Month: August 2026

Purpose

This report summarises how clinical psychology and psychiatry generally understand people who believe that killing others is justified, necessary or required because of a religious or ideological cause. It uses plain language where possible and distinguishes extreme beliefs from mental illness.

Believe it or not – Key finding

A belief that killing people is justified by religion does not, by itself, mean that a person is mentally ill.

This is an important distinction. Contemporary psychiatric literature indicates that members of terrorist or extremist groups do not generally have higher rates of mental illness than the general population. Mental illness appears to be more common among some lone-actor extremists, but it still cannot be assumed to be the explanation for their behaviour.

In other words, someone can be psychologically capable of understanding what they are doing, planning it deliberately and believing that it is morally right, while not suffering from a psychiatric disorder.

1. Extreme religious belief is not necessarily psychosis

Psychosis involves a significant loss of contact with reality, such as hallucinations or fixed false beliefs that are not reasonably explained by the person’s cultural or religious background.

For example:

• Extreme ideology: “My religion teaches that these people are enemies of God, so killing them is justified.”
• Possible psychosis: “God is personally speaking to me through my television and has instructed me to kill my neighbour because he is secretly a demon.”

The first statement may represent an extreme ideological or religious belief. The second could indicate a psychiatric disorder, particularly if it occurs alongside other symptoms of psychosis.

A psychiatrist would therefore ask much more than “Does this person have strange beliefs?” They would examine whether the person has lost the ability to distinguish their beliefs from reality and whether there are other symptoms of mental illness. Distinguishing extremist beliefs from symptoms of mental disorder is recognised as an important difficulty in psychiatric assessment.

2. How can an otherwise ordinary person come to accept killing?

Psychology provides several explanations that do not require mental illness.

One is moral disengagement. This is where a person changes the way they think about an action so that something normally considered wrong becomes acceptable.

An ordinary example would be a soldier being trained to think of an enemy as a threat rather than as an individual person with a family and a life.

In extremist thinking, this can become much more extreme:

“They are not innocent people. They are enemies of God.”

Once someone has been placed into an “enemy” category, killing them can become psychologically easier to justify.

3. The importance of an “us versus them” mentality

Extremist movements often create a very strong distinction between “us” and “them”.

The person may increasingly see:

• their own group as good, pure or righteous;
• outsiders as corrupt, dangerous or evil;
• disagreement as evidence of hostility; and
• violence as self-defence or moral duty.

This is something ordinary people can recognise in less extreme forms.

For example, football rivalry can involve “us versus them”, but most people retain the understanding that the opposing team’s supporters are still ordinary human beings.

Extremism can take the same psychological distinction to an entirely different level, where the opposing group is no longer regarded as deserving the same moral consideration.

4. Religion can provide a powerful justification

Religious belief can become particularly powerful when something is regarded as a sacred or absolute value.

If a person believes:

“This is God’s command”,

then ordinary moral reasoning can change.

Instead of asking:

“Is killing this person morally acceptable?”

the person may ask:

“How could I disobey God?”

This can produce a situation where the individual genuinely believes they are doing something morally good, despite the fact that an outside observer sees the behaviour as horrific.

That does not make the behaviour acceptable, nor does it make the belief reasonable. It helps explain how the person can psychologically reconcile their actions with their own sense of morality.

5. Believing something and acting on it are different

Clinical assessment is particularly interested in the difference between extreme beliefs and a pathway towards violence.

A person might say:

“I believe people who oppose my religion are evil.”

That is concerning, but it is different from:

“I have decided to kill someone.”

And that is different again from:

“I have chosen a target, obtained the means to do it and have started preparing.”

Psychiatric risk assessment therefore looks for behavioural evidence of movement towards violence, rather than simply diagnosing someone based on their political or religious beliefs. Contemporary forensic psychiatry specifically emphasises identifying warning behaviours and distinguishing extremist beliefs from an actual pathway towards violence.

6. Mental illness can nevertheless be involved

Some people who commit extremist violence do have mental disorders.

For example, a person could have:

• schizophrenia or another psychotic disorder;
• severe depression;
• a personality disorder;
• substance-use problems;
• significant paranoia;
• or another condition affecting their judgement or behaviour.

However, clinicians should not automatically assume that the mental illness caused the extremism.

