I can’t believe I’m finally writing this, but Worth: The New Science of Self-Esteem and Secure Attachment is officially out!

Today, I’m sharing one of the core ideas from the book. Enjoy!

Something weird is happening in the mental health world. We are more fluent in therapy-speak, aware of our attachment styles, and ready to assert our boundaries than ever, yet research finds we’re only getting more insecure. How could it be—amidst the thousands of influencers helping us achieve an elusive secure attachment style (myself being one of them, I add humbly)—that we seem only to be getting worse? And is it possible that the very things that we thought could help—this newfound literacy around our dysfunction—could be the very source of our undoing?

Reactivity to Feelings

As a psychologist, I’ve noticed we’ve become terribly reactive to our (normal, natural) feelings of discomfort. Then, we take our feelings as evidence about how unhealed we are.

This is concerning because research shows that being more aware of our feelings can make things worse—if we judge ourselves for having them. In one study, people who were high in observing their feelings were either the most or least likely to worry and ruminate. What made the difference? It was whether they were able to be nonreactive toward those feelings.

When we yearn for an emotionally unavailable jerk, we’re not just doing something human; we’re re-enacting our daddy issues. When we ruminate about that ex who cheated on us, we’re not experiencing normal grief; we’re revealing how anxiously attached we are. And when we feel attached to that parent who doesn’t respect our boundaries, we aren’t trying to accept someone for their complexities; we are revealing our codependence. We act as if there’s a bible for how we should feel. And if we feel anything different, we perceive it as a sign of how damaged we are.

As I state in my new book, Worth: The New Science of Self-Esteem and Secure Attachment, vulnerable, unwanted feelings are a fact of human existence. As Judith Butler argues, the body is defined by its vulnerabilities, not temporally affected by them. In their essay “Sick Woman Theory,” writer Johanna Hedva states that, “What is so destructive about conceiving of wellness as the default, as the standard mode of existence, is that it invents illness as temporary. When being sick is an abhorrence of the norm, it allows us to conceive of care and support in the same way.” This extends to what we conceive for ourselves. When we’re so convinced we should be healed, and thus not so needy, so petty, so resentful, then we stop caring for ourselves when we are. We stop saying “It’s OK to feel this way. You’re human,” and start asking “Why am I so broken?”

Shaming ourselves for not being healed enough comes from a well-intentioned place. When we’re suffering, this narrative provides us with a fantasy of relief. Someday, if we just punish ourselves enough, a part of us thinks, we can become someone less irrational, less tortured, more healed.

How Acceptance Can Liberate Us

Accepting that we’ll never be free of these meddlesome feelings can fill us with despair. Our fantasy of perfect inner peace disappears. Yet, this acceptance can also liberate us. No longer are we living in psychological purgatory, waiting to become an imagined healed self that will never materialize. No longer are we measuring our feelings against a standard of green-flagged emotional perfection. Instead, we evaluate our feelings against… nothing at all. Feelings become simply there, a matter of fact rather than something to be sized up.

And when we stop litmus-testing our feelings, we stop evaluating ourselves as defective for having them. We build a nest for feelings once in a cage. This sensitivity, pettiness, and self-absorption simply means we are human beings existing in the messiness we were made to. We’re no better of a person if we feel less.

As psychologist Marion Woodman put it, “It is easier to try to be better than you are than to try to be who you are.” As I argue in Worth, the goal of healing is not to never feel so pathetic, aggressive, ungrateful, or desperate, but to stop shaming ourselves when we do.

Healing was never about being perfect. It’s about being OK with being imperfect.