Your self-esteem
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Your self-esteem
| Wed, 07-05-2006 - 12:27pm |
What do you do to be sure that you maintain a healthy self-esteem/self-image or whatever you'd like to call it?
I find it difficult to ignore signals that seem to be coming from everywhere, telling us how we don't measure up.

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I have always had relatively high self-esteem all my life and a lot of it has been internal. I think my mother just instilled a strong sense of independence and "go your own way" lessons in me that I've always followed. I have a lot of things to be proud of including school and my career path, my interests and activities, and a fantastic boyfriend.
Now the one thing that does get me down is my weight which has been really bothering me lately. I've been trying but apparently not hard enough. And its not because of comparisons to others, its comparisons to the way I was and how I know I can be. I feel stuck in a rut over clothes (how come the skinny girls get the cute stuff?!) and sometimes I dont feel sexy, which can spell problems in other areas of my life. I know I'm beautiful and I am ok with having the curves that I do. I think its just that I'm "out of shape" in those curves. I also do a lot of negative self-talk at times and I need to work on that too.
So I guess right now, I'm in a stage in my life where I'm personally beating myself up and hating what I'm doing to myself because I know I'm better than this.
You don't think it has anything to do with attitude?
<< What do you do to be sure that you maintain a healthy self-esteem/self-image or whatever you'd like to call it? >>
Sometimes I do positive affirmations and creative visualization. Also I have noticed that giving good advice to a friend or helping them achieve a more positive outlook can be great for my self-esteem. And also I may read something by Karen Salmansohn--that ALWAYS helps (my favorite is "Be Happy, Dammit").
It has quite a lot to do with attitude, but it starts with experiences. That and, attitude is related to experiences. An experience can create an attitude, and attitude can create an experience. But it all begins with experiences...when you're young. But I was brought up in a broken home (crazy mom, enough said there), was shunned by my peers, and wasn't given help for disabilities I didn't even know I had until after I went to boot camp (and yes I did get out on a medical discharge).
But I can't really relate to women who have low self-esteem because of their looks. My frets run a little deeper. I guess when it comes to that, it's mostly about attitude. I used to care a little too much. We all were teenagers! But now I don't care (not saying that I let myself go, but I don't try to live up to any ideal). But I'm not "woman sized" anymore. I consider size 10 to be great after being an over-plump size 18 for six years.
Many, many of us have had bad experiences as children.
Sorry to hear about your childhood Shywon. Sometimes parents don't realize they are doing more harm than good. It seems your mother was constantly criticizing you and thats just not healthy. The role of the parent should be to guide, to encourage, but if a parent always points out the negative, than that's how we see ourselves. It's conditioning, that conditioning can stay with us our whole lives, unless we see it, acknowledge it. Shywon, do you tend to blame yourself or are you hard on yourself. I used to be that way. I grew up with a mother that was chronically depressed and a critical father. I didn't experience unconditional love, I just heard about the wrong things that I did. I believe self esteem is a combination of things, but nutre is probably the biggest contributor.
I think some people may view counseling as bad and the person that wants to do it may feel like, hey what;s wrong with me. There is nothing wrong with counseling and the people who go are brave, not weak. We all could use to work on ourselves, and there is nothing wrong with sharing our emotions with someone, it's healthy. Our society seems to encourage repression and suppression. I also think some parents discourage their children to go to counseling, because some parents may feel the counselor is going to blame them. The sad thing in today's society we are judged by out performance, our appearance, but our heart are overlooked. This stuff is passed down into different generations, but knowledge is power.
I had low self esteem, I still have low self esteem
It stems from childhood. Being larger than most koreans, I got criticized and compared all the time. Even though when I was a size 5, I still got pushed to lose weight.
As for grades 97% really wasn't good enough for my family. Being anything less than a professional(doctor/lawyer...) was just insulting.
eventually I broke down, spiraled into a deep depression and gained 25 lbs in a year.
which made me feel even worse.
I still haven't lost those pounds and I am still struggling with my self esteem. I basicaly have none which is why it makes having friendships difficult.
I compare myself far to often to my friends to a point where I feel the need to distance myself because I feel more unhappy around them, then happy when I am with them.
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