The maltreatment -> FUCB -> untreatable PTSD path.
From childhood, we’re taught we aren’t worthy of attention, care, consideration, safety by the people who raise and surround us.
Our thoughts don’t matter. We’re told to shut the fuck up and stop bothering them.
Our feelings don’t matter. They’re inconvenient and need to be shut out.
Our experiences don’t matter. We need to be happy with what we’re getting, because no one else is.
Since we aren’t worth hearing, connecting with, or protecting, we must not have value to the people who brought us into this world.
This is exacerbated if they, themselves, are miserable. Because we “should” make them feel better with our childlike wonder and reflections of themselves within us, right? But if we can’t fix the primary parent, then we must not be high value children.
If we don’t have value… we are worth-less than others as a steady state… then we’re innately burdens for existing. We don’t offer, we only cost them.
If we’re burdens, that means life is filled with urgency. Because we always need to be proving ourselves. Running on other people’s timelines. Taking care of everything so that we aren’t BIGGER burdens by neglecting responsibility or causing a bigger problem.
That means life is stress. Vigilance, deprivation, and self-policing to stay out of the way. Chronic awareness and behavioral management. Emotional repression and self-abandonment often come into the picture.
Meanwhile, we feel inclined to be low maintenance. If you’re already burdensome, don’t ask for more than you require. Instead, change what you realize you require so that you don’t ask for anything.
Which means… disassociate. If you can’t feel your emotions or deprivations, then they aren’t problems for you (or more importantly, for others).
We can easily take these three behaviors - functioning under urgency, being low maintenance, and disassociating for everyone’s convenience – and misconstrue them as being “highly adaptive” for the rest of our lives.
We can mesh with any environment. Nothing is too much or too little for us. Every bed and bowl of porridge must be “just right enough” because we don’t dare have preferences or needs. We don’t even recognize we have bodies.
Don’t worry about us. We don’t. We aren’t worth it. We’ve been told for a long time now.
And in this way, we might consider ourselves highly resilient… so capable of rolling with the punches and still being “okay enough”… when we’re actually living through the lens of childhood abuse and neglect. Perpetuating it. Treating ourselves and our wellness as inconsequential, just like others did.
It’s not worth the effort of caring for ourselves, and if we did we would be punished.
So we wind up in trauma-typical lives of abandoning ourselves, letting unfair treatment continue, living in ramshackle surroundings, accepting the bare minimum of life… and treating the pain on the other side with whatever means are available. Scrolling, drinking, human escapism.
In this way, starting with a sense of worthlessness:
We pony up and support others, however they might need, but rarely ourselves.
We repress our emotions and our bodily sensations.
We cope through nasty situations, leaning on behaviors that temporarily numb some pain, but ultimately hurt us more.
We cause ourselves mental, spiritual, and physical damage.
And whatever outcome we end up with? Abusive relationships, work places, substandard living circumstances, addictions, diseases, pains, chronic discomforts?
We assess as “correct.” Fitting well with our sense of value.
What, would we expect a better life for someone with as little worth as we have? That would be wild. Egoic. Unwise. It’s been a long time now, we know the ways of the world and how we fit into it.
So we continue eating the shit sandwiches we’re served and then accidentally throw them together for breakfast, lunch, and dinner once we’ve learned the recipe.
And so, I posit that underneath chronic, unresponsive, CPTSD – yes - might be nervous system disorder and emotional dysregulation…
But driving both of those issues is the ongoing fucked up core belief that we’re simply worth-less than others are. That’s our place in life. That’s how we have to behave. And we’d best not challenge it or there will be negative consequences.
With this one thought, “I am worth less than other humans,” we can’t emotionally balance ourselves. Trying to think our way out of a negative feeling only reminds us that this is what we deserve, and worse. Our feelings seem inevitable and “right.”
So, again, in response, we can only disassociate.
We engage in unconscious behaviors which are comforting in the moment, but harmful over time. We leave our meat, we treat medicate ourselves in our preferred methods, and it is taken advantage of by others. Our bodies absorb the impact of our stress and unmet needs.
So that eventually we CAN’T function in the most worthwhile way. In relationships, at work, in our bodies, in the world.
