Do you have a healthy self esteem?

My self esteem is 0. I never had a problem in school, but I think I am the ugliest person alive. I am skinny, pale, have purple bags under my eyes, my hair is falling out, and I feel like a worthless piece of trash, etc. It’s basically my chemo causing all of this, but I still don’t see it that way. I am not vain though. I don’t judge people on their looks, just myself.

@ducky_dnl I’m sorry.

I have really f*cked-up self-esteem. For example, one of the major roadblocks to my quitting smoking is that I just don’t value myself or my life enough to care about it being the fast track to illness and death. Not to be morbid, but I would welcome death at pretty much any time because I hate life and find it to be a trivial mess of suffering and people treating each other like crap.

So, I have the same problem as you, @holden.. any time I get a bad grade, I beat myself up black-and-blue.. it totally ruins my day and makes me feel horrible. I know I could do better if I put more effort into it, so my not doing well is a reflection of my laziness, which makes me hate being me even more.

(not looking for sympathy or anything, just being totally honest)

I just put problems behind me and get on with moving forward, having learned from my mistakes.
I don’t think of problems as life changing, just new challenges.

@MissAnthrope That is so very sad. You really shouldn’t beat yourslef up about things. OK you smoke, and you shouldn’t, but so do I.
Start to love yourself first and foremost and your self-esteem will start to rocket.

I think you would benefit from some thought pattern training. Cognitive Behavioral Therapists and Mindfulness therapists can both help you learn how to stop or separate yourself from those thoughts so they don’t keep on stopping you.

I hate making mistakes, too. But I’ve made enough of them and survived them to realize they aren’t the end of the world anymore. I wouldn’t say I was self confident—at least, not in public. But I am very confident of my thinking and my knowledge. I wish that translated into external confidence.

I don’t know if it’s how much my self esteem translates into real life as how much real life translates into self esteem. Real world events kill me. Really easily. Also, my brain chemistry can make me very vulnerable to those circular negative thoughts.

I know enough now to know what is going on. I know now that self-esteem is pretty much a head trip. It can go any way I can make it go. I know that I have a tendency to let it go down and down, because it can be easier to think nothing will ever go right and I can let myself go. I need some good self pity at times. I need other people to pay attention to me at times. I get lost and can’t find myself or my self esteem, and when other people remind me of things I do well, it helps.

But I’ve been working so hard for so long that I really wish I could put down the burden at times. Losing self-esteem and getting depressed feels like it might help that way. It never does, though. I’m too fucking responsible to really get dysfunctional. But I do dream about letting it all go, and truly becoming nothing (instead of fantasizing about being nothing).

I used to be. I did a lot of work stopping negative self talk and improving self esteem using a book titles Self Parenting.

Yes I do. Why shouldn’t I? Not having much self esteem is a psychological disorder and should be treated by a psychologist.

Edit: titled (not titles)

Everybody makes mistakes and drops the ball in life the difference is people with high self esteem know and expect setbacks and have the confidence knowing they won’t make the same mistake twice. I am that way myself and it takes a lot to bring me down even a notch.

I think the self esteem touches us in different ways. I’m an Honors student, but I just got a “D” in my math class. I totally didn’t care. For me it was like bad sex in that I just wanted it to be over.
But I get really down on myself for other reasons so I guess it’s personal and what things you use in your identification of yourself.

No I am truly crap at this. I made a big mistake on Friday havign an argument with my sister and then not only going to my parents and telling them all about it but spewing out other thoughts that should have been left for another time… I have caused a major rift in the family and even though I’ve gotten together with my sister this afternoon and sorted things out with her and she does not hold me responsible now…I still feel crap about it all… I still feel like a bad person…I still feel like it’s all my fault and I have ruined everything…and yet I know somewhere that maybe it isn’t true… but that little source of truth is hiding from me at the moment like a little mouse and I just wish I could make myself feel better somehow… but I can’t :-(

Thanks for the book reference @marinelife sounds like what I’ve been looking for xx

I remember feeling that way about grades – back then I cared too much about stuff like that, unimportant stuff – I look back on my pre-med days in horror and think we were so blinded. These days, my self esteem has good and bad days. In terms of my intelligence, skills and abilities as a parent, I think quite highly of myself. In terms of my physical appearance, I get down on myself but shouldn’t.

Hell yeah.My kids think i’m Superdad.Who am I to doubt them.They do have great taste.

I’m hard on myself about grades. Anything less than a perfect score seems like a failure. I blame my parents for that. I have a realistic view of myself as far as intelligence, physical appearance, and things of that nature are concerned. Most of the time it’s conflicting though. For example: I really should start exercising again, but I still look good, so I don’t. =/

I’m good with myself. (BTW, thank yourself on this question @holden and see if you don’t feel better!)

