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Hi, I'm Katie Lowe's and I'm Guillermo Diaz. And we're the hosts of Unpacking the Toolbox, the Scandal Rewatch podcast where we're talking about all the best moments of the show. Mesmerizing. But also we get to hang out with all of our old scandal friends like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington. Well, suit up, gladiators. Grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for even more behind the scenes stories with Unpacking the Toolbox podcast.
Listen to Unpacking the Toolbox on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life in marriage. I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words that I've said like in my head for like 16 years.
Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Angie Martinez, and on my podcast, I like to talk to everyone from Hall of Fame athletes to iconic musicians about getting real on some of the complications and challenges of real life.
I had the best dad and I had the best memories and the greatest experience. And that's all I want for my kids as long as they can have that. Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Want to know how to leverage culture to build a successful business? Then Butternomics is the podcast for you. I'm your host, Brandon Butler, founder and CEO of Butter ATL. And on Butternomics, we go deep with today's most influential entrepreneurs, innovators, and business leaders to peel back the layers on how they use culture as a driving force in their business. Butternomics will give you what you need to take your game to the next level. Listen to Butternomics on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. ♪
Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology. Music
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world, it is so great to have you here back for another episode as we of course break down the psychology of our 20s. One of the things that we tend to worry about more than anything else in our lives, and especially in our 20s,
is love. Love is by far the theme that I get the most questions and worries about. And a big one is whether we even have the capacity to love and be loved, whether we are even worthy of that experience and why it is that we feel like we're not. And that is exactly what I want to discuss today.
today and really delve into why is it that we feel so unlovable why is it that we are followed or overwhelmed by these doubts that we will never find anybody that we will always be alone and that we you know even if we do find somebody we will have to settle with good enough rather than a love that is spectacular and amazing it is a real mental prison to want something so bad and
and have this equally strong voice in your head telling you that you'll never have it or that you don't deserve it. Not only is this, you know, a really hard battle, especially when the voice is kind of coming from inside the house,
But it's also so much more common than we think. That is one thing that I can promise you. There are so many of us, especially in this decade, walking around feeling like love is not something that we deserve or something that we can have.
And this experience, this mental state has some really striking psychological origins from childhood to even early romantic experiences or lack thereof in high school and our teen years. Pivotal moments of rejection and shame that really caused us to internalize a lot of comparison and criticism and
and insecurity so understanding where it all began i think is the first point for kind of accepting what we've been through escaping the maze and then truly feeling like we deserve vibrant love in our lives and i mean truly deserve it these origin points of all of our self-doubts and you know self-beliefs about why we are unlovable they might seem permanent it might seem like
our kind of destiny but you can really rediscover or perhaps discover for the first time all of the things that make you brilliant and all the things that make you quite honestly amazing
catch and that there are so many people who would be so lucky to have you in their lives and with that you really raise your confidence you raise your levels of self-love and of course you also raise the bar for what you deserve the standard for who gets to love you rather than living in a scarcity state where anyone who comes along and promises you the bare minimum is
gets let in. So that's what we're going to discuss today. Why do we feel so undeserving of love? Where does that come from? And what exactly can we do about it? How do we heal from the wounds that have created this belief system? So without further ado, let's get into it.
To be vulnerable for a second, there was a point in my life where I was so desperate for love and at the same time felt so undeserving of it that anyone who even gave me like the slightest bit of attention, it felt like they were the one. It felt like I had met my soulmate. And it caused me to end up with a lot of people that at the end of the day, I never even liked and who were most certainly not worth my...
my time. And I can recognize that now. I can recognize that all of my habits stemmed from how unworthy of love that I felt. And these same habits were not only attracting these people to me, but they were also making it so I kept them in my orbit, even when time and time again, they proved to me they did not deserve to be there. Essentially, this like deeply rooted,
sense that I was unlovable meant that I had no boundaries because the boundaries that I should have set were just going to be another reason that people wouldn't be able to love me but if I lowered them more people could be let in if I pleased everybody I could be loved and I didn't you know quite think about why exactly those people wouldn't have been around before my boundaries were lowered but again that is the nature of this really insidious self-belief system that you are unlovable.
not only is it that we accept less for ourselves, we also sabotage when we have a really good thing going on. Because when you feel unworthy of that kind of affection and kindness being showered on you, you react from a place of fear. This experience is so unfamiliar and it feels like it doesn't belong to you. So you find, you know, some kind of way unconsciously
to end it before the other person wakes up and realises that for themselves.
