How Much Does Self-Worth Drive Your Decisions?
Self-worth isn’t a mood. It’s the architecture underneath almost every decision we make. For nearly three decades, Dr Maria-Elena Lukeides has worked with women carrying anxiety, exhaustion and a self-rejection. What makes her different from many in her field is how openly she reveals her own relationship with self-worth, one she describes as ongoing, evolving, and far from finished.
Dr Maria-Elena Lukeides is a Sydney-based clinical psychologist with 28 years of experience treating anxiety, trauma and depression, and the deeper patterns beneath them. Her approach is warm, direct, and grounded, and she takes the whole person seriously, not just the symptoms, but the body, the health, the life. Dr Lukeides believes healing isn’t just psychological. It’s physical, relational, and deeply personal. She has just finished a book on self-worth.
I reached out to Maria-Elena to understand more about the relationship between our self-worth and the decisions we make.
In this episode, I talk with Dr Lukeides to examine the difference between self-esteem and self-worth, the physiological and psychological roots of anxiety, and the internal battle for control that shapes so many of the choices women make; in relationships, in the mirror, and in the relentless pursuit of enough. Dr Lukeides has one consistent belief: understanding changes everything.
➡️You’ll Hear :
- The difference between self-worth and self-esteem.
- How self-rejection shapes the decisions we make, from the partners we choose to the clothes that we wear.
- The physiological and psychological roots of anxiety, exhaustion and low mood.
- Why control sits at the centre of the war within.
Key Takeaways:
- Self-worth is not a fixed trait. It’s an evolving relationship you build with yourself for life.
- Self-esteem is conditional, built on achievement, appearance and comparison. Self-worth is innate.
- Anxiety and exhaustion are rarely the problem itself. Clinically, they’re usually the symptom of something deeper.
- Letting go of control isn’t the same as not caring. It’s the difference between striving from fear and choosing from worth.
Dr Lukeides said:
“My relationship with my self-worth is ongoing and evolving. It will be for the rest of my life.”
“I’ve achieved so much more since I stopped caring about achieving, because I’ve got nothing to lose.”
Recommended Reading:
Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach
📖 Read the full transcript of this conversation here.
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
DI GILLETT – HOST (00:00)
You need to love yourself as if your life depends upon it. Because it does. Now This is a quote from Dr Maria-Elena Lukeides and it is at the core of what this episode’s going to be about today.
I’m Di Gillett and welcome to the Power Of Women Podcast. The place where women supporting women isn’t just a sentiment. It is the decision we make every single day.
Maria-Elena will help us better understand our self-worth, our need for control, and the societal and other influences that underpin the choices that we make. And I’ve reached out to her today because there are a number of topical points that keep showing up in the community that I’m really curious about and I trust you are too. Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides thank you for joining me on the podcast.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (01:20)
Di it is such an honor and a pleasure to be on this podcast and a real gift to to share maybe some of my insights, but also some of my concerns about women, our burnout, you know, and hopefully we have a really invigorating kind of fun discussion. Doesn’t have to be too serious, but also like that really touches at the heart of you know some of the things that, you know, I think women
get to a certain age and we have, you know, just this place within us that that feels unheard, unseen, and a little thirst that has never really been quenched. And I think there’s so much around mental health and well-being. But I think we need to really kind of dive in and and really kind of explore what it means to to heal that space and to be able to feel fulfilled from that inside out.
DI GILLETT – HOST (02:16)
I already know we’ve got the right person in front of us. What a what a what a privilege. So thank you so very much. Could could I start with and and I think it helps our our listeners to to connect a little more deeply too.
Touching on a little bit about about you and and your personal experiences because I know you’ve been renowned for revealing a little more about yourself than perhaps other clinicians. And and And tapping tapping into that, Maria-Elena, could could you share with us what your relationship is with your own self self-worth? Because I think that’s a great spot to start.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (03:03)
I’ll start by saying my relationship, my self-worth is ongoing and evolving. And and I and it will be for the rest of my life. A bit about myself. So the thing that I find most important and why self-revelation for me i i isn’t just about talking about myself or it’s not a gimmick per se. I think when I’m in the room with someone and and they’re struggling and
I’m a woman that struggles as well. That sense of meeting as two humans that are in the same mud together. And that doesn’t mean that I don’t have some skills or some perspectives. Like we all can offer, you know, even if we’re in the same battle as our friends, from a bit outside, there are certain perspectives that
reveal certain insights that can be helpful. And obviously my studies and and you know, almost three decades of my work hopefully have made me a l or able to offer something a little bit more than just a a friendly perspective shift. But for me it was really important that no one came to me and felt that they were speaking to someone who acted as if they were above them.
Or acted or pretended or didn’t share with them that same common humanity of sometimes overwhelm, sometimes distress. you know, I think in my book I I talk a lot about, you know, in terms of trying to talk about how mindfulness and mindfulness practices and taking care of your inner world can be helpful in releasing patterns, but that
you know, I often will shout at my daughter when we’re running late and you know and
DI GILLETT – HOST (05:03)
You’re human.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (05:04)
then, you know, have that same feeling of feeling like I’m drowning in in this, you know, hole of guilt and and self criticism in a way where I I I know that what I’m doing isn’t really helpful and potentially is is harmful and and difficult for my child and I don’t want to be that parent. And so
Being able to reveal things about myself is always about allowing this other person to know that what they’re experiencing isn’t because that they are different or they’re failing or they’re broken in some way or they’ve missed something or they’re, you know, don’t have the capacity for things. It’s about creating that common human ground that this life is tricky and bloody hard.
And a lot of us, you know, find that really comfort when we hear something, we’re like, my God, I have that same thing, or that thought comes up for me as well. my God, I’m not the only person. Because we carry these difficulties that, you know, as as these inner shameful parts that we’re scared will be revealed. And that I think creates a whole level of suffering.
That is unnecessary and I want to liberate people from. So, you know, when I share, I share from that perspective of, you know, we’re all in this together. No one’s above or beyond. And and the humility, like that sense, that word, it it comes obviously from the Latin hum, you know, to to be with the ground, the the humus, like the the ground.
But what it means is that we’re all people whose feet get dirty. No one’s got clean feet here.
DI GILLETT – HOST (07:00)
It I don’t know whether you watch it and I and I I digress, but it reminds me a bit of one of my favorite Apple T V series, Shrinking. Have you have you watched that? I love that. You know, it’s the raw humility of a group of psychologists going through exactly what you’re talking about. The the everyday traumas and and trials and anxieties that that we face and and and we’re all trying to work it out.
