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Ultimately, shame corrodes self-worth. But later in the book you’ll learn how to become resilient to shame.
    Most parents don’t mean to shame their children. They’ve no idea that the language has any negative effect at all.
    One of the most empowering communications with a child I ever heard was in a movie called The Help , based on a book by Kathryn Stockett. I’ve not read the book, but in the movie, the black nanny repeatedly says to the white child in her care that she is good, she is kind and she is important. The child is then invited to repeat it back to the nanny. This, to me, is a very empowering message to give a child, one that can only strengthen their sense of worth. It gives the child a positive sense of identity through the words, ‘You are’ followed by something good.
    My friend Lizzie, however, pointed out that many parents, her own included, would have been horrified by a child affirming her worth in this way, believing that she was being encouraged to be ‘too big for her boots’. I heard that term a lot in the village I grew up in, too, and at the school I attended. Unfortunately, a consequence of not wanting to be ‘too big for your boots’ can be a lifetime of playing small and apologetic, which gives birth to asense of not enough and also interferes with achievement. I can say this from personal experience.
    Another version of the term used in my village and school was ‘If she [or he] was chocolate, she would eat herself.’ Similarly, the result of this is that to avoid being singled out and rejected by the community, children learn to play small, and thus the seeds of not enough are sown.
2) Being Criticized
    The second way children learn to doubt their worth is through being criticized. Some are criticized for doing things wrongly or badly. Others are compared to a sibling who does things correctly. Some parents even swear or sneer at their children.
    Now and again, a little piece of criticism is OK if it’s well intentioned, but for some children it is consistent, and that’s how brain networks are shaped. The fact that the parents are trying to educate the child and help them grow doesn’t change the point that consistent criticism can give rise to a feeling of not enough. A parent says, ‘You’re doing it wrong,’ and what they mean is ‘It will be/you will be better if you do it this way.’ What the child hears is ‘You’re not good enough right now.’ In time, the child learns at a subconscious level that they are not enough.
    Many children have critical parents who push them to excel academically. If the child gets a ‘B’, the reaction is kind enough, but it is often along the lines of, ‘Maybe if you work even harder you’ll get an “A” next time.’ What the child hears is, ‘You’re notworking hard enough right now.’ Sometimes, parents even launch into a lecture about how well they did at school or university.
    All this can give rise to decades of trying to prove yourself to a parent. Many high-fliers in life are like this, perfectionists needing to be the best, powerfully driven by a sense of lack that, they believe, will one day be filled by achievement. But they completely lack the understanding that lack of worth can never be filled by achievement. Only knowing you are enough will fill the void.
3) Through Observation
    The third way we learn to doubt our worth is through observing the behaviour of those around us, particularly our primary caregiver. My mum had low self-esteem when I was a child and I was there when she acted out her feelings about herself, so I learned to act the same way – not because she told me this was how I should behave, but simply because it was what I learned from her. In fact, she’d learned to doubt her own worth when she was a child.
    As an eight-year-old, my mum had watched her mum have a stroke that left her