Category Archives: Trauma

When Love Becomes Conditional

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How Conditions of Worth Shape the Self

Many people come into therapy believing that they have a problem with confidence or self-esteem. They may describe themselves as people-pleasers, perfectionists or chronic overthinkers. They may struggle to make decisions without reassurance, feel deeply affected by criticism or become anxious at the thought of disappointing someone. Often, they are highly capable people. They may be successful, responsible and caring. Yet beneath these qualities can lie a fragile and persistent question: Am I still good enough?

For some people, self-worth does not feel like something they naturally possess. It feels like something that must continually be earned. This experience can be understood through the work of the humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers and his concept of Conditions of Worth. These are the often-unconscious beliefs we develop about what we need to be, do or feel in order to be accepted, loved or valued. Over time, they can become so deeply embedded within us that we no longer recognise them as beliefs. They simply become part of who we think we are.

The Seeds of Conditional Worth

We are not born questioning whether our feelings are acceptable. A young child experiences the world directly. They feel anger, sadness, excitement, fear and joy. They have needs, preferences and impulses. Their experience simply arises. But as children grow, they begin to learn something important about relationships. Some parts of them appear to be welcomed, while others are not. A child may discover that happiness is encouraged, but sadness makes others uncomfortable. Being helpful may bring praise, while expressing anger brings criticism. Achievement may receive attention, while mistakes bring disappointment.

Sometimes these messages are spoken directly but more often, the message is communicated indirectly through approval, criticism, disappointment or emotional withdrawal. Gradually, the child begins to organise themselves around what appears to be acceptable. The unconscious question becomes less What am I feeling? and more What am I allowed to feel? This is where the seeds of conditional worth can begin.

When Inner Experience Conflicts with the Self-Concept

Carl Rogers believed that psychological difficulty can arise when there is a growing disparity between our actual inner experience and the self-concept we have developed. Our inner experience is continually changing, but alongside it we carry beliefs about who we think we should be. There is nothing wrong with having a sense of identity. The difficulty arises when our idea of who we should be becomes so rigid that certain experiences are no longer permitted to belong to us. A person may feel angry but believe that good people do not get angry. They may feel exhausted but believe that strong people do not struggle. They may want to leave a relationship but believe that loyalty means staying. Their actual experience and their learned self-concept begin to pull in different directions. Rogers described this disparity as incongruence.

When Feelings Become Unacceptable

When feelings conflict with our Conditions of Worth, we may learn to suppress them in order to protect ourselves from rejection. This is not simply a weakness or a failure to face reality. For a child, belonging and acceptance are deeply important. If expressing a particular feeling appears to threaten connection, the child may learn that the feeling itself is unsafe. The unconscious message becomes: If this part of me threatens acceptance, then this part of me must be hidden.

The feeling does not necessarily disappear. Instead, it may become disconnected from conscious awareness or emerge in another form. Anger may be turned inward and experienced as anxiety. Resentment may become guilt. Disappointment may become self-criticism. Needs may become shame. Over time, a person can become increasingly disconnected from their own internal experience. They may know what everyone else needs but struggle to recognise their own needs. They may constantly ask others for reassurance because they no longer fully trust their own judgement. Their sense of value becomes increasingly dependent upon external approval.

Why Conditional Self-Worth Feels So Fragile

Instead of asking What feels right or true for me? A person may increasingly ask What will other people think? Will they approve? Will they be disappointed?

This is one of the reasons self-esteem becomes so fragile. When our worth depends upon meeting particular conditions, we may feel secure when we are successful, helpful, productive or in control. But when we make a mistake, disappoint someone or fail to meet an expectation, our sense of worth can quickly collapse. The difference between ‘I made a mistake’ and ‘I am a failure’ becomes blurred. Someone else’s disappointment can feel like proof that we are a disappointing person. Being unable to cope can become evidence that we are weak. Conditional self-worth means that we are constantly required to maintain our value. There is little opportunity to simply be human.

