Our sense of identity and worth develops in the relationship between ourselves and our caregivers. As children, we learn about ourselves through their attention and responses to our needs. When others seem to accept and enjoy our emerging personality, we start experiencing ourselves as valuable.
No relationship is perfectly attuned. Frustration, misunderstandings, and conflict are inevitable and can support our development when followed by repair. What matters is a reliable sense that our feelings can be recognized, our needs do not endanger the relationship, and disconnection does not erase our sense of belonging.
Seeing Ourselves Through Others
Before we develop a sense of who we are independently, our caregivers’ responses function as a mirror. A child whose excitement is met with interest may internalize that their inner life matters. When curiosity, distress, or pride is met with indifference or ridicule, parts of the self can feel excessive, inadequate, or unwelcome.
Because we depend on our caregivers, it can feel safer to conclude that something is wrong with ourselves than to recognize the limitations of the people we need. Self-blame preserves hope and control. We might start believing that if I become easier, quieter, or more impressive, we may receive what we need. This adaptation protects attachment while organizing self-worth around deficiencies.
How Relationships Become an Inner Voice
Over time, relationships take up residence in our inner world. Critical or demanding responses may become a voice that continues judging us long after the relationship changes. Responsive relationships can become a source of comfort, helping us tolerate mistakes, disappointment, and uncertainty without experiencing them as verdicts on our worth.
A harsh inner critic may do more than judge. It can anticipate criticism, keep anger or need outside awareness, drive achievement, or discourage emotional risk. Because it once offered protection, reassurance may not dislodge it. Compliments can be dismissed as inaccurate, while a mistake feels like proof of a deeper defect.
Repeating Early Expectations
Early relationships influence what we notice, expect, and evoke from others. Someone who anticipates disappointment may conceal their needs, feel drawn toward unavailable people, or interpret ambiguity as rejection. These patterns are not deliberate, but their familiarity can make them feel inevitable, while their consequences confirm that one is unworthy of care.
Not every difficulty with self-esteem originates in childhood, and later relationships can strengthen or undermine our sense of worth. Still, early relationships provide a template through which experiences are interpreted. Understanding this history helps us see low self-esteem as more than insufficient confidence or an inaccurate thought to be corrected.
Toward a More Stable Sense of Worth
Self-esteem is often understood as the opinion we hold about ourselves. A sense of self-worth is less dependent on maintaining that opinion. It involves feeling recognizable to ourselves when we fail, disappoint someone, need help, or encounter aspects of ourselves that do not fit the identities through which we once secured approval.
Greater stability does not mean becoming independent of other people’s recognition; our sense of self continues to be shaped in relationships. It means that another person’s disappointment no longer determines our entire value. We can receive criticism without collapsing, value achievement without making it the condition of belonging, and seek closeness without abandoning parts of ourselves.
If childhood experiences still shape how you see yourself, individual therapy can help you understand these patterns, challenge self-critical beliefs, and develop a more stable sense of self-worth.
About the Author
Santiago Delboy, MBA, LCSW, is a psychotherapist, clinical supervisor, and founder of Fermata Psychotherapy, a psychodynamic therapy practice in Chicago. Fermata provides therapy for adults in-person and virtually. Santiago works with people navigating the aftermath of relational trauma and attachment issues, anxiety, depression, relationship and identity, self-esteem, men’s mental health, and cultural, professional, and life transitions. His approach is informed by psychoanalytic, relational, attachment, and trauma perspectives. He is Adjunct Clinical Faculty at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis, and has been a clinical consultant at the Institute for Clinical Social Work and Northwestern University.
