Heal SELF-WORTH Through Embodiment & Somatic Psychotherapy

Do you ever catch yourself thinking, “I’m not good enough,” “I don’t belong,” or “I’m useless”? You’re not alone. These thoughts are part of being human. But they’re also tied to the nervous system, early experiences, and the culture we live in.

In this episode, we talk about:

• Why it’s easy to feel bad about ourselves
• How feelings of shame can come from our past
• Simple ways to challenge your inner critic
• A short somatic practice to help you connect with younger parts of yourself with kindness

This isn’t just about trying to think positively. It’s about helping your body feel safe, cared for, and like you belong, so you can truly believe you are enough.

If you prefer the video version, this episode will also be on YouTube this Sunday evening under the same title: “Somatic Therapy for Low Self-Worth.” I’ll put the link here once it’s live.

If this episode speaks to you, please share it with someone who might need it, or let me know what you think. I’d love to hear from you.

Transcript

Somatic Therapy for Low Self-Worth

 
Healing Self-Esteem Through the Body

This episode is about self-worth; why it feels so fragile, and how you can start to feel better through your body.

Hi, I’m Shelley Treacher from the Stress and Anxiety podcast, and I help people explore how the nervous system, the body, and our lived experience shape the way we feel about ourselves. Today, we’ll talk about self-worth, how many of us struggle with it, and how somatic therapy can help change that feeling in both our mind and body.

If you ever think you’re not good enough or hear a critical voice in your head, this episode is for you.

We’ll look at where the feeling of “I’m not good enough” comes from, how our early experiences and nervous systems affect our self-esteem, and I’ll guide you through a simple exercise to connect with your younger self kindly.

This season, we’re focusing on how our body, mind, and nervous system work together in healing.

So, let’s get started.



Why Self-Worth Feels So Fragile
 

Self-worth is one of the most common struggles that people come to therapy with. We often wonder, am I good enough? And often without even realising, we answer that question so harshly with thoughts like, I’m stupid. I don’t belong. I’m such an awful person. These are way more common than we realise.
 
What’s your version of this? What’s the phrase that you repeat over and over again in your head?
 
Most of us have one of these, it’s like a kind of background soundtrack, and it can be so automatic that we hardly even notice it’s there. These aren’t just random thoughts. They’re tied to the way our nervous system works, to our early experiences, and to the world around us.
 
Today I want to show you why self-worth is such a universal struggle and how somatic therapy can help you to begin to shift it. Not just in your head, but in your whole experience and your body. Many of us grow up feeling judged or unloved, and these feelings stick with you. So even when we face the tiniest rejection as an adult, this can hit really hard from a survival point of view, we are wired to want to fit in and be accepted.
 
When we fear rejection, we can feel it as shame, which is a powerful force that can shut down your whole system. Neuroscience shows us that if our brains aren’t focused, we can often drift into self-criticism. Add to that, our culture, social media and all those articles on the 10 ways to fix ourselves, it is easy to feel inadequate.
 
I’ve read those lists, the five habits of happy people or the seven ways that you should wake up in the morning. I’ve got to be honest, I don’t know about you, but they’ve never really made me feel that good or fixed in any way. Usually quite the opposite. I think it often makes us feel inadequate, not quite up to the task.Like it should be easy.
 
And of course, lots of us learned how we feel about ourselves when we were much younger. Through maybe conditional love or subtle criticism or that just that look of disapproval that our parents gave us. These moments become internalized. The nervous system remembers, which is why sometimes as adults, that tiny piece of rejection or criticism can send us crashing down.
 
 
Practical Ways to Shift Low Self-Worth
 

The good news is that low self-worth isn’t permanent. Think of it like building a muscle. You can start by fact checking your self-critic. When you catch yourself saying something like, “Nobody likes me”, pause and think, “Is this really true or am I just having one of those reactions? An automatic generalisation…”

You could also try keeping a belief log. Write down the thoughts that you have about yourself, and then gently challenge them. Over time, you’ll build a different story. One of my clients believed that they were boring. This is something that I hear quite often, but when they checked the facts, they realised that they’d actually been invited to three separate social occasions in the last week. This is proof that they’re not boring at all!

