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for people who have/had low self esteem

Discussion in 'Chit Chat' started by sunnii, Nov 12, 2012.

  1. sunnii

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    Do you know what was the root of your low self esteem? I myself have low self esteem but despite being a self loathing person tbh idk why I have low self eteem other than I'm just a miserable git. My sexuality is a role but th. It's a minorole, I've came out to people who are cool with it so my sexuality isn't the root (tbh I didn't cone out because I thought it would fix my self esteem issues.)
     
  2. Jared

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    Most of my self esteem issues are rooted around my sexuality, childhood abuse and being obese for most of my life. I've come to terms with my sexuality, come out and lost tons of weight, but I haven't really come to terms with the abuse I went through growing up. And of the three that one contributed to the most to my self esteem problems, so my self esteem still isn't great.
     
  3. LailaForbidden

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    My childhood is one cause, i suspect. I'm the youngest in my family and I'd always try to live up to my brothers and fail -- mostly because i'm a girl (not as strong physically) and I was always younger, so they had the edge. Which i understand, but that knowledge doesn't change my insecurities. Also, since my childhood, i've continually failed at most things, with my one saving grace being in writing and even that has been poor latley. I dunno, i get i've always set the standards to high and so set myself up to fail. Why? hell if I know, but it bothers me even as I type this.

    Probably should add, while my sexuality wasn't a major blow to my self-esteem, it did worry me horribly before I came to terms with it. I suppose it did alienate me a bit, although i've never had much of a social life so it wasn't that much of an issue.
     
  4. Fugs

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    Bullying in school mostly, social ostracism and all of that. No fun and I'm still suffering terribly from it :frowning2:
     
  5. madi

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    My sexuality played a very minor role. Really it was just the teasing in middle school for it but other than that it hasn't affected my self-esteem.
    I think a lot of it has come from living with a verbally and physically abusive brother. He made me feel bad for succeeding in anything and unable to open up to anyone.My parents also constantly sided with him so I felt like my health and well-being were put on a lower priority to his.
    I have also never fit in anywhere because of my odd quirks. I tend to have very different beliefs,values, and interests than others my age and so I feel like the "odd man out" much of the time. The latter are probably the two biggest contributors to my low self-esteem.
     
  6. Cassandra

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    My obesity. I had it since born, and it's a hell growing like that. Also (only this started only 6 years ago) I'm getting bald and that's some freaking downer (f*****g genes).
     
  7. Exceeder

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    Self esteem issues aren't a major issue I have today. I think most people do feel at some time or another that they/we feel insecure. It is fair to say I have a degree of intimacy issues though today (I talk a big game but I really am not someone who scores - or tries to score).

    In terms of self esteem issues, I think my case was fairly typical from high school. I was confused about my sexuality, particularly in my last year, and although I was well liked, I wouldn't let myself get close to most people. I would tell myself that girls just were not attracted to me/that I was not attractive and blame that as to why I wouldn't let myself become physically close with girls and equally deny my sexuality/confused nature. I had also been overeight in my first years of high school and had a radical weight loss in those early years as well (ie not done in a healthy or positive way).

    Even after coming out in my first year of undergrad, I was sexually erratic into the beginning of my second year. Its sort of ironic because I would hook up so flagrantly because I felt insecure but as I become more and more comfortable and happy with myself and my sexuality, I become more and more of (what some might say) a prude. Some of my friends even joke that I am asexual.

    Anyway, I have read most of what you guys have posted. All I can really say is that you need to love yourself for who you are before all others. Remember you are all beautiful and have great qualities, because these are things all people have. Not everyone will like you for you, but many will like you for being you. Remember your uniqueness, and cherish that! I would say being queer is something pretty unique (better then being your average run of the mill hetero - not hatin'! Love the allies! :wink: jk).

    Those are my spur of the moment thoughts.
     
  8. Emberstone

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    I just told myself not to sweat over what I cant change (my speech impediment, the bags under my eyes, and my extreme eddie munster hairline), and work on the things I can (my phobia of public speaking *doing theatre really helps push you out of your comfort zone in a friendly enviorment*, being skinny *though now I am actually muscular*, and meeting new friends *again, theatre really helps*).

    you create low-self esteem when you dont allow yourself to accept that you cant change, and not bother to change what you can.
     
  9. Harve

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    Caring too much what others think of you.

    There's a happy medium between that and being deliberately brash and arsehole-ish.
     
  10. csocm

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    For me I think it came from my family, I have an older brother who is ridiculously smart and I always felt that I was being compared to him and not as good as him. It also doesnt help that he not necessarily called me stupid, but he never really made me feel all that good about myself either. School didn't really help either, I had a couple of friends when I was little, and was never picked on picked on, people talked about me behind my back. So I am now paraniod about that stuff. My sexuality didn't play that big of a role in it.
     
  11. Drakey

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    my self-esteem issues are rooted in the fact that nearly everybody treated me like crap from kindergarten until the ninth grade. Even my own friends would bully me and tear me down emotionally. When they stopped doing that and grew up/I stopped hanging out with them, I met better friends but I took up where the teasing left off and did it for myself.
     
