Your relationship with yourself sets the tone for very other relationship you have!
So what sort of relationship do you have with yourself?
Impaired self-esteem can affect everyone. Even the most outwardly confident and successful person can experience a crippling poor self-esteem…
Impaired self-esteem negatively impacts our ability to manage adversity and life’s disappointments. All of our relationships are affected, including our relationship with ourselves.
When our self-esteem is impaired, we feel insecure, compare ourselves to others, and doubt and criticize ourselves. We neither recognize our worth nor honour and express our needs and wants.
Instead, we may self-sacrifice, defer to others or try to control them and/or their feelings towards us to feel better about ourselves. For example, we might people-please, manipulate or devalue them, provoke jealousy or restrict their association with others. Consciously or unconsciously, we devalue ourselves, including our positive skills and attributes, making us hypersensitive to criticism.
What causes Impaired Self-Esteem?
Our self-esteem begins developing as children. Growing up in a dysfunctional family can lead to a weakened self-esteem as an adult. Commonly, in such families, as a child, you don’t have a voice; your opinions and desires aren’t taken seriously.
Parents in these families usually have impaired self-esteem and are unhappy with each other. They themselves neither have nor model good relationship skills, including co-operation, healthy boundaries, respect for others. They may be abusive, controlling, interfering, manipulative, indifferent, inconsistent or just preoccupied. Directly or indirectly, they may shame their children’s feelings, personal traits and needs.
Children in these families learn that it’s not safe to be, to trust or to express themselves… They grow up with impaired self-esteem and learn to hide their feelings, walk on eggshells, withdraw and try to please, or become aggressive…
Research indicates that a partner with healthy self-esteem can positively influence his or her partner’s self-esteem, but it also shows that impaired self-esteem portends a negative outcome for the relationship…
Impaired self-esteem hinders our ability to speak up about our wants and needs and share vulnerable feelings. This compromises honesty and intimacy… we may have developed an attachment style that to varying degrees, is anxious or avoidant and makes intimacy challenging…
We can change and build healthy self-esteem. Raising self-esteem means getting to know and love yourself — and building a relationship, as you would with a friend — and becoming your own best friend. This takes attentive listening, quiet time, reflection and commitment.
— Merrill Gee, Psychotherapist
I will forever thank my ex-husband for leading me to Joel Brass (my favourite therapist) and his “Work of Love”. Although the relationship was not salvageable, we both benefitted immensely from the personal and relationship coaching. Twenty years later, my biggest gift continues to be my improved relationship with myself. I learned how to identify, acknowledge and articulate my feelings and then make requests on my own behalf. In short, I learned how to have my own back. Game changer. Just sayin’ :) Hugs and good luck. XO
Blessings,
Chatgirl
