How Does Trauma Impact Self-worth

I have been doing some research about the impact of childhood trauma in the lives of people who develop mental health problems. My interest for this is due to the high number of people I work with as an outpatient provider of counseling services who exhibit some pretty severe impairment in their daily lives and also reported childhood trauma. When they come to me and my colleagues they are struggling with depression, anxiety, substance use, eating disorders and self-harm. Most of them have real difficulties in relationships, as well. Here are some of the things I have come to understand about these individuals.

• Almost to a person, they see themselves as unworthy of love and mistrusting of others.
• They engage in some type of self-destructive behavior which, when you do some digging, seems to be a result of trying to avoid feeling something or thinking something. 
• Most of them are able to point to an event or events in their lives (usually their trauma) where they passed judgment on themselves and started to believe their abuse or trauma was their fault, or that they deserved it because they were "bad" or less valuable than those around them.

The research I am reading seems to confirm that the underlying problems they face from day to day, including many of their addictive behaviors, stem from the residual effect of being traumatized. This residual effect is that they have come to believe they have little or no value. "I am worthless" is repeated often and with deep conviction and belief. The result of this often repeated statement is, in my opinion, at the core of why healing and recovery is so elusive for many of them. 

I have come to believe that the deeper work of helping them re-write the stories they tell themselves is the most important work. I have also come to believe that this deeper work really has to be done in tandem with skills training so they can successfully stop their self-destructive and addictive behaviors because these behaviors are helping them avoid their feelings.