Low self-worth and a sense of failure and shame do not simply arise because we feel bad about ourselves. We have also trusted in other people, and we think that they feel bad about us. Perhaps we have experienced overt rejection from someone especially important to us, but the truth is that we don’t really need anyone to speak against us. We can tell when we have failed. We know people who do it better than we do, are more attractive than we are, seem to have more intimate relationships, better jobs, and so on. It is as if we are born with an innate ability to poll the world on hundreds of
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