Self-Esteem Matters
Elements of Positive Self-Esteem
Having grown up as an orphan, abused and sexually abuse throughout my childhood, my self-esteem dropped to nearly it's lowest point. I never attemped suicide as my sister, growing up in the same household, did, but I did ask God many nights to "please don't let me wake up in the morning".
My self-esteem was at it's lowest point as a teenager. I was shame based, consumed with guilt, hypervigilant, confused and angry. Knowing, and then being reminded frequently, that my own mother didn't want me was the beginning of putting the wheels of self-destruction in motion. Afterall, what kind of person are you if your own mother doesn't even want you
To add to that, being knocked around, hit, whipped with the belt, then sexually abused on a regular basis -- a little more than occassionally until I was 12 years old, and then as much as 4-5 nights a week throughout my teens -- made me feel more like garbage than human.
I knew I had low self-esteem. It was just a matter of what I was going to do about it. After moving halfway across the country, I started over. The goal I wanted to reach was to help other girls and women who had self-esteem issues. Having had the opportunity to go to college and also get a CADAC certification put me on the road to reaching that goal.
But there was still a missing piece. My own self-esteem. Sure, I was feeling great since I was beginning to get closer to my goal, but I had some issues to work out. Not only did I have to examine my process so far, but I needed to do something Grandpa (my foster mother's dad who lived next door) once told me to do. "If you need to learn something, teach it to someone else. That way you get a benefit and so does the other person."
So, I began teaching. This is what I learned and passed on:
Your level of Self-Esteem is your sense of overall personal worth or value. Similar to self-respect, it describes your level of confidence in your abilities and attributes.
Having healthy self-esteem can influence your motivation, your mental well-being, and your overall quality of life. However, having self-esteem that is either too high or too low can be problematic. Better understanding what your unique level of self-esteem is can help you strike a balance that is just right for you.
Here are just a few key elements of positive self-esteem include: • Self-respect • Feelings of security • Positive identity • Sense of belonging • Feeling of competence Other terms often used interchangeably with self-esteem include self-awareness, self-worth, self-confidence, self-image, self-love and self-acceptance.
Self-esteem tends to be lowest in childhood, but in the right enviroment, one with love and security, self-esteem increases during adolescence, as well as adulthood, eventually reaching a fairly stable and enduring level. Why Self-Esteem Is Important Self-esteem impacts your decision-making process, your relationships, your emotional health, and your overall well-being. It also influences motivation as people with a healthy, positive view of themselves understand their potential and may more easily feel inspired to take on new challenges. Basically, your self-esteem is your vehicle to life. With healthy self-esteem you have smooth sailing down the highways. But with low or poor self-esteem, you may be driving the best and most expensive vehicle, but you are going to hit a lot of bumps along the way. Beautiful, expensive clothes, the best line of make-up, the most expensive perfumes, and Jimmy Choo shoes is a facade that hides low self-esteem. Eventually, it will surface. It may be the type of guys you choose, or the need for alcohol or drugs, or the inability to make friends, or any of the many other ways pretending to be someone you're not shows itself. Four key characteristics of healthy self-esteem. An individual on the right side of the scale (see Self-Esteem Matters graph) will experience these characteristics at different levels and at different times in their lives.
However, no matter how strong her self-esteem is, these characteristics can change, sometimes instantly and without warning, when a trauma occurs.
The characteristics are: 1. Individual has a firm understanding of their skills. 2. Individual has the ability to maintain healthy relationships with others as a result of having a healthy relationship with oneself. 3. Individual has realistic and appropriate personal expectations. 4. Individual has an understanding of their needs and the ability to express those needs. For instance, she is in a car accident and loses a limb, or her face is badly scarred from a fire. She may have lost her home and all of her possessions due to a fire. A parent or sibling or best friend may have died tragicly. Divorce or unexpected break-up may have occured. There are many instances that can change an inividual's life unexpectly. Her life can go from being nearly perfect to a nightmare in an instant. If she has healthy self-esteem, she may get through this tragedy with a few bumps and briuses (metaphor), take control, and work her way out of the negative or bad feelings she is experiencing because of the trauma. She may push forward and face the new challenges no matter how difficult they may be. The individual with poor self-esteem may see the tragedy as one more thing in her life that validates her worthless existence. She may possibly fall apart or she may get so angry because of the trauma that she takes it our on any or all of those around her. That's one way she may haddle a trauma. However, even with low self-esteem, she may be the type of individual who shuts down, takes control of the situation, comes up with solutions, and moves on. She used to shoving down feelings and getting the job done. Having self-esteem is about more than just generally liking oneself. It also means believing that youdeserves love. It is valuing her own thoughts and actions. This individual clearly knows her feelings, opinions, interests, and goals count. But, just importantly, though, is that her level of self-esteem plays a huge role in how she lets others treat her.
When an individual has healthy self-esteem, she usually feels confident and ready to take on the world. She feels good about herself at both a conscious and at a deeper, unconscious level.
Having healthy self-esteem can influence your motivation, your mental well-being, and your overall quality of life. However, having self-esteem that is either too high or too low can be problematic. Better understanding what your unique level of self-esteem is can help you strike a balance that is just right for you.
Here are just a few key elements of positive self-esteem include: • Self-respect • Feelings of security • Positive identity • Sense of belonging • Feeling of competence Other terms often used interchangeably with self-esteem include self-awareness, self-worth, self-confidence, self-image, self-love and self-acceptance.