It's again, a whole labyrinth. Feeling unworthy of love causes us to miss out on a lot of opportunities because we close ourselves off. We reject ourselves before we even get to the start line. And it can also be lonely. In fact, I think that is one of the core pillars of this experience is that it creates loneliness. It makes us inherently somebody that is isolated and perhaps living very solitary, even when we are surrounded by other people.
and it continues to shape a series of behaviors that sadly keep it that way. So let's talk about why that is. When we feel unlovable, it's not just that we feel generally undeserving of love, it often also means that we think there is something about us that makes us a fundamentally bad person, or there is something about us that others would look at and immediately turn away from.
You know, this could be some part of our personality that somebody has, you know, told us isn't attractive or isn't desirable. You know, we're too loud. We're too much. We're too sensitive. It could be some feature of our body, our weight, our height, our mental health, believing that no one could love us at our lowest or our past.
Each of us has some insecurity, some secret, something that we think almost brands us with this big sign that says this one is unlovable. That's really what it feels like. And the saddest part about recognizing that is subsequently recognizing that somebody else had to teach that to us. No one enters this world inherently hating who they are. Someone out there
you know, if we think about this hypothetical, there is somebody out there who has never been exposed to unkind words, who has never been exposed to social judgments or media portrayals or unkind statements or bullying or teasing, and they would not have the insecurities that we have because they inherently have a social origin. It's the same thing as like someone who has never seen a mirror could never call themselves ugly.
Someone who has never been scolded or shamed or embarrassed or teased about some aspect of themselves will never learn to hate what makes them them and they will always feel deserving of love. So, you know, we learn how to love ourselves by how others have or haven't loved us. That is where this sense of inherent unworthiness typically emerges. It is learned and therefore it's also taught. So I think the most important
obvious source of this sense that we are unlovable is our childhood and how our caregivers, typically our parents, showed us affection and showed us care. This is where like the whole theory of attachment style emerges from, you know, the premise being that our initial bond with our parents goes on to shape all future bonds. And if they showed us unconditional, unquestionable love and
That is what we will seek in the future because that was the example that was set. That is the norm. But if they were dismissive or emotionally unavailable, if there was some level of abandonment, if they suffered from something that made it difficult for them to parent correctly, like an addiction or an untreated mental health condition, if they experienced trauma themselves, you know, that's going to
be passed down to us through an avoidant or anxious attachment style because the way that we were able to bond with them was in some way disrupted or disturbed
And there have been a lot of recent studies confirming what I think we already knew, which is that yet again, insecurely attached individuals implicitly often believe that they do not deserve love. And it all stems back from these childhood and early adolescent as well origins. It becomes this very deeply ingrained part of their belief system. So especially if there is, you know, a history of abuse in your childhood as well,
it is difficult to not internalize those experiences as being a reflection of you, that you were a bad kid, that you were undeserving, you were inherently unlovable. Because as children, we kind of don't have any other way
to rationalize those experiences. You've got to remember here that our brains try really hard to protect the bond that we have with our caregivers by idolizing them, by creating a fantasy, by almost suppressing memories of their wrongdoing.
