Personal Growth
6 Steps to Enhancing Your Self-Esteem
There are many things in life that we have to accept because we can do nothing about them. The one thing we can change is how we relate to ourselves.
As said in previous posts (Understanding Self-Estseem and How it Develops, How Early Experience Shapes One’s Relationship with One’s Self and Self-Esteem – a By-Product of How You Treat Yourself) we first have to realize we have developed a style over time. We need to become aware of what our style is. We may even develop different styles with different people and in different situations. The styles may be healthy or unhealthy. If a style is positive, such as respecting oneself, it does not need changing (other than to enhance what is already done). This can last a lifetime.
The styles that need changing are the ones that are unhealthy, such as not respecting, disparaging, negating, hurting, or judging oneself harshly. Many people have harsh inner critics, treating themselves in ways they would never treat another human being.
STEPS TO CHANGE
1) Become aware of your own personal style.
2) Build a solid foundation. Identify the positive interactions within yourself and choose to do them more often.
Scenario:
Wenda likes to try new things even though she gets anxious. The risks she takes are reasonable and safe. She encourages herself to keep taking risks by saying to herself. “ I can do this.” Afterwards, she gives herself credit. When it turns out well she says to herself, “Good for me. I did it.” If it goes badly, she says to herself, “OK, that did not go well, but I learned from it. At least I tried it.”
3) Change what needs changing. Identify the negative interactions and target them for change.
Scenario:
Wenda would not allow herself to accept compliments. She would dismiss, ignore, or deny them. She decided she wanted to receive compliments. She knew if she could take them in, she would feel better about herself.
4) Figure out new behaviours to replace the old ones.
This takes planning and experimentation. You cannot operate in a void. You need to replace the old way with a new way.
Scenario:
Wenda decided on 4 new ways she would respond when someone complimented her:
- Thank you.
- I’m glad you think so.
- It’s good to hear that.
- I appreciate your saying that.
5) The Choice Point.
This is the point at which you are aware you are (or are about to) treat yourself badly, and you mindfully decide to continue to do it, or you decide to do something different.
Scenario:
Wenda’s friend complimented her on her hair. Wenda, without thinking, replied sarcastically, “Oh yeah, right.” Suddenly, Wenda realized she had just done her old thing. She looked at her friend and said, “I mean, thank you.”
6) Practice, practice, practice.
Experimenting means that sometimes what you try will go badly. Expect those times to happen. Do your best to laugh them off, dismiss them, and learn from them. Encourage and support yourself to try again. Gradually, you’ll replace a bad habit with a good habit, an unhealthy habit with a healthy habit.
With care and concern,
Dr. Bea
How to Shift Guilt into Positive Action
Guilt is a tremendous waste of energy. It does no one any good.
Guilt is all about feeling bad. Using guilt, you can make yourself feel bad, make someone else feel bad, manipulate yourself into doing something that you don’t want to say or do, and manipulate others into saying or doing things they don’t want to say or do. Using guilt, if you let them, others will manipulate you into doing something that you don’t want or need to say or do.
Guilt is grounded in standards and values. Standards and values are expressed with words such as – must, have to, ought to, obligated to, vowed to, should, responsible for, etc. The most used word is ‘should’.
I should work harder. I mustn’t talk so much. I should lose 10 pounds. I have to exercise more. I ought to drink less. I should go to church more often.
You can ‘should’ on yourself and you can ‘should’ on others. It’s a guaranteed way to make yourself and others feel bad.
Wants and needs are expressed with words that describe what we want or don’t want, what we need or don’t need, our preferences, passions, interests, tastes, etc.
I want to work with people. I need to feel wanted. I love music. I am fascinated with antique cars. I need some exercise. I need quiet to focus. I love holding my grandson. I hate licorice. I don’t want to travel anymore. I don’t need as much sleep as I used to. I’m crazy about tennis.
When we feel guilt, either of our own making or from what others say or do to us, it is often because our (or someone else’s) standards and values are opposed to our wants and needs.
E.g., I should visit my friend in the hospital more often.
You may not like hospitals so you avoid visiting your friend. You are also busy in your life and have difficulty finding the time to go. You value your friend and have a standard of how friends interact so you make yourself feel guilty for not acting accordingly. Or, you use the guilt to make yourself visit your friend. People often do or say things, not because they want or need to, but to stop or avoid feeling guilty.
Sometimes guilt is employed to avoid confrontation or to control your impulses. Perhaps you’re mad at someone but you feel it is risky or unsafe to be angry with that person so you turn the anger back on yourself. Only you experience the anger as guilt. “I should not be angry. I’m a bad person. There must be something wrong with me.” There is less danger of confrontation; there’s less danger of losing control of your impulses. And, you feel bad.
Guilt is energy. When you feel guilty, turn that energy into productive action: If you are religious or spiritual shift the energy of guilt into prayer. Prayer is the action of sending energy to God. You can pray for God to help you. You can pray for God to help others.
For example, when you feel guilty about not visiting your friend in the hospital shift from feeling guilty to praying for your friend.
