Symptoms of Low Self Esteem

Symptoms of low self esteem

There is nothing more killing to the human spirit than the loss of our ego. However, with a lot of work, we can see and heal this spirit killing condition in ourselves. The indicators of our debased value may be hard to see to the casual observer unless we know for what to look. In a child, the symptoms of low personal image might be quiet obedient behavior, and a posture of low maintenance. To the unskilled and abusive parent, this may seem like a Godsend. Children with symptoms of low self esteem will be perfect children requiring no attention from the adult and will never get into trouble in school. As we mature into adults the same characteristic of hiding our needs, and therefore the symptoms of our low self esteem carry over into our adult world. Sadly enough one of the symptoms of low self esteem is to try to hide the fact we have it. We on the inside see it not as an emotional need, but as a personal fault within ourselves and we see it as a weakness to conceal.

Welcome to our website and thank your for visiting us! We are glad you are here. If you or a loved one suffers from low self esteem, we will begin with a simple overview of what it is. We will begin at the beginning, because this type of knowledge may be new to most people. Some psychologists and therapists may tend to throw their weight around with big terms and try to confuse you, because they need long term patients and clients. We are not impressed with their grandiosity or their degrees. The truth of the matter is that you or your loved one can get their emotional needs met for themselves, once you understand the problem. It is well within your mental and spiritual capacity to help your loved one heal themselves, if they apply effort, and to heal yourself as well. Not all therapists are unethical, but some are and the good therapists and we would wish you to try the simplest fixes first, and then graduate to heavier measures if you need them.

To simplify your education in psychology to a beginner’s level, because you deserve that respect, we will break down the symptoms of low self esteem into three categories, which are the sources of those symptoms. There are three, not one set of symptoms of low self esteem. The first set of symptoms are internal, and are visible to the sufferer, and come from their feelings about themselves and how they see the world, and their place in it. The second set of symptoms of low self esteem is external and they are how the friends and loved ones view the sufferer. The third set of symptoms of low self esteem, also external, is the actual behaviors of the sufferer, and their personality traits. What you are learning here doctors do not get to read about until their fifth or sixth year in college, at great expense at that point, and you are getting it here free.

Symptoms of low self esteem will begin to show themselves, not on the outside, but on the inside.It begins with how we start to see ourselves as children. The first source of symptoms of low self esteem,Our feelings about our selves and how we see the world, and our place in it can begin early in life, often in early childhood. Sometimes a catastrophic event in later life can cause us to lose self esteem as well. To understand symptoms of low self esteem, you need to understand that there are two forces in competition as we interact with our environment. The symptoms of low self esteem arise when these two forces get out of balance. The first force is our drive and our childhood enthusiasm we have as we play and dream as children. We want to go and do everything, we want to fly, we want to go to the beach, we want to go to the park and the zoo, and grow up to be firefighters, and everything else. This unbridled zeal and excitement within us makes us want to go into the world and conquer everything and make our life to our wishes, and that is as it should be. So far, all is good.

The second force is the natural resistance to our inner drive, which is the opposing force in the environment. We as individuals are the potter, and the environment is the clay. The conflict is between our desire and enthusiasm, and the natural resistance in the medium for molding to our efforts into what we want. This resistance is powerful, and our needs are so great for encouragement and emotional support, that we may experience failure. Conquering our environment means first understanding it, with our wonder and our curiosity, and then by manipulating it to get our needs met, which achieves our desires. The very first skill we develop after we leave the womb is the power to evoke love and nurturement from our caregivers. That is the actual first attempt we make to manipulate our world around us. If we have attentive parents who love us and nurture us, we learn right away that we have and deserve power over our environment and we are emboldened to go out and conquer the world. However if we have no loving parents, or bad parents, then we learn the environment is hostile. If we fail to evoke sympathy here, then we will fail at life, because we will learn several things. First, the world is too hostile to manipulate, second, we do not deserve to get our emotional needs met, and third, manipulation of life to our will is wrong, because we are wrong. If our unbridled zeal and enthusiasm within us is a source of irritation to our parents if they are dysfunctional losers, they may not respond with encouragement, as we need. On the other hand, if there is a lack of caring source in our lives, then we also receive no encouragement. Either hostile parents or lack of a parent will still teach us the same negative messages above.

