Everyone is impacted upon by conditions of worth but most people are completely unaware of them – what they are, how they affect us. There are many who are aware of them, though, at least some of them, even if they aren’t familiar with the phrase ‘conditions of worth’, for reasons I will come to.
Conditions of worth are so much at work in our lives that we can reach awareness of them and how pervasive they are, how persuasive and corrosive, with or without therapy. I did, although later therapy was a huge help. I never knew what they were called collectively – the umbrella term – until I began to study counselling. Everyone is generally familiar with terms and conditions and contracts, though. Terms and conditions and contracts are not that far removed from conditions of worth in that all of them involve expectations applied to us.
There is a big difference, however. To work for a company and earn a wage, you have to sign a contract agreeing to various things: your number of hours, what you have to do to earn your wage, company rules around sharing information, and so on. You choose to sign and agree to abide by the terms. The same is true when applying to buy things on credit, or to use certain software (even if you don’t read the terms and conditions, you sign anyway).
With conditions of worth, though, nobody ever asks you to sign a piece of paper or click a box agreeing to being bound by them. They are applied from an early age throughout life, without your consent ever being asked for. We are told, directly or through behavioural mechanisms such as reward or rejection by parents, guardians, teachers and peer groups, how we are expected to live our lives and what we need to do to be accepted, supported, validated as human beings.
You can be damaged by failure to meet conditions of worth and there is often a cost involved in not only taking them into yourself but also in rejecting them. Conditions of worth applied in childhood can lead to all sorts of negative and persistent notions and outcomes, such as:
• difficulty in accepting the help of others, seeing it as somehow shaming.
• it being easier to give than to receive love and affection.
• a negative view of your own abilities, talents, disabilities, sexuality, gender and more, often leading to the masking of associated behavioural traits.
• responding to perceived failure to meet conditions of worth in self-destructive ways, such as addiction and mental health issues.
• a distorted self-image when presented with a mirror (body dysmorphia), bulimia, harmful intimate relationships, toxic one-sided friendships and more.
We can all break free from the effects of applied conditions of worth. Therapy helps, through which we can gain understanding of ourselves and look at our personal histories with new perspectives that allow us to forgive not only ourselves but often others as well.
xph therapy offers integrative counselling, which means working with multiple therapy types, including CBT, psychotherapeutic and person-centred to develop a therapeutic pathway just for you, whatever outcome you’re hoping to achieve. Get in touch in a variety of ways. See the contact page for more info.