www.bible.com/116/psa.100.4.nlt
Giving thanks to God Almighty for everything I’ve been through; the pain, growth the sad times, happy times, all I have and everything in between.
I humble myself in praise.
Tag: Encouragement
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.
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Teen Siblings Create notOK App for Peers in Distress
Charlie said his motivation for building the app came from watching his sister spiral into depression.
What a great idea! This may be old news to some but I’m just hearing about it.
If one button could change everything, save a life or help a teen, wouldn’t you tell everyone about it?
When Hannah Lucas was diagnosed last year with a medical condition that caused frequent fainting, she felt scared and alone.
“I started passing out more and more often and I was terrified of going anywhere,” Hannah, 15, told ABC News. “Because what if I passed out and no one was around or what if someone took advantage of me?”
Hannah, a high school sophomore from Georgia, became anxious and depressed and started to self-harm, she said.
From that dark point in her life, Hannah and her younger brother, Charlie Lucas, 13, created an app to help people in distress.
The idea for the notOK App came from Hannah, who told her mom she wished there was an app she could use to quickly alert her family and friends when she needed help either physically or emotionally.
Charlie heard his sister’s idea and used coding skills he learned in summer camp to design the app.
“I helped illustrate it out so he would know what to do,” Hannah said of her brother. “He looked at my drawings and he coded it to tell the coders exactly what I wanted and how I wanted it to look.”
Charlie said his motivation for building the app came from watching his sister spiral into depression.
“I saw Hannah depressed, and she told me about her idea, and I started wire-framing it,” he said. “Making this app made her feel better and that made me feel better.”
Hannah pitched the app while taking a summer class on entrepreneurship at Georgia Tech. Professors there were so intrigued by the siblings’ creation that they connected the family with a development company in Savannah.
Over the course of five months, Hannah and Charlie worked side by side with the developers, often over Skype, to see their idea for the app turn into reality.
They also compiled research on mental health statistics to make the case that their app would find an audience.
Mental illness is defined by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) as a mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder. One in six U.S. adults lives with a mental illness, the institute reports.
Among adolescents, an estimated 49.5 percent between the ages 13 to 18 have a mental disorder, according to NIMH.
NotOK was launched in February 2018, both iOS and Android versions. The app, was originally came with a $2.99 monthly fee, but is now offered for Free. It allows users to press a button that sends a text message to up to five preselected contacts.
The text, along with a link to the user’s current GPS location, shows up on the contacts’ phones with the message, “Hey, I’m not OK. Please call me, text me, or come find me.”
“The reaction we’ve heard has been really positive, especially from parents and kids suffering with anxiety,” Hannah said. “Those kids don’t know the words to tell somebody.”
Hannah added of the app, “It definitely gave me a sense of comfort.”
Original source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.goodmorningamerica.com/amp/wellness/story/teens-struggle-depression-led-brother-create-app-52791054. By KATIE KINDELAN. Accessed September 12,2019.
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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
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This is how to rewire your brain for happiness: 4 secrets from research
“Thoughts determine feelings.”
Remember that. Make a note. Get a tattoo.
This is an awesome article which can apply to anyone, at any age. Especially teens.
By Eric Barker, TheLadders.com
Someone compliments you and you think, “They don’t mean it.” Something good happens and you hear, “I don’t deserve this.” You’re meeting new people and it’s, “They won’t like me.”
And you usually accept those words because they’re coming from inside your head. It’s like the horror movie where the calls from the killer are coming from inside the house.
These are called “automatic thoughts.” And they suck. But we all know the answer: you just need to think happy thoughts, right? Wrong. Let’s get our psychology lessons from somewhere other than Instagram memes, alright? “Think happy thoughts” doesn’t help unless you don’t need help.
From The Confidence Gap:
Their study, entitled “Positive Self-Statements: Power for Some, Peril for Others,” … showed that people with low self-esteem actually feel worse after repeating positive self-statements such as “I am a lovable person” or “I will succeed.” Rather than being helpful, these positive thoughts typically triggered a strong negative reaction and a resultant low mood.
So when you’re really feeling down, happy cliches won’t cut it. Nope. So we’re gonna need to science the hell out of this one. We need to rewire your brain, bubba.
From Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders:
This new approach— cognitive therapy— suggests that the individual’s problems are derived largely from certain distortions of reality based on erroneous premises and assumptions. These incorrect conceptions originated in defective learning during the person’s cognitive development. Regardless of their origin, it is relatively simple to state the formula for treatment: The therapist helps a patient to unravel his distortions in thinking and to learn alternative, more realistic ways to formulate his experiences.
It’s not hard or expensive, but it’s gonna take some practice. (Look, if you can spend 10 minutes taking a Facebook quiz to find out which Harry Potter character you are, you can spend 5 minutes a day to live a happier life, alright?). And once you get good at this it won’t just make you happier — these techniques are proven to help with all kinds of issues from procrastination to anxiety to anger.
From Thoughts and Feelings:
Challenging automatic thoughts is a powerful way to counter perfectionism, curb procrastination, and relieve depression and anxiety. It is also helpful in treating low self-esteem, shame and guilt, and anger. The techniques in this chapter are based on the cognitive therapy of Aaron Beck (1976), who pioneered this method of analyzing automatic thoughts and composing rational comebacks to refute and replace distorted thinking.
We’re gonna get some solid answers from Dr. Matthew McKay’s “Thoughts and Feelings” and even roll psychologically old school with UPenn professor Aaron Beck’s 1979 classic “Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders.”
Let’s get to it…
Cognitive Therapy 101
“Thoughts determine feelings.” Remember that. Make a note. Get a tattoo. This powerful idea goes back thousands of years to the Stoics. Aaron Beck even quotes Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus (the Biggie and Tupac of Stoicism) in his book.
From Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders:
If thou are pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs thee, but thine own judgment about it. And it is in thy power to wipe out this judgment now. – Marcus Aurelius
“Always trust your feelings” sounds sweet but you wouldn’t tell that to someone with a phobia, a hoarding problem, or — god forbid — homicidal impulses, would you? No. Teenagers and golden retrievers are excellent at blindly following their feelings but neither are regularly consulted on their decision-making skills. Continue reading…
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Your adult child resents the way you parented them. Here’s how to handle it.
You can be a good parent and have unintentionally caused hurt in your child.
This 8-step process will help you get through the conversation and build a better relationship with your grown children.
By Nicole Spector
As my husband and I deepen our discussions around family planning, we’re tackling a number of questions about budgeting, housing, childcare, employment and so on. Most of our inquiries are of a fairly practical nature, such as “How can we afford this?”, and “What kind of parental leave can we work out?”
But some of our questions tend to veer into the wild, snake-infested territory of “what ifs”. One of my favorites to ponder, with an urgent hopelessness, is “What if we screw up and our kid grows up to resent us for it?”
It’s an impossible question to answer right now, but in 20 years or so, I might be asking this same question, and justifiably so.
“Even when they do their best, parents fall short regardless and there will be memories and experiences that children find hurtful,” says Lauren Cook, MMFT, a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at Pepperdine University. “There is no such thing as a perfect parent.”
So what is a parent to do if, after raising their kid as best they could, their grown child begrudges them for how they were raised or how said parent handled a particular issue?
Through consulting numerous therapists, we’ve pieced together a 8-step process detailing how parents can deal with this difficult situation, and ultimately build a better relationship with their grown children.
You can be a good parent and have unintentionally caused hurt in your child.
— Read on www.nbcnews.com/better/lifestyle/your-adult-child-resents-way-you-parented-them-here-s-ncna1042081
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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:
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The Most Missed Signs That a Child Has Been Sexually Abused
In the United States, government authorities respond to a child sexual abuse report every 9 minutes. Recognizing the signs of abuse is the first step in protecting a child who’s in danger. Unfortunately, the signs aren’t always apparent.
Ninety-three percent (93%) of child sexual assault victims already know their abuser. Sexual predators are usually close to the family and in positions of trust, which means that parents and caregivers already have their guards down. It’s hard to fathom that someone in your inner-circle could be capable of violating a child.
Six child sex abuse signs that can be easily missed:
#1. The grooming stage.
One thing abusers have in common is their effort to gain trust.
Those efforts may include: gift giving without occasion or reason, allowing the child to witness them giving elaborate gifts to others (attempt to impress), taking the child out to eat, movies, being overly complimentary to the parent and/or child, extra time with one-on-one tutoring or coaching (alone time) trips out of town, and more.
Single moms beware! Initially you may be flattered that this person has taken a special interest in your child, but in reality the abuser sees you and your child as an easy target.
Keep your eye out for the grooming stage!