And I it just takes me to that to that show. I I I have a rather soft spot for it.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (07:35)
Fantastic
and and I I you know I really recommend anyone watch it. It’s it’s a hoot but it’s also warming and it’s touching and it’s able to both balance, you know, irreverence as well as kind of tackling really deeply painful scenarios and difficulties on a on a human journey.
DI GILLETT – HOST (07:55)
Could I ask with the benefit of of hindsight, your relationship with your own self worth ten years ago by contrast to today? What’s What’s changed?
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (08:09)
Not much, but it’s an ever improving relationship. So I would say my self-worth was very limited. It was, you know, impoverished
DI GILLETT – HOST (08:20)
Bished.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (08:21)
not heavily invested in, I guess. up until so my I guess my personal journey is one in which I think like many of us, you know, we grow up and, you know, we’re confronted with schooling and, you know,
socializing and you know, dating and I always say I was very, very lucky to have been gifted with an above average IQ. It’s definitely lowered as I’ve aged significantly.
DI GILLETT – HOST (08:57)
How you measure that?
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (08:58)
remember being so cl like I really remember being able to absorb a lot of information. I I would have like five books out of I mean I taught myself to read at two and a half years of age from do you remember those cassette books that we used to have? Like it was the the original portable, right? And I often joked that Angela Lansbury taught me how to read ’cause she was the narrator for the Cinderella one. And I remember being obsessed with this book and I I was around, you know, one and a half and two years old when when
When I got gifted this book. And within three months I learnt to read because it would make a ding, it would have this little like bell.
DI GILLETT – HOST (09:37)
yes, yeah.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (09:38)
And
because of that, I learned how to track the words. Now both my parents are Greek immigrants, so they didn’t know how to read English. And so I I come in from two years of age, and then I think my appetite for reading was voracious up until, you know, probably still now, but it was yeah, I I kind of remember absorbing a lot of information, being able to write a lot, do multiple fields of study. Like, you know, I wasn’t just doing school, I would then do
DI GILLETT – HOST (10:05)
Yeah, but keep in mind you’ve got a little bit more on your plate now. So your your bandwidth to s to dedicate it to you is a little different, isn’t it?
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (10:14)
You are definitely right and and I’m probably being a little bit harsh on myself, but I I d I d I think so I would say that clearly I had a keen intellect. So I was one of these kids that was able to thrive at school very early in terms of scholastic achievement. But I always struggled with friends, I always struggled my social relationships, I
you know, struggled with my physical appearance. I didn’t feel very confident in my attractiveness, in my social attractiveness. I had a pretty difficult home life. It was quite stressful. There was a you know, my parents’ relationship wasn’t very harmonious. It was a house full of a lot of conflict, a a lot of sadness and distress and high stress, economic stress. And I also then struggled socially. I struggled with parents who
His predominant kind of focus in parenting was was more the practical needs and definitely not the emotional. And that’s just a factor of their social cultural upbringing themselves and and education. But I think, you know, that sense of what they believed was really important was us just learning to have discipline, being hard workers and and studying and getting a good education for them.
And so there wasn’t a lot of what we would call pastoral kind of care in the home. So I carried quite a lot when I was younger, and I I was someone who really struggled with intense anxiety. I mean, I think I remember having insomnia from at least 14 all the way to 20, and would actually get anxious as night approached because I knew that the the night would be endless. So with a lot of that, I had an why I say I was quite.
Lucky to be able to have this vehicle of success in front of me was because I anchored a lot of my worth in achieving and winning. So being first all the time was really important. You know, coming first, being first, I think it created this kind of buffer of self-esteem that I felt like, well, if I could just be a really high achiever.
then whatever I lacked in social skill, personality or physical attractiveness would be kind of made up. It was almost like there are these scales in front of us. And I’m like, okay, well maybe I’m not great on these things. So if I just put a lot of my eggs in my basket with this, maybe that will be enough to kind of, you know, make me, you know, make me likable, make me feel more worthy.
DI GILLETT – HOST (12:51)
You
made choices. You you made considered choices to improve your circumstances. As as a as a young child.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (12:59)
And and and it worked. I was lucky enough that I had that vehicle and that that you know that that strategy ahead of me.
DI GILLETT – HOST (13:07)
Hm, not so sure it’s luck.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (13:10)
I definitely made choices. It I definitely worked hard and I always worked hard on myself as well. I wanted happiness. I was very interested in spirituality. I wanted to know what the big picture was all about. I mean like I’m a clinical psychologist. I was interested in the brain, in the heart, like what makes humans humans, what what you know flourishing is all about, you know, why do some of us have these problems? You know, why do we suffer? And so for me there was this keen kind of personal experience.
But also watching the suffering of my parents in many ways and and how difficult their lives were and then how difficult a lot of lives are around us in that in our community. Mm. And so I was very drawn to to that that space of suffering. And it wasn’t until my first big heartbreak where I got a
fell in love with a young boy that was very good looking. And of course that felt very dangerous dangerous. He was just now it’s like you know those memes on, you know, Instagram where it’s just your girlfriend’s like bringing in her new boyfriend. It’s just a red flag. I mean that’s that’s who
DI GILLETT – HOST (14:20)
Yeah,
yeah, yeah. Good good looking is fraught with chora.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (14:25)
Right, especially for someone who never felt physically attractive enough, right? You know, so you’re just like, Well, if he likes me, I must be in, this is it, finally validation. And it was I I mean, and and I got rejected hard, I got cheated on, I got rejected. And so all of this kind of I’m not good enough came up for me i in a wild way, at around twenty four, twenty five. And it was
Palpably so distressing for me. It wasn’t the heartbreak, it wasn’t him per se. It was this unworthiness that deep within me I I had hidden from, I think, or had dressed up, you know, like it was almost like I, you know, put on the feathers and put on the drag makeup
DI GILLETT – HOST (15:14)
I can so relate to this.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (15:16)
and her out, presenting her to the world. Look at this person. And wow, that just
made me feel naked, you know, like that I had been stripped naked and and there I was feeling super unworthy. And a psychologist I was working with, a colleague of mine, said, here’s a book. I really like it. It’s called Radical Acceptance. And up until that time, I I mean, had been doing, you know, meditation and yoga. And I thought, okay, this is, you know, by a writer who’s both a clinical psychologist and a
Meditator and that book changed my life. Acceptance. Radical Acceptance by Tara Brack, V R.
