Unravel the profound connection between our sense of mattering and mental health. Explore how feeling valued and significant can bolster emotional well-being, and why it's crucial to cultivate this sense in our everyday lives.
Anti-mattering is when you feel you do not matter at all
This quality can lead to mental health disorders
- New research developing the 5-item Anti-Mattering Scale shows how people high in this quality can be vulnerable to mental illness
- However, it is also a key psychological resource
- In positive psychology, the quality of “mattering” is considered to be an important psychological resource
Does Being High on Anti-Mattering Matter?
High AMS and high loneliness scores produce what Flett et al. refer to as the “double jeopardy of feeling alone and insignificant.”
- Anti-mattering can become part of a larger identity in which you feel that you lack value to others, contributing to a sense of marginalization.
Why Does it Matter to Matter?
When you suffer from what they call “anti-mattering,” you define yourself as someone whose “personal identity is dominated by the sense of not mattering to others.”
- You adopt this identity as a shield for the specific reason of protecting yourself from the stress of being ignored or regarded as irrelevant by others.
- The “anti” here, literally means “against” mattering, not simply being low in the feeling that you matter.
5 Ways to Test Your Anti-Mattering Tendencies
The AMS compares to the General Mattering Scale (GMS) in its relationship to measures of depression, loneliness, and anxiety
- How much do you feel like you don’t matter? How often have you been treated in a way that makes you feel insignificant?
- To what extent has you been made to feel invisible? How much will you be missed if you leave?
