Distorted Reflection

[andrewducker]

I have a fairly large chunk of self-confidence. Which isn't to say that I think I'm perfect - I have plenty of people around who will happily put me straight if I veer too far in that direction - but I do think that I'm fairly interesting, smart and fun to be around (if you're my kind of person - I'm probably not much fun to be around if you're into football, eastenders and gangsta rap).

Anyway, I'm fairly confident in my own general goodness. I don't need reassuring on this, partially because I get enough general background levels of reassurance and partially because other people's opinions don't actually matter a hell of a lot to me when it comes to matters of aesthetics - _I_ like me.

What baffles the hell out of me is why people that seem obviously cool to me - smart, funny, interesting people, who are capable, creative, fun and generally froody, _aren't_ self-confident. They need other people to tell them that they're worth knowing. They need reassurance. They don't believe, deep down, that they're good people.

Ed pointed out yesterday (yeah, this was the other conversation we had. Well, we chatted a lot about a wide variety of silly things, but I don't tend to catalogue silliness most of the time) that people look at themselves and see faults. That a cool person looking in the mirror may see nothing but the faults they have, much in the same way that an anorexic may look in the mirror and think "If I was just a stone lighter..." when they're already a bag of skin and bones.

So, all you people with low self esteem - why is it that you feel that you're a bad person? Do you think that you are undeserving? Or that you are deserving, but that the world will never recognise that? What do you need reassurance about? What would make you believe that you were good?

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit odd with this topic I have done a great deal of introspection. I'm exceptionally bright, usefully clever, deeply loving and caring and I quite like myself. I also do not consider myself to be a good person. I am not evil, but I have done a number of exceedingly nasty things that I would do again and I am capable of levels of selfishness that are I consider to be wrong. OTOH, I am quite OK with this in myself, I accept how I am (and also know that being this way can be quite useful). I have met (a few) people who I consider to be good, I am not one.

[andrewducker]

I didn't mean morally good in the slightest. I meant good as in "positively valued".

"This is a good apple"
"Buffy is a good tv series"
"I am a good person"

[nickys.livejournal.com]

Possibly some of it is family background related.

I know my family tended to regard praise as slightly dangerous because it could lead to people being egotistical, so there was a lack of general positive reinforcement on attractiveness, although plenty on moral goodness.

Then I was 'the clever girl' at school, and therefore, obviously, was never considered as potential girlfriend material, which isn't good for the developing self-esteem either.

I have to say that I thinked feminism helped a lot with my self-esteem, and not just in the obvious ways.
I was aware that constantly putting women down in any way possible, including based on their looks, was a political and oppressive act (see "The Beauty Myth" for details on the whole argument on that one) so it was my positive duty as a young feminist not to feel bad about the way I looked, to like myself as I was and to not attempt to camoflage my "flaws" by spending money on make-up, cosmetic surgery, etc, etc.
This gave me a reason to keep on fighting the feelings of low self-esteem about my appearance, and not to give in to them, because I could feel it was part of a greater cause, not just a personal issue.

[simonchapman.livejournal.com]

My self-esteem depends on being happy and having a clean conscience.

It's harder to be happy if I feel that I'm bored, lonely, poor, anxious, in conflict with someone, creatively stifled, emotionally stifled, powerless, reliant on someone, etc.

My conscience is mainly troubled by doing something that causes another person unhappiness without sufficiently good reason.

I can have some self-esteem without being happy if I've done something extremely moral. For example, if I've chosen to sacrifice my happiness so someone I love can be happy.

I can have some self-esteem without a clean conscience if I'm extremely happy. For example, if I've screwed someone else over in order to get a promotion which leads to me getting the car, woman, house and lifestyle of my dreams.

But apart from those extreme cases I think it requires a balance of both happiness and morality to achieve self-esteem.

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

It has everything to do with how I was brought up. My parents were extremely critical of everything I would do or say. I internalized their criticism.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

In one of my books of lesbian etiquette (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/089594197X/qid=1077980640/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/103-1276583-6043023?v=glance&s=books), there's a cartoon of a man and a woman looking in two mirrors. (Both of them are basically normal-looking people - not thin, not fat, not tall, not short.) The man sees a hunk: the woman sees a fat lump.

Now, obviously this isn't just a male/female thing, but I have to say that I find the attitude of the person who looks in the mirror (metaphorically) and sees her faults much more explicable than the person who looks in the mirror and sees a hunk.

Equally obviously, this is a sliding scale. There are some people who are not capable (or so they say) of seeing anything good in themselves at all. There are others who are (or so they appear to be) utterly self-satisfied and complacent. Neither group makes good friends, but fortunately most people fall into the middle: they see good in themselves, they see their faults.