So that our core belief that we’re lacking in value, burdensome, a problem that breaths to the chagrin of everyone we encounter… becomes material reality. We prove to ourselves that we don’t matter.
Hence, from an unworthiness wound, we get issues like the ones we’ve spoken about for the last several years:
Revictimization – we leave our bodies, people sense it and prey on us, we lose our emotional wisdom to recognize it’s happening.
Social anxiety – we believe we aren’t good enough, so every social encounter is bound to crumble.
Rejection sensitive dysphoria – when they crumble, it throws us back into our core beliefs of unworth, where we generalize the idea and suffer.
Extreme impression management and facades of conformity – to try to avoid these things happening, we try extra hard to be “normal and good,” which ultimately leads to inauthenticity and dissatisfaction.
Wonky egos that tend to flip into grandiose narcissism or the exact opposite – but never find a stable, solid, center, because we only have fleetingly positive, socially mediated senses of self.
Immature self-defensive strategies - behaviors like black and white thinking and passive aggression, because we can’t sit with nuance and don’t think we’re worthy of setting healthy boundaries or directly speaking up for ourselves.
Chronically unmet needs – we aren’t deserving of satisfaction or equipped to ask for what we need, since we’re already burdens to everyone we know.
Addiction and substance use issues – from the pains of deprivation and inability to express our will, we try to feel differently and get through life via chemical means.
Abusive relationships with self and other – continual deprivation causes resentment, sense of helplessness makes us try to control whatever we can, sense of unworth causes impulsive social behaviors, and constant pain increases expression of anger… at others and also internally.
Depression-PTSD symptomology back and forths – the stunting of our desires and experiences in disappointment result in depression and traumatic thinking.
Chronically dysregulated nervous systems – constant hypervigilance trying to be good enough and stave off punishments we believe we’re fated to experience creates hyperarousal… which tends to become hypoarousal when the body can’t sustain the elevated activation.
Unmanaged and intrusive emotions – since we can’t manage our thoughts with more positive ones, we also can’t manage our emotions, and they pop up without invitation.
Rumination and obsession – we try to figure out how to escape this afore-described prison or make meaning of our unique position in it, without coming to solutions. So the brain ticks away, trying endlessly to understand.
Suicidality – altogether, it’s a hellish existence that we can’t find a way out of. Tortured by our brains and feelings and circumstances, a mind determines that the only option is to get out of it all.
In other words, worth-less-ness underscores the trauma typical outcomes that fill prisons and mental institutions, abusive or chronically lonely residences, hospitals and homeless shelters, even morgues.
All because of the OBEY model.
When we can’t come to a central, safe, thought station.. when our core beliefs are negatively slanted towards the one situation we can’t alter (being ourself), we can’t help ourselves regulate anything. Our feelings, our judgments, our nervous systems, our behaviors. We act against ourselves, even when we try to act for ourselves, because we largely only know how to detach from ourselves as a form of self-care. We can only spiral downward, internally.
And everything spirals in response, outside of us.
As above so below. We build the lives we know we don’t want.
But maybe feel deep down that we deserve.
We can’t identify what’s going wrong or how to fix any of these issues. Because it doesn’t appear as though there is “A” thing to fix, with so many diverse problems that crop up. And because we don’t identify “low self worth” as a problem or a thought disruption. It’s merely a reality. The one that we’re uniquely trapped within.
One that we’re actively surviving against. Which is why the stress never stops.
And, while that definitely is enough to chew on for a few weeks, looking at how childhood events created the brain that led to these results…
Here comes the societal trauma talk.
Those same ideas have been confirmed all around us.
Sexism, racism, ablism, sexual-orientation-ism, classism… have always told us that some people are more than others.
But I in today’s (2026) world? Worth is diminished for most. There is much more “surviving” taking place than before, as a default condition.
Now we can’t “fake it to feel worthy by following the designated path,” even.
A 9-5 doesn’t mean you’re housed or health-accessible. The rules seem to be mutable, inconsistent, and getting harder all the time.
There are more societal assertions than ever, more widely publicized than ever, that you are in the position you’re in, you deserve to be there, and it’s unsafe to be you. The economic, race, sexuality, ablist, and gender disparities are in our faces, propagandized and leveraged against us, from the top-down, across all platforms.
Who is worth what? Who deserves care? Protection? Thought?