DI GILLETT – HOST (16:02)
Okay.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (16:03)
And I mean, sh she’s still working to this day and does, I think, almost weekly live podcasts and talks. But this book wasn’t just a meditation book, which is, you know, here’s how to breathe, or here’s how you can do to relax, or here are some, you know, just talking about
ways in which we can escape, you know, the the rabbit hole of the mind. She fundamentally changed how I approached mindfulness and also then how I approached working with my clients and my patients.
DI GILLETT – HOST (16:35)
Could you share a couple of the key points that that underpin that?
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (16:39)
So what she shifted was that at the core of our suffering isn’t necessarily just that we have this monkey mind that keeps talking or the stresses that are in our lives. It’s that these things impact how worthy or unworthy we feel. That they impact and kind of tug on deep core wounds from wherever and we all have them.
DI GILLETT – HOST (17:02)
And this can happen at any point in our journey.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (17:05)
Any point and radical acceptance was about starting to look at the self not as something that needed to be shaped and molded into this palatable thing, but something that at the core of us, in order to feel loved, genuine love, we have to be okay with who we are as we are.
DI GILLETT – HOST (17:24)
Yeah.
‘Cause we have to accept ourselves before anybody else.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (17:27)
And accept ourselves in a way where we’ve real love, not just as a token gesture. ‘Cause I think we talk about self acceptance, but the near enemy of self acceptance is resignation.
DI GILLETT – HOST (17:39)
Is self loathing on the same continuum?
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (17:42)
Self-loving might be the actual enemy, the near enemy. In Buddhism, we have a concept which is called near enemies, right? Looks like, feels like, tastes like
DI GILLETT – HOST (17:51)
Mm.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (17:52)
and is it? And so we work on this sense of, I well, I I guess I just will have to accept that this is who I am and that’s it. If there’s a reason there’s an anger there, it’s not actual acceptance, it’s it’s a giving up.
DI GILLETT – HOST (18:06)
It’s a resignation, isn’t it? Yeah.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (18:09)
So there’s a qualitatively different way that that acceptance was more than just letting go of trying to change because potentially you might fear that it’s unchangeable or it’s too hard or you just give up on that. It’s acceptance, it’s it’s an embracing. It’s actually it’s a welcome, it’s it’s an embrace, it’s I’ll still love you, I still love you.
DI GILLETT – HOST (18:34)
And
only us can can work through the journey to land at that point. That’s that’s not that’s a a deeply embedded personal point of acceptance.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (18:46)
Absolutely nailed, Di because if you think about it, even if someone else loves me, the only reason I want that love is so that then I can tell myself that maybe that’s true too. But ultimately, the person that I really want to feel good about me is me. It’s that interrelationship. Because when I truly love myself and that sense of worthiness no longer
is up for question within me. It’s not even something that can doubt. It becomes silly to doubt it. Then even when someone rejects me, it’s hurtful and painful. But it no longer touches that worthiness. It is it’s two different things.
DI GILLETT – HOST (19:31)
So do those rejections along the way add value to finally landing at that point of acceptance or can they be detrimental rather than positive?
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (19:44)
Depends you work it. Yeah, it depends how you approached. Definitely it was detrimental at first. And then I found this book and it was, you know, it was really altering of that relationship. And the big difference, and I and I want to make this point because this is what I see very commonly, is that we conflate worthiness with self esteem.
DI GILLETT – HOST (20:03)
Yeah. Well that’s and that’s that’s really interesting ’cause that was going to be one of my one of my questions, Maria-Elena was th you know, the difference between self worth and self hatred. It’s that same it’s not this or that. Is or is it?
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (20:20)
No, I mean self hatred is an active despising of a part of the self. But what I would say is that I I don’t know if anyone really has self hatred. What I think is that we have cut off parts. So there’s a part of me that is really angry at another part of me.
for not being different or better or or adjacent because the angry part of me loves me so much that it wants me to have everything that I want, meaning love, worthiness, whatever. So there’s that angry part then is that part that actually has that sense of worthy. Because I said, well, why do you
DI GILLETT – HOST (21:08)
‘Cause that’s the fuel. That can be fuel, positive fuel.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (21:11)
So once you can so when you can work with that in a way where it’s like, well, why do I hate myself? Well, I hate myself because I’m bad at this, I’m bad at that, I hate this, I hate this about myself, I’m unlovable, you know, I’m I’m sh I’m shameful or I’m a failure or I’m dumb or whatever it is. And like, well, why is that a problem? Well, because I want to have the things that I would have like, you know, so it’d be about seeing that these deficits
which are more related to self-esteem, are causing the true self to miss out on the things that the true self believes they deserve. And if you believe you deserve it, then somewhere we know we are worthy. That’s it. And so if psychologists or therapists go too quickly to try and move to that eradicating that self-hatred, we’re missing the very entry or the doorway.
DI GILLETT – HOST (22:08)
‘Cause you need to sit with it.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (22:10)
Yes. That
part of you that is actually angry, unnecessary. I mean, we don’t have to keep, you know, hating ourselves, but it’s like, where is that part coming from? It’s coming from another part that knows that we are worthy, that we deserve love, we deserve fulfillment, we deserve to be safe, we deserve to be loved. If I believe I deserve that, then there is an innate belief in my worthiness.
And where we suffer is that we don’t have faith in the external world to recognize that worthiness in us. And so we build esteem stuff. So this is where the self-esteem comes in, because the esteem stuff is all the stuff that I was doing. Achievement, making sure I dressed well, making sure I, you know, performed, you know, so that the feathers, does that make sense? The costume.
I’d wear it and so that self esteem is criteria that we use or that we believe other people will identify as worthy for us. So self esteem is
DI GILLETT – HOST (23:20)
But you might not be feeling any of those things that you’re presenting.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (23:25)
And self esteem is about a projection of how I believe others see me, even though it’s an internalised measure.
DI GILLETT – HOST (23:32)
Sounds like Instagram just got completely exposed.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (23:35)
So self-esteem is about how highly do I esteem myself on certain variables and that always is going to be in comparison. I can’t esteem myself. I can’t rate myself unless there is a rating. To be a rating, there needs to be a differentiator. That means someone has to be above, someone needs to be below. So this is where that innate sense of looking out into the world and very quickly rating ourselves, ranking ourselves. Where am I? How good?