Because as children, we are really, really dependent on them for everything. So if we truly believed that they were bad people, that they were seriously trying to hurt us, we would have nowhere else to turn to. So it's a survival mechanism to idolize our parents, to keep coming back to them. Our brains, therefore, have to turn to the next logical explanation for what we are experiencing. And the only other person in this equation...
is us. And so we must be the problem. We are the issue. A lot of times people who have gone through this abuse deduce that they must be so unlovable as to deserve that experience. And as we get older, we know that that is untrue because all of our rational thinking skills begin to click in because we see that other people didn't experience what we experienced because we learn what is actually right.
Okay, but that doesn't change what has already been done.
It doesn't change that we already have this belief system based in our experiences that we have to unlearn. So Freud, Sigmund Freud, was someone who was really interested in what kind of behaviors this experience creates for adults. And he observed this unconscious tendency, especially amongst people who experienced emotional or physical abuse as children called repetition disorder.
compulsion. So back when he was studying this in like the 1920s, he noticed that quite a few of his patients were basically recreating traumatic experiences in new ways, in new scenarios or a new environment. They were constantly in this process of reliving and repeating what had happened to them.
And it wasn't a mental process. It's that there was some unconscious, subconscious part of them that would enter a new relationship and almost always immediately seek out people who were just like their parents. Or they would live out their trauma through this new experience. So the reason why he kind of believed that this happened was because
Firstly, it was a way to ease the initial emotional trauma by almost getting used to that trauma again and again and again. Like when you keep pressing down on a bruise, the pain lessens because we become more tolerable, less sensitive to it. But he also believed that maybe it was because the reason this repetition compulsion was occurring was
was that it allowed people to gain mastery over the experience. So if you experienced a difficult childhood, a difficult attachment, this kind of theory says that you go looking for that in every new person because this is kind of all that you are familiar with.
And it may be why that not only do we feel unworthy of love, but we also become quite cynical about others' ability to give us love because we have never encountered a situation that proves differently because there is some part of us that...
I don't like to say is attracted to bad people because I think that puts a lot of the blame on us, but there is some compulsion that draws us back to the comfort of what was familiar even if that was terrible. So childhood experiences are one thing and don't get me wrong they are probably the biggest contributor to a sense of feeling unlovable.
But there are many people who may look back at their memories and say, no, you know, everything was so perfect for me. I never wanted for anything physical or emotional. I had beautiful, loving parents. Why do I still feel unlovable?
And that is where our teen and adult experiences really come into it. You know, it's not like we're only influenced by our infancy. We continue to learn and observe and shift, change, evolve, be influenced by experiences and, you know, events way into adulthood. And often I think that our teenage years are just, if not more formative for our sense of self-worth than our childhood.
It's really during this developmental stage, this chapter, that we begin to also get a taste for romantic love beyond the familial and platonic love that we've been used to. It's like, you know, all you turn 13, all your friends turn 13, and suddenly you want boyfriends and you want girlfriends. And we begin to perceive that our value is in some way derived from whether other people find us attractive or have a crush on us or want to date us or want to hold hands with us.
want to take us to prom, I want to take us to formal. And, you know, as adults, you might roll your eyes at those moments and think of them as really childish and really silly. But they're actually really valuable as a way, you know, they're actually really valuable in creating our romantic social scripts.
So understanding how people relate to each other, understand kind of it's like love with training wheels on, you know, that's what teenage romance, especially in early teenagehood is kind of like. And if you skip that step, if you've never had it, eventually you start to wonder why the further along you get.
Our teenage years are this chapter of like ultimate insecurity and comparison and wanting to fit in. So when you feel behind in a certain way, that can definitely carry with you later into life because it's emotionally significant at the time. It's also a period in which we are really developing our self-confidence. So even small minor things can disturb that process. You know, I think I've told you this story before, but
Back when I was in high school, I had, like, one boyfriend, and it was, like, really near the end, but I spent so much time, like, watching all my friends get, like, carried away in these, like, young romances and never really having anybody who was attracted to me or into me or, like, wanted to be, wanted to date me. And sometimes I wonder whether, you know, I would have had better standards for myself if
If I had not felt like I was pissing out, if I didn't feel quite so desperate, if I didn't feel quite so unworthy based on those experiences. Essentially, the reason this may contribute to feeling unlovable is because it actually contributes to an insecurity about our desirability. That's really the thing about being desired. You can't desire yourself. Somebody else needs to be part of
of the picture to confirm that you are indeed somebody that is wanted and likeable and worthy of their attention. And if that never happens for you, it's hard to feel like you are actually somebody who is deserving of all those things or who is looked at in that way.
