected to life, you're connected to nature, you're connected to others. Hopefully, if not, Start moving towards that, and that reinforces this idea that you are connected. You're not alone in this world. You're part of something. And when that is your reinforcement, then you might start to have a different story like, I belong or I'm part of something. So you might end up hacking into a worthy story by changing that. Either way, even if you don't recognize a story, you're still moving over to the worthy cycle where you have a better story, a better behavior, and you're reinforcing that you deserve your own time and attention and energy.
What to Do When You Feel Like Hiding
So here's the tool when you want to hide.
Remember shame wants you to connect to your community
Number one, remember that this is a feeling that evolved to help you stay connected to your community and loved ones. This is a feeling that evolved to help you forge social bonds.
the emotion will naturally fall away
Number two, every emotion has a job to do. So when you take action, the emotion passes naturally. When you don't take action, it just sits and becomes toxic. So shame wants you to connect.
take action to Move to the worthy cycle
Number three, move into the worthy cycle by taking a different action. Try to connect in real life with a human, an animal, or with nature.
acknowledge your need to belong
And number four, remember that your need for connection is worthy. It deserves your time, attention, and energy. So don't ignore it. And don't pretend like it's a small thing. It actually really matters. So to the degree that you feel like hiding is the degree to which you need to be connected and you need to take ownership of that.