Hi Mara. First, lets look at what you have said here:

I have caught myself in a trap lately, looking for my self worth and my value in others. How they see me so impacts how I see myself sometimes. I don’t know why I am suddenly so fragile but I am. "

How do you know how they see you? Do they say something to you that explains how they feel? Or, what I think might be more likely the case, but I'm not sure which is why I am asking, is it really how you feel about yourself that you are projecting onto them as their opinion?

Perhaps the issue is less about why you seek value and self worth in others, and more about why your self worth and self value is so low?

And something else you said:

"If I can’t be who the world “needs” me to be, it feels like my life doesn’t have any value at all."

Does the "world" (friends, your kids, the insurance company) need you to be perfect in everything you do, or is this to a self imposed self defeating standard you are projecting onto the world as their/it's expectation of you?

Yes, our feelings do indeed lie to us, and why we believe them goes back to the roots of our trauma, where we were conditioned to be this way.

I have had these thoughts you have put here in this really honest and beneficial post many times in my life. And every time I get to the root I find it is why I am so hard on myself, and holding myself to honestly an unachievable goal given that I am human after all.

I found therapy and particularly a little of DBT workbook time helpful in how I come to realize my negative thinking, and how I find my way back to a more realistic expectation for my self.

triple hugs of support Mara~

I come from 3 generations of Christian ministers, Mara, and yet I was 42 years old before I realized it was time to break with the people pleasing that eventually got my dad kicked out of his megachurch for fraud in the end. Pleasing God and pleasing people aren't always the same thing. Ask Jesus about how Easter went there for a while. Everybody but John and Mary ran, and Peter even denied knowing who Jesus was--not once, but three times.

That's when I got up enough nerve to follow my own calling. I had passed up on it 20 years earlier. It was not to stand in front of crowds as a minister, but to go from room to room for a congregation of one patient at a time as a hospital chaplain instead.
Congregations may never have witnessed it, but my Higher Power did. I had gotten a new therapist in a new town, and it turned out that he went to the same church I did. He gave me the support no one else had offered.

I found out from my patients that folks tried to kill the Buddha, too, as people pleasing wasn't so much Buddha's thing, either. It seems that people tend to turn teachings upside down quite often to suit their own purposes.

Therapy really started to help me once I went into hospital chaplaincy against my family's wishes. When I made that move, in fact, my pastor dad punched me in the face when I went to spend Christmas with him.

But I knew I was following what was right for me, I suddenly felt I was spending my life in a worthwhile way. It hit me one night when I was standing in the ER doorway in Chicago as an ambulance came toward us sirens blaring.

My family turned its back on me then, 10 years ago now. But I'm where I belong, and my Higher Power is with me. I'll bet yours is right there with you, too.

When trauma happens, be it from parents within our growing years or from a single violating trauma, our self-worth takes a huge hit. The superego is formed from these experiences especially when young. As Evergreen has stated, we are conditioned to feel this way.

I honestly feel we can learn to value ourselves without reinforcement from others. No one is perfect and that takes acceptance and knowing the right people and situations will come. I would suggest reminding yourself of your worth whenever these thoughts come up. Find some statements to reinforce positive thoughts about yourself. I am nowhere near perfect with it but I can tell you doing positive things for myself has helped a great deal as well as processing trauma.

I would recommend reading up on the superego and improving self esteem. possibly co-dependency stuff too