Who’s I’m in the room and I’m looking, okay, where do I fit in the scheme?
DI GILLETT – HOST (24:09)
And you see girls doing that against each other so so often and and and one’s the leader of the pack and the others will be being held back because they’re competing e against something that they may never achieve. Yeah.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (24:23)
And so there is a sense that I think some of this comparative nature is evolutionarily based. I don’t think we can overcome it, but we can stop buying into it as a factual reality of what leads to fulfilment, happiness and safeness.
DI GILLETT – HOST (24:41)
I think what is more pervasive though today is the whatever the imagery is, whether it’s it’s visual or success or the like, the what’s been held up is so much more prevalent in it in it coming at us today for all the obvious obvious reasons, than it than it was before. So this
sense of anxiety and this feeling of of compromising our self worth has got a whole lot more enemies coming at us or a whole lot more inputs coming at us at such a such a rate that it’s no wonder self esteem is taking a battering amongst Yeah. Not just younger people, but peop people in general. All of us.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (25:34)
I mean you’re absolutely that’s absolutely I mean that’s that’s statistically proven, right? Like the the more imagery and it’s not you’re right, it’s not just about like when I was growing up a lot of the visual imagery was two dimensional, right? It was it was only i in terms of what they were wearing, maybe you know, what they looked like. Now we have insights into how they relate with their partners and does that make sense how like so it’s also now
brought into direct comparison things that we couldn’t see from a magazine two-dimensional of like three-dimensional, but you know, like the the image. Yes. Now where, you know, people are posting little snippets of their conversations. They’re taking videos of them relating with their kids or packing lunch boxes or, you know, doing things with work. So suddenly we’re exposed to almost all aspects. None nothing’s private.
And so now we have comparisons on so many more variables in our lives.
DI GILLETT – HOST (26:36)
Which may or may not be authentically
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (26:39)
True. They may be authentically true in the moment, but it’s a sliver of someone’s entirety. Right, you know, if you see me on a Monday morning at eight AM, I’m not s yelling at my daughter and you’re like, Whoa, what a great mum and
DI GILLETT – HOST (26:50)
It reminds me of when my when my mother who could be quite quite strident who’d be yelling at you and then the phone would ring and she’d say hello Margot speaking and you’re like How did you just do that?
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (27:06)
Show yourself woman.
DI GILLETT – HOST (27:08)
Exactly. You just ripped my head off two seconds ago and and the next thing you’ve got your phone voice on and it was so hard to reconcile.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (27:19)
You
know, and the answer to well, who’s the real Margaret, it’s both of them. Both of them. And yet, you know, the public facing might be, hello Margaret speaking. And and the like, you know, so the experience we’re not given again, even though we have so much saturation, we’re we’re still not often given that that real glimpse. And so we’re comparing ourselves on things that you know are are unfair, but it’s that comparison, right? And
And that constant sense of the and somehow the benchmark’s always up here. It’s not in the common realm, like it’s not that average. So that’s that’s really hard. And and the reason why self-worth gets a battering, because self-esteem is all about this ranking, it’s achievement-based, it’s it’s criteria-based. You know, you’re you’re in or you’re out of a category. Whereas worthiness is not an in or an out criteria.
DI GILLETT – HOST (28:16)
Yeah.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (28:17)
This is the way I want like if anyone takes this away, it’s why sometimes I say self-esteem is the enemy of worthiness, whether it’s good or bad. Because self-esteem is is literally how do I score on a number of variables? Like I go to the doctor and you know I get eighty tests done and there’s there’s an answer for each one of those tests. You’re here, you’re here, you’re here, you’re here, you’re here, you’re here. But aliveness
like my worthiness, my potential for health.
DI GILLETT – HOST (28:48)
It’s not a direct scorable part of our world.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (28:52)
You might say no test can pick up that.
DI GILLETT – HOST (28:54)
And then it’s subjective. It’s not it’s not objective.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (28:57)
Or, you know, I say like worthiness for me when I when I when that clicked for me, that my worthiness isn’t the same thing as self-esteem. Actually that worthiness, that entitlement to safeness, that entitlement to love, that entitlement to friendship, to to to to to to positive experiences.
and when when I say safeness I mean everything we need to be safe. I don’t just mean physical safe, I mean financial safety, the the ability to thrive, to be respected, to have my human rights. That that these things are not conditional upon me meeting certain social cultural criteria, which really, you know, are only and and every culture has a different set of criteria to have of and
DI GILLETT – HOST (29:44)
Cool.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (29:44)
and or and historical time points. So does worthiness change then according to, you know, like
who’s worthy in ancient Egypt is different to who’s worthy now. I mean worthiness should be a constant construct.
DI GILLETT – HOST (29:57)
If I tie worthiness to self esteem in in my own situation, I would I would say I didn’t really land there until my early forties. But events going on around us, be it political, social, whatever, start to chip at that, that can get dinted at at any point in time.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (30:24)
Absolutely. Especially because it’s coupled with self-esteem. So someone who feels worthy because they’re I’m pretty great in the world, things are going well, I’ve got good friends, I’ve got a partner, or I or I have, you know, I feel confident in my body or my look, I don’t have issues with that. So their esteem is high. It only takes one redundancy.
DI GILLETT – HOST (30:46)
Yeah. And it all comes crashing down.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (30:48)
One divorce. It only takes
And and this is what I kind of try and preach. You know, I’m almost like a preacher. I’m so passionate about this. You’re gonna hear me be super passionate. Because all of this self-esteem stuff, work on it if you want, you know, or not. But it’s also because it’s based on conditions, and most of our conditions, no matter how hard we try.