Another practice you can try is normalising your quirks. This is one that I’ve been caught out with. More than once. So one time my neighbours had gone away. I lived in a flat and I started talking quite quietly to myself out loud in the flat thinking no one could hear me.

And then my noise got louder and louder, and my voice got louder. I talked to myself a lot by the end of the couple of weeks, and my neighbours came running because they thought I was being attacked. Because they were so used to me being quiet in the flat. But you know, talking out loud to yourself is so human.It is not a failing, it’s just normal.

And finally, you can try shifting your focus from needing other people’s approval to asking yourself what you feel. Instead of asking, “Do other people like me?” ask, “What do I value?” “How do I feel about what happened today?”

This does take practice, but it’s one of the most powerful shifts that you can have.


Nervous System Healing and Deeper Self-Worth

Practical tools are important, but self-worth often lies deeper in the body. It’s carried in the nervous system. Sometimes the most healing thing that we can do is to recognise the younger part of ourselves, the child or the teenager who didn’t feel they were good enough. You might be unconsciously haunted by a specific moment that happened to you in your past by a look that you got once by words that you heard or by an absence happened in the past. But you feel it in the present when something familiar to it happens.

When this old voice comes up, “I’m useless,” “I don’t belong…” Pause.

Notice your body. Take a slow breath and soften your shoulders, your jaw, and your belly, and then offer kindness to the younger parts of you.



A Guided Self-Worth Practice Through the Body

Let’s do this together. You can follow this standing, sitting, or lying down, but let’s take a moment just to feel the ground underneath your feet.

Take a moment to feel your feet on the floor.

Notice the weight of your body in the chair or on the floor.

Allow your shoulders to drop a little.

Breathe in slowly through your nose… and breathe out gently through your mouth.

Now, place a hand on your chest or stomach, or wherever you’re drawn. It might be over a tender spot.

Notice what happens if you stay with that for two or three breaths.

If a younger version of you comes to mind. Perhaps you as a child, or a teenager. Imagine sitting with them, and just being present. With respect to how far, or how close, they want you to be.

No fixing. No pressure. Just be with them.

If you can, remember a time you were loved or appreciated. A small moment of warmth; maybe someone’s smile, or kind word.

Let yourself breathe that in.

Notice how it feels in your body when you allow it to land.

If you struggle to feel this, be curious about what’s stopping you.

In therapy, this can lead to deeper exploration and understanding.



Closing Reflections on Self-Worth and Somatic Therapy

Self-worth grows when we can accept care and compliments from others. So what if we focused on really being able to take these in? Self-worth isn’t just in our minds and in thought. It’s connected to our bodies and our experience. That’s why changing how we feel about ourselves isn’t about forcing ourselves to feel good enough.

It’s about exploring new possibilities and experiences in the body gently and consistently. Before we finish, think of a time when somebody said something kind to you. How did you react? Did you dismiss it or did you let it in? What happens if just for a moment, you let that in by breathing it in rather than having your usual response?

This is a long journey of allowing your body to relearn, one that can teach you deeply that you are enough.

Today we talked about self-worth. Where those harsh inner thoughts come from and how to start feeling better. We also looked at how somatic practices can help you soften and shift  the old stories carried in your body.

If you noticed a shift, even a small one, that matters. Building self-worth takes time; it’s forming new habits that switch you into really believing you are good enough. Healing self-worth isn’t about flipping a switch. It’s about gently building new experiences until your body learns, over time, that you are enough.

This talk is a summary of my three-part podcast series about self-worth. It covers what self-worth is, how to improve it, and some deeper body-focused ways to heal. If you want to learn more, you can check out the full series on my podcast.

This is the Stress and Anxiety Podcast with Shelley Treacher.
 
Thank you for listening, and I’ll see you next time.