I watched a video on Instagram of a little boy who wanted to jump a gap and was scared of falling. His dad was cheerily pressuring him into it, telling him he could do it. The child kept trying but kept stopping at the edge, and the dad egged him on, a note of exasperation creeping into his tone. As the child grew more agitated, his self-talk became more erratic with words and phrases being repeated excitedly, like “one step, one step, one step.” The dad said at one point that he had to stop himself laughing at the child’s self-talk. Finally, the child did the leap with a reassuring hand hold from the dad. Then he did it without the hand hold and was rewarded with cheers and high fives, and loads of praise. This is how conditions of worth are created.
What are conditions of worth?
Conditions of worth are such a ‘normal’ way of being in ‘western’ societies that they’re automatic behaviours. Conditions of worth are what make us feel that we are only worthy of love if we do or do not do something that gets us approval from caregivers / teachers / people we deem to have authority over us. The term ‘conditions of worth’ was coined in 1959 by Carl Rogers, the founder of person-centred psychotherapy. Here’s a quote by him:
A condition of worth arises when the positive regard of a significant other is conditional, when the individual feels that in some respects he is prized and in others not. Gradually, this same attitude is assimilated into his own self-regard complex, and he values an experience positively or negatively solely because of these conditions of worth which he has taken over from others, not because the experience enhances or fails to enhance his organism.
(Rogers, 1959, p. 209)
Using this terminology, if, like me, you’ve ever felt you were “too much” or “not enough”, those beliefs come from conditions of worth that we took into our psyches and built into our ideas of who we are. These ideas of not enough or too much seem to grow into a kind of protective shell. We might have myriad forms of protective shell that seem to sabotage us when we are not feeling psychologically safe as a warped way of protecting us (I wrote about this in my book, SHINE).
Conditions of Worth and Self-sabotage
Self-sabotage is often triggered by feelings and because of years of not feeling safe to feel those feelings, the protective saboteurs in our psyches jump to creating stories about something in the present situation that needs fixing. If the saboteurs can’t fixate on a current situation they thrash around trying to pinpoint something to be the cause, thus causing anxiety. One simple, but often difficult, way of easing the anxiety of this is to focus attention on the sensations of feelings in our bodies.
When we use a curious gaze to notice the sensations of feelings, it can bring the compassionate parts of the self ‘online’ and the stories and the need to fix can rest for a while (the need to fix seems to be a society-wide condition of worth). As I said, this is simple, but it can be hard to do, especially when alone.
Person-Centred Therapy: A Way of Being With Anxiety
Conditions of worth are often created in childhood but also can be grown at any time of life, and particularly when we’re feeling vulnerable. That’s why person-centred therapy is so valuable. It helps us undo the years of building conditions of worth so we can be with ourselves with compassion.
As a person-centred therapist, I aim to be with my clients with empathy, genuineness and unconditional positive regard. These qualities form the relationship that allows the protective layers of conditions of worth to unfurl so that you can be the self that you had to hide away. At the heart of this is the belief that we are valuable because we exist, not for what we can do.
Going back to the video of the little boy and the dad, I can clearly see that the dad loves the boy and is not trying to thwart his son’s development. The dad doesn’t see his automatic behaviours arising from his own conditions of worth. Maybe he feels slightly uncomfortable or excited as he acts out society’s unquestioned value of achievement. This is how conditions of worth get passed down the generations. This particular behaviour might seem kind of okay, and maybe not even worth examining, but it is a subtle form that shows how conditions of worth can contribute to upholding societal norms. To feel valued for existing feels very different to being shaped by approval.
How Does Person-Centred Therapy Work?
It’s great to know the theory behind how things like conditions of worth arise. Especially with Rogers’ theories, which were built from many years of observing phenomena, creating descriptions of them, and then testing the descriptions in research experiments. However, the theories don’t help us process and transmute our conditions of worth. Earlier I shared about the power of person-centred therapy to create the conditions for clients to unfurl their conditions of worth. But what is it, practically, that makes this happen?
I wish I could state it’s a technique that is the same for everyone. It’s not. Each person is unique. There’s a kind of power in being held by someone who is not telling you what to do that is so safe your nervous system begins to untwist and see what it’s like to do what it needs to do. Each client is different and has different needs, and each client relationship is different.
It’s the Process, Not the Technique
My book describes some of the parts of the psyche that some people might have and offers some ways of working with them to grow self-compassion. The chapters build on one another. The way I work with clients is not systematic like this. I am empathetic to how clients show up in each session. We engage in the process by being together, with both of us focused on the client as a person. It’s a beautiful process, and one that is subjective, and, therefore, subversive to the society that we live in that wants to fix us up and get us working and spending.
I once ran an 8 week program from my book and it was useful for the participants, but I quickly realised that techniques only last for a while. They can be great for getting out of a rut or over a hump, but they don’t create lasting change from the inside. Only love can do that, and love doesn’t come from giving authority to someone else as an expert over you (I have done this so many times and it can be very painful). Love comes from listening with curiosity, rather than contempt, and sharing genuine responses.
As a therapist, I might find myself offering time for practical things like research, or sitting alongside someone as they feel the sensations of their feelings, or something else entirely. There is no ‘one size fits all’ and just because something works for me doesn’t mean it will work for you, as I’ve found out when I’ve offered my own solutions in the past, and then the client does something I could not have dreamed up. My clients are amazing at being themselves and my job is to be with them, prizing them for who they are, rather than for what they do.
I wonder if any of this makes sense? What’s your experience of being prized for who you are? Or being shaped by approval?
I have a couple of spaces available for therapy or coaching at present. If you’d like a free initial chat to see whether we’re a good fit for working together, you can click this link below:
References
ROGERS, C. R. (1959). A theory of therapy, personality, and interpersonal relationships as developed in the client-centered framework. In S. Koch (Ed.), Psychology: A study of a science. Formulations of the person and the social context (Vol. 3, pp. 184-256). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.