#481September 16 · 51 min
Dr. Marisa Franco is back, and this time she's turning her attention from friendship to something underneath it: self-worth. Her new book, Worth: The New Science of Self-Esteem and Secure Attachment, starts with a confession. While her relationship was falling apart, she was performing security, saying all the right things, staying calm, doing everything the books tell you to do, while quietly abandoning what she actually felt. She and Dr. Joy talk through why that kind of self-abandonment is so familiar to Black women in particular, and what it costs us.
The conversation moves through what Dr. Franco calls the difference between the good twin and the bad twin of high self-esteem, both of whom say they feel good about themselves, but only one of whom can sit with a hard feeling instead of pushing it away. She explains why insecurity isn't a flaw so much as a coping strategy our brains developed to protect us from repeat harm, and introduces memory reconsolidation, the idea that revisiting an old memory with care can actually change its emotional charge and help you feel safer moving forward.
They also dig into stigma, identity stretching, and what happens when we spend our lives chronically evaluating ourselves against an ideal we didn't choose. Dr. Franco talks about raising kids with real self-worth instead of just confidence, why chasing achievement often keeps us from feeling anything at all, and what it means to aim for secure-ish instead of secure.
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