Why do I feel unimportant?

“It strikes me to realize how much it has become my self-image that I feel unimportant.” If this resonates with you, then this self-inquiry exercise may be valuable to you.

(While the below inner dialogue certainly may not be fully about you, it is real. It isn’t altered for a more pleasurable experience, only for readability. If you find it useful, then do your own self-reflection.)

Self-Observation on why I feel unimportant

• This is a childhood trauma I have. I have had this self-image ever since I can remember.
• Sometime early in my life, I developed this image that I am not important. This has become a big part of how I relate to my life.
• I have all kinds of smaller and bigger issues with success and getting what I want. This is because I developed low self-esteem. Since I feel somewhat unimportant, I do not think that I deserve to be successful. So I resonate with situations where I play this out. 
• I do things like overexplain almost everything. I want to win other people’s acceptance this way because then I feel safe…
• I also let people do things that throw me even deeper into my self-doubt.
• Maybe I have made myself insignificant willingly. As a tool to justify why I can never really get what I truly want, at least this was my perception.
• When I do become important, then I feel shame.
• Now that I observe this image of myself, I understand why I feel contempt, resentment, and anger many times.  

Chain of thoughts coming when I am able to go deeper

• I feel abandoned and lonely. This is also a little bit of good news because I have a vague idea of what I am missing.
• This feels very true: I lost connection, and I developed the idea that I must not be important if this break happened.
• What is strange is that I understand that this is my problem – I mean that I think I am abandoned – but still, what I want is to feel important.
• I am juggling between wanting to feel important and wanting to restore connection. ‘Wanting to feel important’ to me has to do with getting what I want. ‘Feeling connected’ is a different thing. I know this is more important, but I cannot describe why.
• I connected these two things: Feeling neglected and needing to feel important. ‘My sense of self-worth is dependent on how much people love me…’
• Now I understand that my need to feel important is a symptom, and the root cause is my feeling of being abandoned.
• Right now, for me, the hard thing is to see that it is important. I got used to being alone so much.
• Actually, I see that this loneliness is helping me to connect with myself at a deep level. Things aren’t as bad! And anyway, I am not looking for some half-cooked connectedness, or some puffed-up pride.