Self-Worth
Self-worth is your sense that you matter and are worth caring for, independent of what you produce or how others treat you. When it is shaky, you try to earn it through being useful, agreeable, and needed.
Self-worth is the quiet baseline answer to a question most people never say out loud: am I okay as I am? When that answer is steady, a no does not threaten it and criticism stings without shattering it. When it is shaky, your okayness has to be topped up from outside, and other people's approval becomes the supply.
For many people-pleasers, worth got tied to usefulness early. Love or peace at home seemed to depend on being good, easy, or helpful, so being needed came to feel like the price of being kept. As an adult, saying no can feel like spending down a balance you are not sure you have.
Self-worth is not earned by doing more. It steadies as you treat your own needs as legitimate, in small ways, and notice that the people who matter stay. You are allowed to take up room without justifying it. That is the thing the pattern was covering for.