It’s only natural to have some self-doubt about our abilities. In fact I think its part of a healthy balanced person, much like having a little dose of narcissism. It’s almost like an ingredients list for a good cake, too much or not enough of the right things will mean the cake might taste too sour, or too sweet.

A weak self-esteem will be the cause of you knocking yourself down when you try to achieve anything. I recall some lovely stories of children who were blessed with supportive parents to the point where they knew no fear. One child would launch itself off the top of the wardrobe because they knew a parent would always be there just in time to catch them whilst the other would walk up to the largest meanest looking stranger to chat to them.

Such innocence doesn’t seem to last too long in life. We have nasty things called parents, and vicious monsters called teachers as well as hideous things called brothers and sisters. They are all there to challenge us, to stop our plan for world domination and to ensure we know full well our place in the pecking order.

Too much of this knocking down can, as we know, get us all down. Constant knocking down eventually gets under our skin and enters our own personalities. “Yes, they are right, I’m never going to be as good as my big sister” or “there’s no point in me trying for that competition, Dad never thinks much of my ideas”

From our early years until we are very old we can suffer from the effects of being knocked down by others, even if it happened many, many years ago. It becomes part of the way you look at the world. I can affect you that much that it taints what you see and what you do with your whole life. It becomes a voice inside your head that criticizes you, that says, “see? I told you that you couldn’t do it”

Try to work out where it is in your head. Go on your way today doing what you normally do in your life but be aware and listen out for the voice. Eventually you will find it in your head telling you that you cant do something, or you won’t do a good enough job of something. The voice drives some to become obsessive in their ways to try to prove to the voice that they are wrong. But for most of us it’s like a thumb, keeping us down, stifling our performance and abilities to succeed.

Someone I knew, (I shall call him ‘Roger’) came to me calling it a disability. I became to understand why he called his low self-esteem a disability was because quite simply, it disabled him from succeeding. For instance in a shooting competition, when the pressure was on him he wouldn’t be able to perform well.

Whilst he was relaxed he could achieve enough to win any shooting competition. He was a farmer, and a successful one at that! However during a long period in his teens as he begun to work along side his father he begun to realise how much of a threat he seemed to be to him.

His father became depressed at the same time and begun to knock Roger down or not praise him for any work or activity he took on. Roger kept quite and never said anything, so it never stopped. Until one day when Roger’s father retired. His father stopped knocking him down, probably because of his own low self esteem wasn’t threatened any more by him, and maybe because he begun to realise how hard he had been on him.

By this time Roger had grown into a man yet he found his confidence would be weak under certain circumstances and he would find he couldn’t achieve under pressure. He recalled being embarrassed whilst at a family event when all eyes turned on him as he was publicly told off. Now, whenever he needed to stand up in front of many people to talk, he found it hard to do so and would make many mistakes.

Roger gives us a good example because he is successful, he is handsome, he is tall and he is around 50 years old so has a lot of life experience. Yet he still suffers from low self-esteem. Why?

Roger, like many of us have been affected by a lengthy period of knocking down. This normally is due to our parents / guardians or brothers / sisters since they are individuals who are normally with us for long periods during our significant early personality development period.

Essentially what happens is that if someone knocks you down, and/or doesn’t praise you for good as well as guide you when you do not so good, you eventually take their opinion on as your own. You ‘internalise’ it. It becomes part of your personality that says, “actually, yes, you aren’t very good, you can’t achieve or succeed”

Part Two of this article is here

Have you got any advice you would like to share about your situation? Post them here.

Guy

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Filed under: Depression, Self-Esteem & Anxiety

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