That can create a lack of confidence. And that is, I think, only exacerbated the older we get and the further we get into our 20s and beyond without still having those experiences. You know, it's everybody around us is having experiences
flings or these love interests or these big romances, it can really feel like the only question left to ask is what is wrong with me? What don't I have? Why have I not had this experience? You know, it's very easy to also overlook the logical explanations as to why not. You just haven't met the right person. It just wasn't your time. You've been busy with other things. Like those are all
super logical explanations for why this hasn't happened yet. But social comparison leaves us feeling lacking and therefore drawing the wrong conclusions about our desirability, our worthiness, and therefore our capacity to receive love. So let's turn to another area, which is the experience that happens when we do start dating or do get into relationships and how that can also leave wounds around our
you know, sense of worthiness. Even before we get into a relationship with somebody, I think frequently experiencing rejections can also really damage our self-esteem, especially when they continuously happen. We do start to reconsider whether the common denominator is us. You know, if this person is
didn't text us back after a first date, if, you know, we didn't get as many matches on dating apps as our friends, if this guy, you know, dumped us after like a couple weeks of dating, that can really start to chip away at our self-confidence.
I also want to add here that can also be for friendships as well. You know, if you've had a few friendship breakups, if you've had a few letdowns, a few rejections when it comes to putting yourself out there in any capacity and trying to make connection, that all comes back to love, right? That all comes back to feeling desired in a social sense. So it's not just like poor experiences when it comes to romantic relationships can really blind us to our sense of worthiness.
platonic experiences, familial experiences can also have an impact. And so what that can create in you is that you feel like the only way to ever have that is to lower your standards, especially when the scarcity effect begins to, you know, kick in the sense that this thing is so valuable. It is so available to other people and you don't have it that you're more desperate to find it. The more you value it, that the scarcity effect is essentially that
feeling that something is more valuable when it is less available to you so the less available love is to you the more valuable it is the more you will do to obtain it perhaps the lower your standards become the less you kind of respect others ability to respect you not every experience with love whether it is our first or most recent is going to be positive is going to be
golden. If there is anything that we have learned so far, it's that the people we love the most can actually cause us the most harm. And that goes for our exes. That goes for the people that we fall in love with. A bad partner can leave you feeling pretty worthless, especially if they've been cruel, especially if they've made you feel like you demand too much.
Especially if they've spoken down to you, ignored you, never fully reciprocated your intimacy, your love, your generosity, your care. After a while, you change your expectations around what it actually means to be loved and what you actually mean.
deserve. You know, if this person you trust and obviously care about still doesn't see you as worthy of everything that you give them or everything that you want, who is going to believe that you are? Who is going to give you those things? This is a component of narcissistic abuse as well. And I don't use that term lightly, but it is a component of it that I often see when people find themselves in a situation where
with a partner who belittles them, who wears them down, who gives and takes, that is so often intentional. Because the poorer your self-esteem becomes, the less deserving you feel, the less likely it is that you will believe that you can find somebody better, and the more likely it is that you will stay. And that gives them control. Your belief that you are unlovable, that benefits their ego and it benefits their intentions.
Again, it also often creates this cycle of jumping from one terrible relationship to the next. And it all starts with somebody teaching you that you can't find better. So you accept what you think is normal, which is quite frankly, horrible, horrible love. I want to be clear, really clear here, crystal clear. None of that is your fault. None of it. How are you meant to know any better if you have never had an example before?