The relationship may instead look something like:

Personal grievance + extremist ideology + social reinforcement + psychological vulnerabilities + opportunity + willingness to use violence

rather than simply:

mental illness → terrorism.

Research specifically cautions against looking for a single cause or single psychological profile for radicalisation.

7. The most important clinical distinction

From a clinical perspective, there is a major difference between:

“This person believes something that I consider bizarre, frightening or morally repugnant.”

and

“This person has a psychiatric disorder that is causing them to lose contact with reality.”

Those are not the same thing.

A person can be completely sincere, highly intelligent, psychologically organised and fully aware of their actions, while holding an extraordinarily dangerous ideology.

That is one reason psychiatry does not regard terrorism or religious extremism as a diagnosis in itself.

Conclusion

Clinical psychology and psychiatry would generally view religiously motivated killing as a complex interaction between ideology, psychology, social influences and individual circumstances, rather than automatically as evidence of insanity.

The crucial question is not simply:

“Are their beliefs extreme?”

It is:

“What is driving those beliefs, how firmly are they held, is the person able to distinguish belief from reality, and have they moved from believing violence is justified to actually intending, preparing or attempting to carry it out?”

That distinction is important because a mentally ill person is not necessarily dangerous, and a person who is not mentally ill can nevertheless become extremely dangerous. Contemporary psychiatric literature explicitly warns against confusing mental disorder with extremist ideology and instead emphasises assessing the person’s actual pathway towards violence.

Low self-worth is one of those things almost everyone has heard of, but it’s often misunderstood. It’s not simply “not liking yourself” — it’s a deeper, often quiet belief that you’re somehow not enough: not good enough, not lovable enough, not worthy of good things. This belief can shape how a person thinks, feels, behaves, and connects with others, sometimes without them even realising it’s happening.

This article walks through what low self-worth can look like, how it tends to develop, why it’s not always the explanation for a behaviour it might seem to explain, and what genuinely helps.

What Does Low Self-Worth Actually Look Like?

Low self-worth doesn’t show up in just one way — it tends to ripple across several areas of a person’s life.

In the way someone thinks

• A harsh inner voice that’s quick to blame and slow to forgive
• Black-and-white thinking about their own worth (“I’m a failure” rather than “that didn’t go well”)
• Brushing off compliments or achievements (“I just got lucky”)
• Constantly comparing themselves to others, usually unfavourably

In how someone feels

• A background hum of shame or guilt that isn’t tied to anything specific
• Anxiety in situations where they feel judged or evaluated
• Taking criticism much harder than the moment probably warrants
• Struggling to feel like they deserve good things — joy, rest, success

In how someone behaves

• People-pleasing, and real trouble saying no
• Avoiding challenges for fear of failing in front of others
• Perfectionism, partly as a way to dodge criticism before it happens
• Overcompensating — bragging, chasing status, or over-achieving to cover up insecurity underneath
• Self-sabotage, like procrastinating or quitting before they can “fail properly”
• Over-apologising, even when nothing’s actually their fault

In relationships

• Putting up with disrespectful or unequal treatment
• Needing frequent reassurance from others
• Trouble setting or holding boundaries
• Pulling away from people to avoid the risk of being rejected

Physically

• Guarded body language, poor posture, avoiding eye contact
• Neglecting self-care, sometimes because they don’t feel “worth the effort”

Worth remembering: none of these signs are exclusive to low self-worth. They overlap with anxiety, depression, trauma responses, and other things going on for a person. It’s the overall pattern — and the story underneath it — that matters, not any single item on this list.

Where Does It Come From?

Low self-worth is very often learned rather than something a person is simply born with — which is actually good news, because what’s learned can also be unlearned.

Watching the adults around us Kids learn a lot about how to treat themselves by watching how the important adults in their life treat themselves. A parent who’s constantly self-critical or dismissive of their own needs is teaching a child a template, even without saying a word directly to them.

Love and attention that come with strings attached If approval or affection is only given for achievement, appearance, or good behaviour, a child can learn that their worth depends on ticking boxes — rather than being something they simply have, no strings attached.

Being told directly Repeated criticism, shaming, or put-downs from parents, teachers, or peers get absorbed, especially in childhood before a person has the tools to separate “someone said this about me” from “this is true about me.”

Early relationships with caregivers Inconsistent, neglectful, or dismissive caregiving is strongly linked to a shaky sense of self-worth in adulthood — the underlying logic often being something like, “if the people meant to care for me didn’t, maybe I’m not worth caring for.”