What you're missing, I think, is a strong cultural imperative on women not to acknowledge that they look good or that they've done good. Proper manners require a woman to wait for someone else to offer a compliment, to be self-deprecating, and to give credit to others. To a superficial observer, this can look very like someone who falls into the first group: just a similar set of cultural imperatives is more likely to make a man look like he falls into the second group.

[gomichan.livejournal.com]

I have an interesting divide going on, self-esteem-wise. Since early childhood, I've somehow intimidated and confused people simply by existing. Never my family, though -- they found me delightful. Whenever I was at home, I was loved, accepted, understood, respected, challenged, rewarded. Whenever I left the house -- for school, church, or whatever -- I became, at best, a source of poorly-hidden mild unease, and at worst the target of violent attacks. This is a generalization, of course; my parents had their flaws, being only human, and not every teacher or schoolmate displayed fear and loathing. But it was consistent enough that I came to two conclusions, which alternate.

When I consider the viewpoint of 'the world', or 'people in general', I find myself vaguely horrible. Embarrassing, pompous, incomprehensible, unattractive, and dull. When I let go of the effort to see things as 'everyone' sees them, though, I recognize my merits and talents, and see my flaws as challenges rather than irredeemable.

Knowing this, oddly, doesn't change it. And I don't need to actually imagine what others think of me to trigger that self-loathing; so long as I'm trying to see in the Muggle spectrum, even if it's only to wonder what people see in SUV's or reality shows, I get that sick I'm-a-loathsome-crawly feeling.

So it's not that I think I'm a bad person. I don't really find the abstract 'bad' concept useful. I know what I am, and what I'm not, and generally I'm satisfied with my path. But I also seem to have an unshakeable conviction that only the closest, most trusted people in my world can see this, and that according to the populace at large I should probably be stoned to death while they point and laugh. Thus, to your question about reassurance, and what makes me believe I'm 'good', I suppose that would be simply the company of people I trust not to misunderstand me.

[andrewducker]

I had this. It took moving far away and going to university, where I met much more cool cool people who were also different and accepting for me to start liking myself properly.

[odheirre.livejournal.com]

I don't know. In my case, part of it is probably depression, and part of it is probably how I grew up/was raised.

The thing is, I don't need reassurance. I know I'm not, when all is said and done, a cool/good/deserving/whatever person. I can do things that temporarily move me into that range (and I do), but that's not the baseline. And when I screw something up or hurt someone, I get mad, but I'm not surprised, because, well, it's my nature.

That's just the way it is, which sounds horribly fatalistic, but I've kind of given up trying to change it.

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

I have an amount of self-love and self-hate and can horribly catapault between the two. Yesterday being a prime example, with too little sleep _everything_ made me want to scream and just run. The most ridiculous of things can make me intensely angry, self-loathing and self-pitying and the most obvious of nice things can be taken cynically to such an extent that I tell people not to compliment me. I personally prefer the insults. I can deal with the insults. I don't know how to deal with the compliments.

In some ways this is getting better, mostly by knowing when I'm doing it and why I'm doing it and how ridiculous it is.

Mostly it's about paranoia, caused by bullying in school and a complete lack of self-confidence that's fallen to specific areas of lack of self-confidence after many years.
I know I'm smart, witty and charming. Perhaps too sarcastic, but sarcasm was the form of comedy that I came about which I found made people laugh with me and like me and I cannot put it down, even when I know it annoys people intensely and pushes them away.

So, I feel that I'm a good person (although by your terms only; by the terms of heron61 I can be quite the opposite of a "good" person), but my being a good person is defined by constantly being the person that is outwardly perceived as a good person. When I'm making people laugh I am a good person, the second I stop and I'm not the centre of attention and I'm not entertaining and someone else is the good person I become a bad person and assume that my lack of being entertaining moves me into being boring and unworthy simply by sitting silently seconds after stopping all conversation by making everyone laugh. The good is very transient, the bad is everything that's not good. Bit black and white really. Annoying.

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

I can totally sympathise with the loving/loathing thing. I do that, and suffer from 'black and white' thinking also.

Today, for example, I feel pretty shitty. Logically it's the crap diet and probably still the aftereffects of a very heavy Friday night, but I hate that I haven't given up drinking as I was going to, I hate that I cannot stop eating the crap they put in front of me and that I haven't, despite the facilities being on my doorstep, go into going to the gym/cycling/swimming. There's probably a bit of hormonal disturbance to throw in the mix too.

Basically, I always find myself disappointing. I'm never as good at things as I would like, and I cannot enjoy things that I'm crap at (well except maybe dancing, as I truly consider that a lost cause). I expect other people to have similarly high standards for themselves too, and am always amazed at how people can just smile at themselves being bad at stuff and not seem to care.

oh, I'm just in a bad mood, it's all so tedious, no doubt it will all seem different some other day.

I tend to see myself as good though, just lazy and totally undisciplined.