Many of us have been told “not us.” A confirmation of what we were informed shortly after birth.
It’s hard to feel worth-ful in 2026. And a history of abuse or neglect makes it even harder.
Then, after COVID the message was spit louder than ever as we were shamed back to office work and the wealth disparity became cavernous.
However much you’re working? Is not enough. Everything only costs more than you can bring home. And here are your peers, making a quarter mil a year, to prove that it’s a “you problem.”
(read: it is not. It is an originating circumstance problem where we didn’t all begin running from the same starting line.)
On a very material level, worth is apparent, reiterating what we already thought about ourselves.
But we’ve all been told we can overcome our original circumstances. So just try harder, right?
One might suggest that achievements and accomplishments disprove worthlessness. But that’s the thing when we run it through human psychology. Actually, DESPITE everything one can do that fly in the face of a difficult upbringing, the sad fact is, without social capital, the accomplishments often don’t snowball into reward. They lead to… surviving. Getting by. Without extraneous comforts.
Because of being worth-less and compensated-less. The material outcome of those negative core beliefs.
And those beliefs have been repeated by anyone who profits off them. Every work place, government mandate, personal relationship formed in the larger capsule of capitalism.
So we can work and work and work some more. Living in a state of self- and society-created deprivation.
OR, give up on working, since it never pays off anyways, and fall into a comfortable early coffin.
When you don’t believe you have worth, you drive yourself past the breaking point. Then keep driving anyways. Until the wheels fall off. And you stop moving at all.
And behave however you have to survive, throughout. To numb some pain or self-pity. Leading to new negative events and repeats of previous patterns. Which all starts with emotional neglect. Which causes worthlessness wounds.
If your feelings, thoughts, and experiences don’t matter… you learn that you don’t matter.
We lose our voice because as children we didn’t receive verbal support or comfort.
We need to feel like our safety is of concern to our family or we’ll be unconcerned with it, ourselves.
Our social needs have to be considered and cared for or we end up poorly connected.
We learn to detach from our feelings as inconveniences when they’ve been treated as such, so we detach from our emotional centers, so our wellness and mobility are affected.
We’re treated poorly by the systems we’re surrounded by. First, families, then the rest of the world.
And the way we’re treated causes us to treat ourselves the same.
Internalizing the lesson, the self-talk, and the self-punishment that go along with emotional maltreatment. Keeping ourselves in a looped track of abuse and unhappiness and unwellness.
And so, I urge you to discover your worth-less beliefs, perhaps hiding beneath all your other negative self beliefs.
And see the ways they drive behaviors that – not to be dramatic – torture you and ruin your life.
For example: Overworking, underworking, socially withdrawing, socially escaping with unsafe people, living in squalor, chronically self-deprivating, compulsively self-overindulging, health obsession, health avoidance, abusive relationships – from both ends.
And when you find them?
I recommend you speak to them with people you can process with.
Returning to the article:
The impact of core belief disruption on posttraumatic growth and PTSD in healthcare workers: examining the mediating effect of rumination
Aghil Habibi Soola 1, Naser Mozaffari 1, Azam Hashemian Moghadam 2, Maryam Hashemian 1, Masoud Saeedyan 3, Alireza Mirzaei 1,✉
BMC Psychology
2025
A large body of research suggests a positive relationship between exposure to traumatic events, intrusive rumination, and PTSD [13].
Intrusive rumination refers to involuntary, repetitive, and distressing thoughts about the trauma and its consequences [9]. Deliberate rumination is a voluntary, purposeful cognitive engagement with posttraumatic thoughts and emotions, often involving a struggle to find meaning and make sense of the trauma [9, 15].
These two forms of rumination are related; research shows that intrusive rumination occurring shortly after a trauma can strongly trigger deliberate rumination, which in turn can facilitate growth [16]. A fundamental re-examination of core beliefs is often initiated through deliberate rumination. This voluntary engagement with posttraumatic thoughts and cognitions usually involves struggling to extract meaning from the trauma [15].
Both forms of rumination can underlie both PTG and PTSD, but deliberate rumination is more strongly associated with PTG, while intrusive (automatic) rumination is more associated with PTSD [8, 17].