DI GILLETT – HOST (31:14)
They can change at any point in time.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (31:17)
AI, I mean I say this all the time. You know, people we we’re for for many centuries intelligence has been highly prized, does that make sense? And there has been a sense that well, you know, intelligence and and working hard, if you’re smarter, you deserve to have more than other people. That is it’s kind of like we’ve all accepted that. Well, you know, it’s unfair, but you know,
DI GILLETT – HOST (31:40)
Now that’s up for grabs.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (31:42)
or more attractive, then, you know, life’s gonna be easier for you and that’s just how the dice rolls. And we’re about to see that maybe AI is going to come and be like, well, no one’s gonna be like, no matter how smart you are, you’re probably not gonna have the same memory retention as Google. You’re not gonna be able to go, okay, do you remember what’s what’s that thing for this thing, right? Now Google already is smarter than most of us in terms of just I’m not talking about true intelligence, but just that ability to hold
DI GILLETT – HOST (32:10)
Recall.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (32:11)
We don’t need that anymore. So that’s not necessarily we don’t that’s not impressive anymore. So if we are also now, you know, going to base all of our sense of worthiness and we feel good about ourselves because we’re like, look how like, you know, maybe not egotistically, look how much I’ve achieved, but you’re like going, I’m pretty smart, I earn a good living, you know, I’ve done a lot in my life, you know, I must be pretty good, I’ve got a good family, whatever. And then suddenly now
Maybe your industry collapses.
DI GILLETT – HOST (32:42)
There’s so many industries that will be feeling like that now. I mean, I think probably one of the obvious ones are are advertising and and media and and all of those creative spaces because it’s all been all been done differently. And and prized roles that were on pedestals in the past, a bit like in the day, you know, when my my
p my grandparents in in the day the the prize role might have been the bank manager. Well well these days that’s probably almost seen as a pariah or non existent. So, you know, the the world the world is changing constantly, but I think I think you’re right. If if intelligence was linked to and and knowledge was linked to self esteem
That’s got the biggest bit of competition coming at it right now than we’ve we’ve ever had in any point in our history. Ever.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (33:42)
And so you’re going to be left with, well, what makes me good enough now? What if like what use am I? And to me, I’m devastated when I hear that. And I’m like, having a higher self
DI GILLETT – HOST (33:52)
Yeah, that’s a depressing
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (33:54)
should never have been what you anchor your worthiness in. How about your humanity? How about who you are as a human being? How about how you relate to others? But the problem is that we’ve tied worthiness and self esteem into this competitive edge without knowing it.
Because really what we’re saying is if I’m not better than other people at stuff, how am I good?
DI GILLETT – HOST (34:18)
I keep seeing either in my friendship group or broader circles and and then more in in discussions with with people where you know and and you touched on it about your relationships early on, you know, we we who we choose for our partner and and maybe you know we’re attracted to the poor choices, not the not the right choices.
And then down to what we choose to wear, choosing to go and opt for a cosmetic procedure, all of these things trying to fuel our self worth. Is that the internal battle trying to elevate our position?
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (35:04)
If it’s coming from a place of fear that unless I’m competitive in this like in the market, whether it’s does that make sense with my looks or you know, anything else, if I if I’m not an eight, if I’m not a nine, like so again, I want us to start thinking about the difference between knowing that you’re worth, which is just that because people inherently have value as they are, with the uniqueness that that they have, compared to this sense that
And I’m I have value and worthiness only because I reach this criteria. And if that goes lower, then I lose what I have, because what I have is based on this conditional that I’m in this box eight plus, seven plus, you know, and if I go four to six, then I’ll lose what I have. I’ll lose this thing. Or it’s there’s insecurity and so this fear.
that is constantly chasing us of, you know, it’s almost like the makeup will come off, the feathers, I’ll lose my feathers, you know, I’ll I’ll lose the Emperor’s new clothes and everyone’s gonna see me naked. And I think it’s really important for us as women to feel able to, you know, do whatever we want with, you know, to upkeep, to look good, to to feel ourselves in the way that we like.
That’s a passion project. It’s like, you know, going to your home and updating it and taking pride in how it looks is very different to patching things that you’re scared that if I don’t fix this, it’s gonna fall apart. Where, you know, it’s been driven by fear. And that fear it means that temporarily you’re going to get the face done or you’ll get a few things, you’ll feel confident again, but only for six to nine month nine nine months.
Yeah.
Back again and women waste an entire lifetime. Men as well, like this is ubiquitous, but women especially, because I think social culturally so much of our value is not about innate stuff.
DI GILLETT – HOST (37:19)
It’s all this superficial cosmetic stuff in whatever in whatever that cosmetic package might be.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (37:25)
Right. And so so much of our sense of how we’re seen by the external world is based on whether or not we’re meeting that criteria of eight plus. So f and I use the word eight, you know, like that number arbitrarily. So that’s a lifetime where you’re constantly on a treadmill and you’re only safe for very short periods of time, you know, like you lose the weight maybe, you get fit, you like how you’re looking.
And then one week of bed rest because you were sick, or a busy period at work, or you go on holidays and you click and it slips. And so it slips. So that fee comes again. And so we spend a whole lifetime in this cycle of constantly chasing, constantly scared, with very brief intermittent episodes of maybe feeling good. That’s such a that’s that’s such a difficult experience. The cumulative effect of that.
DI GILLETT – HOST (38:20)
I’m talking with clinical psychologist Dr. Maria-Elena Lukeides and coming up we’re going to delve further into the root cause of what impacts our feelings, causes anxiety and that general feeling of being flat.
If you’re loving the Power of Women podcast, be sure to jump onto our YouTube channel and hit that subscribe button to ensure you never miss an episode. Maria-Elena, so often if if we go to the doctor and and we’re feeling anxious, we’ve got low mood and exhaustion, there’s a tablet for that.
there’s a something to shift our our our mood that comes in a in a bottle. But it’s really the symptom of something much broader than that, is it not? What what would be the root cause of of some of this and and should we be treating it with a tablet?
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (39:31)
That’s it’s a million dollar question.
DI GILLETT – HOST (39:35)
Yeah, it’s a million multi billion dollar industry question, I think.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (39:39)
Yes.