[rainstorm.livejournal.com]

I have very varied amounts of self esteem, depending on how my day has gone, or what the weather's like or whatever. I'm not even sure what affects it.

Sometimes I hate myself, but then sometimes I think I'm great. A lot of the time I just think that there's not much point to anything since most of the really intelligent people I know aren't having much fun, and the people I see who are really stupid have far more money, and often are happier, than I am or my friends are.

I also think I'm a bit too tired/depressed/annoyed with the world right now to be answering this in a balanced way.

From Ekatarina

[ekatarina.livejournal.com]

What baffles the hell out of me is why people that seem obviously cool to me - smart, funny, interesting people, who are capable, creative, fun and generally froody, _aren't_ self-confident. They need other people to tell them that they're worth knowing. They need reassurance. They don't believe, deep down, that they're good people.

Definitely talking about me. I struggle with it. I know what people tell me about myself. I know I have talents and skills and abilities and a great set of cheekbones, but I don't always *believe* it all.

So, all you people with low self esteem - why is it that you feel that you're a bad person? Do you think that you are undeserving? Or that you are deserving, but that the world will never recognise that? What do you need reassurance about? What would make you believe that you were good?

Oh I was always told I was "good" just never "good enough", especially by my father.

I don't think he ever meant it like that, but that is what I heard over and over again. Prime example - I brought home a test from my advanced calculus class. It was a specially developed class in my district and it was actually first year university math. This mid-term was hard and I got 95/100. My father looks it up and down and asks "Where did you lose the five points?"

I am sure he did not *intend* to make me feel like the most worthless bug that ever dared to intrude upon his time with such meaningless things as anything connected with my life, but that is what I heard.

And that message was reinforced over my entire life.

A few years before that I had asked to drive the ride-on lawn-mower. "Not this year. You aren't big enough, but you are too big to sit on my lap when I drive. So, you will just watch this year and then next year I will teach you to drive it." Cool, great. So I spend a year watching my little brother have fun sitting on dad's lap knowing that I will be driving it next year.
Spring comes and dad says he is going to fire up the lawn-mower. I run to my room to get my earmuffs and my outdoor shoes so I can be ready to learn. I hear the mower start up as I run past the living room window and then I hear it running. But wait! Wait! I am going to learn to drive it! Wait for me!

I open the door to see my little brother - two and a half years younger - driving the mower with Dad giving him pointers.

Again, I am not worth even thinking about let alone bothering to teach anything. I will never be good enough. I am just a stupid girl who he will not take the time of day for.

And no, I don't believe he intended that. Yes I believe he loves me, but I have never felt it.

Sure, I'm "grown up" now and I should be able to put it behind me. However, every remark, every line from him is so loaded with baggage and background that I do not always trust my father. I do not feel he believes I can actually do anything. Every time he corrected the way I was washing the dishes and then just did it for me. Every time he took over a task form me and did it himself. All of those told me I wasn't good enough. The few times I got uppity and dared to say something like "Fine, then *you* do it." I got angry tone and glare and "Don't talk to your father like that." looks from him - which made me feel even worse for daring to challenge his public opinion of me.

It's not all my father's fault. My North American English speaking society did a lot of damage since I am not a perfect size two and I don't play dumb. And yes, *I* am the one who has internalized it all. There is a lot here pressuring me.

Like my rape, I wish I could put it behind me, I wish I could forget those moments, or at least that the pain would subside. But, like my rape, the crystal clear picture of those moments hits me again and again and again, stalling me, stunning me into silence and fear when I most need courage.

I am trying to fight it, to learn to live with it, to be better than all of that garbage. But it is hard to be better than that when you do not believe you are.

So, there are some thoughts for you.

Ekatarina

Re: From Ekatarina

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

Fathers, huh.
My father's great line was always: "If you coud just loise a stone or two {Amber}, you'de really be quite pretty."

My mothers' was "SO you got 95%. Where did the other 5% go?" It was a joke of course, but not a joke really.

It's very tiring trying to be perfect but I don't know any other way to survive.

I don't think I can understand people who don't understand low self esteem. Most people have it and live with it - it's like the common cold, or tooth decay.

Re: From Ekatarina

[ekatarina.livejournal.com]

I'm with you all over there!

I loved getting my mother to read my essays since she would check my spelling, maybe make suggestions on grammar, but she would not pick about my thesis - unless it was truly awful in which case she would save me from myself. Mothers are supposed to do that.

And yes, we low-esteemers just make do, or we don't and we do ourselves in.

I am a nice person, I have had nice relationships, I have fabulous friends who tell me how wonderful I am, I have had a great life and I plan on continuing that. No one is happy all the time, it's unnatural.