#2. Common misconceptions.
At least 1 in 6 men have experienced sexual abuse or assault, whether in childhood or as adults. Don’t be blindsided!
Research on male childhood sexual abuse concluded that the problem is common, under-reported, under-recognized, and under-treated.
Parents, we must remain as diligent with protecting our sons as we are with protecting our daughters.
MYTH: Men who abuse boys are gay. FALSE.
Studies suggest that men who have sexually abused a boy most often identify as heterosexual and often are involved in adult heterosexual relationships at the time of abusive interaction.
#3. Bedwetting or resuming behaviors they have grown out of.
Resuming behaviors of a younger child such as thumb sucking or wetting the bed are red-flags.
If you have a pre-teen or teenager, don’t dismiss bedwetting as just an isolated incidence. Pay attention!
#4. Unexplained bruising or spots on the sheets.
When children play outside and are involved in sports, a little blood here and there may not be cause for alarm. If you have boys, cuts and bruises are the norm and won’t even warrant a second look.
But, as we now know, any unexplained stains on the sheets or clothing is worth a mini-investigation.
#5. Sexual behavior that is inappropriate for the child’s age.
Other warning signs include; excessive talk about or knowledge of sexual topics, asking other children to behave sexually or play sexual games.
A toddler masturbating or mimicking adult-like sexual behaviors with stuffed animals, toys or other objects is a strong sign of sexual abuse.
#6. Typical pedophilia behavior: Tries to be a child’s friend rather than filling an adult role in the child’s life.
– Abusers are often in a positions which give them access to children (i.e. church, coaching, mentoring) either as a career or volunteer.
– The abuser may often talk with children about their personal problems and relationships.
– They may vocalize how much they “love kids” and have several relationships with children outside the scope of their professional realm.
Typical Signs in adolescents:
- Self-injury (cutting, burning)
- Inadequate personal hygiene
- Drug and alcohol abuse
- Sexual promiscuity
- Running away from home
- Depression, anxiety
- Suicide attempts
- Fear of intimacy or closeness
- Compulsive eating or dieting
Violations of trust are betrayals that have lasting effects. Parents, this is a matter of life or death, you can’t be too cautious. Remember, you are not alone. If you suspect sexual abuse you can talk to someone who is trained to help.
National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800.656.HOPE (4673) or chat online at online.rainn.org.
Online Prevention Training- https://www.stopitnow.org/prevention-training-on-demand
References: Rainn.org, Stopitnow.org, 1in6- https://1in6.org/get-information/the-1-in-6-statistic/
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The Best Thing You Can Do To Help a Depressed Friend
Whenever your friend explains what has happened or how they feel, you don’t need to always follow-up with a story of your own.
Knowing the right thing to say to a friend who’s in a dark place can be challenging. We want to help but may be afraid to say the wrong thing.
Whether your friend is suffering from depression, anxiety or abuse, the single most important thing you can do is, make yourself available.
Research confirms that just reaching out is critical.
Here are five ways to help, with no strings attached.
1. Keep checking in.
Reach out via text or phone call, and do it more than once. Make sure your words are nonjudgmental.
Choose what you say wisely especially when texting. Using a ton of smiley face emojis won’t help them feel better. It could actually do the opposite, making the person feel that you’re minimizing what they’re going through.
2. Meet them where they are.
Meet them where they are, as-in don’t pressure them to “get out”, or do anything else they’re not quite ready to do.
Allow them some space to direct the conversation and discover their own coping skills.
3. Remind them of things that make them happy.
Bringing up memories that you think are funny may not be a good idea; be certain that the memory is equally happy for them.
Be patient and kind, hopefully the conversation will help get them back to a somewhat positive head-space.
4. It’s not about you.
Whenever your friend explains what has happened or how they feel, you don’t need to always follow-up with a story of your own.
It may be tempting to share similar experiences in an effort to prove how much you can relate to their pain. But talking too much about yourself can be counter intuitive.
5. Don’t just say you’re available, prove it.
Continue to reach out even if they don’t respond at first.
Never just say, “Let me know if you need anything” or “I’m here if you need me“. You don’t want to make your friend feel that they’re bothering you.
Individuals suffering from depression or having suicidal thoughts are great at hiding their feelings. It’s just easier for them to say, “I’m OK”.
You don’t always have to have an answer, just listening is the most important help you can give.
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Don’t Quit
The Youth Advocate 