And it’s not an easy answer. The road to hell is paved with many, many paths. And what I mean is that anxiety, you know, low mood, depression, there’s multiple pathways to that. And I I really want to kind of say that for many women, some of it is physiological and we’re often gaslit.
by doctors and not on purpose, but there is a sense of, well, it’s just your mood, maybe you’re stressed, is is work hard, are you tired? And you know, maybe sometimes the right type of tests or, you know, especially in menopause, for example, so many women should have been prescribed HRT, for example, now that we know that it is safe enough for some women. For some women it it won’t be, but it’s peri menopausal symptoms and they they have been dismissed ’cause maybe someone’s
not finished their period. They’re still in that 10 year. So anywhere from, you know, 35 to to 50 where some of these symptoms can show up. And they authentically can create panic symptoms because the because so we have a top-down and bottom-up model of s of of mental health. Top-down meaning it’s the way that I’m thinking, it’s, you know, maybe some beliefs,
DI GILLETT – HOST (40:59)
Leave.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (41:01)
it’s the pressure, it’s it’s
it’s psych psychological from the perspective that it is based on experiences that I’m having in the world. But there’s also what we call bottom up. And that’s that this is we’re all integrated. So it’s a holistic system. So sometimes there are genuine physiological causes for our mental health concerns that might be overlooked and and and maybe you’re having a a real understanding of your clinical picture, you know, sleep.
you know, digestion, absorption of macro and micronutrients, w we know hormones have a huge effect. We know our thyroid affects us iron. There’s a whole range. So that’s one thing that I think we need to note because there’s so many women that have come to me and and really we’ve discovered down the track that there’s a physiological issue that really needs to be taken care of. But let’s look at the more psychological kind of nature of anxiety of
you know, worry and then depression a little bit different. So fear and anxiety, anxiety is always our attempts to try and find a way to not experience something that we don’t want to experience. That is the simplest way I can define it because that then encompasses a whole all of the spectrum of things that might come up. So anxiety occurs as a hormone to help us
Stay focused on something that might lead to something that we don’t want to happen.
DI GILLETT – HOST (42:36)
Fight or flight?
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (42:38)
It will include fight, flight, freeze. Yep. Right.
DI GILLETT – HOST (42:43)
Food?
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (42:45)
And mating the five Fs. So we we like there are many. So it’s not just fight or flight, it’s freeze, which is I’m just stuck, I can’t move, right? It’s also feed. Sometimes it’s this overwhelming hunger, like so you’re and again that makes sense, right? If some bad times were coming that we’re fueling up for the winter, for example. So for some people, there’s a real kind of feed response.
And and you know, sometimes also, you know, physiological markers of like anxiety can also be in hyper arousal states and things like that, again, much less common, but can actually happen. So what I would say is that that major fight flight freeze is probably the ones that we know. It’s that that symptom of adrenaline. Now, adrenaline’s going to be extremely useful if we need to run away from something.
Scary very quickly. It’s going to be very useful if we need to fight off some attacker, whether it’s animal or human. The flight, so flight or fight, so avoid.
Or worry. So the avoidance is when we we are actively proc so procrastination is part of this. So procrastination isn’t a laziness issue. It’s not a can’t be bothered issue.
DI GILLETT – HOST (44:14)
That’s a freeze.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (44:16)
It’s an anxiety issue. It’s an avoidance. I want to I want to leave. I don’t want to do this. I start doing other things. I get up to paint the house instead of writing the paper. You know, so there’s there’s this sense of feeling overwhelmed with that task, fear of failure with that task, you know, fear of not knowing what I’m doing.
So avoidance is part of that flight response, procrastination, that flight response. So it’s a sense of trying to move away from the thing that’s worrying us. Or we’re in fight mode, which is okay, I’ve got problems. So that can actually look like problem solving. Working through a problem. So worry isn’t anxiety, it is a strategy to try and come up with a solution to the thing that you.
Don’t want to experience
DI GILLETT – HOST (45:05)
then be linked to worthiness, I’m trying to problem solve so that I feel w worthwhile, I’m useful, I have value. Or am I conflating issues?
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (45:13)
Well, there probably
like I think there is a sense of that worries about something triggers in me and I need to solve a problem, not to feel good, but because I’m actually concerned about it. So concern there has to be some level of concern. Or it could be vicarious concern. Two people have this issue here and you’re like,
it would be I I would like to say I don’t want them to not solve that problem. So there is still that sense of problem solving that’s important. Problem solving and worrying is a skill. So it doesn’t always have to be applied through anxiety. Like if you’re sitting down at work at the boardroom and there’s a, you know, kind of strategy issue and people, you know, you’re you’re not doing that with anxiety. You might even find that it’s super invigorating to do. I love doing, you know, samurai sudokus, like, you know, bring them on.
I’m there for hours trying to solve the problem. I’m a problem solver. It’s not necessarily anxiety fueled. So the type of worry that I’m talking about is when it’s it’s happening in this, you know, space of fear, anxiety, where it’s linked to it it doesn’t feel like problem solving, it feels like worry.
DI GILLETT – HOST (46:24)
What about those days where you wake up on a Sunday morning and it’s it’s grey and and cloudy and you feel demotivated and you don’t want to get up versus the Sunday morning where summer’s bursting out, it’s a beautiful sunny day and you wanna get out and and and amongst it. Can it be as simple as the weather fueling and influencing our emotion?
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (46:52)
There’s
a stepping stone, but yes.
DI GILLETT – HOST (46:54)
So Okay And the stepping stone is what?
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (46:58)
There is a silent analyzer in our mind. So there is some type of decision maker and thinker. There’s a couple of thinkers in there. And so if it’s, you know, it’s been cold, so on a Sunday, and it’s finally one of those days that you can feel spring creeping in and it’s sunny and it’s warm, you’re not freezing, you’re it’s comfortable to get out of bed.
And you think, wow, I’ve got lots to do. So I want to get out and do them. Wow, it’s going to be great. Maybe I can take a walk here. Maybe I can do that. Today’s, it just feels great. That feeling is energy. So I want us to kind of have a different model of happiness, motivation. What is that feeling? It’s energy, it’s energy towards. And so on a day where I’ve said, today is a nice day. I’m going to enjoy it.
I release energy to go out into the day. When I wake up and it’s cold and it’s red and I can hear that it’s been raining all night and there’s a whole ton of things that I have to do. It’s not that you don’t have energy, but that part of you that’s supposed to open the gate for energy or close it, if it’s like this is gonna be miserable, I’m gonna hate today, I’ve just said that my day is going to be miserable. I’ve just said that my day is going to be hard.
that it’s gonna be painful, like whether it’s because it’s cold, it’s soggy, you know, all that thing and it’s like I’m not looking forward. What does I’m not looking forward to it mean is that I’m not gonna experience anything positive.
DI GILLETT – HOST (48:37)
Now I’m on the couch right now ’cause I I have declared how some Sundays do play out.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (48:42)
Yeah, right. So when I’m saying to myself, today’s today’s today’s a fail. Today’s gonna be a shit day, why would that part of me that’s responsible for delivering energy help me out with that? It’s like going, Well, I don’t want you to have a shit day. I’m gonna keep you in the bed. This is what we don’t realize about dopamine, which is this function. We keep thinking it’s the happiness thing. It’s not. It’s it’s based on my assessment.