Things get better. I no longer believe I am worthless, I just have brief moods when I do. I no longer live in no-self-esteem-world 24/7 but I still make short trips there. I think that is normal. And I think that reassessing why I go there and why I come back is important.

I realize I am beautiful and talented and amazing and that not having a professional career as a celebrity does no in any way diminish my wonderfulness as a singer, writer, scholar, or fry-cook.

I am me. I rock. Life rolls on.

There are parts of me that I may never "fix" and that's fine as well. Maybe I'll never have the dizzying highs of life that some of my friends have been able to enjoy, but my life does not suck so I am cool with that.

Sigh, time for dinner.

Ekatarina

Re: From Ekatarina

[moniqueleigh]

Ouch. You know, you've pretty much described me in your comments.

My dad also was of the "where's the other 5 points" sort. My mum was the supportive "save me from myself" one. (Thank all the gods for that, because some days she's the only reason I survived.)

I'm a weird mix of some days realizing that I'm attractive & intelligent, while other days I think I'm the ugliest & stupidest twit on the planet. Most days, I'm somewhere in the middle, but leaning towards the intelligent side of things even when I'm not so certain of the physical.

*shrug* Schoolmates reinforced my positive view of my intelligence, but didn't help at all with my general feelings of ugly-duckling-ness.

[darkoshi]

I believe I am a good person. But what worth is that, if no one else sees it, or if no one else likes me, or likes being with me?

And if I don't get any reassurance from other people that they like me, or that they like being with me or interacting with me, and if it ends up seeming that I have no interaction with anyone, then I assume people don't particularly like me or don't find anything enjoyable about interacting with me. So, what difference does it make if I'm a good person and otherwise like myself? What good does it do me, if I'm still lonely and unhappy?

[andrewducker]

If you don't like yourself then you can be with someone else and _still_ be unhappy.

Being self-confident means that I mind less when other people disapprove of me, because I value my opinion of what I'm doing, not theirs.

It doesn't cure your loneliness, of course.

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

It's usually less lonely to be one of the crowd - and the cowd has low self esteem..

There's also a thin line between se;f confidence and arrogance, and most people, especially women, are trained to err away from the latter..

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

Hmm don't think that one took too well with me. Even my loathing of myself is arrogance-based - I expect to be good at things if I try.

[darkoshi]

at least when people disapprove of you... well, it's pretty bad, but at least you can react to it. but when people just don't seem to care at all, positive or negative, it makes you feel like you're nothing. even though you know you're something. or you think you're something... you may as well be nothing..

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Well, I have low self-confidence etc since to -me-, it seems all too obvious that I'm unattractive, too chubby, unhealthy in many many ways, and just pretending to be something that I'm not. Oh, and I'm not nearly as smart as people occasionally think either.

And I'm a bad person.

You did ask.

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

Overcritical unsupportive parents and pretty much constant neighbourhood/school bullying didn't help.

My parents programmed me to compare myself to other people to see what I'm doing wrong. It didn't matter that I did well at school because there was always someone who did better than me no matter how insignificant the difference. (So my own accomplishment was nothing and wasn't worth mentioning). That kind of criticism was applied to just about everything you can imagine and 26 years down the line I find myself automatically doing it.

Stupid really.

[iggy182.livejournal.com]

I don't feel that I'm a bad person, in fact I generally think that I'm pretty awesome, but that's just the internal me. When it comes to my interaction with other folks, then I generally follow a policy of 'they hates me, my precious", until proven otherwise. And of course I'll get down on myself as well.

Why am I this way? I think it stems primarily from 14 years of being kicked, slapped, hit, punched, told that I was stupid, told that I didn't know anything, seeing my mother picked up and thrown into the wall when she tried to stop my father from beating me, seeing my mother generally beaten and insulted. And general depression brought about as a result of having lost my grandmother who was like a mother to me for the first 4 years of my life, to cancer when I was 5, 3 days before Christmas, and then not being allowed to go to the funeral. And the general being picked on by the other kids at school because we never stayed in any one place longer than a year (i.e. I've moved house slightly more than once for each of the almost 34 years I've been alive), and so I was always different from them somehow. And having my best friends turn on me when I was 14, spreading rumours that I was gay, which I'm not. Not that there's anything wrong with being gay, or not being gay.

Yeah, I think that about covers it.

Of course somewhere between 12 and 14 I realized that all the insults and external opinions didn't mean jackshit in reality, and so I worked at developing and exercising my eccentricities, because it amused me to observe people's reactions, before I adopted Zen Buddhism as my religion/life philosophy of choice. I'm still practicing at that though.

I generally have a big problem in accepting that anyone could love me (but they do), or that I'm at all attractive (they say that I am, but it could be an elaborate joke), and I have bad days were I'm just laid so low, but for the most part I'm happy, and I honestly couldn't imagine living any other way. I hate society in general, but I love you all as individuals.