Self-esteem tends to be lowest in childhood, but in the right enviroment, one with love and security, self-esteem increases during adolescence, as well as adulthood, eventually reaching a fairly stable and enduring level. Why Self-Esteem Is Important Self-esteem impacts your decision-making process, your relationships, your emotional health, and your overall well-being. It also influences motivation as people with a healthy, positive view of themselves understand their potential and may more easily feel inspired to take on new challenges. Basically, your self-esteem is your vehicle to life. With healthy self-esteem you have smooth sailing down the highways. But with low or poor self-esteem, you may be driving the best and most expensive vehicle, but you are going to hit a lot of bumps along the way. Beautiful, expensive clothes, the best line of make-up, the most expensive perfumes, and Jimmy Choo shoes is a facade that hides low self-esteem. Eventually, it will surface. It may be the type of guys you choose, or the need for alcohol or drugs, or the inability to make friends, or any of the many other ways pretending to be someone you're not shows itself. Four key characteristics of healthy self-esteem. An individual on the right side of the scale (see Self-Esteem Matters graph) will experience these characteristics at different levels and at different times in their lives.
However, no matter how strong her self-esteem is, these characteristics can change, sometimes instantly and without warning, when a trauma occurs.
The characteristics are: 1. Individual has a firm understanding of their skills. 2. Individual has the ability to maintain healthy relationships with others as a result of having a healthy relationship with oneself. 3. Individual has realistic and appropriate personal expectations. 4. Individual has an understanding of their needs and the ability to express those needs. For instance, she is in a car accident and loses a limb, or her face is badly scarred from a fire. She may have lost her home and all of her possessions due to a fire. A parent or sibling or best friend may have died tragicly. Divorce or unexpected break-up may have occured. There are many instances that can change an inividual's life unexpectly. Her life can go from being nearly perfect to a nightmare in an instant. If she has healthy self-esteem, she may get through this tragedy with a few bumps and briuses (metaphor), take control, and work her way out of the negative or bad feelings she is experiencing because of the trauma. She may push forward and face the new challenges no matter how difficult they may be. The individual with poor self-esteem may see the tragedy as one more thing in her life that validates her worthless existence. She may possibly fall apart or she may get so angry because of the trauma that she takes it our on any or all of those around her. That's one way she may haddle a trauma. However, even with low self-esteem, she may be the type of individual who shuts down, takes control of the situation, comes up with solutions, and moves on. She used to shoving down feelings and getting the job done. Having self-esteem is about more than just generally liking oneself. It also means believing that youdeserves love. It is valuing her own thoughts and actions. This individual clearly knows her feelings, opinions, interests, and goals count. But, just importantly, though, is that her level of self-esteem plays a huge role in how she lets others treat her.
When an individual has healthy self-esteem, she usually feels confident and ready to take on the world. She feels good about herself at both a conscious and at a deeper, unconscious level.
Low Self-EsteemIndividuals with low self-esteem tend to feel less sure of their abilities and may doubt their decision-making process. She may feel afraid and lack motivation to try novel things because she doesn't believe she can reach her goals. If she feels unloved or unworthy, and lacks confidence in herself, which many if not most individuals with low self-esteem do, she may have issues with relationships and expressing her needs to others.
Individuals with what appears to be extremely high self-esteem may overestimate their skills and abilities. She may feel entitled to succeed. Even without abilities to back up her beliefs in herself, she is often very boastful and brags about herself a lot. Usually seeing herself as perfect, she may struggle with relationship issues and be unwilling to participate in any kind of self-improvement. After all, when you’re perfect what do you need to fix.
Underneath it all, though, is a fear that if anyone finds out who she really is, they won't like her.
She often mask her fear by bullying others, in childhood, as a teenager, then even as an adult. She may be the one who puts down others and makes sure everyone aware of the other person's flaws, while hiding her own. “That’s a nice top, but it looks like crap on you.”
An individual with low self-esteem have some very strong negative beliefs about herself. She holds on to negative experiences, memories, thoughts, and words that others say that sting a little (or a lot). Old messages and memories about herself and the world around her often become so embedded into her thinking patterns that they become core beliefs and create a filter of how she sees everything.
Perceptions of self and the world around her are distorted. Negative core beliefs and negative thought processes not only contribute the poor view she has of her self and her abilities, it may be the root cause of it.
If those negative feelings last for an extended period of time, she may need to learn how to build her self-esteem. I have the perfect solution.
I teach classes for learning about self and others. The first two series of classes are very important in this process. Barriers to Self-Esteem supports an individual in learning what caused the low self-esteem in the first place. This 8-week class takes you through six steps of learning to undo the damage that has been caused. The second 8-week class, Building Self-Esteem, is just that. It teaches you, step by step, how to build yourself, starting with a new belief system.
These two series of classes are very powerful and have helped hundreds of women. Even women who thought their self-esteem was clearly intact, were surprised by how much they didn’t know about their own self-esteem until they took the classes. Usually, they came along with a friend who didn’t want to take the class alone. But the subconscious is a powerful thing. It usually sits us right where we need to be.
I know these classes work because at age 25, I was at my lowest point, seeing no way out. This is the process I created and used to build a life worth living. A wonderful life. It is not without ups and downs, sometimes very calm, sometimes with drama. At times it is full of discontent and a need for change. It took work, self-reflection, and breaking through thick walls of denial to get to where I am today. But I got here. To a place of taking control of my life and making good choices for myself.
One of the most important things I learned was that we are changing continuously, therefore, working on myself is continuous. “The change of life” that many adults refer to is not a mere 35years old for women and 40 for men. Change of life is continuous. At age 73, I can tell you change is a constant.
Life is a process. For me, change is inevitable, welcomed and accepted. I hope it is for you, too.
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