The Common Causes Of Low Self Esteem
Your level of self esteem is based upon the relationships and unique experiences during your life.
Although the positive experiences and fulfilling relationships have helped to raise your self esteem,
bad experiences and relationships may have lowered your self esteem.
Your experiences at home, at school or at work - in fact all areas of your life have influenced your self esteem.
If you or your friends and family have constantly compared you to others, if you've been constantly critisized
in a negative way then your self esteem may have been adversely affected.
In general, there are two sources for the causes of low self-esteem: external sources and internal sources.
External sources are the things that happen around us; the way people act toward us, and the type of environment we live and work in, and things that happen to us throughout our lives. Internal sources are things that we create for ourselves: our explanation of events and the image we create of ourselves. However, although we may see external sources as things largely out of our control, we make them internal by our reaction and explanation of them. This defines the image we have of ourselves – our self-image.
Our parents, and indeed our family as a whole have played a large part in forming our sense of ourselves, and our perception of reality. Our parents’ own self-esteem, how well they’ve nurtured us, what they’ve expected of us, and their general outlook on the world, have all influenced us. This is also true for our friends and colleagues too. Many of the opinions and views they have, religious, political and even just the way they see and interact with people have influenced our self-image and hence our self-esteem. What people think and how they act tend to “rub-off” on us, especially when we see these people as somehow important to ourselves or in society. We have a tendency, especially at a young age to adopt these views and behaviours as our own. If these views are negative and are generally bad for self-esteem, then we inherit them and risk inheriting the low self-esteem that comes with them.
Our childhood experiences have greatly influenced our self-image, especially with regard to our parents. Children are totally dependent on their parents from the day they are born. Although this physical dependency soon turns to independence, the emotional dependency and need for guidance in life continues for much longer.
It is very difficult for a child to have a higher level of self-esteem than the self-esteem of the people who raised them. Children assume that their parents are perfect; they are well balanced and have all the right answers. We assume as children that all we are taught is correct and unbiased, however in fact this may not be the case.
Much of the information that you thought was unbiased and accurate was in fact inaccurate; it was distorted or incomplete. Perhaps you were given someone else’s opinions, based on their own desires and standards, desires and standards that were very different from your own, and hence not in your best interest. However, it is important to remember that in most cases our parents were doing what they thought was best for us.
Competition in families, especially amongst siblings is quite common. Jealously amongst siblings can lead to untrue, yet hurtful comments being said to each other. If we believe them to be fact will damage our self-image and self-esteem.
The society we live in is equally competitive. We are constantly judged by what we’ve achieved, what model of car we drive, the size of our house, how much money we have, how “normal” we are and so on. The media portrays images of what they see as being successful, beautiful, sexy, and a wide range of other qualities. If we are lead to feel inadequate in any of these areas, this can lower our self-esteem.
We are constantly compared to others throughout our lives. If someone of a similar age or similar job at work is performing to a particular standard, we are expected to match or exceed that standard. When we don’t achieve similar results, we may be put down which lowers our self-esteem and can affect our motivation to strive to achieve the standards required. If we do however exceed a particular standard, jealousy or others’ insecurity can lead to untrue statements being said which further lowers our self-esteem. We can find ourselves in a no-win situation with a feeling of helplessness.
The way we react to how people treat us can often be self-destructive. When we are subjected to abuse, as a child we tend to think that we must have done something to deserve this. This can carry on into adulthood if we take comments as being true without questioning them.
People also tend to live up to their expectations. If you are expected to do badly in something and are treated as if you will, chances are that you will perform badly. We unconsciously strive to satisfy these expectations as if somehow this will lead to approval by those setting them; we prove that they’re right.
The extent to how we are punished, physically and verbally as a child can also adversely affect our self-esteem. This may happen more subtly as an adult, not just with verbal punishment, but also in the way people give approving or disapproving looks to our behaviour or performance.
Our internal feelings are largely responsible for the level of our self-esteem. We all have an inner voice that acts as a judge to our behaviour and performance. This inner voice is constantly warning us, criticizing us, praising us and motivating us to do better. If we are overly harsh on ourselves or put ourselves down this will lower our image of ourselves and damage our self-esteem.
This is also true when others compare us to either themselves or other people. If someone is constantly saying, “Why can’t you be like so and so”, then sooner or later we’ll start making that comparison ourselves, again lowering our self-esteem.
One of the symptoms of low-self esteem is a disabled will. This causes us to start a task and then give up before completing it. This can either be because we don’t know how to complete it or we simply don’t want to succeed hard enough; in short, we don’t believe we can. This is usually caused by being prevented from doing what we want or succeeding in the past, either by being told “No” as a child too often or by having our efforts or motives belittled.
We may be dominated by fear, fear to change or fear of failure. This contributes to a disabled will and can lead us to accept things the way they are feeling helpless or unwilling to strive for better things. Indeed, we may actively go out of our way to prevent any change within our life.
There may be baggage from our past that still haunts us because we haven’t dealt with them. We may be still hurting from a past grievance or experience that constantly comes back no matter how much we try to ignore it. It starts to dominate our lives and distorts our view on ourselves, our environment and other people. Unless we learn to deal with our issues, they will act as a prison for us and we can be dominated by the past, never seeing the future for the wealth of opportunity it is.
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