How Conditions of Worth Continue into Adult Life

These early patterns can continue long into adulthood. The person who cannot say ‘no’ may have learned that being good means being accommodating. The person who constantly achieves may have learned that approval comes through performance. The person who takes responsibility for everyone else’s emotions may have learned that keeping others happy is necessary for emotional safety. Different patterns can emerge from different experiences, but beneath them may lie a similar fear: What will happen if I stop being who I believe I need to be?

The difficulty is that the person may continue living according to conditions that were formed long before they had the ability to question them. They may still be trying to be the good child.

Moving Towards Self-Acceptance and Self-Trust

The journey towards greater self-acceptance begins with becoming curious about these conditions. We can begin to notice the rules we unconsciously live by and ask where they came from. What did I learn I had to be in order to be accepted? What feelings did I learn were unacceptable? What happens inside me when I disappoint someone? Whose voice tells me who I should be?

Gradually, we can begin to move from looking outside ourselves for constant evaluation towards developing a greater trust in our own experience. This does not mean that we stop caring about others or become indifferent to their feelings.

Relationships will always involve consideration and compromise. But another person’s approval no longer has to be the sole authority on who we are. Perhaps one of the most important discoveries is that a feeling can be acknowledged without defining us. Feeling angry does not make us a bad person. Feeling tired does not make us weak. Having needs does not make us selfish. Making a mistake does not make us a failure.

We can learn to change without rejecting ourselves. We can disappoint someone without becoming a disappointment. And perhaps self-worth becomes less fragile when we stop asking if we have done enough to deserve acceptance. Instead, we learn how to remain accepting of ourselves even when life does not go perfectly. One of the deepest forms of self-worth begins when we no longer feel that we must continually earn our right to accept ourselves.

Collette O’Mahony, (Dip.Psy.C) September 2026

Collette O’Mahony is a Psychotherapeutic Counsellor in private practice, working with clients online. She writes regularly on mental health and emotional wellbeing, with a focus on self-discovery, developing self-awareness, and supporting individuals to take meaningful responsibility for their inner lives.

To book a free introduction session click here.

Moving from Control and Uncertainty to Self-Trust and Allowing

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There is something deeply reassuring about feeling in control. When we know what is going to happen, what other people are thinking, how a situation will unfold and what we need to do next, life can feel more manageable. Control can give us the impression that we are protecting ourselves from uncertainty. But life does not offer us that kind of certainty.

People change. Relationships change. Circumstances change. Plans don’t always work out. Sometimes, despite everything we do to prepare, something unexpected happens. And when we don’t trust ourselves to cope with uncertainty, we can become increasingly focused on trying to control it.

When Control Becomes a Way of Feeling Safe

Control does not always look like controlling other people. It can happen entirely within us. We may overthink conversations, repeatedly check our decisions, seek reassurance, imagine every possible outcome, plan excessively, avoid situations where we might feel uncertain or constantly monitor how other people are responding to us. Underneath these behaviours there may be some beliefs that say: “If I can just work this out, I will feel safe.” “If I make the right decision, nothing will go wrong.” ” I don’t trust myself to deal with what happens if things go wrong.”

This is where control and self-trust become connected. Sometimes what looks like a need to control the future is actually a lack of trust in our ability to meet it.

The Beliefs We Carry

Our relationship with uncertainty is often shaped by what we have learned about ourselves and the world around us. If we have experienced situations where things felt unpredictable, we may become particularly sensitive to change. If we have learned that making mistakes leads to criticism or rejection, we may become afraid of making the wrong decision. If we have repeatedly relied on other people to tell us what is right, we may gradually lose confidence in our own judgement.

These experiences can form beliefs that we have poor coping strategies, that we make bad decisions, or if something goes wrong, we won’t know what to do.

These beliefs then influence our behaviour. We seek reassurance. We check. We analyse. We postpone decisions. We look outside ourselves for answers and each time we do this, we may experience a moment of relief. But the relief can come at a cost. We have not necessarily learned that we can tolerate uncertainty. We may instead have learned that we needed to remove the uncertainty before we could feel okay.