We probably have learned that PTSD and rumination are fond butt buddies. But there are different types of ruminatory thinking: intrusive (accidental) and deliberate. Core beliefs are often created by intrusive post-traumatic thinking, whereas they can be rewritten by deliberate rumination that produces positive meaning from the negative event. Deliberate rumination, therefore, is a requirement for post-traumatic growth rather than ongoing symptomology.
Sounds nice, but if you’ve lived through it, you might realize that intrusive and deliberate rumination can be hard to separate. Deliberate attempts are often corrupted by those intrusions, because both thought pathways are coming out of the same brain, using the same wires.
So is there a way out of the intrusive rumination station that creates and doubles-down on negative core beliefs?
…Individuals who can share their experiences with others and engage in verbal communication are more likely to experience PTG [4]. It is hypothesized that when health personnel actively provide each other with social support, they often find meaning and identify many positive aspects or insights (“positive points”) during verbal communication with others, which facilitates growth [18]. These social support opportunities may facilitate the cognitive and emotional processes necessary for growth [16].
Yes.
Social support may foster creation of more positive beliefs after a traumatic event. People can re-affirm your worth and re-right the shattered cognitions caused by the negative happening. They can correct your thoughts, reminding you that you aren’t specially doomed. Having access to their core beliefs can help reset yours.
OR… a broadly negative social environment might help to substantiate them.
If connection isn’t available. If the negative event is downplayed. OR if the trauma is given too much attention, in a negatively slanted way… the worthlessness and fear can be supported – confirmed - rather than reframed.
So, remember, don’t wade through your fucked up core beliefs alone.
Or they might only become rumination traps that make the beliefs even bigger or appear more evidenced in your life.
Healthy social connections and communications are the solution to redrafting fucked up core beliefs. Tapping into outside perspectives, rather than cycling through the worst of yours.
And, at the same time, recognizing that you aren’t separate from the species.
To believe that you’re the worst or the worthlessiest? Is to believe that you’re distant and distinct from everyone else. Counter to common understanding, it’s indicative of a large ego.
To have a healthy ego, actually, is to recognize worth-equal-ness with mankind.
Which means talking to and treating yourself the way others treat themselves.
Not expecting too much or too little from yourself.
Cutting yourself slack but also holding yourself to your own standards.
Listening to what you feel and need.
Taking on what makes sense for you; saying “no” to what does not.
Holding others to your agreements, and upholding them yourself.
Experiencing joy.
Having comforts.
Tending to the body – physically and in those stupid goddamn emotions.
Accepting dishes you can and want to eat… rather than scarfing down shit sandwiches, just because that’s what arrives with the dinner bell after a long life of self-neglect.
And so, because there’s never a better time to start, I invite you to challenge yourself and your self worth this summer. Through talking about it, questioning core beliefs of self-disparagement, leaning on what feels like delusionally positive self-regard (but is really just reflection of lived experience) when your feelings get hard, and changing rutted behaviors that normally arise from default thoughts and emotions… to see what better outcomes might (shockingly) occur.
And remember. When times get harder, it’s more important than ever to see yourself as deserving of care. That’s how you don’t abandon yourself. Don’t leave the house empty to be pillaged by anyone walking by. Don’t allow your nervous system to be untethered from reality.
You tend to it.
Be the caregiver you always needed.
Be your own priority, for once.
And see that all the years you treated yourself like shit clearly didn’t prevent misfortune. You didn’t spare yourself suffering by aligning your behaviors with how these systems seemed to want you to value yourself. By being unburdensome or holding it together for everyone or passively staying out of the way of the world… there haven’t been rewards or reliefs.
That’s the old way of doing it. And the results have been consistently negative.
So maybe it’s time to try a new approach, despite everything in you insisting that it’s not possible or allowed. Following those instructions hasn’t panned out yet, don’t you want to try something else?
Challenge the worth-less beliefs that might be acting like superstitions, forcing you to relive the careless environment from which you came.
And find out what can happen if you lived outside of the shadow of abuse.
It’s time to prove it to yourself through behavioral change, not thinking about what’s stopping you from doing it.
You are worth-more than you know. And there’s only one way to find out the truth. Bravely behaving like it.
Thanks for being here for this message.
May you OBEY a new internal working model and create a new world experience for yourself in the process.
And I’ll talk to you soon.