Category: Psychology

9 Ways Your Parents Caused Your Low Self-Esteem

It’s not uncommon for childhood trauma to manifest itself well into adulthood. When we start to connect-the-dots, it’s clear to see a direct correlation between certain childhood events and our self-worth. Low self-esteem can be a result of a negative or dysfunctional family environment, but where exactly does it originate? There’s no one answer to this question but here’s a short list of ways your parents may be the root-cause of your low self-esteem.

1. Disapproving Authority Figures

If you grew up hearing that whatever you did wasn’t good enough, how are you supposed to grow into an adult with a positive self-image? If you were criticized no matter what you did or how hard you tried, it becomes difficult to feel confident and comfortable in your own skin later. The fear forced on you for perpetually “failing” can feel blindingly painful.

2. Uninvolved/Preoccupied Caregivers

It’s difficult to motivate yourself to want more, strive for more, and imagine that you deserve more when your parents or other primary caregivers didn’t pay attention – as if your greatest achievements weren’t worth noticing. This scenario often results in feeling forgotten, unacknowledged, and unimportant later. It can also leave you feeling that you are not accountable to anyone, or you may believe that no one in the here and now is concerned about your whereabouts, when that’s actually a carry-over feeling from the past. Feeling unrecognized can result in the belief that you are supposed to apologize for your existence.

3. Authority Figures in Conflict

If parents or other caregivers fight or make each other feel badly, children absorb the negative emotions and distrustful situations that have been modeled for them. It’s scary, overwhelming, and disorganizing. This experience can also occur when one parent is deeply distraught or acts unpredictably around the child. When you were subjected to excessive conflicts between authority figures, it can feel as if you contributed to the fights or to a parent’s painful circumstance. Intense conflicts are experienced as extremely threatening, fear driving, and you may believe you caused it. This feeling of being “tainted” can be carried into adulthood.

4. Bullying (with Unsupportive Parents)

If you had the support of a relatively safe, responsive, aware family you may have had a better chance of recovering and salvaging your self esteem after having been taunted and bullied as a child. If you already felt unsafe at home and the torture continued outside home, the overwhelming sense of being lost, abandoned, hopeless, and filled with self-loathing pervaded your everyday life. It can also feel like anyone who befriends you is doing you a favor, because you see yourself as so damaged. Or you may think that anyone involved in your life must be predatory and not to be trusted. Without a supportive home life, the effects of bullying can be magnified and miserably erode quality of life.

5. Bullying (with Over-Supportive Parents)

Conversely, if your parents were overly and indiscriminately supportive, it can leave you feeling unprepared for the cruel world. Without initial cause to develop a thick outer layer, it can feel challenging and even shameful to view yourself as unable to withstand the challenges of life outside the home. From this perspective, you may feel ill prepared and deeply ashamed to admit this dirty ugly secret about you, even to your parents, because you need to protect them from the pain they would endure if they knew. Instead, you hid the painful secret of what’s happened to you. Shame can cloud your perspective.

Eventually it can seem as if your parents’ opinion of you is in conflict with the world’s opinion of you. It can compel you to cling to what is familiar in your life, because it’s hard to trust what’s real and what isn’t. You may question the validity of your parents’ positive view of you, and default to the idea that you are not good enough or are victim-like and should be the subject of ridicule.

6. Bullying (with Uninvolved Parents)

If your primary caregivers were otherwise occupied while you were being bullied and downplayed your experience, or they let you down when you needed their advocacy, you might have struggled with feeling undeserving of notice, unworthy of attention, and angry at being shortchanged. When the world feels unsafe, the shame and pain are brutal. These feelings could also be evoked if parents were in transitional or chaotic states – so that what happened to you wasn’t on anyone’s radar. If there’s chaos at home, it can be hard to ask for attention or to feel like there is room for you take up space with your struggles. Instead, you may retreat and become more isolated and stuck in shame.

7. Academic Challenges Without Caregiver Support

There’s nothing like feeling stupid to create low self-esteem. If you felt like you didn’t understand what was happening in school – as if you were getting further and further behind without anyone noticing or stepping in to help you figure out what accommodations you needed – you might have internalized the belief that you are somehow defective. You may feel preoccupied with and excessively doubt your own smartness, and feel terribly self-conscious about sharing your opinions. The shame of feeling as if you aren’t good enough can be difficult to shake, even after you learn your own ways to accomodate for your academic difficulties.

8. Trauma

Physical, sexual, or emotional abuse may be the most striking and overt causes of low self-esteem. Being forced into a physical and emotional position against your will can make it very hard to like the world, trust yourself or trust others, which profoundly impacts self-esteem. It may even feel like your fault when it couldn’t be less your fault. Obviously, in these scenarios, there is so much going on at one time that you might need to check out, dissociate, go away. It can make you feel like nothingness. In an effort to gain control of your circumstances, in your head you may have convinced yourself that you were complicit or even to blame. You may have found ways to cope with the abuse, to manage the chaos in ways that you understand are unhealthy, so you may ultimately view yourself as repulsive and seeringly shameful, among a zillion other feelings. 

9. Belief Systems

When your religious (or other) belief system puts you in a position of feeling as if you are perpetually sinning, it can be similar to the experience of living with a disapproving authority figure. Whether judgment is emanating from authority figures or from an established belief system in your life, it can evoke shame, guilt, conflict and self-loathing. Many structured belief systems offer two paths: one that’s all good and one that’s all bad. When you inevitably fall in the abyss between the two, you end up feeling confused, wrong, disoriented, shameful, fake, and disappointed with yourself over and over again. 

It is important to understand that experiencing any of these early circumstances doesn’t mean you must be bound by them as an adult. They will be woven into your fabric and absorbed into your sense of yourself in different ways over time, but there are many paths to feeling that you are better prepared, less fragmented, and more confident moving forward.

As an adult, when you examine your history, you can begin to see that in some cases the derision or intense negative messages you encountered weren’t necessarily meant for you. Rather, they flowed from the circumstances of the people who delivered them. That perspective can help you to dilute the power of the negative messages about yourself you received and formed.

There are some circumstances you may have suffered that may be impossible to understand. You can’t and aren’t expected to understand, empathize or forgive in these circumstances. What matters most is continuing to find ways to feel as okay and as safe as you can in your own life right now.

The more you understand the sources of your low self-esteem and can put them into context, the more you can use your self-understanding to begin the process of repairing self-esteem and living the life you’ve always wanted.

Source: Original article, psychologytoday.com- 2013, by Suzanne Lachmann Psy.D.

Don’t Be Afraid To Rewrite Your Past

Your past, present, and future are all happening right now—at least in your mind.

Something for parents and teens.

According to the Theory of Narrative Identity, developed by scholar and researcher Dr. Dan McAdams, we form our identity by integrating our life experiences into an internalized, evolving story of ourselves which gives a sense of unity and purpose to our lives. 

This life narrative integrates our reconstructed past, perceived present, and imagined future. All three coexist at the same time. Hence, from an experiential standpoint, the past, present, and future are not separate and linear, but holistic and co-occurring. 

In other words, your past, present, and future are all happening right now—at least in your mind. As American writer and Nobel Prize laureate, William Faulkner famously put it, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

When you change the meaning and narrative of your past, you simultaneously change the narrative of your present and future. And vice versa.

Changing the narrative of your present and future simultaneously alters the meaning or narrative of your past. 

The story we hold of ourselves is continually evolving and changing based on the experiences we are having. No, the facts about your past can’t change. But the story you tell yourself about them absolutely can change.

Unfortunately, most people are not strategic about their narrative identity. They aren’t conscious of the meaning-making process they instinctively go through in their day-to-day life, and as a result, they often shape limiting stories based on the emotions they are experiencing. 

Your entire identity and view of the world is a meaning. A story. The questions to ask yourself: Is this story serving you? Is this the story you want to tell?

The story you have in your mind about the world at large and yourself as an individual is far from objective.  Chances are, much of who you believe you are is based on stories that you tell yourself, that have come from experiences in your past. Potentially traumatic experiences wherein you didn’t or haven’t had an empathetic witness help you to positively and powerfully frame those experiences. 

A fundamental aspect of reframing the past is to shift what was formerly seen as a negative experience into a positive one.

Having studied this for over a decade, I’ve never seen a more useful reframing technique that what Dan Sullivan calls, “The Gap and the Gain.”  Continue Reading…

By: Benjamin Hardy Ph.D., https://www.psychologytoday.com

You Don’t Have To Be a Veteran To Have PTSD

Depression is an illness, PTSD is a psychiatric anxiety disorder. It’s possible to have both at the same time.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is extremely different from typical anxiety and depression. Although, depression and PTSD share certain symptoms, many don’t realize that it is possible to experience both conditions at the same time.

You don’t have to be in the military to have PTSD.

According to David Yusko, Psy.D., Perelman School of Medicine,                  PTSD symptoms can develop from experiences involving natural disasters, serious accidents, life-threatening illnesses, physical abuse, and sexual assault during childhood or adulthood.

A traumatic event that precedes the onset of PTSD can be experienced either directly or indirectly by an individual.

Learning how a loved one died a violent death, or watching someone be assaulted, are examples of indirect trauma exposure.

The Difference Between PTSD and Depression

Depression doesn’t just go away overnight, it’s an illness that can be treated with therapy or medication.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a psychiatric, anxiety disorder that happens after experiencing a horrible event.

Although military veterans constitute a great proportion of cases- PTSD can also be caused by various traumatizing events, for example:

  • Death of a loved one, family member or friend by suicide or homicide
  • Directly experiencing or witnessing traumatic events
  • Serious car accident
  • Physical assault
  • Sexual violation
  • Exposure to actual or threatened death
  • Abuse (physical, emotional, sexual)
  • Learning that a traumatic events occurred to a close family member or friend

Common Symptoms of PTSD:

  1. Persistent avoidance of distressing memories
  2. Detachment or estrangement from others
  3. Lack of motivation
  4. Thoughts, or feelings about or closely associated with the traumatic events or of external reminders (i.e., people, places, conversations, activities, objects, situations)
  5. Insomnia
  6. Inability to remember an important aspect of the traumatic events (not due to head injury, alcohol, or drugs)
  7. Jumpy/ easily startled
  8. Persistent irritability, anger, lashing out
  9. Nightmares
  10. Memory loss, difficulty recalling recent events unrelated to the trauma
  11. Distorted blame of self or others about the cause/consequences of traumatic events
  12. Persistent fear, horror, guilt, or shame
  13. Exaggerated negative beliefs (e.g., “I’m bad,” “No one can be trusted,” “The world is completely dangerous”)
  14. Diminished interest or participation in significant activities
  15. Persistent inability to experience positive emotions
  16. Numbing or self medicating, drugs and alcohol

Help & Referrals

HelpGuide.org – https://www.helpguide.org/articles/ptsd-trauma/ptsd-symptoms-self-help-treatment.htm

American Psychiatric Association – https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/ptsd

National Institute of Mental Health – https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/index.shtml

Please visit the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) website to learn more about other treatment options for PTSD. Additional resources include the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety, the VA’s National Center for PTSD, the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, and any rape crisis center near you.

Source: https://www.anxiety.org/

How Your Parents Behaviors Shape Who You Are Today

If your mom was constantly stressed, you were more likely to be worse at math.

Whether your parents were your best friends or you barely knew them, your relationship with Mom and Dad had an impact on who you are today.

At least that’s what Sigmund Freud said when he theorized that our adult personality develops from early childhood experiences, an insight empirically tested by attachment theory and developmental psychology through the 20th century up until today.

Here are 10 ways your parents shaped who you are today.

1. If your mother was constantly juggling multiple jobs, you are likely to suffer from stress.

2. If your parents spoke negatively about their body, you are more likely to have low self-confidence.  Continue Reading…

Meet The Psychologists Helping Teens to Manage Mental Health and Reduce Self-harm

The DBT service aims to replace problematic behaviours with skillful ones, help teenagers navigate relationships and experience a range of emotions without necessarily acting on them.

By Bethan ShufflebothamCommunity Reporter

Five years ago there were no specific interventions for young people who were self-harming and feeling suicidal outside of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and family therapy.

In December 2014, the Trust’s Children and Adult Mental Health Service (CAMHS), was set up to meet the growing demand of young people with high levels of mental health needs in North Staffordshire.

Specifically, the team assisted teenagers aged 13 to 17 going through emotional difficulties which were causing them to self-harm or attempt to take their own lives.

The aim is to replace problematic behaviors with skillful ones, help teenagers navigate relationships and experience a range of emotions without necessarily acting on them.

Some states now allow students to take “mental health days.” This is an opportunity to start a conversation about how to address mental health in schools. Continue reading…

How To Manage Anxiety When You Feel Like You’ve Tried Everything

If it feels like you’ve tried everything to manage your anxiety, but have yet to find what you’re looking for, keep in mind there are always more options out there.

By Carolyn Steber, Bustle

Constant anxiety can be debilitating, and feeling like you’ve tried everything to get rid of it can add another layer of anxiety in itself.

Sure, the go-to treatments, like medications and therapy, can be a huge help. But they don’t do the trick for everyone — at least not right away — and it’s important to keep that in mind so you don’t feel too frustrated.

Try the following seven holistic ideas:

Read more… www.bustle.com/p/how-to-manage-anxiety-when-you-feel-like-youve-tried-everything-according-to-experts-18138770

Does Your Child Have a Fear of Silence? It could be Sedatephobia!

“Silence”, it is said, ‘speaks a thousand words’. But to some people, silence can be downright scary. There is a term for this phobia: Sedatephobia. People suffering from Sedatephobia cannot withstand silence; they constantly need noise and human interaction.

The word originates from Greek ‘Sedate’ meaning ‘silent or sleeping or dead’ and Phobos meaning the Greek God of fear, or dread or aversion.

Sedatephobia was relatively unheard of 50 years ago. However, today, it is a fairly common phobia. Expert hypnotists and psychotherapists are seeing large numbers of Sedatephobic individuals in their offices and they believe that these numbers will continue to rise in the coming decades.

For Sedatephobic individuals, darkness might not be scary, but the silence and lack of noise can bring on a full blown panic attack. This constant neediness can be very harmful to the individual.

Symptoms of fear of silence

Excessive noise can be debilitating and can bring on headaches. However, it is silence that can cause various symptoms in a Sedatephobe. Power cuts can be especially trying to such people, since they are left without technology, noise, music or movies around to comfort them.

When left in silence, the phobic might have a full blown panic attack which may be characterized by following symptoms:

  • Shivering, shaking, trembling
  • Having dry mouth and sweaty palms
  • Inability to speak or express themselves: feeling detached from reality and having thoughts of death or dying
  • Feeling numb, feeling like crying or fleeing
  • Experiencing rapid heartbeat, nausea, gastrointestinal distress etc

Sometimes, a person with Sedatephobia can also feel afraid in a group when people stop talking or there is a lull in the conversation.

Exam times can be especially hard for these individuals. Spending time in a library or even trying to sleep alone can be a scary time for the sufferers of fear of silence phobia.

Causes of Sedatephobia

Like all other specific phobias, the fear of silence is usually caused by a traumatic or negative episode in the phobic’s life. Some phobics, for example might have been locked up or abused by an adult,(some having been kept in basements or closets for punishment where no outside sound reaches them).

The feelings the child has experienced then can get permanently etched on his/her mind. News of a loved one’s death or other traumatic/negative episode associated with silence can also bring on this phobia.

Many experts believe that technology has also given rise to the constant need for sounds around humans.

For some people, it is impossible to meditate or sit in a quiet room for even a few minutes as they always need their phone, music, TV, or the noise of traffic around them.

To be left in silence can mean being “hunted down by supernatural beings or things that go bump into the night”. It also brings the fear of the unknown.

Most sufferers of Sedatephobia also tend to have inherent anxieties. They may inherently have monophobia (the fear of being left alone). The fear of ghosts is also associated with this phobia.

Other causes of the fear of silence phobia include adrenal insufficiencies, depression, hormonal imbalances, and delusional paranoia.

Treating and overcoming the phobia

Family members can play an important role in helping an individual overcome his/her fear of silence.

Talking about the fear to a loved one (or in group therapy) can provide relief to some extent. Else it is best to seek professional help from a professional Therapist or Psychiatrist.

Today, many modern therapies like CBT (or cognitive behavior therapy), NLP or neurolinguistics programming and systematic desensitization therapies are known to help reduce anxiety experienced by Sedatephobia.

All these treatments can help one get to the root of the fear of silence phobia and help the sufferer overcome it once and for all.

Source and original article by: Jacob Olesen. https://www.fearof.net/fear-of-silence-phobia-sedatephobia/

Teens Seeking Validation

 By Caroline Knorr

How Girls Are Seeking (and Subverting) Approval OnlineFrom selfies to shout-outs, girls are using social media both to build up and break down their self-image.  

It’s not a law that you have to post a selfie before, during, and after every activity. But for kids, it’s pretty much mandatory. The resulting likes, thumbs-ups, and other ratings all get tallied, both in the stark arithmetic of the Internet and in kids’ own minds.

For some — especially girls — what starts as a fun way to document and share experiences can turn into an obsession about approval that can wreak havoc on self-image.

That kids have been comparing themselves to popular images in traditional media — and coming up short — is a well-researched phenomenon. But new studies are just beginning to determine the effects of social media — which is arguably more immediate and intimate — on the way kids view themselves.

A Common Sense survey called Children, Teens, Media, and Body Image found that many teens who are active online fret about how they’re perceived, and that girls are particularly vulnerable:

– 35% are worried about people tagging them in unattractive photos.
– 27% feel stressed about how they look in posted photos.
– 22% felt bad about themselves if their photos were ignored.

How Kids Get Feedback
You probably know about popular apps such as Instagram and Snapchat. But the specific ways kids use these tools to get — and give — feedback can be troubling. Here are a few examples:

Instagram. The number of followers, likes, and emojis kids can collect gets competitive, with users often begging for them. Instagram “beauty pageants” and other photo-comparison activities crop up, with losers earning a big red X on their pics.

Snapchat. Numerical scores display the total number of sent and received chats. You can view your friends’ scores to keep tabs on who’s racking up the most views.

Lipsi. This anonymous question-and-answer app lets kids find out what others think of them.

“Am I pretty or ugly?” YouTube videos. Kids — mostly girls — post videos of themselves asking if other users think they’re pretty or ugly. These videos are typically public, allowing anyone — from kids at school to random strangers — to post a comment.

The Good News

Although approval-seeking and self-doubt continue to plague girls both privately and publicly, there are signs of fatigue. The “no-filter” trend is prompting girls to share their true selves and accept (and even challenge) whatever feedback they receive.

Under hashtags such as “uglyselfie,” and “nomakeup” girls post pics of their unadorned selves, funny faces, unretouched images, and “epic fails” (attempts at perfect selfies that went wrong).

Given that adolescents are naturally eager for peer validation — precisely when they begin to use social tools that provide it — it’s encouraging to see kids having fun with the notion of perfection.

As a matter of fact, one of the Common Sense study’s most welcome findings is that social media has the potential to combat unrealistic appearance ideals and stereotypes. And, after all, kids use social media to be, well, social, and constant rejection and pressure is no fun at all.

It makes you realize just how powerful social media tools can be. While they foster relationships and engagement — and can even bolster self-esteem — they can be both constructive and destructive. That’s why you can’t leave it all up to kids to find their way.

Whether your kids are just getting into social media or are seasoned posters, it’s critical to help guide them to use Snapchat, Instagram, and other networking apps for fun and connection and not as fuel for self-doubt.

What You Can Do

Talk about the pictures they post. Experimenting with identity is natural, and it’s very common for kids to adopt provocative stances in cell phone pictures, on their social network pages, and in YouTube videos. But are they doing it only because they think others expect it of them? What pose would they strike if they could do anything they wanted?

Ask how feedback makes them feel. Are they stressed out by others’ comments and feedback? Does it make them feel better to be “liked?” Why is external approval important? How do negative comments make them feel?

Help them develop a healthy self-image. Body image is developed early in childhood, and the family environment is very influential on how kids view themselves. Emphasize what the body can do instead of what it looks like. Also, be careful of criticizing your own looks and weight.

Rely on role models. Positive role models have an enormous effect on kids. Cultivate relationships with women your daughter can look up to. Also, point out celebrities and other famous folks who challenge stereotypes about size and beauty and seem comfortable in their own skins.

Help them stop the cycle. Urge them to post constructive comments that support their friends for who they are, not what they look like.

Help them view media critically. Talk about over-sexualized images or unrealistic body ideals of girls in the media.

Explore websites such as the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in the Media and the Representation Project that promote the importance of positive body image and valuing women for their contributions to society.

Original Source: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/how-girls-are-seeking-and-subverting-approval-