Ways to Enhance Self-Esteem

There are many pathways to self-esteem. It is not something that develops overnight or because of any single insight, decision or modification in your behaviour. Self-esteem is built gradually through a willingness to work on several areas in your life:

• Taking care of yourself
• Developing support and intimacy
• Other pathways to self-esteem

Although these pathways to self-esteem are diverse among themselves, they can all be viewed as extensions of the basic idea of taking care of yourself.

Taking Care of Yourself

Taking care of yourself is the foundation on which all other pathways to self-esteem rest. Without a basic willingness and ability to care for, love, and nurture yourself, it is difficult to achieve a deep or lasting experience of self-worth.

Perhaps you had the good fortune to receive the love, acceptance, and nurturing from your parents that could provide you with a solid foundation for self-esteem as an adult. Presently you are free of any deep-seated feelings of insecurity and your path to self-esteem is likely to be simple and short, involving certain changes in attitude, habits and beliefs. For those who have carried a lifelong sense of insecurity, though, the way to self-worth involves developing the ability to give yourself what your parents could not. It’s possible to overcome deficits from your past only by becoming a good parent to yourself.

Some Causes of Low Self-Esteem: What are some of the childhood circumstances that can lead you to grow up with feelings of insecurity or inadequacy?

Overly-critical Parents: Parents who were constantly critical or set impossibly high standards or behaviour may have left your feeling guilty; that somehow you could “never be good enough”. As an adult, you will continue to strive for perfection to overcome a long-standing sense of inferiority. You may also have a strong tendency toward self-criticism.

Significant Childhood Loss: If you were separated from a parent because of death or divorce, you may have been left feeling abandoned. You may have grown up with a sense of emptiness and insecurity inside that can be re-stimulated very intensely by losses of significant people in your adult life. As an adult, you may seek to overcome old feelings of abandonment by over dependency on a person or other addictions to food, drugs, work or whatever works to cover the pain.

Parental Abuse: Physical and sexual abuses are extreme forms of deprivation. They may leave you with a complex mix of feelings, including inadequacy, insecurity, lack of trust, guilt and/or rage. Adults who were physically abused as children may become perpetual victims or may themselves develop a hostile posture toward life, victimising others. Adults, especially men who were sexually abused as children, sometimes express their rage by turning to rape and abuse as adults. Or they may turn that rage inward in deep feelings of self-loathing and inadequacy. Survivors of abusive childhoods often, and understandably, have difficulty with intimate relationships in their adult lives. While less flagrant, constant verbal abuse can have equally damaging effects.

Parental Alcoholism or Drug Abuse: Much has been written in recent years on the effects of parental alcoholism on children. Chronic drinking or substance abuse creates a chaotic, unreliable family atmosphere in which it is difficult for a child to develop a basic sense of trust or security. The denial of the problem, often by both parents, teaches the child to deny his or her own feelings and pain connected to the family situation. Many such children grow up with poor self-esteem or a poor sense of personal identity. Fortunately, support groups are presently available to help adult children of alcoholics heal the adverse effects of the past.

Parental Neglect: Some parents, because they are preoccupied with themselves, their work or other concerns, simply fail to give their children adequate attention and nurturing. Children left to their own devices often grow up feeling insecure, worthless and lonely. As adults, they may tend to discount or neglect their own needs.

Parental Rejection: Even without physical, sexual or verbal abuse, some parents impart a feeling to their children that they are unwanted. This profoundly damaging attitude teaches a child to grow up doubting his or her very right to exist. Such a person has a tendency toward self-rejection or self-sabotage. It remains possible for adults with such a past to overcome what their parents didn’t give them through learning to love and care for themselves.

Parental Over Protectiveness: The child who is overprotected may never learn to trust the world outside of the immediate family and risk independence. As an adult, such a person may feel very insecure and afraid to adventure far from a safe person or place. Through learning to acknowledge and care for their own needs, overprotected individuals can gain the confidence to make a life of their own and discover that the world is not such a dangerous place.

Parental Overindulgence: The “spoiled” child of overindulgent parents is given insufficient exposure to “deferred gratification” or appropriate limits. As adults, such people tend to be bored, lack persistence, or have difficulty initiating and sustaining individual effort. They tend to expect the world to come to them rather than taking responsibility for creating their own lives. Until they are willing to take personal responsibility, such people feel cheated and very insecure because life does not continue to provide what they learned to expect during childhood.

Do any of the above categories seem to fit you? Does more than one? You may initially find it difficult to acknowledge problems in your past. Our memory of childhood is often hazy and indistinct-especially when we do not want to recall what happened. The point of remembering and acknowledging what happened to you as child is not so that you can blame your parents. Most likely, your parents did the best they could with their available personal resources, which may have been severely limited because of deprivations they experienced with their parents. The purpose of remembering your past is to release it and rebuild your present. Old “tapes” or patterns based on fear, guilt or anger will tend to interfere with your present life and relationships until you can identify and release them. Once you acknowledge and ultimately forgive your parents for what they were unable to give you, you can truly begin the journey of learning to care for yourself. This means becoming a good parent to yourself.