Low self esteem, or a low sense of self often exists alongside low confidence, a strong negative inner dialog, and struggling to be assertive or set boundaries.
But low self esteem is a symptom of a deeper wound.
One of our more innate and primal needs is to belong, and to fit in with our community.
In the not too distant past, being rejected from the community would have almost certainly resulted in our suffering and our death.
Growing up, there’s a mix of nature vs nurture where we’re under tremendous pressure to learn to fit in with the expected customs and ways of our community, what we call, “being normal” – saying the right things, acting appropriately in social situations, dressing right, looking right, getting the right job, having the right interests and hobbies and so on, not being awkward, not standing out, and not asking the wrong questions, which is all of course just a very arbitrary set rules that have evolved over time across different communities and places.
This even comes down to the minutiae of what clothing styles and brands that are acceptable or what we call “fashionable”, what colour of makeup to wear, what hair styles or shoes are ok in which situations, and so on.
A lot of pressure comes from our parents, and caregivers, and school to fit in, be normal, behave, not stand out, and over time we internalise that and start denying the unacceptable parts of who we are, to start denying ourselves and keep ourselves in check.
A very prevalent and dangerous idea is that being liked and being likeable is more important than being authentic and expressing ourselves.
And what’s really happening is that we’re masking – we’re learning to deny our authentic nature and present a more acceptable version that can be liked and approved of by others.
This takes a huge amount of energy and causes us tremendous internal conflict and stress, especially when our authentic nature is significantly different from what’s acceptable by our community and our upbringing.
The more of ourselves we need to work to deny, the more exhausting and painful it becomes.
We spend a lot of time checking ourselves and replaying past situations in our minds. Am I being acceptable right now? Did I do OK in that situation? How awkward or embarrasing was that interaction? How am I appearing right now from this other person’s perspective?
And over time we almost entirely forget who we really are, and we come to believe that this false identity that we’ve created is us, so when we get criticised we feel hurt and it stings for a while so we go and make some changes and and go out and try again, and this time hopefully we won’t get hurt, but we do.
And the point is, we learn that who we are, our authentic self is unacceptable and needs to be hidden at all costs.
I don’t have the right to exist because who I am is unacceptable.
This is one of the most painful, harmful and destructive concepts that we can internalize.
The journey out of low self esteem starts with accepting that we have every right to exist, because we ARE here, we DO exist.
There is no outside person – no parent or authority that can give you the permission to exist as your authentic self.
You must realise that nothing that anyone has told you about who you are can possibly be true – they’re only projecting their own fears and past trauma onto you.
Next, the trauma that carrying this has caused has to be released through shadow work and body work, and then the day to day practice, the question in each moment is, how can I show up as my most authentic self and speak my truth in a kind way?
