Why Self Worth Is the Missing Piece in Women’s Health

I am a huge advocate for developing the self worth of women and girls. That’s because for a really long time I was completely disconnected from my own sense of self worth, and I lived the devastating effects of that.

Here’s What Happened…

What happened because of that disconnect? A lot of lessons came to me in the form of

• poor choices and their consequences

• unhealthy relationships

• boundary transgressions (in part because I didn’t know how to set healthy boundaries in the first place)

I suffered because I had no relationship with my self worth, and I knew I needed to do something different (but I had no idea what or how).

I was extremely blessed to be working in the office of a naturopathic doctor at the time, and remember that even during those dark adolescent years I would light up at work to see the creativity that went into developing individualized treatment plans for people, and how greatly they benefitted from it. I remember people coming in to the office sick and exhausted and leaving like new versions of themselves: full of happiness and light, like they could do anything they wanted to do.

I knew I wanted to give that gift to women. I also knew that first I needed it for myself. But I wasn’t sure exactly how to go about getting it.

The Beginning of Burnout

I went to medical school and worked really hard, earning my doctorate and master’s degrees simultaneously. I loved it and felt inspired by the transformations I saw in the patients with whom I worked. But all day classes, clinic shifts, working in a research center, and weekend workshops took their toll.

I kept going. As I continued my practice I continued to fall in love with the feeling that I could really help women heal and transform their lives. But the cost of this ceaseless work was my health.

I spiraled down into burnout over the course of years. While my patients were getting better, I was not.

It wasn’t until one day on my couch that I realized that something was missing from my own psychology, something that I needed to have the results my patients were getting: self worth.

The Day I Realized What I Was Missing

See, I valued my work so much, and it was and is such an honor to help women reclaim their lives. But while I could make the dietary changes and do the workouts and get to bed early for a while, my good habits eventually caved in to the demands of work and stress.

As I sat on the couch that day, my head empty with brain fog and apathy, my mood ping-ponging dangerously between anxiety and depression, 20+ pounds overweight, I realized that

I wasn’t getting better because I’d made what was outside of me more important than what is inside of me.

I’d overvalued work and other people, and undervalued my own health and happiness. Because I didn’t value my own health and happiness enough, my self care was the first thing to go when external demands put pressure on me.

What I lacked was the reason I needed to stick with my self care plan: self worth.

What is Self Worth?

I define self worth as the knowing that you are inherently and unquestionably valuable, precious and worth caring for.

It is an internal value system, although it is reflected externally in how we care for ourselves. See,

we tend to take care of things we believe are valuable.

When I realized that I lacked something as fundamental as self worth, everything changed. I began to take better care of myself, and because of that I began to heal. As I began to heal and my higher thought faculties came back (yes, it really did get so bad that my brain stopped working), I started to look at our healthcare system as it lives in our cultural milieu. And what I realized broke my heart:

Women and girls are not taught to value or even acknowledge our inherent, inalienable self worth.

Women, Girls, Self Worth and Our Health

Women are are taught from a very young age that our value comes from outside ourselves: our looks, our relationships (wife, mother, sister, daughter, etc.), and more recently, our careers. Despite all the advances we’ve made, we’re still not teaching girls and women that our value is inherent and inalienable.

We are born valuable. We are born with the ability to manifest our inner self worth to the world. We are born with the ability to live fully, to the edge of our possibility and beyond, where we shine so brightly with the light that comes from within us that is connected to something much bigger than us.

But we are taught to seek our sense of value outside of ourselves. So we become mirrors, trying to borrow light from somewhere else in the world: the approval of another because of our looks, our supportive roles, our accomplishments in advancing an organization.

Don’t get me wrong: none of these things are inherently bad at all. But when we throw ourselves into them without an intact sense of self worth, we simply become even farther removed from ourselves, our lives, and our purpose.

This is the problem: living a life separate from our sense of self worth.


So how does this manifest in healthcare today? I’ve personally seen it so often in women, as they’ve told me story after story of seeking care from a doctor because they don’t feel well. The doctor runs a few quick tests, maybe does a physical exam, and tells them there’s nothing wrong. It’s all in their heads. And too often they’re offered an antidepressant. She went in asking for help and was told that the problem was inside her head. That SHE was the problem.

This is no attack on the well meaning doctors who are working inside a healthcare system that overburdens them. This is more a commentary on the fact that we are living with a broken healthcare system. And unless we want to continue to see people needlessly medicated and brushed off, something needs to change.

It all begins with helping women and girls reclaim their sense of self worth. Self worth is necessary for self care. Remember, we take care of what we value.

How Does Self Worth Help Us Heal From Burnout?

If we take care of what we value, and we value ourselves unconditionally, it just makes sense that we would prioritize our own self care. When we do that we make time for the walk, the healthy meals, the sensible bedtimes. We also make time for the activities and relationships that light us up from inside.

Burnout happens when we value things outside of ourselves more than we value things inside of ourselves, and so we push ourselves farther, harder, faster to do and accomplish more. A healthy sense of self worth naturally sets boundaries around what we will and will not do for ourselves.

Imagine we live in a culture where women and girls take better care of ourselves without question, and we are supported by the external world in our daily self care.

Imagine you lived from a place of unshakable self worth from which you cared for yourself without question.

What would you do for yourself?

How would you feel?

What would your life be like?

And how would you change the world?