THE REAL PROBLEM WITH LOW SELF-ESTEEM

THE REAL PROBLEM WITH LOW SELF-ESTEEM

By: Jack Guyler

In previous blogs in this series I’ve talked about several issues with low self-esteem or low self-worth. But here is the real problem: it negatively affects your relationships with others. And here is why. When you suffer from low self-esteem, you constantly feel bad about yourself. You feel insecure. You feel often times worthless, inadequate, inferior and that you don’t have much to offer or that your life overall just doesn’t count for much.

Now imagine how these feelings translate into a relationship with other people. First, you will tend to function out of the reptilian part of your brain which is the reactive part of your brain. It’s the part of your brain that is always looking to see who is out to get you. It is the defensive part of our brain and the part that is most interested in self-survival. It can be a very useful part of your brain.

Suppose you are crossing the street and a car whips out of nowhere. It is this part of your brain that will have you instantly respond and give you a burst of energy to get out of the way and save your life. So while it is extremely useful in emergency situations, it actually works against us in normal life and especially in our relationships with others. To react in survival mode in relationships becomes very dysfunctional. It looks like being defensive, speaking harshly, raising your voice, saying threatening things or bullying or being aggressively angry. As you can imagine, these don’t work well in building healthy and loving relationships.

So here is the thing. Even in the healthiest relationships, people will say or do things that will trigger you or push your emotional buttons. When you deal with chronic low self-esteem, you can be triggered a lot. You end up taking people’s comments so much more personal than people who don’t deal with this chronic problem. They are able to see negative comments either from the perspective of the other person saying them or they consider the source of the comments to be having a problem. They aren’t taking the comments as negative things about them because they feel good about who they are.

But when you don’t feel good about yourself and you feel insecure, then you take most comments to heart or as targeted at you personally. And when this happens, you erupt like a volcano in order to preserve not your literal life, but your ego. And we all have one! We will react with things like, “What do you think I’m stupid?” or “You always think I’m the problem.” All these comments are meant to put off the other person or to create distance. It’s like someone touching a scab and we react by pushing the person away. Why? Because it hurts! We don’t want to feel the pain. We don’t want people revealing to us just how inferior of a person we really are. It’s not that we are inferior or less than others, but we feel that way; and when someone touches a tender spot, we are going to react. You can see when we are constantly reacting or erupting like a volcano, it is not going to help us develop healthy relationships with others. Healthy relationships are built on mutual dialogue, understanding, compassion and empathy. But when you are spending all of your time in survival mode, these healthy qualities are in short supply.

So what is the answer? It is to really get to know yourself and develop emotional maturity. Outside intervention by a qualified counselor is generally the best way to do this. You will learn what your triggers are and how to manage your life when you are triggered and be able to sustain healthier relationships with those you know and love.