How are you meant to think that you deserve better if your confidence has been destroyed? It's not just that you feel unworthy of love as a result of these experiences, but also that you perhaps feel shame. Shame around what you've tolerated. Shame around the fact that this keeps happening. Shame around the fact that you haven't found the one yet. And I think this all just continues to trigger...
you know, a lack of self-esteem, a sense of unworthiness and the repetition of this experience, an identical pattern, because there is nothing that is breaking the cycle here. Honestly, it has to be one of the worst things that you can put another person through is breaking down our most precious and core belief, which is that we are a lovable creature, that we are deserving of
of love. It's, you know, so crazy to me that people can do that to other people because every person is genuinely just so special and unique and deserving. It's like a, it is a basic human need and human right to be loved and to receive love. So depriving somebody of that or telling them that they aren't worthy of it is, it's criminal. It's also, I think, worth noting that people who are simultaneously struggling with
mental health concerns or conditions like depression, like PTSD, like borderline personality disorder amongst many others, they're already at an increased risk of feeling unworthy and feeling worthless and that sense of self-doubt. And so those experiences combined with
traumatic upbringing combined with early experiences of rejection and shame combined with a terrible experience in a past relationship are just going to make you so much more susceptible to this false belief system. And I spoke about this in my episode on dating and mental health in our 20s, but it can be hard to see others valuing you when you're struggling to value yourself as well. It can be a really hard mindset to navigate because
wanting love but also feeling like you'll be a burden if you accept it into your life there are so many different factors that contribute to this feeling of what feels like inherent unworthiness so what do we do about it how can we relearn self-love beyond the basics of self-care and self-acceptance but like truly relearn at the core of ourselves in the in our very the fiber of our being and
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Hi, I'm Katie Lowe's and I'm Guillermo Diaz. And now we're back with another season of our podcast, unpacking the toolbox where Guillermo and I will be rewatching the show to officially unpack season three of scandal. Unpredictable. You don't see it coming. It's a wild, wild ride. The twists and turns in season three mesmerizing, but
Also, we get to hang out with all of our old scandal friends like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington. So many people. Even more shocking assassinations from Papa and Mama Pope. And yes, Katie and I's famous teeth-pulling scene that kicks off a romance.
And it was Peak TV. This is new scandal content for your eyes, for your ears, for your hearts, for your minds. Well, suit up, gladiators. Grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for even more behind the scenes. Listen to Unpacking the Toolbox on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling, as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage. I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.
I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa, I said the words. Yeah.
that I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Angie Martinez. Check out my podcast where I talk to some of the biggest athletes, musicians, actors in the world. We go beyond the headlines and the soundbites to have real conversations about real life, death, love, and everything in between. This life right here, just finding myself, just relaxation, just not feeling stressed, just not feeling pressed. This is what I'm most proud of. I'm proud of Mary because I've been through hell and some horrible things.
That feeling that I had of inadequacy is gone. You're going to die being you. So you got to constantly work on who you are to make sure that the stars align correctly.
Life ain't easy and it's getting harder and harder. So if you have a story to tell, if you've come through some trials, you need to share it because you're going to inspire someone. You're going to give somebody the motivation to not give up, to not quit. Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
If there is one thing that I believe passionately, it's that self-love is not always romantic. It is really tough sometimes undoing an entire belief system, even if you didn't create it in the first place. It is hard to be vulnerable and it is hard to be soft after so many years of being strong and hard and resilient, of trying so hard to convince yourself that you don't need love, that you're better off alone, that you don't care.
But I saw this amazing TikTok the other day from this woman saying, I know that I'm deserving of love because I love myself. And I was once my own worst enemy. I hated myself more than anybody else in the world. And if that person can still learn to love me, I am sure that somebody else can as well. And that is exactly the attitude that we want to be taking. As cliche as it sounds,
Feeling worthy of love really does start with you. And it also starts with realizing that it's not just about having your basic needs met. It's about actually finding love that is enriching and rewarding and generous and being open to receiving that. Not just believing that you would like it, but being open to seeing somebody offering that to you and thinking that is for me.
