I am reading The Power of Self-Esteem by Nathaniel Brandon, Ph.D.
I have never had much self-esteem. At least I did not think so. I was not raised a JW, so I can't blame it on them.
But much of how people feel from what the JW experiance does to them develops low self-esteem.
Here is a list of Obstacles to the Growth of Self-Esteem
Parents throw up severe obstacles to the growth of a childs self-esteem when they........
*Convey that the child is not "enough"
*Chastise the child for expressing "unacceptable" feelings.
*Ridicule or humiliate the child.
*Convey that the child's thoughts or feelings have no value or importance.
*Attempt to control the child by shame or guilt.
*Over-protect the child and consequently obstruct normal learning and increasing self-reliance.
*Raise a child with no rules at all, and thus no supporting structure, or else rules that are contradictary, bewildering, undiscussable, and oppressive, in either case inhibiting normal growth.
*Deny a child's perception of reality or implicitly encourage the child to doubt his or her mind.
*Treat evident facts as unreal, thus shaking the child's sense of rationality. For example, when an alcoholic father stumbles to the dinner table, misses the chair, and falls to the floor as the mother goes on eating or talking as if nothing had happened.
*Terrorize a child with physical violence or the threat of it, thus instilling acute fear as an enduring characteristic of the child's core.
*Treat a child as a sexual object.
*Teach that the child is bad, unworthy, or sinful by nature.
Today millions of men and women who have come out of such childhood experiances are searching for ways to heal their wounds. They recognise that they have entered adult life with a liability-a deficit of self-esteem. Whatever words they use to describe the problem, they know they suffer from some nameless sense of not being "enough" or some haunting emotion of shame or guilt, or a generalized self-distrust, or a diffusive feeling of unworthiness. The sense their lack even if they do not know what precisely self-esteem is, let alone how to nurture and strengthen it within themselves.
Definition of Self-Esteem.
Self-esteem is the experiance that we are appropriate to life and to the requirements of life. More specifically, self-esteem is...
1. Confidence in our ability to think and to cope with the challenges of life.
2. Confidence in our right to be happy, the feeling of being worthy, deserving, entitled to assert our needs and wants and to enjoy the fruits of our efforts.
Lacking positive self-esteem, or psychological growth is stunted. Positive self-esteem operates as, in effect, the immune system of consciousness, prividing resistance, strength, and a capacity for regeneration. When self-esteem is low, our resilience in the face of life's adversities is diminished. We crumble before viscissitudes that a healthier sense of self could vanquish. We tend to be more influenced by the desire to avoid pain than to experiance joy. Negatives have more power of us than positives.
People with low self-esteem can and do achieve, but are crippled in their ability to find joy in their acheivements. Nothing they do will ever feel like "enough."
purps