That brings us back to the first source of symptoms of low self esteem, which is their view of the world. They need to look closely at their feelings about ourselves, how they see the world, and their place in it. People with symptoms of low self esteem will see themselves as unworthy to exert effort to better their place in life. They will have a pronounced attitude of knowing everything. They will never let you tell them anything and if you do give them any advice, they will go out of their way to do just the opposite. All the while, they will complain to you about hard life is and how rough they have it, and seek your sympathy and your pity. This is a degenerated effort of crying to mother to get her to change their diaper or stop the other children from hitting them. Once an honorable act as a baby, they have now defiled that same act into a tool to ply sympathy and unearned resources from stupid people around them, playing the distorted role as caregivers. Every bum at any street corner wanting a handout demonstrates signs of low self esteem. They are acting out the unmet need of mother giving them a hug, tucking them into bed, or cleaning their soiled underwear. It may seem a simple correction to give a handout and an employment opportunity would solve the problem, but that would only be a mistake. It would not only fail, it will make the problem worse. They are not just innocent victims of emotional need; they are also victims of misconceptions about life as well. If you meet their need, but do nothing to correct their misconceptions about life, then they will get worse and not better. Why is it a mistake to give them resources to help them?

We will answer that here with a question; what happens if you cry to your parent for help with a problem and they ignored your plight? At some point in time, you would become enraged at their indifference to your pain. You not only have learned the lesson that the world is hostile and unsympathetic, you now have rage at the source in your world for not meeting your needs and comforting you. You have learned the lesson that it is okay to get whatever you can by force and deception because the world is going to neglect you anyway if you do not. This is the reason why you cannot tell someone with symptoms of low self esteem anything to help them. They do not want help. They have a different agenda than you do. They have rage at the world for hurting them, and they have no interest in bettering themselves in life. The first reason is they do not feel they deserve it, second, the world is too hostile and they cannot do it, and third, they do not wish to play by the rules and contribute to life, because they are angry. If our country were at war, and somehow you found yourself in their country behind the lines of the enemy, you would have no trouble stealing whatever you could to survive from the hostiles, and avoid contact with them. You would prey on all of the resources that you could to get out of there. That is how someone with symptoms of low self esteem sees things in life. They see all of life as an enemy, and their agenda is to get by with as little effort as possible to survive. In other instances, the sufferer will seek out abusers to replace the abusive or absent parent from childhood. This is just another version of the ‘lost behind the enemy lines’ scenario that the sufferer will act out. In either case, it is their hatred, and not their emotional need for love that they worship, which energizes them. Because they experienced no intimacy and sympathy in their childhood, they see it as a weakness in themselves and an exploitable vulnerability in others. The best plan of attack for them is to create weakness and innocence in their life and then capitalize on the sympathies of others. Persons demonstrating these symptoms of low self esteem will ply their mind games on strangers and loved ones alike. These are the first set of symptoms of low self esteem, which are the attitudes and views of the sufferer, and their world, and their place in it.

The second set of symptoms of low self esteem is external and they are how the friends and loved ones view and treat the person. The surest symptoms of low self esteem are the views of the friends and colleagues of ones’ company. If you surround yourself with emotionally available, intimate, boundary respecting nurturers, then you have strong self esteem. If you have in your social and professional world a bunch of poisoning, consumptive shame-based losers, then that is a strong symptom of low self esteem. If the employer and the associates of the person are abusive, controlling, and emotionally cold individuals, then the person has the same viewpoint of himself or herself as well. We often believe that the hostility of our friends may give us low self esteem by their abuse of us. Actually, the opposite is true, for we pick friends and settings for our life that will mirror our internal image of ourselves. How your friends treat you is how you are actually treating yourself. You call into your world and your sphere of influence the type of people that reflect your view of yourself and of life. You associate with these persons by choice, not by necessity. All life communicates to all other life through our hearts on the psychic level. We attract what we think to us. Moreover, if you believe yourself unworthy and the world hostile, the poisoning losers and hostile settings will gravitate to you to make your dreams, in this case your nightmares all come true. That is why if we encourage a friend to leave her abusive husband or a man friend to leave his shaming and oppressive boss, the victim will refuse, because the oppressive situation mirrors what they feel they deserve, and they will feel out of place without it.

