How to Stop Feeling Worthless: Daily Practices for Positivity

When you feel worthless, you feel you have nothing of value to contribute to society, your relationships, or your own personal well-being. These feelings of inadequacy can arise for various reasons and are often a symptom of depression. As such, while you can do plenty to boost your mood and regain your self-worth through your own efforts, consider speaking with a qualified professional about your feelings of worthlessness, too.

Feelings of worthlessness are a significant burden, and they manifest for several different reasons. Here are just four to consider if you begin to feel worthless in your own life:

1. 1. Mental health conditions: You might start to feel worthless due to the onset of a mood disorder. For example, clinical depression can cause you to exhibit an overwhelming sense of emptiness, low self-esteem, and worthlessness. This might further compound into other conditions. Seek professional help to get the treatment you need in these circumstances.
2. 2. Negative self-talk: Feeling worthless often results from spending an inordinate amount of time thinking negative thoughts. People who believe they are inadequate often feel their negative thoughts are “truer” than their positive ones, granting them more weight and value than they deserve. The key is to rewire your brain toward self-acceptance and self-compassion by practicing positive self-talk instead.
3. 3. Past experiences: Childhood trauma or maltreatment throughout other important relationships can contribute greatly to a sense of worthlessness. When the people you love and depend on the most let you down, they can leave you with lasting scars and a lot of unanswered questions. If you internalize this rejection or mistreatment, you can often feel there’s something you did wrong to make these bad things happen. This is a harmful belief, and you can counteract it by granting yourself the grace and time you need to heal from these lasting wounds and let go of your traumas.
4. 4. Stress: The negative effects of stress can eat into your sense of well-being in different ways. Perhaps you’re going through a period of transition with your career or you’ve just ended a relationship—when events like this occur, you might channel your sense of internal distress into greater feelings of worthlessness. Remember that even if something is hard or causes you stress, you still have innate worth as a human being and can grow from facing the hardship.

When you feel worthless, it can sometimes seem like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel—luckily, there always is. Keep these tips in mind as you push through and find a renewed sense of self-worth and hope:

• Do things you enjoy. If you experience negative feelings of worthlessness, one easy way to counteract them is to deliberately do things likely to make you feel good. Delve into hobbies you enjoy. Meet with friends and experience a sense of community. Pursue creative endeavors by channeling your negative feelings into art. Along the way, pay attention to how your mood shifts and remember that feelings of worthlessness are fleeting.
• Practice positive self-talk. Shore up your sense of self-worth by replacing your negative self-talk with positive words of affirmation. When you notice yourself telling an internal story about your worthlessness, start telling a different one about your innate self-worth instead. If it’s unlikely you would ever describe another person as worthless, you owe the same grace to yourself when you drift toward excessive self-criticism and self-doubt.
• Reach out to loved ones. The love of others can teach you how to practice self-love as well. Reach out to friends and family members you trust and ask for support. When they tell you how much you mean to them and why, believe them. Sometimes you might find it hard to view yourself objectively. In circumstances like this, try to look at yourself through the eyes of someone who loves you through thick and thin.
• Talk with a mental health professional. CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy sessions can help you overcome feelings of worthlessness. Mental health care is as essential as physical health care, and any form of depressive disorder is a legitimate medical condition. When you feel worthless, recognize it might be time to reach out to a professional. There’s no reason to feel any sense of shame about this—your brain is just another part of your body that can get sick (and then heal) with the proper treatment.
• Write about your feelings. If you feel worthless, you might benefit from writing out what it is you’re feeling. As you try to pin down your feelings as granularly as possible, you might realize they’re more ephemeral than they seemed at first. Similarly, you can also start a gratitude journal to remind yourself of what you love about other people, the world around you, and yourself. Similarly, you could find a self-help workbook especially tailored to feelings of worthlessness and go through all the exercises inside of it.

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