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Your worth is not determined by your productivity or your accomplishments. It’s inherently a part of you from the moment you’re born – Anonymous
When Your Worth Is Measured in Service: Shame, Self-Erasure, and the Gift That Costs Too Much
There are people whose presence is so attuned, so deeply focused, that you feel entirely seen. They listen without interruption, respond with empathy, and meet you exactly where you are. They don’t just hear your words — they understand the feelings beneath them. These people make extraordinary helpers and often end up in helping professions.
Sometimes, this gift is born from something far more complex than natural empathy. Sometimes, it grows out of a life-long habit of disappearing into others, a survival adaptation where the self has been trained out of the picture.
The Pattern: “I Only Matter When I’m Helping”
When you’ve grown up in an environment where your needs were shamed, ignored, or punished, a dangerous equation forms:
I only matter when I am useful to others. My needs are irrelevant. My worth is in my service.
This belief doesn’t just live in the mind — it shapes the nervous system and the body itself.
- When you’re with another person, you instinctively erase your own presence, stepping into their world completely.
- You become fluent in reading others’ signals, matching their tone, and anticipating what they need — often without them saying a word.
- In that moment, you feel purposeful, even satisfied.
But it’s not the same as wholeness. It’s a borrowed sense of aliveness, lit by another person’s needs. When the conversation ends, you may feel drained, cold, or suddenly aware of your own body only because it’s screaming for warmth, food, or rest.
Over time, you may discover that you feel most “alive” when you’re helping — and least connected to life when you’re not.
Shame and Early Wiring
Shame in childhood can work like a sculptor’s chisel — carving away at your edges until the only version of you that remains is the one who pleases others.
When a child is shamed for being “selfish” or showing their own needs, it doesn’t just hurt — it rewires the survival system. The body learns:
If I disappear into others, I am safe. If I show myself, I am punished.
This isn’t compassion in its purest form. It’s self-erasure dressed as virtue. It looks like generosity but is rooted in fear — fear of rejection, of punishment, of losing connection entirely.
Over years, the equation becomes automatic: service equals worth; self equals risk. You may not even notice it happening because it feels natural. It becomes the air you breathe.
The Gift and the Cost
There is no denying that this survival strategy produces remarkable skill in caring for others. You can hold space like few can. You can bring calm to chaos, focus to confusion, and warmth to despair.
But there is a cost: your own life can become the background to other people’s stories. You may not even feel you have a life unless you’re helping. Alone, you might feel relief — because for once, your needs aren’t in competition with someone else’s — but also a quiet emptiness, as though life only counts when it’s in service mode.
The Turning Point
The moment you begin to work with shame, the old survival equation starts to crack.
You begin to see that compassion for others is incomplete without compassion for yourself. You realise that the very skill that makes you a powerful healer was born out of something that hurt you — and that it can be transformed into something that nourishes both you and those you serve.
This is the painstaking, courageous work of reclaiming the self that shame erased. It’s not about detaching from life — it’s about attaching to your own life for the first time.
And when you do, your service to others becomes even more powerful — because it no longer costs you everything.
How counselling will help
We will form a therapeutic relationship and work in a safe space, where you can explore your feelings about yourself, relating to others and the world. You will work out how to make subtle changes to your life by putting in boundaries, maintaining relationships with family, friends and colleagues in a healthy way. You will feel less worried all the time, less wired to abandon yourself at the cost of relationships and be more in your life. You will feel more peaceful, more grounded, more calm and in control of your decisions and enjoy being in your life, where you are just functioning at the moment.
Are you ready to talk?
I offer a low-cost confidential service. I offer space to speak, find your voice, be really heard and validated. I am a trained professional counsellor who specialises in anxiety and trauma. Make an appointment to meet me and tell me what you want from counselling. See if you feel comfortable. The first session is over Zoom for both of our safety and then you can do sessions over Zoom from your own home or in person in mine, in my safe, comfortable therapy room.
Book your appointment today
Click here and book a free initial consultation with me today. Read what people are saying about working with me in counselling here. I hold a private, confidential space for you. I’m looking forward to meeting you and hearing you very soon. Best wishes, Karen.
Disclaimer: I am a UK qualified person centred counsellor specialising in anxiety and trauma within the context of counselling. I write from my experiences and from my client work in counselling. My work is dependent on the therapeutic relationship and the meeting of two minds. It is a humbling experience and that is all part of the healing process that I witness every day. It is the best job in the world. This is not an emergency service. If you need to speak to someone urgently outside of my sessions, please call the Samaritans on 116 123 (24/7 confidential helpline in the UK).
