Do you ever have a crappy self-esteem day?

Who me? Are you crazy? Never had a cloudy day in my life!

What brings it on? Are you having one of those random, no reason for it, bad days where all of a sudden you are depressed or something?

I wish I knew. They happen out of nowhere for me, sometimes, and I search for explanations and can’t find them, and then, when I’m lucky, they are gone after a few days. Or weeks. Or sometimes, years. The only story I have for you is that it is a change in brain chemistry. Otherwise, it makes no sense when there is no external cause for it.

I’m having one of those “Am I good enough? Am I smart enough? Gosh, darnit, do people like me?” kinda days.

May be the winter doldrums getting to you. Not enough light, not enough activity, holed up with your thoughts…

Never. Then again, I rock!

It’s the rare day that I am not utterly disgusted with myself in some way or another.

Fortunately, I’m learning how to not try to cure that feeling with copious amounts of food.

Oh, yeah. I usually look for someone who can and is willing to give me a pep talk.

Not in a while, but definitely not unheard of and at one time a relatively common occurrence.

As I remember most of the time it was brought on by putting off something I did not want to do.

Absolutely, yesterday was mine (just pms ya know.)

Even Darwin had bad days.

About every other day.

@Mama_Cakes : One thing I try to remember to do when this happens is review an achievement I am particularly proud of. Remind myself what I am capable of.

Now and then. Usually when I line up all of the negatives in my life and look at ‘em.

every day

I used to have them occasionally when I’d screw up at work. I have not had that lately, as my current work is not that strenuous.

Tomorrow’s another day, Miss Scarlet!

Maybe so, but I don’t know nuthin’ ‘bout birthin’ no babies.

Oh yes! Not often but it happens. It might be stress about something I have to do that I’m not confident about or haven’t done before. I can beat myself up very well. Or perhaps I had to give a presentation and I’m not 100% happy with what I did. My experience has been when I get feedback from others, I have usually been much too hard on myself.

It could also be a health thing. Perhaps you are run down and that can definitely affect your mood.

Most of my bad days happen because not enough legions have been driven at my feet.

But yeah, bad esteem days. I have them. I often think that, if it was possible to fail kindergarten, I most likely would have done so. Well, that’s kind of a joke. Usually I just shrug it off, and do something that might take my mind off of it. It’s passive, and good too, because I have no way to actually rectify a bad esteem.

PMS used to do it for me. I would start feeling like everyone hated me and everyone was picking on me. Then in a few days it was all over with, and I couldn’t even remember why I had felt that way.

That is at least one good thing about getting older. I no longer have roller-coaster emotions.

No, because focus on self-esteem is overrated and actually counterproductive. Feeling sad from time to time is perfectly normal and healthy. Accepting sadness without triggering a mental downward spiral can be learned.

The self-esteem movement in the US created a lot of damage.

@mattbrowne “The self-esteem movement in the US created a lot of damage.” <—- wish I could give you 10 great answers for that one but I do not accept “feeling sad is… healthy”. It is unhealthy but we have prescribed a cure worse than the disease.

@muhammajelly – Of course, sadness is healthy. Life is about ups and downs. Primary emotions developed because they gave humans (and other mammals and birds) an evolutionary advantage. What matters is the frequency and intensity of emotions. Fear is good, panic isn’t. Anger is good, rage and hatred aren’t. Sadness is good, depression isn’t. Joy is good, prolonged euphoria isn’t.

@mattbrowne I am not sure if I believe what was once good still is. I fully agree evolution pushed for sadness. I also think it made us like sugar. I think people who are sad more than a little often have something wrong with them caused by living in an environment very different from the one they evolved in. For instance in the past we went to sleep when it got dark. If sleep patterns different than dark=bedtime cause sadness the problem isn’t the new sleep pattern which helps us now that we have artificial light but instead the sadness that doesn’t help us because it isn’t teaching us to do something productive in our new world.

@muhammajelly – It’s true that artificial light messes with neurotransmitters and hormones such as serotonin and melatonin. Perhaps there’s more sadness on average today than 30,000 years ago. It could also be the opposite, because today there’s less misery than 30,000 years ago. The world has become a much safer place. Life expectancy has tripled.

@mattbrowne If average sadness has gone down it certainly hasn’t gone down at the same rate as “misery”. The decrease in misery without the corresponding decrease in sadness is unhealthy. Americans eat like they are starving when they are not. They are sad like they are in misery when they are not. Just like the appetite of a starving person is unhealthy in a fat person the unhappiness level we current have doesn’t correspond to the misery we currently face. OVERALL we are much better off (no doubt) but we could be even better off still especially when it comes to areas we don’t well understand like hormone and brain chemistry.