“Life grows lovely where you are.” – Mathilde Blind Self-esteem is how a person feels about themselves, their abilities, and their values. These feelings develop over time as we grow up interact and experience new things. A person with healthy self esteem values themselves as a person and trusts their feelings and abilities believing that they are capable of doing amazing things and are able to work toward their goals. Unfortunately, due to the rise of social media and competitiveness among people more than 19.4% of teenagers have a negative self-esteem. Low self-esteem is associated with anxiety, depression, and academic stress which significantly affects people's quality of life and leads to suicidal thoughts.
Typically, a person with low self-esteem tends to be extremely critical of themselves, downplaying or ignoring their positive qualities, judging themselves to be inferior to their peers, and often using negative words to describe themselves. Often they assume that luck played a large role in all their achievements and blame themselves when things go wrong instead of taking into account other things that could have influenced the situation. These are some common traits of a person with negative self-esteem but recognizing a person with low self-esteem is not always easy. Here are three common faces that a low self-esteem person may wear:
1. The Imposter: This person may act happy and successful all the time but is really terrified of failure. They often live with the constant fear that they're crave for attention will be found out. They maintain the mask of positive self-esteem, which may lead to problems with perfectionism, procrastination, competition, and burnout.
2. The Rebel: This person may act like their opinions are superior to those of others—especially people who are important or powerful. They live with constant anger about not feeling good enough. Continuously needing to prove that others' judgments and criticisms don't hurt, which may lead to problems like blaming others excessively, breaking rules or laws, or opposing authority.
3. The Victim: This person tends to act helpless and pretends to be unable to cope with the world and waits for someone to come to their rescue. They use self-pity or indifference as a shield against fear of taking responsibility. They repeatedly look towards others for guidance, which can lead to such problems as unassertiveness, underachievement, and excessive reliance on others in relationships. Our past experiences, impact our daily life in the form of an "inner voice."
For people with healthy self-esteem, the messages of the inner voice are usually accepting and reassuring. For people with low self-esteem, the inner voice becomes a harsh critic, punishing one's mistakes and belittling one's accomplishments. To improve one’s self-esteem it is necessary to recognize what a person is good at. In addition to that, we need to build positive relationships and spend time with those who encourage us and build up our self-esteem. If we find certain people that bring us down, try to spend less time with them, or tell them how you feel about their words or actions.
Unfortunately, positive people can only do so much change must come from the inside. A crucial step to building positive self-esteem is to learn to be kind to ourselves. Think what you'd say to a friend in a similar situation. We often give far better advice to others than we do to ourselves! Another crucial step is to learn to say no. People with low self-esteem often feel they have to say yes to other people, even when they don’t want to, for the most part, saying no does not upset or disrupt relationships.
Learning to be assertive, communicating your feelings, and creating healthy boundaries can significantly improve your confidence. At the end of the day, everyone has strengths and weaknesses. As humans, it is in our nature to focus on our flaws rather than our strengths. One of the best things an authority figure or a friend can do is to help them identify their strengths and reinforce positive thoughts. It is important to remember that everyone lacks confidence occasionally but people with low self-esteem are unhappy or unsatisfied with themselves most of the time. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of attention and daily practice to boost low self-esteem so take your time, and every day try taking small steps to rejuvenate yourself!
Bibliography: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00698/full https://cmhc.utexas.edu/selfesteem.html#:~:text=Consequences%20of%20Low%20Self%2DEsteem,- Low%20self%2Desteem&text=create%20anxiety%2C%20stress%2C%20loneliness%2C,to%20drug%20and%20alcoh ol%20abuse https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/self-esteem
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