Self-Esteem – Page 19 – Self Esteem Awareness

Low self-esteem can keep you from living your life to its fullest potential because you don’t think you can be happy, or you feel like you don’t deserve to be happy. This can affect all the relationships you have in your life, including those at work, with friends and, most importantly, your romantic relationships. What is Self esteem? Self esteem is how we perceive ourselves and how we feel about ourselves. People’s self esteem can be too high, making them seem arrogant and self-centered. Other people have trouble with low self esteem that makes them feel inferior to others and makes them doubt their decision-making and how others perceive them. Where does Low Self esteem Come From? Our self-esteem can be impacted by those closest to us, especially our parents, our siblings and our relationships. Our self esteem is often affected starting at a young age. If you are told how great you are and continually praised for your accomplishments, you will probably end up having good self-esteem. Unfortunately, those who are closest to us can cause us to have low self esteem if we are criticized too much and told we are unworthy of love or unworthy of being cared for. Abusive relationships, whether from parents or spouses, can affect our self-esteem and cause us to doubt ourselves and question what is right for us and what is bad. How Low Self esteem Affects Relationships If you are in a relationship where you are always being criticized, or it seems you cannot please your partner, it can lower your self esteem. Have you ever wonder: Is My Low Self esteem Ruining My Relationship?. Women who are involved with abusive men, whether the abuse is physical or verbal, often have problems with poor self esteem and it can lead them to conclude that “my boyfriend is killing my self esteem.” Low self esteem can cause you to mistrust people because all you’ve ever experienced is individuals who criticize everything you do, including how you look and your intelligence. However, if you don’t have trust in a relationship, it can undermine even the best of relationships because the other person feels like they cannot be out of your sight without being questioned about their fidelity. It can also be frustrating for your partner because your self esteem may cause you to question or doubt the positive statements they make about you. If they praise you for the dinner that you made, you may think they have an ulterior motive for saying those things. You may doubt how much they care about you because you feel unworthy of their love and that doubt can cause a rift in your relationship. Some people with low self esteem have trouble staying in relationships, of any kind, because they have a tendency to push people away from them due to lack of trust. This is very common for people who have been abused in the past, but it can be extremely hard to the people who care about them. They may lose their patience and end up leaving the relationship because they have been pushed away once too often. Improving Your Self esteem Ask yourself “what is my self esteem level” to figure out if you have low self esteem or not. If you find you have trouble trusting your partner or if you question the positive things they say to you, you probably are suffering from low self esteem, and you need to take steps to improve it. You can talk small steps every day to improve your self esteem by reminding yourself that you are worthy of being loved and nurtured and you are a great person. Self-talk is important for many people with self esteem issues because they may have experienced prolonged verbal and emotional abuse and end up believing everything negative that has been said to them. Self-doubt is as destructive as not being able to trust others around you. Not being able to trust yourself can lead to the inability to make decisions, which in turn, prevents you from progressing in your life. You have to be to trust the decisions you make and stop the self-critical behavior. Telling yourself it is okay to make mistakes as long as you learn from them can help you. Along with self-talk, you can see a therapist to learn more skills to improve your self-esteem as well. They can help you develop ways to improve your self esteem and feel better about yourself. They may give you an action plan to start taking small steps to begin to improve your self esteem, such as changing your hairstyle or treating yourself to a massage just to be good to yourself. Another step to take in improving your self-esteem is to stop doubting the compliments you are given. Not everyone has an ulterior motive when they make positive comments about your shoes or your new hairstyle or whatever the compliment is. Learn to take what people tell you at face value instead of always assuming the worst or trying to read in between the line to figure out what they mean. Improving how you feel about yourself will positively impact your relationships because you can believe what others tell you as well. It will also give you the ability to get out of relationships that may be bad for you because you will realize that you are worthy of being treated with respect and dignity and not being verbally or emotionally battered. You will learn to take back control of your life instead of giving it to someone else.