Of how successful I’m likely to be today, how much fun or how positive, like it’s not just a fun thing, but it’s more like, am I gonna, you know, is today gonna be a good day? So if it’s not gonna be a good day and you can stay on the couch, you’re gonna go, Well, I’m not I’m not going out there and wasting my energy because from an evolutionary point of view, the part of us that’s responsible for giving us energy or not is a hoarder.
DI GILLETT – HOST (49:39)
Because
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (49:41)
Evolutionary
point of view, we shouldn’t be burning a calorie unnecessarily. This is why we have an obesity issue. Because we’re designed to keep like we don’t have a mechanism that that makes us hungry or appetitive based on how many calories are left. It’s just if it’s available, keep going. Keep going. And you know what? I’m not going to spend a cent if I can hoard it for as long as I can. I’m not paying out some money.
So this energy system, and I’m simplifying it somewhat, but it’s kind of like this, is that it’s like this, you know, kind of stingy money, like your accountant, your money manager, who’s like going, Yeah, if you’re not gonna win today, I’m not giving you money to burn on shit. Like I’m not doing that. If you’re gonna have a good day, because a good day means that I actually get more money in than I’ve spent.
I want to sit there. So when I have a good day, I actually replenish and I’m in surplus. So I actually bring back. So I allocate a little bit of money, but I actually get 10%, 20% more. That’s money in the bank. When I’m gonna have a bad day or I’m not looking for the thing that I have to do today is not a great, it’s an awful day. It’s with people I don’t like, or it’s a task that’s horrible, or I might get fired today. That system is like, I’m not letting you go to work.
Now here’s where adrenaline can come in, and this is something really important, is but I not every day Sunday, I can’t stay on the couch. So on Monday, if I don’t go to work, I don’t get paid, if I don’t get paid, I don’t pay rent, if I don’t pay rent, I don’t have anywhere to live. So now I have to. But I don’t want to. So my manager, my money manager goes, I don’t want to allocate resources.
But now I have to, so the fear network comes in and goes, Well, if you don’t go, so now there is a consequence that I do not want to experience. This is anxiety.
DI GILLETT – HOST (51:43)
And is this battle going on in your head? This is left left brain, right brain battling ourselves?
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (51:49)
It’s multiple selves. I wouldn’t say it’s left brain, right brain at all. It is different parts that are supposed to be doing different things and it’s not based on any component in and of itself. So these are different emotional motivational networks where it draws from multiple areas of the brain that organizes our behavior through chemistry, right? So if I now don’t have natural energy because I’m not looking forward to going to work, but I have to.
There’s a consequence and I want to avoid getting fired. Adrenaline comes in and goes, well, I’ll guess I’ll lend you the money.
So now I’m getting up out of bed, but with adrenaline. Now adrenaline is like a loan shark. You’ll get it. Like they will give you like an unlimited supply, but it’s dirty fuel. It feels yuck, it doesn’t feel great like you’re getting there, but it’s like a yucky energy. And then you have to pay it back with interest. So then we come home, we’re finally done.
Now on the good day, we’re finally done. If we’re fueled by dopamine, if that money manager goes, Okay, you’re gonna have a good day, here’s the dopamine. You’ve got this yum energy, it’s nice energy, it feels great, you’re motivated, you’re good, you come home, there’s actually a surplus of cash, you put it back in the bank, you feel good. When you come home after you’ve been fueled by anxiety, even if you’ve successfully navigated the day, so even if you have had a win, you’re depleted.
You don’t feel rewarded. You actually just like, thank God that’s over. So now that gets hashtagged as a loss, as a fail. Thank God it’s over. Isn’t I killed the day? I’m so glad I went. It’s that’s a loss. So tomorrow, if I’ve got a similar day to attend to, guess which system’s likely to kick in? Adrenaline again.
DI GILLETT – HOST (53:50)
Starting
yeah, you’re starting from behind the eight ball. Yep. And that and that could be the pattern of of so many people’s so many people’s lives. So is this what is this what you’re dealing with in a clinical setting more often than not? All
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (54:05)
Right. And teaching people like, you know, and and part of it is understanding the motivational network and system that this is how it actually works. So it’s not normal. It actually would be mentally unwell for me to look forward to going somewhere where I’m gonna get my ass handed to me. Yeah. So some s and this is what I find, you know, so sometimes it’s like it would be mental illness for me to have no problem going somewhere where I perceive
Constant threat, constant anxiety, disasters, constant stress, constant battles. So someone, you know, for example, who’s living in a really toxic relationship coming to me and saying, Look, you know, I know he yells and I know he’s emotionally abusive and he criticizes me, but I just want to feel happy. I I would have to make you mentally unwell.
DI GILLETT – HOST (54:57)
So it’s a it’s a scenario where, you know, this this war within is is an ongoing battle and there are so many influences coming at us at any point in our lives, right back to where you started when I asked you about your self worth and you said it’s a it’s an evolution. This is
The same for all of us. How we feel, how we operate, the level of of anxiety we may experience at any given time, it’s a constant evolution because life is ever changing.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (55:42)
Right. And the demands in life is ever changing. So if we’re going to have any shift, we have to free ourselves from what we consider unpalatable. So in order for me to liberate myself, I actually need to stop seeing the rain and going, okay, so I’m gonna get wet. You know what? Maybe that’s okay. You know, or there’s a lot at work that I can’t control, I’m gonna have super lot of demands on me.
And I I might stuff up and get fired. I don’t want that to happen. That’s that’s a reality one way or the other. You know what? I need to let go of that. I need to stop controlling that bad thing from happening. And I also need to start looking at my day in ways that I can start to see myself as being successful. And what I mean by that is rather than going, I just
I almost lost that or I stuffed up here. It’s actually being aware of how we’re talking to ourselves because that is like it’s Instagram’s a great analogy. Is it’s like all of these moments are like images that get hashtagged. And if we’re hashtagging them critically, low self- like you know, like l self-criticism, failure, loss, I don’t think I can do this. We’re actually
Going to be calling on the adrenaline system to help us out. The dopamine system, you know, this kind of clean energy, if you will, kind of model, is when dopamine is only going to be released if there is a high likelihood of success. And what I mean by success is that I’m going to navigate that task optimally. Like, you know, I’m going to finish it. There’s a criteria like, yes, I finished that report. It’s going to be good enough.
