Our parents set up conditions of worth for us. That is conditions upon which their positive regard hinges. Conditions of worth force us to live and act acording to someone else's values rather than our own. In our efforts to gain positive regard, we deny our true self by inhibiting some of our behavior, denying and distorting some of our perceptions, and closing ourselves to parts of our experience. We experience stress and anxiety by doing this. Our whole self-structure can be threatened by imposing conditions of worth.