I’m exactly the same, constantly second guessing myself and thinking I’m not good enough for anyone. It’s gotten to the point where I consider this a fact and not just an opinion I have of myself. I’m hoping it will change one day.

I guess it is about training yourself to think more positive thoughts and doing things that make you feel good about yourself. If you get to the stage where I am, anti-depressants may be a more helpful and beneficial option.

My self esteem is way healthy!!!

“Oh Lord it’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way…”

“I can’t wait to look in the mirror, ‘cause I get better lookin’ each day!”

I have pretty high self-esteem and I’ve had it my whole life. Even so, if I put a lot of effort into something and I don’t do as well as I wanted to, I am going to be pretty disappointed. However, usually if I don’t do well on something I put effort into it means either 1) I didn’t put enough effort into it or 2) I’m not understanding it. In those cases, I will seek extra help if necessary.

Get out into the world and actually DO something. Your “self-esteem” may or may not imporove, but no one will give a crap because your experience level will be so high.

I have good days and bad days but for the most part, my self esteem really bites.

@CaptainHarley I’m a student. I’m working on getting two science degrees. Am I not actually “doing” something?

Therapy. Please get some, even if you just need a little bit. Even if you have done wonderful things, low self-esteem won’t allow you to acknowledge them, and you end up focusing on mistakes, flaws, etc. I know.

I’ve lived my entire life with the idea that no matter what I said or did, no matter how I dressed, spoke, lived, gave, anything, I wasn’t worthy enough to pursue my dreams, not good enough to talk to men I was interested in, not worthy pursue or create opportunities for myself, all because my deepest self-belief was that I’m worthless. I didn’t originally give this message to myself, but I accepted it as the only way to get love and attention from people who didn’t love me. They told me and themselves they loved me and that they were telling me these things for my own good, but those were lies. They were incapable of being loving.

They left me alone and didn’t hurt me when I didn’t argue with them about what they told me I was, but I sure got walloped if I openly disagreed with their opinions of me. And what made it worse was when they called me names, it sounded so authoritative, like preachers in a Baptist church. It made me think that they really did know me better than I did; they could see right through me, so I must be lying to myself. They must be telling the truth. I must be this horrible person.

CBT is helping me to separate these hideous and patently untrue messages from my real self (and to stop making others’ opinions worth more than my own). In CBT you’ll learn what you’re dealing with, thought-wise, and how to counteract this stuff. No matter how authoritative it sounds, when you think stuff like that, remember that they’re just thoughts, just feelings, and those aren’t facts! This book has helped quite a bit, even though my inner critic raged at me the entire time when I initially read it.

Good luck to you.

I used to have a very low self esteem. I worked on it and became a very optimistic fellow, but I do get those occasional days where I just wanna hermit at home.

@holden

Not really. You are PREPARING to do something. I have two undergraduate degrees and a masters degree and I well remember how depressed I use to get in college. Things change when you get out and actually work at making your way in the world.

I have very low self esteem. As a matter of fact, I have very high self loathing.
I can easily forgive others for things I beat myself up over.

Well then I sure am putting a shit-ton of effort into not really doing anything. :/

@CaptainHarley – I don’t find your position to be particularly helpful or supportive, in light of this thread topic.

@holden – There’s a point buried in there, but I would ignore most of what he said. You are being productive, and with working on two science degrees, you have a lot on your plate. I floundered like hell at WVU working on one science degree, so I give you props.

@MissAnthrope thank you.

I have come to see the constant evaluating of self, as a uniform whole, to be nothing more than a tiring hamster wheel often fueled by perfectionistic and grandiose thinking. There have been days when I surely thought I would die from exhaustion.

I have gone through a shift in how I view self. I now find my sense of self in the simplicity of existing, not in estimations of things like intellect, emotions, traits, etc… and work hard not to equate self with moral measurement. I am, there is nothing inherently right or wrong about this, it is a valuable treasure (that I believe is gift). I look upon others the same way.

I do think part of living life authentically involves honest evaluation. When it comes to evaluating myself I have spent a lot of time separating my behaviors, characteristics, and world view from my sense of self. I try to avoid moralizing over things and making broad generalizations. Some things about me expand vitality, while others things hinder it. Some things are mutable and some things aren’t. My experience of evaluation becomes more about self-acceptance and change rather than about being terrific or horrible.

I have a poor self esteem. I always second guess myself and rarely trust my own decisions. I am like you, I do the same thing with school and obsess over such trivial little things. I actually botched a test Friday too because of nerves and have been beating myself up about it since, because I know for a fact that I could have done 10x better if I would have just calmed down.

I am fully aware of myself without the trappings of ego.

Does that count?

@Blondesjon sure.

You go, @holden!!!

I am fully aware of @Blondesjon without the trappings of ego.
Does that count?

@liminal excellent answer – wish I could be like that so bad!!xx