Problems of Self-Esteem

“See your problems of self-esteem
Could be self-fulfilling prophecies,
So probably your best policy is to talk to me.
Stop looking over your shoulder
Cause if it was up to me I would make you feel right.”

Chromeo, Over Your Shoulder

People with addictive personalities suffer from many “problems of self-esteem,” which are rooted in problems of self-love. And, more often than not, it seems to me that problems of self-love are based in self-beliefs.

Anyone who believes that he/she is unworthy, untouchable, unacceptable or unlovable is going to suffer from tremendously poor self-love. And, as a result, his/her self-esteem is going to be equally as poor. A person with poor self-love sees very little value or worth in him/herself. And self-esteem is based in feelings of healthy self-worth.

Self-love requires that we believe we are created in the incredibly beautiful image and likeness of God. It also requires that we believe we are worthy, touchable, acceptable and lovable—despite our flaws and personal failings.

How do we build self-love where it has never existed? We start by building a foundation of self-acceptance. Acceptance is the key to solving so many problems. Self-acceptance requires us to first become literally aware of all of the things about ourselves that we have loathed or found unacceptable.

So we need to get out a pen and piece of paper and start jotting them all down. Every flaw, every part of us that we have criticized, felt insecure about, attempted to hide or have even hated, we need to acknowledge by writing them all down.

Next, we need to decide if these things we loath so much are changeable or not. For example, maybe we have always been ashamed of the fact that we are dyslexic. We were teased and labeled “slow” or “stupid” as children because of our dyslexia, and it has always made us feel inferior to others. Is dyslexia something that we can change? No. It’s not. But we can choose to accept that it is simply the way we were created. It may make like somewhat more difficult, but it does not make us “stupid” or inferior. We can choose to accept that this is part of the hand that life has dealt us and that it is OK. We can choose to stop being ashamed of it. And we can choose to believe that the people who really count in our lives will always love us, despite this or any other flaw we have.

Everything that we include on our list can be accepted in the same manner. It comes down to accepting our humanity, our frailty and all of the imperfections, which we share with the entire human race. No person is perfect. Everyone has those things about themselves that they have deemed to be unacceptable. But the happiest people are always those who have learned to accept their flaws with compassion and empathy.

After we have made our list of flaws, we need to find someone safe that we can share the list with. It’s important that we be able to open up and be vulnerable about our perceived flaws. We need someone who can validate our feelings and help us to see the bigger picture. Anytime we are trapped in self-loathing, we are seeing ourselves through a very narrow lens and we are completely overlooking our natural beauty.

We need the support of others, but we need to remember that no one else can make us OK. We have to do the internal work ourselves. We can look over our shoulders to other people all we want and we can hope that they will somehow magically make us OK, love us into being OK or whatever. But it will never happen, no matter how much they may want to make us feel right about ourselves. No one has the power to do that—but us.

And we do have the power. All we have to do is connect with our Higher Power, with Higher Love, and do the work we need to do to love ourselves better and grow our self-esteem. Acceptance is the place to start and what we cannot do for ourselves, Higher Love will do for us.