The Paradox of Control

This creates an interesting paradox. The more we try to control uncertainty, the less able we may feel to tolerate it. Our mind begins to believe that uncertainty means danger. So, when something changes, we immediately feel that we need to do something about it. We need certainty, we need reassurance.

Yet some of life’s most important experiences cannot be resolved through thinking harder. Sometimes there is no immediate answer, that another person’s feelings are outside our control. At times we have to make a decision without knowing exactly how it will turn out. And sometimes life simply asks us to wait.

Moving Towards Allowing

Allowing is not the same as giving up. It does not mean becoming passive or accepting situations that are harmful to us. It does not mean that we stop making decisions or stop taking responsibility for our lives. Allowing means making space for what is happening without immediately trying to control, suppress or resolve it.

It makes room for uncertainty and being okay with it. We stop trying to offer immediate resolutions and listen to the feeling. Similarly, we can listen to other people without needing to offer them advice, or asking them to decide for us. We can let a situation unfold while remaining connected to ourself.

There is something powerful about that shift. Instead of thinking how can we make sure everything will be okay; we begin asking can I trust myself to respond if things aren’t okay.

Rebuilding the Locus of Evaluation

This is also where our locus of evaluation becomes important. When we don’t trust ourselves, we can become overly dependent on external evaluation. We look to other people to tell us whether our feelings are valid, whether our decisions are right or whether we should stay, leave, speak, wait or change direction. Other people’s perspectives can be valuable. We don’t have to become completely independent of everyone else’s opinions. But there is a difference between listening to someone and handing them the authority to decide for us.

Self-trust begins to develop when we can listen to another person and still hear ourself. We can consider other opinions without abandoning our own. It’s okay to make a decision that someone else doesn’t agree with. This is not about always getting things right. It is about becoming increasingly able to follow your inner locus of evaluation. (see article Locus of Evaluation)

Self-Trust Is Built Through Experience

We cannot simply think ourselves into self-trust, it develops through experience. We make a decision and learn to live with the uncertainty that follows. When something doesn’t work out, we adapt. If we make a mistake, we learn. If someone is disappointed with us, we discover that we can tolerate their disappointment. A relationship changes and we discover that we can grieve, adjust and continue. Slowly, something begins to change. We develop evidence that we can cope and perhaps this is one of the most important differences between confidence and self-trust. Confidence can say: “I know I can do this.” Self-trust can say: “I don’t know exactly what will happen, but I trust myself to respond.” The second is far more useful when life becomes unpredictable.

You Don’t Have to Know What Happens Next

There will always be things we cannot control. We cannot control another person’s choices or control every outcome. We cannot prevent every disappointment or know exactly how our lives will unfold. But we can develop a different relationship with uncertainty. Instead of treating it as something that must immediately be eliminated, we can begin to see it as something we can experience. We can notice what we are feeling. We can consider what matters to us. We make the best decision we can with the information that is available to us. Then we can allow life to respond.

Self-trust is not about believing that we will always make the right decision. Perhaps it is trusting that if we make the wrong decision, we can learn. If something changes, we can adapt. If something hurts, we can allow ourselves to feel it. If life takes us somewhere we didn’t expect, we can find our way again.

We don’t need certainty before we move forward. Sometimes, we need something deeper. The trust that whatever life brings, we can trust ourselves to meet it.

Collette O’Mahony (Dip.Psy.C) August 2026

Collette O’Mahony is a Psychotherapeutic Counsellor in private practice, working with clients online. She writes regularly on mental health and emotional wellbeing, with a focus on self-discovery, developing self-awareness, and supporting individuals to take meaningful responsibility for their inner lives.

To book a free introduction session click here.

Finding Your Inner Compass:

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From External to Internal Locus of Evaluation

In my counselling practice, one of the most transformative shifts I witness in clients is the move from an External Locus of Evaluation to an Internal Locus of Evaluation. When we live with an external locus, we are essentially living our lives according to a script written by others. When we begin to develop an internal locus, we start writing our own script. Understanding this transition is essential for anyone seeking deeper authenticity and emotional resilience.

The External Locus: Living for the Audience

Carl Rogers developed this concept to explain how people, through therapy or personal growth, shift from needing external validation to trusting their own internal judgment. An external locus of evaluation occurs when we outsource our self-worth and decision-making to the world around us. It is like trying to navigate a landscape while constantly looking at a mirror held by someone else to see if we are going the right way.

Self-worth fluctuates based on the feedback of others. Praise provides a temporary hit of stability, while criticism feels like a profound threat to your identity. Decisions are often paralysis-inducing, filtered through the lens of “What will they think?” rather than “What do I value?”

You may find yourself morphing your personality, opinions, or behaviours to fit the specific audience you are with, leading to a fragmented sense of self. Because you distrust your own judgment, you rely heavily on authority figures or peers to tell you if you are on the “right” path.

The Internal Locus: Trusting Your Own North Star

Moving toward an internal locus of evaluation is not about becoming cold or indifferent to others; it is about reclaiming your own sovereignty. It is the process of shifting your reference point from the outside world back to your own core values.

Your sense of “rightness” is no longer a public vote; it is an internal alignment. You ask, “Does this feel right for me?”

You can tolerate being misunderstood or disagreed with because your stability is no longer contingent on external consensus. Your identity remains relatively stable across different contexts. You aren’t playing a role; you are simply being yourself. You set limits based on your own needs and capacities, rather than shifting them to accommodate external expectations or fear of rejection.

Understanding the Roots: Why We Adopt an External Locus

Perhaps you are wondering: If an internal locus is more authentic and resilient, why do so many of us start with, and stay stuck in, an external one? The answer is rarely about a lack of character; it is almost always about survival and adaptation.

The Survival Mechanism: Why We Look Outward

From an evolutionary and developmental perspective, our early environment dictates how we learn to orient ourselves. We are social creatures; for a human child, connection with caregivers is not just a preference; it is a biological necessity for survival.

Adaptive Compliance: If you grew up in an environment where your needs were only met when you were “good,” “quiet,” or “compliant,” you learned early on that your worth was contingent on your performance. You had to monitor your caregivers’ expressions and expectations to ensure your own security.

The Cost of Authenticity: In many families, expressing a divergent opinion or asserting a personal boundary was met with withdrawal of affection, ridicule, or punishment. To stay “safe” within that system, you learned to suppress your internal signals and prioritize the expectations of others.

External Anchoring: When caregivers are emotionally inconsistent or preoccupied, a child may struggle to develop a stable sense of self. They turn to external feedback as a way to “check” if they are okay, essentially using others as an external barometer for their own internal safety.

Conditioning Through Life Experiences

Beyond childhood, our environments continue to reinforce an external locus. We are rarely rewarded for being “internally validated”; society, in fact, is often structured to keep us in that external loop.

Educational and Workplace Systems: Many structures are built on hierarchies that prioritize conformity over critical, independent thought. When grades, promotions, and bonuses are tied entirely to how well we adhere to someone else’s rubric, we are being trained to maintain an external focus.

The Echo Chamber of social media: Modern life presents us with a constant, quantified feedback loop. Likes, comments, and views provide an immediate, data-driven “external locus” that is highly addictive. It is easy to start believing that our value is quantifiable, leading to a profound erosion of internal trust.

Moving From Safety to Selfhood

It is important to approach this realisation with profound self-compassion. If you have an external locus, you do not lack individuality; you successfully adapted to a world that demanded your compliance. Your individuality strengthens when the scaffolding of conditioning is dismantled.

The struggle to develop an internal locus is not about fixing a broken part of yourself; it is about realising that the survival tools you needed in your formative years are no longer the tools that serve you as an adult. When you were younger, looking outward was the smartest way to survive. Now, looking inward is the bravest way to thrive.

How the Shift From External to Internal Locus Facilitates Change

This is not a binary switch, but a journey of reclamation. As you practice shifting your locus of evaluation, several profound changes occur:

Reduced Anxiety: You stop carrying the exhausting burden of managing other people’s perceptions.

Increased Agency: When you trust your own judgment, you feel capable of navigating challenges without needing constant external reassurance.

Self-Compassion: You stop the cycle of global self-condemnation. A mistake becomes a data point for learning, rather than evidence of your personal inadequacy.

Deeper Relationships: Paradoxically, by relying less on others for stability, you become more capable of forming genuine, interdependent connections, as you are relating from a place of wholeness rather than neediness.

If you are currently feeling as though you are living for an audience, I invite you to start small. Next time you face a choice, pause. Ask yourself: If I knew that no one would ever know, or if I knew that no one could judge my decision, what would I choose? That small act of inquiry is the first step toward your internal compass.

Collette O’Mahony (Dip.Psy.C) May 2026

Collette O’Mahony is a Psychotherapeutic Counsellor in private practice, working with clients online. She writes regularly on mental health and emotional wellbeing, with a focus on self-discovery, developing self-awareness, and supporting individuals to take meaningful responsibility for their inner lives.

To book a free introduction session click here.

The Role of Childhood in Forming Adult Identities

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Many adults who begin therapy describe a subtle but persistent feeling that they have spent much of their lives being the person others needed them to be, rather than the person they naturally are. On the outside they may appear capable, responsible and well adjusted, yet internally there can be a sense of disconnection from their own feelings, preferences or needs. In psychology this experience is sometimes described as living from a false self.

Despite how the phrase may sound, a false self is not about dishonesty or pretending. It is usually a protective adaptation that develops during childhood in response to the emotional environment around us. When we understand how this process unfolds, it becomes easier to see why so many thoughtful, capable adults still struggle with authenticity later in life.

The idea of the false self was introduced by the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, who observed that a child’s sense of identity develops through being seen, understood and responded to by caregivers. When a child’s feelings and spontaneous expressions are welcomed, they gradually develop what Winnicott called a true self; a sense of being real, emotionally alive and able to express themselves naturally in the world.

However, not all environments allow this process to unfold easily. Children are highly sensitive to the emotional climate around them. If certain feelings lead to tension, criticism, withdrawal or unpredictability, the child often learns, without consciously realising it, to adjust their behaviour in order to maintain connection and safety. They may become especially responsible, quiet their own needs, avoid conflict or focus on keeping others comfortable. These adjustments can work remarkably well in childhood, helping the child navigate difficult emotional situations. Over time, however, these adaptive patterns can become so familiar that they begin to replace the person’s natural responses.

In adult life this can lead to a feeling of performing rather than simply being. Some people notice that they automatically prioritise other people’s needs, struggle to identify what they themselves want, or feel uneasy expressing disagreement or vulnerability. Others describe a sense of exhaustion from constantly adapting to expectations. Interestingly, these patterns can become especially noticeable in environments that resemble earlier family dynamics. Returning to the family home, interacting with certain relatives or entering hierarchical situations can sometimes trigger a quick return to old ways of responding. When this happens, it does not mean that personal growth has been lost; it simply means that the mind recognises a familiar emotional landscape and briefly reactivates an old strategy for maintaining safety.

Seen in this light, the false self is not a flaw but a sign of the mind’s remarkable adaptability. At the time it developed, it was often the best available way to preserve connection, stability or emotional protection. For this reason, the aim of therapy is not to eliminate this part of the self but to understand it and gradually reduce the need to rely on it in every situation.

Reconnecting with a more authentic sense of self tends to be a gradual and compassionate process rather than a dramatic transformation. It often begins with simply noticing the moments when we automatically adapt or override our own feelings. From there, many people begin to rediscover their internal experience, such as preferences, emotions and bodily responses, which may have been set aside for many years. As these signals become clearer, it becomes possible to experiment with expressing them in small, safe ways within supportive relationships.