Peers and wider social environments Bullying, exclusion, and highly competitive or comparison-heavy environments — including social media — can teach the same lesson outside the family entirely.

Broader social messaging Cultural narratives around race, gender, body type, class, or ability can also send repeated messages of lesser worth, reinforced across many different settings over time.

Why It’s Not Always the Explanation

It’s tempting, once you’re aware of low self-worth as a concept, to see it everywhere. But plenty of behaviours that look like they’re about self-worth are actually about something else entirely — or several other things at once.

Take a few common examples:

• Substance use can be tangled up with self-worth (numbing shame or a harsh inner critic), but addiction is genuinely shaped by many factors — genetics, brain chemistry, trauma, mental health conditions, and environment all play a real part.
• Having few or no friends might reflect low self-worth (believing you’re not worth others’ time), but it could just as easily be social anxiety, depression, being naturally introverted, or simply preferring one’s own company. The key difference is usually the story underneath — does the person want connection and feel blocked by fear, or is being alone genuinely fine by them?
• Coming across as arrogant or superior is often assumed to be a mask for hidden insecurity — and sometimes it is. But it’s worth being cautious here, because this assumption can become impossible to disprove (“if they’re arrogant, they’re secretly insecure; if they’re humble, that confirms it too”). Sometimes confidence is just confidence.
• Frequent casual sex or a high number of partners doesn’t automatically point to low self-worth either. For many people, this is simply how they’ve chosen to structure their sex life, without any distress or underlying insecurity attached. What matters more is the function the behaviour seems to serve for that particular person — for example, someone who says they need to tell others about their experiences afterward specifically “to feel validated” is giving you a much clearer signal than the behaviour itself would.

The takeaway: self-worth is worth holding as a hypothesis to test with a person, rather than assumed from the outside based on how something looks.

What Actually Helps

If low self-worth is at the heart of things, here’s what tends to make a genuine difference — not overnight, but over time.

1. Notice and challenge the inner critic Pay attention to the specific language your mind uses about you. Often it’s harsher and more sweeping than how you’d ever speak to someone else. Try the “friend test”: would you say this to someone you cared about? If not, that’s a sign of distortion, not truth. It also helps to separate the behaviour from the self — “that didn’t go well” instead of “I’m hopeless.”

2. Loosen the strings attached to your worth Notice what your sense of worth currently depends on — achievement, appearance, being liked, being productive. Then start building small experiences of worth that aren’t tied to those things: resting without earning it, being liked without performing. This is slow, quiet work, but it’s often the real target.

3. Build evidence, not just insight Small, doable actions build a track record of competence over time — self-worth grows partly through lived proof, not just understanding. Avoiding challenges or social situations might feel safer, but it also blocks the very experiences that could prove the harsh self-view wrong.

4. Practise boundaries Struggling to say no, or putting up with poor treatment, is common with low self-worth. Practising small boundaries — even minor ones — can genuinely shift things, not just relieve symptoms temporarily. Pay attention to the fear beforehand versus what actually happens afterward; they’re often quite different.

5. Try self-compassion rather than self-esteem Self-compassion doesn’t require feeling good about yourself — it just means relating to yourself kindly, especially when things are hard. That’s often a far more achievable starting point than trying to force positive self-regard from a standing start. Remembering that struggling is part of being human (not a personal failing) is a big part of this.

6. Pay attention to relationships If low self-worth was shaped by relationships, it often needs relationships to help un-shape it too — this is part of why therapy, and a genuinely supportive relationship, tends to work better than self-help alone. Where possible, it also helps to reduce contact with people or environments that actively reinforce the negative self-view.

7. Shift from approval to values Instead of asking “what will make people think well of me,” try asking “what actually matters to me.” This shift — living by your own values rather than by anticipated approval — reduces the constant self-monitoring that keeps worth tied to outside opinion.

A Final Note

Self-worth work is rarely quick, and it’s rarely a straight line. It’s more like slowly rebuilding a belief system than fixing one single thought. Old patterns will likely resurface here and there — that’s not a sign the work isn’t working, it’s just part of how deeply learned beliefs unwind over time.

If this sounds familiar to you personally, it’s worth having a conversation with a psychologist or therapist — someone who can help you work out what’s underneath the patterns, and support you through actually shifting them.