After a breakup: why it's so hard to value yourself

It starts with a breakup. Our author was with the father of her two children for a very long time and very early on, and now she has a lot to learn. She finds that especially difficult with self-worth.

We all have it – a small, fine Pandora's box that we have hidden deep inside us. A trigger that can unleash an avalanche, fears that we suppress, injuries that we have experienced. Locking up works well until suddenly an earthquake, a gold digger or too much schnapps rinse the can to the surface and flush ourselves right in front of our noses. And suddenly it is there, the big crisis, right in front of us and we ask ourselves: "Who am I actually?".

Where did my skin go

The separation from my partner, the father of our two daughters, catapulted me from a height of one thousand meters straight down to the ground. I lay there for a while and waited for the black hole to finally open up and just devour me. The feeling of being alone, the guilt towards our children, the uncertainty about what was and is right and what is wrong and the overwhelming desire to be saved by someone are so great that I can often hardly stand it. Over and over again my friends have listened to the same stories, platitudes and all of my (self-with) woes, but every well-intentioned advice, every attempt to make it clear to me that this is perfectly normal and that these horrible feelings will pass again just seeped right through me I didn't want to hear that I was going to get through this. I didn't want to hear that I was going to learn to endure myself and be alone with myself, and I didn't want to hear that the new relationship I had rushed into was a bad idea. I felt as if I had been completely zeroed in and stood without protective skin in the world I no longer fit into and cried my old life and because of my new one.

In the basement, in search of self-worth

The desire to be saved and the fear of being alone are not a good mix and certainly not a good advisor. There I sat now and did not want to listen to my gut feeling or my mind. Oxytocin is an asshole. It gives us the impression of having really big feelings, but with a little distance it is just a flash in the pan. But as long as the hormones are going crazy in my body, I push away all my needs, subordinate myself or think about them – the only thing I want is to have a break in between – to breathe. The trouble is, all of my topics are very persistent and knock again at regular intervals while I wait for the right moment to face them. Maybe tomorrow. Not now, the time has not come. It's just stupid that it will probably never come. You have to be brave for change, and this is the moment I am waiting for.

And while I wait, I hear it louder and louder: The voice in my head and that of my friends: Be worth a little something to yourself! First, take care of yourself and heal!

But what about the fear?

Healing – yes, how do you do that? The worst part of the breakup is suddenly being thrown back on yourself. Taking care of myself means enduring myself. In the minds of many, this means: face mask, bathtub and then ice cream and Netflix. Self love! Sorry, but I want to break if I even read the word. Because anyone who has ever had real anxiety attacks or panic, has felt totally dissolved, knows that it is incredibly difficult to break free. And that's exactly what collides with self-worth. My brain pretends: "You can't do it, you can't stand these feelings." My head is playing through the worst scenarios I can think of and my heart? It's just racing. And then do I lie down in the bathtub first? Eh, no. I'm looking for a distraction, a substitute drug, or something that will turn these feelings off, and twist and bend it all so nicely until it fits, or worse, I'll find someone to put the burden of making me happy on.

The thing about self worth is complicated

All of this is just a consolation under which the inflammation cannot heal. This can be seen in the fact that we are very happy to transfer our construction sites to others instead of taking the sledgehammer into our own hands. And that's exactly the point when we talk about self-love and self-worth. To get there, we have to change ourselves from within instead of looking for solutions from outside. And that's the hardest thing ever. Because it means separating yourself from people, exposing yourself to unpleasant feelings and thoughts, learning, accepting and letting go. That hurts, very much, and it takes time, the investment of which only pays off in retrospect. At that moment there is no reward for our hungry brain, but the longer we persevere and open ourselves to new perspectives, rethink old perspectives and get used to new things, the deeper the new tracks in our brain become and our autopilot prefers to take them at some point newly built road in mind than the one with the potholes. But for it to turn right, it takes the moment when our self-esteem knocks on the door and says: "Hey, let's be honest: Aren't you really feeling too good for that?" and we don't answer: "Actually yes", but "Yes!".

JB