The third set of symptoms of low self esteem, also external, is the actual behaviors of the sufferer, and their personality traits. These will be the classic symptoms of low self esteem we read about on other sites on this subject. The sufferers will demonstrate a pronounced behavior of staying well inside their comfort zone. The most noticeable trait is their life never changes. Think of you in your life like a child in a back yard. Under normal circumstances, a child will be all over the back yard, in the tree, in the dirt, and it is normal to go over the fence and beyond the garden. It is normal for us all to test the boundaries and to make mistakes occasionally. One of the symptoms of low self esteem is not to test our boundaries and to never venture out beyond familiar levels. While that may seem like a good thing, it is actually bad, because it means we never reach where we would be happiest, doing the thing that we would love to do most. We never ask the right girl for a date, we never go to the dance at school, we never apply for the job we want, and we never try to ride a bike. Fear of failure may be the cause, or an inner belief that we do not deserve to achieve it may cause it as well, but both are symptoms of low self esteem. Symptoms of low self esteem can originate from inadequate skills as a person or a sense of unworthiness as well. The predominant belief of feeling unworthy will keep someone from trying to overcome his or her lack of ability.

The specific behavioral symptoms of low self esteem will be a reserved personality, speaking in lower volume than is normal, withdrawn posture among friends, and finally a demonstrated reluctance to approach persons of interest to themselves. They will rarely initiate social contact and will hang on the shirttails of others in social gatherings. There are other indicators and symptoms of their low self esteem as well. In conversation, the sufferer will not be able to see the other person’s point of view in matters of normal social activity, as regarding venturous choices. Persons of low self esteem may emphatically argue against one moving away to better themselves, such as going to college, joining the military, or moving to a better part of the country. They have a particularly linear and intolerant view, and they will not be good nurturers due to their lack of character. They can be very parasitic and will want to keep you in their life by convincing you to stay in their limited little world. Symptoms of low self esteem include giving you a feel that irritates you, even though you cannot put your finger on exactly what it is that bothers you. That irritating feeling is their negativism and their wanting to use you for comfort and security at the expense of you giving up your ambition and your dreams, for their benefit. They often will use their helplessness and your compassion to try to trap you into loyalty to them. The truth is they do not care about your best interest or your future, they only care about staying helpless and keeping you down there with them. Sadly, one of the strongest symptoms of low self esteem is the tendency to manipulate others for their benefit at the emotional expense of the other person. They will repeatedly try to invoke guilt on you for leaving them behind, as they see it. Do not let the person of low self esteem use you if they are not willing to grow and to change themselves. You deserve better than to let others manipulate you if they are willing to change and learn from you, as you try to help them. In summary, the best instruments you can use to gauge someone for their low self esteem are your gut feelings about that other person. If they feel emotionally clean and nurturing, they are, and if they do not feel right, and they are not emotionally available to you as a true supportive friend, they are not. Let your feelings decide.

For more in depth on this subject Please consider our book Overcoming Depression from Emotional Abuse/The Tools of Your Mind. In this work, we talk about symptoms of low self esteem and all other aspects of it. We also talk about the whole overview of our soul’s journey as we follow our heart’s dreams to our ultimate destiny. We answer many questions about our boundaries, selfishness, prosperity, psychotherapy, and finding our dreams and happiness. We also talk about the spiritual controls we have within to bring our good to us. Those controls are our Sincerity Switch, Spontaneity Switch, and lastly our Feelings and Dream Switch.

Thank you for visiting us today and please keep in touch, sharing your trials and your victories with us. We promise to answer personally every Email that we receive.

Shayne and Lori North in Aurora, Colorado

Overcoming Depression from Emotional Abuse/The Tools of Your Mind The Book

Leave Symptoms of Low Self Esteem and Return to Self Esteem