And it begins with kind of showing that love to ourselves and setting an example, not just for others, but for us, that this is what we deserve. There is no love that is off limits to us because we have already shown ourselves the highest form of appreciation and compassion, the highest form of intimacy and connection. So if somebody cannot meet that standard that we are showing ourselves, are they really worth it?
I know that sounds like big words. How do we actually get there? Firstly, I think it's important to love yourself where you are at, even if it's not where you want to be.
It is a lot easier to say, yeah, I'll start dating again or I'll be worthy of love when I fix this, when I'm better at that, when I have this thing, when I've lost that weight. But that attaches our value and our worthiness to some kind of weird milestone, to success in something, to output, to productivity, to self-improvement, which is not the case. Our love is inherent. We don't need to change for it.
It also means that, you know, like I just said, we still believe that love is conditional on something else happening first rather than just the fact that you are an amazing, cool person as you are right now. That obviously doesn't mean that you can't be committed to self-improvement or you can't want to change something about yourself. But it's important to think about whether you're doing it for you or for somebody else. A relationship matters.
Love. That is not a reward for working on yourself. Period. I understand wanting to be in the right headspace for a relationship if you've just been broken up with or if you do really want to undo some of those negative beliefs. But I want you to be honest with yourself. Are you waiting because you're not ready for love? Or because you still don't feel like you deserve it? Or because you are scared of
of what you might find or not find and what that might confirm about you. This is where we need to work on the second of our new and improved beliefs. How others treat you and their impression of your desirability or your worthiness is a reflection of them, not you. I like to think about this as if we are a piece of art. Somebody is going to look
at you to look at you the artwork and you just might you know you just might not be their type or their taste that's okay they are allowed to have preferences but somebody else might come along and look at you and be like you the artwork and just it will change their life nothing has spoken to their soul more nothing is better in their eyes
The thing to realize is that the art hasn't changed though. When you go to a museum, it's not like they switch out the paintings based on the preferences of the viewers. You like the art just continues to exist. The thing that changes is people and is how people treat the art and their perception of its beauty and its worthiness. And that is you. You are the art.
It doesn't matter. Like the art does not change. The beauty of the art does not change based on who was viewing it. The worthiness of the art does not change. It's still in the museum. You know, that doesn't change based on whether someone sees the technique that it took or sees the effort that it took or sees the colors and the texture and, you know,
all the beauty behind it that somebody does not. I think when we detach those two things, you know, our worthiness and other people's opinions, those two things are separate. We are better able to pull from the things we know to be true about us rather than others' impressions of those things.
You are still kind, creative, intelligent, attractive, funny, dedicated, inspiring, motivated, a good friend. You are still all number of qualities despite or because of somebody else's recognition. That does not change.
So the second kind of step to this is noticing when you start also to put words in the mouths of people who have never spoken them. If someone doesn't message you back after a second date or a first date, you might assume that it's because they thought you were boring or too sensitive or too loud or because you weren't what they were expecting. We typically put words in other people's mouths. And, you know, did they say that? No, they didn't. We are applying our own false beliefs ourselves.
onto a puppet. We are projecting our assumptions onto somebody, you know, who didn't text you back because they are emotionally lazy, you know, who maybe got busy. Like, it's not that we're finding excuses for them. It's that we're actually just not assuming. We are just letting them exist and we are letting ourselves exist and we are recognizing that
How they feel about us really doesn't say anything about us. I think that applies to a number of scenarios where we tend to implant our past experiences onto a new situation that really isn't the same. Or we look for the most available explanation, which for us is that we're unlovable. But just because that's the most available explanation doesn't mean that it is true.
Often, again, this is all deriving from a false belief, not from fact. I think that that can become harder when, you know, as we spoke about before, they do tell us, especially when it comes to an ex or a partner who was emotionally close to us and hurt us. It's really hard to not take those things incredibly personally and carry them with us for the rest of our life. But again, an opinion, a judgment, a cruelty is not fact. It will never be.