  12. Tetraquark

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    This, plus natural perfectionism and an overbearing mother. In elementary school, I was the awkward, overweight kid who talked to herself in foreign languages and wandered around the schoolyard alone instead of playing nicely with her peers. I was a little more "normal" in middle and high school (plus the bullying stopped once they realized I hit back), but my school district was so small that I still couldn't find a place to fit in.

    Oddly, realizing my sexuality has been empowering for me because it gave me something to hold onto that wasn't tied to an external measure of worth. No matter what my grades are or what my mom thinks, I am attracted to women. Nothing can change that.
     
  13. Hard Candy

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    I have low self-esteem but it's weird because I don't know where it's coming from. And people think I am very confident and happy with myself with the way I act and talk. I'm guessing it's because I can't help comparing myself to others, and the idea that I cannot get out off my comfort zone despite of being desperate to do so, and partly, because I am kinda not "normal" (seriously, I cannot drink alcohol and I am pretty innocent about a lot of things).
     
  14. Dodonnas

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    I have certain...learning disabilities. I can recall even when I was young, being told, "You won't ever be intelligent, so you need to learn to speak intelligently so you'll be okay."

    My entire school career (up until my last couple of years of high school where I gave up), I tried so hard to be smart and learn. Yet despite my efforts so many subjects eluded me. I hated myself for reading something and not being able to understand it like the person to my left...

    Even after all the effort my parents invested into me speaking ( and ridding myself of a terrible lisp), like a normal person, I find it difficult to communicate with others.

    Oh and I am gay and I know it would devastate my parents who worked so hard to make me normal.

    I just don't feel like I am worth much most days.
     
  15. WillowMaiden

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    Being ostracized or bullied all throughout school. Sexual abuse when I was a nine. Overweight, short, acne, oversized breasts starting at a young age that brought forth lots of negative attention (to sum all that up--poor body image. I hate my body and my face so much most of the time, I can't even look in the fucking mirror.) My family is fucked up and growing up around their environment taught me bury my feelings in food or just suffer silently, while being the strong stable one that nobody's gotta worry about, that somebody that the others wack jobs can lean on for support. Just a kid, but mentally I aged 5 years every time shit hit the fan with these emotionally and mentally unstable people, which was often. Soo, I guess that means poor emotional growth and poor coping skills. Uh...striving for the approval of others, being a people pleaser...the list goes on and on. I'm only 19 and I can say without a doubt that I have lived such a miserable life so far. Any good moment I had from the time I started retaining memories as a child to now, are outweighed by ten other bad moments. It's a shame and I'm hoping now to start changing a lot of these things.

    Many things contribute to my low self esteem, all starting from childhood to teenhood and well, now (since I'm still a teen-almost 20-just not in high school anymore.) The only thing that does not have anything to do with my low self esteem is my sexual orientation surprisingly. Honestly, growing up there were just so many other things to hate myself over and so many other things people got down on me for that me being a lesbian never even mattered enough to me or occured to anyone else as a thing to add to the list of reasons why I suck. In fact, realizing I was a lesbian, although short, was a shining moment in my life. It made me feel...I don't know...alive. Like finally I have something happening in my life that I can look forward to, something that gives me things in common with other people. Coming out to myself gave me small hope for the future.

    I tell ya, I was one pathetic kid and today, sometimes I have this slowly crushing feeling that I'm on the path to becoming a pathetic adult. But I fight it, oh do I. Make sure I don't become a statistic by doing above and beyond what people would expect from someone with problems like mine. My method is not the healthiest, I give you that. I continue to bury the feelings and avoid the issues, pretend they're not there or that they don't really bother me. I play the rock and I play it good, still letting the others lean on me. It's been my role for so long, that I don't know how to break character, only use the persona in my favor somehow. It's either keep going like this or break down. I don't want the latter. People looking at me like I let life beat me down, like I'm weak because I couldn't handle the rough hand dealt to me. I'll see myself dead before I let that happen. Heh, guess you could say I'm a high functioning addict. To be functioning as if all is right with their world sounds good, but they're actually the most dangerous and most difficult to save.

    Eh, anyway, what am I going on about? I should go work on a story. I'm a writer. I know big shocker there, right? Turns out arranging words on a page is really all I'm good at. haha
     
  16. Pyrotactick

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    ddaaaaaaaaah, not sure. I think it's because thoughts that I'm never going to be perfect enough in the eyes of my mother. I've gotten used to it, but getting a good grade does make me happy, but it just makes me feel awkward later. I guess another factor is a bad relationship with my parents and my tendency to lie to EVERYBODY. Confusion about myself and what not also makes me feel worse. I was molested and it ticks me every time somebody makes jokes or pretends to do that to me, makes me feel used and like you say, "a git"(don't know what that means but...let's roll with it!). I'm doing an okay job on pushing it away personally, lying about it does help ("It takes a strong man to deny what's in front of him." "If he doesn't like something, he changes it" -- quote from Spec Ops: The Line (oh god I'm a nerd ;A; ). Well...that sums it up...I hate myself and my life.

