Newton’s Second Law of Emotion: Our self-worth equals the sum of our emotions over time.

How we value everything in life relative to ourselves is the sum of our emotions over time. Our Feeling Brain twists reality in such a way that we believe that our problems and pain are somehow special and unique in the world, despite all evidence to the contrary. The false belief in our specialness gives us hope.

1. When moral gaps persist for a long time and can’t be equalized, they normalize.
   When equalization seems impossible, the Feeling Brain gives in, accept defeat, and judges the event or thing to be inferior or of low value. This results in shame and low self-worth. On the contrary, when we constantly get good things we don’t deserve, it creates the delusion of high self-worth.

2. Self-worth is an illusion.
   We are the center of everything we experience, and we judge the world by our feelings about ourselves. The more insecure we are about something, the more we will fly back and forth between delusional feelings of superiority and inferiority.