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Afroshroomerican
Oprah's Minion



Registered: 05/12/06
Posts: 891
Loc: Pennsylvania
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Conquering self-esteem issues.
#7782827 - 12/20/07 06:51 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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I have known that my greatest obstacle is myself; others have also brought this to my attention. I have endeavored to improve my self-esteem, yet I cannot seem to escape belittling myself for my mistakes or any mishap that I think is a mistake, for that matter.
I am currently 21 years old and a junior in college. While I do not cut myself or attempt suicide anymore, my self-hate persists; I even avoid looking in mirrors unless there is sufficient need for me to check my "image".
Often I struggle to believe that I am up to par with my peers even if there is litter evidence to suggest otherwise. I do not believe that I can complete tasks at my skill level, and many times when I encounter situations that I know are well within my capacity, I become the mishap-ridden self that I loate--almost like a self-fulling prophecy.
I feel ashamed that these problems are persisting into my adulthood; however, they do seem to be abating with mediation and more conscientiousness.
I have given up on trying to find a romantic relationship, both because of the sparse gay population at my school and my emotional instability.
Can anyone offer some advice to becoming more emotionally sound and secure?
-------------------- "We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools." ~Martin Luther King Jr.~ <passitbobbie> if I just showed you a closeup of my ass <passitbobbie> youd think it was female "You owe errrbody up in here an apology fow youwe shit, HO!" - classic
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xFrockx



Registered: 09/17/06
Posts: 10,455
Loc: Northeast
Last seen: 11 days, 12 hours
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Do not seek to love your image, seek only to love your inner spirit. The rest will follow.
edit: I see your from PA, what college?
Edited by xFrockx (12/20/07 07:14 PM)
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MushroomTrip
Dr. Teasy Thighs



Registered: 12/02/05
Posts: 14,794
Loc: red panda village
Last seen: 2 years, 10 months
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I suggest that you have patience. You already began to change yourself in a direction of your choice, and you have to keep in mind that everything happens gradually, not all of a sudden. There are parts of you that allow this transformation much easier as they were not so vitiated by the things that obstructed the development you wished, and there are other aspects that need more time and patience. You need to allow yourself to benefit of all the time you need without rushing yourself into anything, because you need to understand that what's happening right now with you is that you're trying to integrate all these new notions into sides of yourself that are used to something else.
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   All this time I've loved you And never known your face All this time I've missed you And searched this human race Here is true peace Here my heart knows calm Safe in your soul Bathed in your sighs
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fushock

Registered: 10/14/07
Posts: 428
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If I knew how to help you, I would know how to help myself. But I have some suggestions that have helped me. And don't take this advise as golden, as I have my own problems.
1. Try not to compare yourself to others. There are a lot of amazing people out there. Excessive self monitoring will drive you crazy! Do your own thing and don't rate it.
2. Fake confidence. It might sound like the worst thing in the world; but if you act confidant it will come eventually. Its a display emotion anyways.
3. Everyone has insecurities. Some are better at hiding them than others. In fact, some of the people who are best at hiding them are that way because they have so many.
4. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. In fact, if that is what you fear most maybe you should go out of your way to keep making them until you learn to be cool with it.
5. Love yourself. When it comes down to it, yourself is all you have. So learn to be at piece with yourself.
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Ginseng1
Elegant Universe



Registered: 09/02/04
Posts: 3,310
Last seen: 9 years, 4 months
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Re: Conquering self-esteem issues. [Re: fushock]
#7783952 - 12/20/07 11:16 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Learn to laugh at yourself.
If you smile at life, it will smile back.
If you frown upon it, thats what you'll get.
Imagine yourself as the man you want to become, and you shall become that man. This is a universal rule. Just daydreams of what you want to percieve yourself to be.
Like mushroomtrip said, patience.
I have similar problems myself... depends on the seasons or something.
Some days I feel like a ferrari, some days like a jetta.
Today I was a jetta... fukin pissed at everything including myself for not being able to get my act together and being thousands of dollars in debt at school. Ah well.. I know some days I know how to smile with ease.. those are the days I strive to remember and look forward to everyday, all day.
Just remember.. you know those good days you have? If you focus on those days, learn how to make those days your life. So everyday is a good life and you genuinely love yourself.
-------------------- Flowing through beginningless time since time without beginning...
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Ginseng1
Elegant Universe



Registered: 09/02/04
Posts: 3,310
Last seen: 9 years, 4 months
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Re: Conquering self-esteem issues. [Re: fushock]
#7783962 - 12/20/07 11:18 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
fushock said:
3. Everyone has insecurities. Some are better at hiding them than others. In fact, some of the people who are best at hiding them are that way because they have so many.
very VERY true!
-------------------- Flowing through beginningless time since time without beginning...
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dblaney
Human Being

Registered: 10/03/04
Posts: 7,894
Loc: Here & Now
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That self-critical, judgmental tendency that you describe sounds really painful. I have similar tendencies. It's especially tricky because it's all too easy to fall into the trap of judging your judgment. Of being critical of the self-criticalness. And it sounds like that's what's happening in this thread. You're describing part of yourself that you don't like, and trying to find a way to change it or get rid of it.
Though that sort of solution may work in the short-term, in the long-term, those tendencies of mind will keep re-appearing and bothering you, manifesting as doubt or self-loathing or whatever.
There is one thing that I have found to be helpful beyond imagining, as well as transformative, is simply love. Love, in this situation, would be the open, compassionate, and aware acceptance and attention given towards the discomfort that you're experiencing.
Simply being aware of the stories you're telling yourself about how inadequate and unworthy you are (I actually suspect that nearly everyone on this planet has, at root, a similar fear of unworthiness or of not being quite good enough just as they are), and not believing them right away. Being aware of the tension in your body, and of the strong discomfort and fear that is being experienced.
So that's the first part of this kind of love: awareness. Simply being aware of what's going on, as it's happening, and being willing to stay with that pain, without trying to avoid it or escape it or distract yourself from it.
The second part is about opening your heart to your own pain. Of offering yourself kindness and warmth and acceptance. Of allowing yourself to be just as you are. Of accepting yourself just as you are.
Through those two aspects, it has been my experience that real growth can and will occur, and that your 'self-esteem issues' will cease to have the intense power over you that it sounds like they currently have.
-------------------- "What is in us that turns a deaf ear to the cries of human suffering?" "Belief is a beautiful armor But makes for the heaviest sword" - John Mayer Making the noise "penicillin" is no substitute for actually taking penicillin. "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." -Abraham Lincoln
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redgreenvines
irregular verb


Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 37,532
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Re: Conquering self-esteem issues. [Re: dblaney]
#7784475 - 12/21/07 03:53 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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love is like letting go releasing tension allowing rest/refuge welcoming unjudging
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_ đź§ _
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WhiskeyClone
Not here


Registered: 06/25/01
Posts: 16,509
Loc: Longitudinal Center of Canada ...
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I'm slowly learning that loving others (not just people you know!) makes it easier to love yourself. If you are compassionate, you will see yourself as compassionate, and suddenly there is something to like about yourself.
If you feel ashamed and inferior, you will have a hard time finding qualities about yourself you are attracted to. Do things for others, it helps a lot.
-------------------- Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. ~ R.W. Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
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Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery



Registered: 03/15/05
Posts: 95,368
Loc: underbelly
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Quote:
Afroshroomerican said: I have known that my greatest obstacle is myself; others have also brought this to my attention. I have endeavored to improve my self-esteem, yet I cannot seem to escape belittling myself for my mistakes or any mishap that I think is a mistake, for that matter.
I am currently 21 years old and a junior in college. While I do not cut myself or attempt suicide anymore, my self-hate persists; I even avoid looking in mirrors unless there is sufficient need for me to check my "image".
Often I struggle to believe that I am up to par with my peers even if there is litter evidence to suggest otherwise. I do not believe that I can complete tasks at my skill level, and many times when I encounter situations that I know are well within my capacity, I become the mishap-ridden self that I loate--almost like a self-fulling prophecy.
I feel ashamed that these problems are persisting into my adulthood; however, they do seem to be abating with mediation and more conscientiousness.
I have given up on trying to find a romantic relationship, both because of the sparse gay population at my school and my emotional instability.
Can anyone offer some advice to becoming more emotionally sound and secure?
I think everyone has these problems to one degree or another. Often I find my actions proving that I have self hate although at other times I can love myself. It's the human condition friend. I think it's important to know that you are not alone one little bit. Over years you may make improvements in your condition. I believe that is all one can do. No cure just improvement. Improvement takes work and time. Often it will seem like you are getting nowhere. Maybe you are and maybe you aren't. Life's a bit of a crap shoot. Luck really helps along with determination and a willingness to endure some pain. I wish I knew more but I don't. Good luck. And just the fact that you are courageous enough to admit to what is honestly going on makes you a good one in my book. Many who seem to have it together with a ready made philosophy to offer in their defense are LIARS and chicken IMO.
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
Edited by Icelander (12/21/07 09:13 AM)
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daytripper23
?


Registered: 06/22/05
Posts: 3,595
Loc:
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Re: Conquering self-esteem issues. [Re: Icelander]
#7784958 - 12/21/07 09:43 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Word, self esteem is not necessarily a good thing as it is made out to be. If you all of a sudden became self confident, without all the natural growth that comes with it, youd be a self righteous prick. learn to channel the self hate into your growth. Not that i have at all conquered these issues myself...This is what I am learning though.
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Bernackums
The universe will have its way.



Registered: 08/06/07
Posts: 865
Last seen: 13 years, 11 months
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Re: Conquering self-esteem issues. [Re: daytripper23]
#7785060 - 12/21/07 10:32 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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There are no mistakes, only lessons.
-------------------- Let's get the fuck out of here.
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kody260z
Stranger