    ---------- Post added 12th Nov 2012 at 09:22 PM ----------

    I preferred not to quote everything since it'll take up a lot of space...but your story really touched me. I feel the same as you do despite me being a lot younger! Woaw! Were going to have shitty lives together!!! To be honest, I feel like I'm going to die soon and then I'm not. So I don't care if I live a shitty life, I live; I live, I die; I die, what's your thoughts?
     
  17. Kidd

    Kidd Guest

    I actually do have pretty low self-esteem and I've always had it. Low self-esteem and anxiety is why I'm in counseling right now. I blame a lot of things for it. I lost my virginity super young to someone who didn't really care a whole lot about me. My family situation has been royally fucked up in a Stepford kind of way. And by that I mean, my parents always set lofty goals and I came from a good background but they didn't really care all that much about what I did except for my grades. They never asked about my friends, or how school was, or just basic things that I think parents should do. When I grew up I took a backseat in my dad's eyes to his business and his cars, and my mom showered her attention on my younger brother who is just like me in every single way (sexuality, personality, and looks included), but he's blond. And then throw my sexuality into it, and since I knew from a super young age that I was into boys, I dealt with it a lot younger than I think most people would. Which, ultimately, sparked a very long series of problems with me, namely an eating disorder that almost killed me through malnutrition, which started when I was basically a pre-teen all the way up until high school, because I was desperate for attention and love and I felt like, and sometimes I still do feel, that I'm not pure enough or thin enough or "pretty" enough or smart enough to deserve love.

    So, you know. I only really recently started dealing with all of it, and even then, that's only because my party monster days were spiraling out of control so quickly and a friend gave me a drunken intervention one night. So, I put myself in counseling last fall after that for the first time. My parents never took me to counseling or therapy even though I was basically starving myself to death in the name of a fucked up view of "health." Took the spring and summer off from it to reevaluate my life, and now I'm back in counseling again, a year later, and I think I'm making a lot of progress. I feel much better about myself in general, but my swings are way more dramatic than they were, mostly because of stress from work and medical family emergencies, but, c'est la vie.
     
    #17 Kidd, Nov 12, 2012
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 12, 2012
  18. Luke Matt

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    I'm pretty much the same, minus the childhood abuse part. Being gay, I've pretty much had to go through highschool while everyone around me had hooked up/had boyfriends/girlfriends whilst I've been basically alone. Similarly, I was pretty overweight during most of my highschool years, so that didn't really help the whole situation either.

    ---------- Post added 13th Nov 2012 at 06:22 PM ----------

    Hey, I don't drink alcohol either :slight_smile: It's pretty much why I've avoided parties/social events tbh.. (although not the only reason; being gay, I've always been afraid of girls hitting on me (which happens from time to time) & it gets really awkward D:slight_smile:
     
  19. Chip

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    Pretty much *all* self esteem issues are rooted in shame, which, in turn, is a basic belief that we are not worthy of love and belonging. And since we are hardwired to seek connection, the lack of belonging, by itself, creates low self esteem.

    The lack of worthiness can be from many different sources, but usually stems from a lack of validation or selective/conditional love by parents growing up. Abuse, bullying in schools, and other factors contribute as well.

    Here are three videos that are well worth the hour (total) it will take to watch them. Dr. Brown is a brilliant researcher who has spent the last 12 years looking at self esteem, shame, vulnerability, and how those factors influence our ability to live fully and wholeheartedly.

    [youtube]X4Qm9cGRub0[/youtube]
    [youtube]_UoMXF73j0c[/youtube]
    [youtube]psN1DORYYV0[/youtube]
     
  20. WillowMaiden

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    Agreed. Whatever happens, happens. I remember in 10th grade telling people honestly that I was going to die young because I could not visualize myself in the future doing anything. I couldn't picture myself living some nice, comfortable life, so I just assumed I'd die young. I used to think I would die right after high school actually. But so far, so good. I'm still kicking, getting by on writing stories, watching tv shows, and eating cookies. :lol: I have a blurry image of a nice life in the time ahead, so I'm hoping with time it becomes clearer.

    I completely empathize with you on the trying to be perfect for your Mom thing. My Mom prefers my brother over me because she only wanted sons and a husand, not a daughter. She actually told me this when I was younger, during her self re-inventing "I'm just opening up and being honest with myself and others" stage. She told me she wanted to be the only woman in her men's lives. I've fought for her love and approval for so long it's just another pathetic feat. My grades were the best, I took shit from everyone around me to avoid fights, so she wouldn't think I was a trouble maker. I never even raised my voice, always kept my head down, so my Mom would think I was good kid. If anything, that probably made her love me less. She was the complete opposite personality wise growing up, still is. We're too different. Still, I wanted to be the perfect kid so that she'd have no choice, but to like me even though I was a girl. It's gotten to the point where I resent her for making me want her interest in me, but really it's me that's gotta just accept that she never will be interested. I'm Allison in this Breakfast Club, invisible to the woman that birthed me and half the battle will already be won once I get over that and just let myself be invisible to her. Her blindness to the awesome things I'll do with myself, won't cease me from existing and becoming something great. So yeah...fuck that bitch. :grin: :thumbsup: