Self esteem, the esteem in which you hold yourself, goes to the core of who you are, and how you behave. It informs your self image (how you see yourself), your self confidence (when and how you back yourself) and your self concept (your understanding of who you are).
Many women who have experienced trauma come to counselling to ‘fix’ their self esteem. I inwardly weep for this statement, we do not want self esteem to join the long, long list of what you think you do wrong, or things you have to do. We want self esteem to be more like the seedling that suffered a winter, and is fighting back, growing strong, painfully and resolutely blooming little green leaves and buds in defiance of the long hard winter.
Nurturing the esteem in which you hold yourself, is a gentle loving process in which we revisit the unconditional love we have inside of us, which we might give to everyone BUT ourselves. It is nurturing the idea that what you give to others, you too deserve.
Nurturing the sense that you can be loved, held in esteem, makes room for you to develop your self concept. Who are you? Why? It makes room for you to embrace your self image, the way you look in the world both when you’re put together, and when you’re a hot mess. It makes room for confidence in the decisions you make arising out of your self concept.
Self esteem is essentially the worth you have in yourself, moving from a deficit belief, that you are worthless, that no one will love you, that you are unlovable and all is lost, toward the notion that even though you may have bumps and bruises, and perhaps even a couple full blown flaws, you are worthy of love, you have intrinsic worth. I can hear the scoffing even from here. Its not worthy to just exist right? You have to be a valuable and contributing member of society, or at least one who follows the rules.
Turning this question around, most people will attribute the other people in their lives worth something, even if only a little, by virtue of their humanness of simply being, showing up every day with what they have. You can acknowledge their faults and failures, but under it most people will find some value in their humanness despite their flaws.
I wonder why, if we can do this for others, why we do not deserve that for ourselves.
I believe we do. No matter how faulted, no matter what poor choices we have made, no matter our mistakes and foibles, we too are worthy, because of our basic humanness.
Laying a foundation of self worth, makes room to build our concept, which will in turn help us to address the faults and foibles we may have pointed to previously as reason for being undeserving and unworthy. For being bad. We can correct and grow, in whatever way fits and as we do, we will improve only because we believe we are worthy, that we can. As we grow, our confidence in ourselves will increase, and following, our image of self in the world.
It all starts with our self worth. While you believe you are not worthy, you cannot grow the idea that you can grow, or that fortunes will change.
Amy Madden 