Reclaiming Your Self-Worth in a Biased World
Nov 15, 2024
The Impact of Social Pecking Order on Self-Worth
We all want to be around people who see and understand us, but what if you’re in an environment where your look, culture, gender or age isn’t on top of the food chain?
Let me break it down. Two people walk into a job interview. They’ve got the same skills, the same experience, and even the same “ready to be your rockstar employee” attitude.
But one of them has a “foreign-sounding” name, (let’s face it, we’re all from somewhere else), and the other has a name that sounds like it belongs to someone in your social circle.
Guess who the interviewer naturally clicks with?
Yup, Team Familiar Name gets the nod, and no one even says it out loud.
Caste systems, race, ethnicity, and a bunch of other labels still run the show. These invisible biases sneak into all the nooks and crannies of our everyday lives, altering our self-esteem, and feeding ideas of deficiency.
In this blog, you’ll learn to:
- 🛡️ Navigating Self-Respect and Boundaries
- ✊🏼 Take Action Against Injustices
- 🧘♀️ Protect Your Well-being
- 📖 Taylor's Story: What happens when the tables turn
- 💡 Tips on Reclaiming Your Self-Worth
- 📌 Key Takeaways
Navigating Self-Respect and Boundaries
Let’s face it, there are loads of rule books, and we don’t have the memo on each person’s personal preferences. So we can’t expect people to know what our boundary is unless we say something.
Being on the receiving end of a person assuming you must be like everyone in your gender, culture, or ethnicity, can for sure be annoying, but giving people the benefit of the doubt, then quickly and politely setting a boundary can make all the difference.
I believe people really want to get it right, so there is no need to keep internalizing those societal microaggressions and negative thoughts.
- When people are “accidently” condescending, – whether they're strangers or even family– it's okay to respectfully and politely let them know how you want to be spoken to going forward.
- Even if it feels awkward, putting your self-respect front and center can make all the difference in being the guardian of your self-worth.
At the end of the day, we all deserve dignity and compassion.
- When people are unkind, it helps to remember that you don’t have to pay the emotional debt of other people’s bad behavior.
Remember, you can make it a game to notice if you’re buying into the societal pecking order, and decide you’re supposed to be you; your gender, look, weight, ethnicity, and see how you feel the rest of the day. No need to pretend to be someone you're not just to make others comfortable.
Taking Action Against Injustices
Here are some powerful quotes to help us reflect on injustices—both those around us and those we carry within. It’s essential we play an active part in building a fairer society.
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice,
you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
~Desmond Tutu
"We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people."
~Dr. Martin Luther King
It’s important to take inventory on what biases you have internalized, so you take the time to do healing work and avoid the escalation of chronic traumas, altering how you show up in the world.
Understanding our own value also gives us the confidence to notice when others are mistreated and the courage to defend them.
Protecting Our Well-being
Microaggressions might seem small, but they can have a significant impact on your well-being.
Whether it's the visual reminders of your marginalized identity or the objectification you experience, these experiences can prematurely age you and contribute to high cortisol levels, which can lead to various health issues.
I'm not suggesting that you become paranoid and assume everyone is out to get you. Instead, it's about tuning into your feelings and noticing when you don't feel good around certain people or situations.
Taylor’s Story of Adjustment
Here’s a story about how bias is so clearly played out.
I knew someone named “Taylor,” who transitioned from female to male during law school. Before his transition, he was never called on in class, and though he was super smart, no one treated him that way.
Once he started passing as a man in the next semester, suddenly he was treated differently. The teachers called on him more, his peers wanted to study with him, and his confidence and self-esteem grew ten fold. Though he wasn’t a cisgender male, he was still a caucasian man who moved up in the social pecking order.
In the process of his new found respect, he began looking down on others, blind to the challenges faced by different marginalized groups. He lost sight of a basic truth - that intelligence, worth, and value aren't limited to any one group of people.
Once he realized that he was, in his words, “exploiting his new found privilege,” he was mortified and corrected his behavior.
It's a reminder that we all adjust our sense of self-worth based on our surroundings, and it's crucial to continually look in the mirror and really see the biases we are holding, and who we might be hurting.
Tips on Reclaiming Your Self-Worth
- 🌟 Be mindful of who's influencing your views Whose thoughts are you really having, and is it time to give them back?
- 🌏 Recognize that different cultures have diverse norms, but fundamental human worth transcends those differences. Seek to understand before judging.
- 🤝 Set boundaries around microaggressions — don’t let them become deficiency beliefs.
- 💭 Reflect on your own cultural biases and how they shape perceptions. Think of fellow humans as your sibling that you’re rooting for in life.
- 🔍 Gently investigate any internalized feelings of inferiority (or superiority) as conditioned patterns, not truth. You are so much more.
Key Takeaways
It's natural to adjust how we present ourselves based on external reactions. We light up when we feel seen and understood, and we shut down when our nervous system senses danger.
However, by cultivating our inner wholeness, we no longer outsource our self-worth to people. No one is the holder of our own value, even if society says you are inferior, you are not.
The most significant takeaway: Compliments and insults are a reflection of what people value or are afraid of. They have nothing to do with our inherent worth. Whether praised or criticized, it simply reflects others' perceptions and biases, not who we truly are.
While compliments are nicer, ultimately, they just mean our presence resonates with that person.We are enough as we are.
So, let’s embrace our authentic selves, knowing our worth isn't determined by others’ opinions.
Would you like to be taken through the process of Overcoming Inferiority and Reclaiming Wholeness?
The information above is from a class inside the Mastery section of the Invoke and Release® Healing Circle. There you will find a step-by-step healing path to help you overcome feelings of inferiority, reclaim your self-worth, and achieve inner wholeness.
You can find the From Inferior to Wholeness healing class in the Invoke and Release® Healing Circle library.
The Invoke and Release® Healing Modality helps you:
- 🧘 Release internalized feelings of inferiority so you can embrace your true worth.
- 💭 Challenge negative self-perceptions absorbed from society.
- 🌍 Recognize diverse cultural "rules" and norms.
- 🔍 Gently investigate internalized biases shaping your perspectives.
- ❤️ Focus on inherent worth rather than comparisons and external validation.
Joining the Invoke and Release® Healing Circle provides these benefits:
- 🌱 Releasing emotional pain from past mistreatment or marginalization.
- 🌈 Anchoring a sense of dignity and self-respect within.
- 🌟 Attuning to feelings of diminishing self-worth in interactions.
- 🛡️ Establishing boundaries against disrespect or unfair treatment.
- 🥰 Embracing your authentic self beyond stereotypes and judgments.
Important Links:
Reveal and Heal Obstacles to Your Success™
Invoke and Release® Healing Circle
Helpful blogs:
Why is Healing Trauma Important
Seeing through the Seduction of Negative Thinking
Ancestral, Family, Gender and Cultural Agreements as an Obstacle to your Dreams
Is Your Family Legacy Weighing You Down? How to Let Go and Heal
Recommended Books:
