This is an interesting topic Lark and one that I have put a lot of thought into over the years. I have come to a personal conclusion that low self esteem has different origins and different effects on different people. Trying to pin point one cause or making a blanket statement about origins and solutions is futile. I have noticed several parallels in origin and solution but those thoughts do not fit everyone.
I think some of the main contributing causes of low self esteem are as follows:
Paternal influence
Adult abuse/ physical and mental
Peer abuse/ physical and mental
Physical appearance and personal feelings about it
Intellectual capacity and learning ability
Cultural and religious influence
Genetic adaptations
Health
You can take the positive and negative influences of each of the above as a starting point. You can have several of the positive influences in your life such as good parents, good health, etc., and feel that you are fairly well rounded. If you add just a few of the negative aspects of the above into the mix such as feeling you are unattractive and being mentally abused by peers along with a lower intelligence level and you end up with a person with low self esteem.
Take that same person with all the same attributes both negative and positive and then put them into a group with others who have the same attributes and the persons self esteem will increase. It's all about acceptance of who you are. On this board as exJW's we tend to accept each other because we have had similar life experiences. We more readily accept the little personality quarks in each other because we share a lot of the same ones. Acceptance is a big key. We accept people here and we are accepted because we "realize" a lot of the same attributes in ourselves, fears, pain, regrets, lost love, inability to fit in, rejection etc.
It is so easy to accept these things in others but the problem is can we accept them in ourselves. Can we say that we have a certain problem in life but that it's OK to have it? Why is it so easy to recognize and accept on this board but not within ourselves and or relationship to the neutral zone we find ourselves in out in the world? All past influences can quickly change when one changes their environment. That is why this board is so popular with exJW's. It is an environment where people from all levels of the above influences can feel a bit normal and converse with others who have had similar life experiences.
That's all well and fine in the confines of this board but the important issue is fitting in outside of the nice little control group. The problem seems to be taking our little personality quarks out into the real world and trying to be accepted. Without acceptance we feel alone and that can definitely bring on low self esteem. Many leave the JW's and run to another Christian religion and become as fanatical within it's ranks as they were with the JW's. Their self esteem is only transferred from one group influence to another. The key here is to build self esteem within yourself so that you can be comfortable with "yourself" in any group or environment. To do this you need to realize that you may not really know who you are. Most people are made up of influences in life programed into themselves by other people. These other people who tell us who we are and what we should be and how we should think.
Positive or negative, our minds and how we think of ourselves is heavily influenced by others telling us about ourselves. We are only a reflection of our many influences in life. This may sound strange but most of us have little idea of who we really are. It is like looking at our own faces. It is our face, it is on our head, but, not one single one of us has or will ever see our own face in the flesh. We can only see our faces as a reflection in a mirror. We can never see it exactly as others do. If we can never do that one thing that is so personal about ourselves then how can we say we know exactly how we look. If we do not know exactly how we look then is it possible that we do not know exactly how we feel about things. How we feel can be just as much as a reflection of others thinking as our reflection of our faces in the mirror. Realizing this is essential to finding out who we really are and then we can begin to build self esteem in ourselves.
Realization is the first step to understanding.
I will give an example of one of my major turning points in life that helped me realize I had a problem with a one of the negative aspects of the above list, parental influence.
I had been out of the religion for a few years, and was around 31 years old. I was well on my way trying to adjust to life outside of the religion and influence of my parents. I was at a business dinner in Washington, DC with about 20 other business associates. It was a formal dinner with about six courses. I was sitting next to my sales Rep from Texas who was a bit older and much wiser than I in the ways of the world. After about the third course He had noticed that I ate everything on my plate. When the next course was served I looked at it and just shook my head. I got about half way through it and I began to take deep breaths to try and put another mouthful in. My sales rep leaned over to me and whispered in my ear "you don't have to clean your plate, you momma aint here". That simple little statement hit me like a recking ball to the head.
I felt as much freedom and relief from that simple little statement as I did after missing the first full week of meetings after walking away from the religion. I had realized at that exact moment that I had been so strongly programed by my parents since birth that I absolutely had to clean my plate when eating that even though I was 31 years old and far away from my parents the programing took over and continued to control my life.
I began to discover that if this stupid little programed characteristic was so deeply set in my mind that there must be many other things that I did automatically that I didn't like about myself. I realized that I could simply identify what they were and stop doing them.
This is one of the keys to building self esteem. You first identify what influences you have had in your life that cause you to do things that you do not like. It is the doing and thinking that is programed into ourselves that cause us not to like ourselves. Not liking ourselves causes low self esteem. The real kicker is, most of us do not realize that we do not like ourselves. We do and say things that later on we are embarrassed about or wished we had not said or done it. We ask ourselves "why did I say that" I don't understand myself. Simply stated, most of us do not really know ourselves. What we know is the person we see in the mirror who is made up of many influences programed into ourselves by other people.
We may not like something but because of this hard drive programing we have had we do not allow ourselves to realize, admit, and then change what it is we do not like. Health issues are the hardest to do anything about. If we are born with poor health we pretty much have to deal with it the best we can. The other influences we definitely can do something about.
The first step is to "realize" an unfavorable programed influence. The second thing is to "accept" that you have this influence in your life. The third thing is to "try and change" your thinking about the influence. I say "try" here because many of us put way too much pressure to make changes that we may not be ready for or may not be able to change.
There are weird little personality quarks that we may not be able to change. Shyness is one of them. In a case like that it is good to look at shyness a little different. Most have in their head that being "shy" is a negative characteristic because society says it. I say bullshit! If you are shy, realize it, accept it, and change it if "you want to." Realizing that being shy is just a part of who you "really are" is just fine. Once you accept it and become comfortable with it you can remain shy but you can build your self esteem because you have realized that it is OK for you to be shy. If others do not like that you are "that is their problem." You can be shy but still have a good self esteem. The same goes for how you feel about how you look and your intelligence level. Change what you are comfortable with and accept what you personally feel is who you really are. What others think is their own problem to deal with and may have influences based on their own insecurities.
If you can examen each and every personality aspect of yourself and keep what you like and change what you do not like you will begin to find your personal balance in life and begin to get to know yourself and then like yourself. Once you do that you build up self esteem. It is hard to build up anything in regard to yourself if you are made up of too many other peoples ideas, predigest, beliefs, wishes and their own personal influences. Don't let people who do not really know who they are try and tell you who you should be or how you should think.
Just a few of my own thoughts on the matter.
I'm done now.
Dave