Over time, these experiences help the nervous system learn something important: that authenticity does not necessarily threaten connection. In fact, when it is expressed thoughtfully and safely, authenticity often deepens relationships rather than weakening them.

In this sense, reconnecting with the authentic self is rarely about becoming someone new. More often it involves rediscovering aspects of ourselves that were always present but had to remain quiet for a time. With patience, understanding and the right support, people can learn that it is possible to remain connected to others while also remaining connected to themselves.

Collette O’Mahony 07 March 2026

If anything in this article resonates and you wish to explore more: Contact me at info@colletteomahony.com – with your name, age, issue and goals for therapy. I offer a free introduction session of 15 minutes to assess if you want to proceed. One hour online sessions are £45. Psychotherapy

Emotional Dysregulation

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Making Sense of Reactions That Once Kept You Safe

When someone has lived with emotional abuse, their reactions later in life can feel confusing or even frightening to them. They may feel overwhelmed by emotions, struggle to calm themselves, or wonder why certain interactions affect them so deeply. Often, what they are experiencing is emotional dysregulation, not because they are failing to cope, but because their nervous system learned to survive in an unsafe emotional environment. Emotional abuse doesn’t always look dramatic from the outside. It can be subtle, ongoing, and hard to name. It might involve criticism, emotional withdrawal, unpredictability, or being made to feel small or ‘too much.’ Over time, these experiences shape how a person relates not only to others, but to their own inner world.

When emotions were not safe to express, or when love felt conditional, the nervous system adapted. It learned to stay alert, to watch for changes, to anticipate harm before it arrived. These adaptations were intelligent responses at the time. They helped the person remain connected, avoid rejection, or minimise emotional pain. The difficulty is that the nervous system doesn’t automatically update when circumstances change.

Body’s Response

Many people describe feeling as though their reactions are out of proportion to the present moment. A tone of voice, a silence, or a perceived shift in connection can bring a surge of fear, anger, or despair. Intellectually, they may know they are safe, yet emotionally they feel anything but. This isn’t a failure of insight or self-control. It’s the body responding to something that feels familiar, even if it no longer reflects the current reality.

When emotional abuse occurs within close relationships, particularly in childhood or long-term partnerships, attachment becomes intertwined with threat. The person they need for safety is also the person who causes pain. In these circumstances, the nervous system often chooses connection over protection. People learn to minimise their own needs, to take responsibility for others’ emotions, or to work harder to preserve closeness, even when it costs them.

Healing the Nervous System

Later in life, these patterns can reappear in adult relationships, especially during conflict, separation, or emotional distance. A sense of stability may feel fragile. Calm may feel temporary or unreliable. There can be a strong urge to repair, to fix, or to hold things together, alongside moments of emotional shutdown or exhaustion. Again, these are not signs of weakness. They are echoes of earlier survival strategies.

Healing emotional dysregulation is not about learning to control emotions or make them disappear. It’s about helping the nervous system experience safety in new ways. This is a gradual process. It involves becoming curious about bodily sensations, learning to recognise the early signs of overwhelm, and developing ways to settle the system rather than override it.

Just as importantly, healing often involves grief. Grief for the safety, consistency, or emotional calibration that was missing earlier in life. Allowing space for that grief can be deeply regulating in itself. Over time, as safety is built from the inside out, emotions become less frightening. They begin to move through rather than take over.

For those living with the effects of emotional abuse, it’s important to say this clearly: there is nothing inherently wrong with you. Your responses make sense when understood in the context of what you lived through. Healing is not about becoming someone different. It’s about slowly, compassionately helping your system learn that it no longer has to live in survival mode.

Change doesn’t come from self-criticism or pushing harder. It comes from understanding, from patience, and from relationships, including the therapeutic one, that offer steadiness where there was once uncertainty.

Collette O’Mahony (Dip.Psy.C) Psychotherapy

For a free 15 minute introduction, email me at: info@colletteomahony.com (include your name, email address and goals for therapy).