Prayer is something you can do for your friend, no matter where you are or what you are doing. Praying for your friend will help you feel good about yourself. Guilt is passive, it does not do your friend any good. Prayer is active and may help your friend. There have been scientific studies that show that prayer is effective. Guilt is negative energy going round and round inside your head and body. Prayer is positive energy going outward into the universe.
This does not mean that you won’t visit your friend. When you feel better about yourself you are more likely to visit, or contact in some other way (phone, email, card, flowers), because you want to, not because you should.
If you are not religious then consider how the universe is made up of energy. The sun is energy. Gravity is a force. The wind is energy. X-rays give off energy. The human body emanates heat.
When you feel guilty turn the energy of guilt into positive vibes and send them out into the universe or send them to yourself. Sending positive vibes makes you feel good about yourself and others.
This is using your energy productively, effectively, and wisely. When people feel good about themselves, they are more likely to live by the standards and values that they hold. They don’t need guilt to make them do it.
With care and concern,
Dr. Bea Mackay
Self-Esteem is a By-product of How You Treat Yourself
Everyone has a relationship with him or her self. It is the quality of that relationship that determines the level of one’s self-esteem.
If you listen to people when they talk, you can detect whether they value themselves or not:
- I’m mad at myself for forgetting to…
- I’m pleased with myself. I figured out how to do it on my own.
- I’m such a coward. I can’t face…
- What do I know, I’m just a silly old woman.
- I feel really good about myself for sticking to my exercise program.
- I’m such a loser!
- I feel more confident now that I have completed my course.
- I can be hard on myself.
- I have a difficult time accepting positive feedback.
Self-esteem can also be observed in body language:
- Sue wraps her arms around herself when she’s scared.
- Jack slaps the top of his head when he’s annoyed with himself.
- Jaime soothes herself by stroking her hair.
- Andrew twists the hair on the top of his head when he is nervous.
- Sam calms himself by stroking his beard.
We are so close to ourselves that it is hard to have a clear perspective of ourselves. It is easier to see how others treat themselves than it is to be aware of how we treat ourselves. Our relationship happens in our heads with words and images and in our bodies with sensations. Hold the palm of your hand an inch from your nose. You can see your hand, but it is a blur. Gradually pull your hand away until your hand comes into focus. Now you can see your hand in clear detail.
This is what happens with your relationship with yourself. To be aware of the quality of your relationship with yourself, it helps to gain some perspective. You may know that you are hard on yourself or that you feel guilty a lot of the time, but you may not realize how you make that happen inside your head.
AWARENESS IS THE KEY TO CHANGE
To increase your awareness of how you treat yourself start by noticing:
- What you say about yourself (your choice of words and the metaphors you use).
- How you say it (the tone of voice, body language).
- What images do you see?
That’s it for now, just notice.
With care and concern,
Dr. Bea
Stop Managing Your Emotions and Start Processing Them
Most people have the mistaken idea that emotions are to be managed. When you process your emotions, they do not need to be managed, they naturally shift and change in healthy ways.
To make this shift, you need to understand the physiology of emotion. The brain and the body are complicated. The following is a simplification of the mind/body connection regarding emotion.
The right brain, limbic system, and the body create the emotions we experience. The left brain analyzes emotions, but it does not create them. We express emotions from our right brain; we talk about emotions from our left brain.
Emotions come in waves. When emotions are pleasant, such as experiences of contentment, satisfaction, happiness, and joy, people tend to breathe normally, rarely noticing the waves. Feelings do not stay the same—they come and they go.
What goes wrong?
When emotions are uncomfortable; such as experiences of high excitement, fear, grief, and loss, people change how they breathe, often without realizing it. As the emotion wells up, people tend to hold their breath and then shallow breathe. They shift into their left brain and start to question what is happening (What if? What’s wrong? OMG, etc.) Holding the breath blocks the processing of the emotion so the wave cannot crest, it cannot recede, and therefore, it cannot dissipate. Now the emotion has to be managed. Unprocessed emotions tend to build over time, like a stack of coins, as other situations create similar feelings. There is more and more emotion to manage. There is less and less energy to manage or wall off the emotions.
When emotions are distressing, such as intense love, fear, grief, and rejection, people get into the habit of trying to avoid them. What they are trying to avoid are the sensations of the feelings. The actual situation that created the distressing sensations usually gets lost. Now life becomes about avoiding the awful sensations. This complicates life because people become so focused on trying to avoid, they cannot live freely. Also, by trying to avoid feelings, people often behave in ways that create the very feelings that they are trying to avoid.
The breath is the key to processing emotions.
As an emotion wells up, breathing through the emotion allows it to crest and recede. At first, the waves may be intense. By breathing through the waves they dissipate and get smaller and smaller until, like waves on a beach, they are gone. There is nothing left to manage or avoid.
By facing a feeling and breathing through the sensations of an emotion you will learn that you can handle it. Knowing you can tolerate and handle difficult sensations, will free you up to make the decisions that you want to make. You are less likely to experience difficult feelings and, because life can be difficult, when you do, they won’t last as long.
Embrace all the moments of life. The capacity to experience the full range of emotions, from the depths of despair to the heights of ecstasy, creates a sense of being fully alive.
With care & concern,
Dr. Bea
