This is beautiful. I learned this the hard way. I did a lot of shadow work and learned that our sense of worth is based in childhood. We develop those parts of us that are acceptable to our parents since this is what gets us attention and (hopefully) love...which on a very primal level means surival. We surpress other parts of us that are unacceptable to them. Then we run on these programs for the rest of our lives. We learn these in our first 7 years of life when the brain is still not fully evolved (we still cannot always distinguish between reality and fantasy and are very vulnerable to input). Then for the rest of our lives our self worth is based on this programming until we wake up and become conscious and do serious hard shadow work and bring those parts of us into the present - reintegration. You can tell how much work you have by how much stuff triggers you in daily life and if you have coping mechanism in place like alcohol, smoking, over achieving and having the same dysfunctional relationship patterns (trying to heal childhood trauma). There are many great videos on this where people can help themselves. I really like Teal Swans videos on integration work. It took me about 2 years to wake up after the last traumatic relationship experience then 1. Learn how to say no, set boundaries, 2. Learn self love 3. Become immune to manipulation attempts like guilt etc 4. Learn about the different personality disorders out there and how they might have affected your formative years....adults around you. The one thing that nobody tells you though is that when you get to the point of solid self love...you have to find yourself all over again because you might actually be a completely different person than who you thought you were your whole life. I became a mermaid at 40. Hahahaha <3