What is low self esteem?

Here are two basic low self esteem responses:

1. Feeling down on yourself

  • feeling overwhelmed by the pace of life
  • feeling like a failure relative to everyone else
  • constantly doubting whether you can achieve anything
  • staying where it's safe, being afraid to try anything too new
  • behaving timidly and cannot assert yourself
  • overly depending on others to look after you
  • finding ways of escaping unpleasant realities
  • putting little effort into things because you doubt you can be successful
  • putting yourself down constantly
  • don't like your looks - too fat, too slim, too short, too tall

2. Feeling angry and getting even

  • losing your temper at the drop of a hat
  • being quick to pick a fight
  • blaming others or circumstances for every setback
  • constantly finding fault with the world
  • being negative - nothing is good, everything is horrible
  • taking pleasure in stories about the troubles of others
  • taking things out on others
  • constantly arguing about petty issues

 

Got that sinking feeling? Is that how low self esteem feels for you?

 

Some stay in one of these positons, others vacilate between them.

  • We mistakenly compare how we feel with how others behave.
  • Inevitably, most others will behave more happily than we feel.
  • So we conclude that no one else could feel as bad as we do.
  • This creates a vicious circle and our self esteem drops further.
  • Dwelling on the negative is like cancer. It grows and gets worse. It's pretty hard to force yourself just to think differently when you feel so negative.
  • One solution, if we can't change our situation or ourselves, is to change our attitude towards such things. One way to do this is to list all of the good things we can find in any situation. This may be hard at first. Perhaps someone else can help you. Keep in mind that you are partly causing yourself to feel worse. When we feel bad, we try to make ourselves feel better by blaming anything and everything around us, but that can often just make us feel worse. The worse we feel the more we feel a need to attack something, anything just to unload these negative feelings. The problem is, however, that this does not really offer a long term solution even if it provides immediate relief. You need, instead, to look at what you can do to change how you perceive things in the first place. This means finding a more positive way of viewing yourself and your situation.
  • Another tactic is to spend time doing and thinking about things that get in the way of our focus on the negative. Do things that are constructive and make us feel good. That means such things as helping others or achieving things that take effort rather than just getting drunk for instance or watching TV. We can't develop a sense of achievement with no effort
  • Achievement is one of the surest ways of building better self esteem. Dwelling on ourselves is one of the surest ways of staying down.

To help you improve your self esteem, read some of these other pages:-

 
           

All pages written by Mitch McCrimmon, Ph.D. and copyright © Self Renewal Group 1996-2008
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