That can be hard to recover from, but the secret lies in concentrating and burrowing down into what you know is true about yourself and your self-worth, the part of you that stays stable regardless of others. One way I really bolstered my own sense of worthiness in the face of these experiences was
was by choosing to almost like have a bit of a love affair with myself. Now I've spoken about this before, but if you want to fall back in love with yourself and rediscover how amazing you are and really begin to defeat those debilitating core beliefs, why not date yourself for a while? And I mean date yourself. I'm talking dinners. I'm talking flowers, quality time, compliments, weekend trips away. You really need to romance yourself.
This may sound odd. It might sound a little bit silly. But again, set the example that perhaps hasn't been set for you. Set the standard that people need to live up to. Because if they can't show you the love that you show yourself, which is honestly the bare minimum, are you letting them in just because you don't think you can do better? Or are you letting them in because they are actually worthy of everything that you have to offer?
Finally, I recommend therapy all the time on this podcast because it is just genuinely so important and it does work. Especially for a sense of unworthiness and, you know, especially knowing that that is really rooted in childhood and past trauma and experiences.
It is so valuable to wrap your head around your response to what you have been through and how that has created your belief system and how that has created your sense of self-worth.
And, you know, I wouldn't talk about it so much unless it worked. And it's worked for me and so many other people that I know, especially in this case, dynamic interpersonal therapy, which really focuses on how dysfunctional beliefs are based on relationships and how that impacts our mood. But also dialectical behavior therapy, talking it through, getting to the root of your emotions and where they came from, where they were born from.
One final reminder for you. The last thing that determines your worthiness, particularly for love, is others. They may receive it and appreciate it, but they should never have the power to influence it. Anybody would be lucky to have you. You are absolutely gorgeous and beautiful or handsome. Like, no one is noticing the things that you dislike about yourself or
more than you. You show so much care and kindness, I am sure, to your friends and to strangers and to your family. You deserve for the love that you show others to be directed towards yourself and nothing less.
So I am sending so much love and that is a love that you deserve, not a love that you had to earn. I think that you are incredible for being committed to yourself and committed to healing and committed to thriving and finding, you know, a real deep compassion for yourself. So thank you so much for listening. I really hope that you got something out of this. I hope you learned something about yourself, about your circumstances, about your thoughts and that
You know, if you didn't learn something, at least this was a bit of a pep talk and it made you feel a little bit better about your life. Make sure that you are following along on Spotify or Apple Podcasts so that you never miss a new episode. And if you did enjoy this episode, please feel free to give us five stars wherever you're listening right now. If you have an episode suggestion, a topic suggestion for me, and you want to hear about the psychology of this topic or
or about something to do with our 20s, please feel free to DM me at that psychology podcast. I would love to hear from you. And as always, stay safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself, and we will talk soon. ♪
Hi, I'm Katie Lowes. And I'm Guillermo Diaz. And we're the hosts of Unpacking the Toolbox, the Scandal Rewatch podcast where we're talking about all the best moments of the show. Mesmerizing. But also, we get to hang out with all of our old Scandal friends like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington. Well, suit up, gladiators. Grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for an even more behind-the-scenes Scandal.
stories with Unpacking the Toolbox. Listen to Unpacking the Toolbox on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life in marriage. I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words that I've said like in my head for like 16 years.
Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Angie Martinez, and on my podcast, I like to talk to everyone from Hall of Fame athletes to iconic musicians about getting real on some of the complications and challenges of real life.
I had the best dad and I had the best memories and the greatest experience. And that's all I want for my kids as long as they can have that. Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Criminalia. I'm Maria Tremarcki.
And I'm Holly Frey. Together, we invite you into the dark corridors of history and true crime. For each season, we explore a new theme, from poisoners to stalkers, art thieves to snake oil salesmen. And tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in cocktails and mocktails inspired by each story. Listen to Criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
