Learned Worthlessness

Colleen’s father let his opinion be known early and often that she’d never amount to much. No matter what Colleen accomplished in life, it was never enough.

If she did well in school, she still wasn’t smart enough. If she excelled in sports, she still wasn’t fast enough. If she did well in business, she still wasn’t savvy enough.

It was never enough because Colleen was never enough. Colleen was not Collin, for that would have been Colleen’s name if she had been a boy. But she wasn’t and her father had never gotten over it. Frankly, he didn’t have much use for girls—he already had too many of them and he’d been assured by his wife that Colleen was going to be Collin.

Her father had pretty much written Colleen off as an extra girl from birth.

Colleen, however, had not written her father off.

She’d developed a pattern of demanding perfection in herself. Only through perfection could she hope to obtain her father’s blessing. She was sure his approval dangled out there, just out of her reach, as she stubbornly refused to believe he had no intention of giving it to her.

Colleen’s father died without ever telling her he was proud of her. As an adult, Colleen thought she could rationalize this loss and move on, but she remained stuck. She began to lose interest in her job and activities. More and more, she isolated herself in her apartment. With the door of his approval permanently closed, Colleen found it difficult to stave off the crushing feeling of her own worthlessness.

In order to overcome her depression, Colleen needed to understand she could substitute her own approval and feelings of worth.

Learned Responses

Families act as an incubator for learned responses to life, both positive and negative.

While positive responses support our emotional equilibrium, negative responses can bog us down, making it difficult to remain afloat under the tide of life. In order to work through the causes of your depression, it is time for you to intentionally think about how the responses to life you learned while growing up may be hindering you now.

As you think about your family, what did you learn about life?

These can be responses you’ve acknowledged, or those you observed but never really articulated. You may want to try a journaling activity, finishing the following statements, in as much detail as you feel necessary:

• The good things my family taught me about life are...

• The negative things my family taught me about life are...

• The good things my family taught me about myself are...

• The negative things my family taught me about myself are...

Often the most negative responses to life are those unspoken truths of your family. Some have called it the family secrets. It is important in your recovery to examine these negative responses so they can be properly evaluated and placed in the context of your life.

Positive Affirmation: I will pursue positive relationships that nourish my spirit.

2013 Gregory L. Jantz, PhD, Turning Your Down Into Up: A Realistic Plan For Healing From Depression, WaterBrook Press.