Deva Anthology

Healing the Lies of Unworthiness
by Jessica Varga

I was 14 when my first boyfriend broke up with me. We never kissed; I was too shy, but we held hands and walked around our school. It was the first time a boy had ever returned my interest, and I was smitten. Yet underneath my excitement was the fear and dread that I might lose his admiration. I dared not answer questions about my dreams, opinions, likes or dislikes, as I couldn't risk his rejection if he didn't think the same way or had a different perspective. So I kept silent about myself, and struggled to find topics of conversation that might interest him. Much of my time in his company was spent in fear that the day would come when he'd grow bored with me, and inevitably, three months after our first tentative stroll around campus, he announced that he only wanted to be friends. I wasn't surprised. I had only been waiting for his words to confirm what I already knew about myself; that I was unworthy of love.

The belief that I was unworthy of love was the real source of pain and grief, above and beyond the rejection of one person. I stared up at the moon on the night of my heartbreak and thought, "I will never be vulnerable again. From now on I will be impenetrable, and no one will see who I really am." I strengthened my resolve to continue hiding my real feelings and thoughts from others, especially in romantic relationship. I feared that I didn't try hard enough to disguise the unworthy person I was, and had also failed to be what he wanted me to be.

The decision never to be vulnerable as well as the belief that I was unworthy of love carried me into my twenties. I became an expert at finding out what the men in my life wanted and becoming it. I studied them, learned what they liked, and figured out how to act, think, talk, and be in relationship with them. Sometimes this clever strategy worked. A boyfriend would tell me how perfect I was, and I'd think, "Wow, I fooled him. I'm doing something right! If I can only keep this up. . ." But it soon became exhausting to mock up the qualities I thought he admired. I'd want to spend more and more time alone simply because it took so much energy to be funny, intelligent and likeable all the time. My time alone did not bother some of the men I chose, because I slowly began to gravitate towards men who were also wounded and afraid.

True intimacy is nothing more than allowing oneself to be seen. I chose men who were emotionally unavailable, knowing it was far safer to be in relationship with one who would never look too closely. But how did I evolve into such a wounded woman? Even at the early age of 14, I was scared someone would find out that I wasn't good enough. But how did I come to believe I wasn't good enough in the first place? It happened long before I was 14, and I know it happened to many of us.

As a young child, I was not afraid to be myself. I laughed and explored and loved. I expressed my feelings very naturally in response to the environment. If I was cold or hungry or hurt, I cried. I believe emotions are the body's intelligent way of discharging trauma and pain as well as getting one's basic needs met before speech is available. When allowed to run their course, emotions offer recovery and renewal. Unfortunately, the adults around me had rules that went against the natural expression of what I felt in the moment. The majority of them taught me that it was foolish to cry or be afraid. Something that came so naturally to me became "wrong." All of a sudden, I was bad for expressing the truth that rose unbidden from my gut. "I hate you! You're mean!" A statement like that got me in big trouble, and I learned that anger would not be tolerated. Regardless of how subtle the negative reaction was to my emotional reality, the message I received as a child is that who I was and what I felt was unwelcome.

In the face of this unacceptance, I learned how to choke my feelings off at the throat to avoid rejection, punishment or disapproval. The only conclusion I could draw from this rejection of my feelings at the time was, "if the feeling originates from inside of me and they say it's wrong, I must be flawed." Learning for the first time that I was not OK exactly the way I was with my anger, fear, sadness, loudness, sillyness, and exhuberance, set me up to hide all of it in order to earn approval from other people. It led me to pretend to be something else for someone else over and over again!

In talking with others I've come to see that this childhood experience is a common one. As adults, if we can recognize that the belief in our unworthiness is a lie, we never have to be anyone other than who we are or try to get it right for someone else.

Years have passed since this revelation, yet even now in my thirties, I struggle to remember that I am OK the way I am. If a relationship isn't going well I sometimes still believe that it's my fault. I catch myself thinking, "If only I were different in some way, things would be better." I often forget that love originated with me as a beautiful expression of the Divine, and it is still that way. It is my intention to continue healing the lies of unworthiness that I grew up with, and I encourage you to do the same, by any means possible.

We are Beautiful, Perfect, Divine, worthy of love, especially our own, and we always will be.