My worth = my ability to work/ be productive

[Dark.Green.Feathers]

I have this. Especially from a dissociative disorder perspective, if I’m not benefitting the system as a whole and maintaining a higher level of health than others are capable of, I do not deserve to exist. Which is very flawed thinking, but I can really believe it.
Becoming sick/more symptomatic in the trauma department/burnt out/more obviously disabled (often due to environmental and mental stressors) = failing, losing worth, losing purpose, taking up space, etc.

I guess maybe "traditional" work is viewed as "contributing to society" whereas working on dealing with trauma and disabilities is seen as "contributing to yourself" and hence is selfish…??

Weird how work in the industrial sense has hijacked our abilities to be self-compassionate and care for ourselves.
Surviving is work. You don’t (or shouldn’t…) expect people suffering from bodily sicknesses to be sitting at a desk, or up a ladder, because it takes most of their now-restricted energy to keep their body functioning and attempting to get better/not get worse. Same with if we’re struggling due to trauma. We cannot survive if we spend all resources on carrying out a job. Much like if it we had a disease/physical disability/chronic illness/injury, et cetera. (Which a lot of us comorbdily have, and are worsened by the stress of trauma). Really, the brain -the core of you- is just as important as, say, the heart. QOL dies when it’s health is neglected and/or being brutally attacked by xyz. And then everything else we’re supposed to/want to/have to spend energy on also gets dragged down with it.

We’re not born to be commercially valuable, as much as it gets steeped into us that we are.

 

[Ecdysis]

Thank you, yes I agree. And I do think that doing trauma therapy and truly processing our trauma and thereby not acting it out and passing it on to others is deeply valuable work that contributes to society's worth.