You know, or if I go to see my friends, I’ll see them and I’ll have a good time. You know, as opposed to, I’ve got to go see these friends, what am I gonna wear? It’s cold outside, where am I gonna park? I’ll have nothing to say, I’m exhausted, this is just gonna take me out of We’ve
DI GILLETT – HOST (57:51)
All the
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (57:53)
all that is going, actually this is I felt like this the last time, the last three times and we laugh. We actually had a great time, and by the time we sit down no one knows what you’re wearing anyway. How
DI GILLETT – HOST (58:02)
How often is that true? We go to all of that effort and then you realise it simply didn’t matter. All that effort or all that expense or all of that anxio Yeah. And it just didn’t matter.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (58:14)
Didn’t
matter and actually that these things are the things that actually give value. And so when we really look at that is like, how are we hashtagging the moments of our lives? Because they’re shaping this money man to know, like, you know, so for me, getting up, even if it’s a hard day, it’s like I’m gonna sit with five, six, seven patients today, and we’re gonna have beautiful moments of connection. Does that make sense? And and heart space.
And even if I’m feeling a bit unwell or I’ve got other things to do, I’m like, that’s important. I really want to go to that. I want to show up for these people. Not I have to, right? Because then that’s going to bring that sense of coming into that space of value. It’s similar to if I’m if I’m looking at other aspects of the things that I’m not looking forward to, is finding the value underneath, is okay, well.
Like I don’t want to lose my job. That’s a fear I have. I’m getting managed at work, or there’s pressure, or I’ve got issues with my husband, or you know, the kids. But actually, I need to if I keep trying to control that and make sure that it’s all okay, I’m I’m going to be using this energy that is ultimately going to rob me of the very thing that I’m trying to maintain. So, in that, you know, in that stress or in that
I’m going to perform less well. I’m gonna get cranky. I’m I’m probably going to forget something or mess something up. It’s like no one wants to lose. Like so when we let go, it’s not about not caring. And people think it’s about not caring. Of course we care. Of course we all want the win. But it’s about no longer trying to control that anymore. To step out of this treadmill of anxiety and worry, it’s not about.
tightening the criteria and getting a performance coach and seeing how much more pressure I can put on myself, more criteria, you know, more kind of leveraging of the and that’s the problem is that we just go deeper, we double down and we’re just like, need more strategies, need to work harder.
DI GILLETT – HOST (1:00:24)
And I know I do that in my own mind and and and question my decisions and and then go and engage a third party external to to give me some some input on and so many of us could could relate to that. Dr Lukeides, you’ve could I ask you as a closing thought today, you’ve you’ve just finished a book on on self worth.
For women listening to this episode, if there was one thing they could focus on to help optimise their self worth, what would it be?
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (1:01:01)
It would be really kind of starting that relationship with themselves. And when there is a part of you that’s feeling overwhelmed or stressed or you’re critical of something within you where you feel like something that you’re not quite getting and you’re trying to kind of work on it harder and harder, it’s like what is that part of you that feels like it’s failing you feel like? And what does that part of you need from you?
And this doesn’t mean that we don’t achieve. In fact, I think I’ve achieved so much more since I stopped caring about achieving because I’ve actually got nothing to lose. So I can venture everything. So I can have the conversation, right? I can, you know, be more spontaneous and effortless in my relationships because if they leave me, they leave me. But I can only be myself. So I actually enjoy them more.
I’m probably a nicer person. It’s to allow yourself that freedom to no longer control the catastrophes, because they’re probably not that controllable. The catastrophes meaning the job loss, you know, the the chastisement, the criticism, the you know, the the argument, w the the you know, someone’s disappointed in you. It it’s almost like that let them, but not just them, let everything.
DI GILLETT – HOST (1:02:29)
Mm-hmm.
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (1:02:30)
And within that space to kind of find that freedom to then be more expressive of our true nature.
DI GILLETT – HOST (1:02:40)
Thank you. I think And if I put my spin on that, I think it’s it’s not about striving to achieve but as you’ve just said, you’ve achieved so much more when you’ve taken the emphasis on that away because you now have nothing to lose, you’ve only got something to to gain and I think that is a much easier
place to live than constantly striving and putting ourselves under impossible pressures, whatever those pressures may be, to fit in, to do better, to be better, to be more. when we haven’t and I’m not saying don’t be ambitious and don’t be motivated, but take some of that pressure off yourselves. Yeah.
Dr Maria-Elena Lukeides thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. Could I ask if somebody is interested in learning more or exploring more in this area and engaging your services, where can they find you?
DR MARIA-ELENA LUKEIDES – GUEST (1:03:49)
I’m on Instagram, Dr Maria-Elena underscore Lukeides and also my my website’s actually my name so it’s super e you know easy to find. So doctor Mariaelinalukeides dot com dot AU.
DI GILLETT – HOST (1:04:02)
Fantastic. Well, hopefully that gives all of us some further insights into the struggles that that life presents. And and look, we’re we’re all on a journey of self-discovery and we’re all on a a a journey of self-improvement. And it’s clearly not linear. There are ups and downs in life. And but the more we understand about who we are and what our worth is, we’ve got a
better war chest by which to face the world and go forward positively. Until next time.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
03:44 Maria-Elena’s own relationship with self-worth
37:30 Self-esteem vs self-worth
38:51 The internal battle behind the choices we make
43:00 The roots of anxiety
48;52 Letting go of control
51:06 The one shift that optimises self-worth
Connect with Di:
Follow Power Of Women on LinkedIn
The Power Of Women Podcast Instagram
Find Dr. Lukeides at:
Website https://www.drmariaelenalukeides.com.au/
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/drmariaelena_lukeides/?hl=en
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-maria-elena-lukeides-psy-clin-d-270379a5/
@ Ponti Health https://pontihealth.com/our-specialists/dr-maria-elena-lukeides
This is the home of unapologetic conversations and powerful stories of reinvention. Subscribe and join a community of women who are changing the game.
💫 Subscribe to the Power Of Women Podcast on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts
The place where women supporting women isn’t just a sentiment. It’s the decision we make every single day.
Your ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify keeps these stories alive.
📩 Sign up for our newsletter where I share insights and thought leadership in the Power Of Women Podcast Brief.
Disclaimer: https://powerofwomen.com.au/podcast-disclaimer/