Registered: 11/16/07
Posts: 72
Last seen: 15 years, 8 months
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Re: Conquering self-esteem issues. [Re: Bernackums] 1
#7785221 - 12/21/07 11:20 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Well, the whole notion of self-esteem is a matter of perceiving yourself at a certain *level* relative to others. It goes hand in hand with jealousy, really. I'm struggling with the same thing, and I stumbled upon a fantastic article, take a look:
"I have friends who are incredibly talented, and it’s hard for me to imagine ever being at their level. But I can say with total honesty that I never feel jealous of their successes and accomplishments, even when they totally put me to shame with their skill. And the reason is that I see reality in such a way that other people’s happiness is simply another expression of my own happiness.
Jealousy is a very ego-based notion. If you want to feel jealous, you must first adopt a scarcity mindset that suggests we’re in competition with each other. Reality must be reduced to your ego vs. other people. If someone gets that great job, that wonderful girlfriend, or that new house, it means you can’t have it. They won. You lost.
There’s an element of scarcity in jealousy as well as an element of attachment. If you want to become jealous, just become emotionally attached to something impermanent and then lose it to someone else.
What you may not yet realize is that the mindset of jealousy is in fact creative. If you cling to a belief in scarcity, you’ll attract plenty of scarcity-based situations that will reflect that mindset back to you: the promotion that you missed because someone else got it, the girlfriend you lost to your best friend, the parent that expresses more affection for your siblings instead of you. Due to the creative nature of jealousy, I’ve no doubt whatsoever that if you’re prone to jealousy, you’ll find plenty of reasons to feel jealous. I’m not saying those reasons aren’t valid or that you should just pretend you didn’t get the short end of the stick. I’m sure you got shafted big time. But are you aware of why this keeps happening to you? Until you can reach that awareness, you’ll continue repeating the pattern of manifesting new reasons to be jealous.
My current view of reality makes it nearly impossible for jealousy to arise because I don’t subscribe to the belief that we’re all separate beings in competition with each other. Instead I see us as projections of an all-encompassing consciousness. This may sound a little strange, but I usually prefer not to think of myself as an individual human being. I consider my ego to be nothing but a perspective — a lens through which consciousness can view and interact with its contents. But by itself it has no real substance.
This is similar to the mindset you might have when dreaming. If you became lucid (i.e. consciously aware that you’re dreaming while still in the dream world), you would know that the dream character you’re playing isn’t the real you. That character is just a figment and doesn’t really exist at all. In reality you are the dreamer, and the entire dream is contained within your consciousness. The dream character you temporarily thought was you is just as much you as everything and everyone else in the dream.
Now if you hold this level of awareness that you’re the dreamer and not the character within the dream, would you become jealous of the other dream characters? Not likely. You may in fact consider their success and skill to be an enhancement of the dream world, which you’d probably perceive as a good thing. Wouldn’t it be more fun to have a dream that you’re running around in the X-Men world, surrounded by characters that exceed your abilities vs. being surrounded by incompetent characters who are less skillful than you? Why not hold this same attitude in your physical life too? Isn’t it great to live in a world where others are even better off than you are?
Keep in mind that the dream will eventually end. The whole thing is rooted in illusion. It isn’t worth getting all worked up over that which you know to be impermanent. You’ll find no long-term security there. Instead focus on enjoying the unfolding story and immersing yourself in interesting experiences. This will be far more fun than becoming overly attached to possessions or positions you may temporarily hold.
Every moment of this life is just so darned fascinating and wonderful. We’re all sharing in the ongoing exploration of consciousness. What one person (or character) experiences only enhances the whole.
When I see someone else’s success, I celebrate it as my own. If I see someone do something that this seemingly limited person named Steve cannot seem to do, that’s of no consequence because I celebrate that the larger consciousness can do it, and that’s the real me anyway.
I’ve never climbed Mt. Everest, but since other people have done it, I feel as if the larger I (the consciousness in which reality unfolds — the true dreamer) has done it, so I allow myself to experience that as if it were a personal accomplishment. That probably sounds strange if you’re very attached to an objective view of the world, but I find it an empowering perspective.
Interestingly I find that with this mindset, my reality doesn’t seem to give rise to situations that could make me jealous. It’s not that I’m so great at managing my emotions — I just can’t find anything to be jealous about. Perhaps it’s because I feel that whatever I want, I can basically have if I commit myself to having it. But I think the bigger part is that I don’t maintain such a death-grip on what I have that I would be terribly upset to lose it, since I know I’m destined to lose all of it anyway. I find that I enjoy my possessions and experiences even more by accepting that all of this is temporary.
Although it may seem like my possessions can be taken away and my positions degraded, those things aren’t real and substantive anyway, so they hold no inherent value. The real value lies in the experience.
I remember Carolyn Myss saying during a lecture that we’re often willing to help people catch up to us, but we won’t help them pass us. Is this true for you?
In The Joy of Sadness, I explained how even negative emotions can be transformed into positive ones when you can move beyond the ego’s perspective and see reality from the perspective of a higher consciousness. From this perspective, jealousy would be like having your left hand accuse your right hand of stealing its ring. That would be silly. What sense does it make for your hands to fight with each other? A jealous reaction does make some sense from the perspective of an individual hand, but it makes no sense from the perspective of the larger body.
Consequently, if you’re jealous, it’s because you’re thinking of yourself as a hand, forgetting that you’re really the whole body. Everything you see and experience IS you. So in this sense, if anyone has anything, then you have it too.
I know this perspective can be difficult to grasp. I’m not suggesting it’s something you’ll pick up overnight. Just play around with it. Allow yourself to imagine the possibility that all of reality is in fact you. You’re not just a body with a brain. You’re actually the whole consciousness that’s experiencing this reality from a first-person perspective. This is your dream, and you’re the dreamer. There’s no past and no future. There’s only this present moment. From this perspective there can be no jealousy because there’s nothing outside yourself to be jealous of.
So that’s my stab at explaining how to overcome jealousy. Stop thinking of yourself as such a small, limited piece of reality, and expand your consciousness to encompass all that exists. That may sound like a wacky solution, but I can attest that it works. How can you be jealous of a dream character when you know you’re the dreamer?" -Steve Pavlina
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