Tag: self love

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Unforgiveness and your health

Unforgiveness is when you are unwilling or unable to forgive someone for hurting, betraying, breaking your trust or causing you intense emotional pain. Forgiving is highly recommended, as there are various researches that have been carried out which shows that unforgiveness causes health issues including:

  • Cancer – 61% of cancer patients have forgiveness issues
  • Suppressed anger – people often get angry for any reason have issues associated with forgiveness
  • Low self-esteem – lack of self-love stem from not forgiving your self or self-acceptance
  • Bitterness – increases the risk of depression
  • Constant worrying increases of the risk sleep deprivation and anxiety
  • High blood pressure
  • Heart disease

When someone has hurt or disappointed you, the logical response would be to think that you’re hurting them by not forgiving them and holding a grudge. The harsh truth is that you’re actually causing yourself more pain by holding on to the anger, and the person that you wish not to forgive has the subconscious power to control you. However, you can get disconnected from the power of control when you forgive.

How to learn to forgive

Decide

When you feel that you have been hurt intensely by someone close to you, it’s very hard to even begin to consider forgiving them, as you want them to feel the pain. However, the first step is to release the emotional pain by making a conscious decision to forgive and let go. This process may take time, due to different emotions that you have to process.

Letting go of the baggage

True forgiveness is when you forgive and forget. However, we are imperfect human beings and although we may forgive we may not always forget as there may be incidents where we are triggered or remaindered of past events. Even if it is a struggle to forget, it’s very important to forgive by letting go of the emotional pain that has been caused.

Take responsibility for that part that you played

You can never control anyone, the only person that you can control is yourself. Taking responsibility for how you allowed someone to hurt you, enables you to set boundaries so you don’t put yourself in the same situation again.

Forgive yourself

It’s easier to forgive others when you learn to forgive yourself. No one can truly hurt you deeply unless you allow them. Sometimes it’s easier to blame others for causing you pain. However, the depth of the pain depends on the boundaries that you set within all your relationships. Forgive yourself for allowing others to treat you with disrespect or emotional pain

Awareness

Be aware of the negative emotions that you feel towards the other person including anger, bitterness, hurt, hatred, and jealousy. Awareness will help you to acknowledge the need to forgive. Holding on to the negative emotions is highly toxic and not good for your health.

Acceptance

You don’t need to make excuses for the person that hurt you. Even if you don’t want them back in your life, it’s essential to accept how you feel and the fact that you can’t change the past.

Learn from the experience

Sometimes we have to go through negative and painful experiences to learn some life lessons, which helps to develop ourselves. In every negative experience, it’s very important to ask yourself, what lessons you have learnt? This will enable you to avoid repeating the same thing over and over again. If you keep doing the same thing and don’t learn from the painful experiences then you will experience the same thing (pain) in your life. Life is like a classroom and people are teachers, and they come into our lives to teach certain things about ourselves. So take the time to learn the lessons regardless of how painful it may be.

Talk about it

When you feel ready to forgive, make arrangements to contact the person that has hurt you and express yourself. Talking things over helps you to let go.

Closure

If you have decided that you no longer want to have the person that has hurt you back in your life, then that is fine. You can write a letter to that person and bin or burn the letter. Writing helps to get rid of any negative suppressed emotions.

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Low self esteem and relationships – Part 3

Anyone can suffer from low self esteem. Regardless of how great your childhood may have been, there may be some experiences that could impact your esteem, such as:

  • Divorce/relationship issues
  • Death of a loved one,
  • Unemployment
  • Life threatening illnesses
  • Failing an exam
  • Financial crisis
  • Housing issues
  • Family break down
  • Stress or depression
  • Dealing with challenging issues within the work place.

All of the above issues could affect anyone. However, people that have ongoing issues associated with low self esteem are mostly individuals from dysfunctional homes, who have been emotionally deprived based on what these individuals have witnessed. These experiences include being sexually, emotionally or physically abused.

There are also incidents where one or both parents may have been polygamous, experienced poverty, suffered with drugs/alcohol abuse, been emotionally unavailable or have had mental health issues.

The sad thing about life is that when babies are born, they are not programmed to dislike themselves; they love everything about who they are, until negative things about them are brought to their attention, particularly when the reflections that their parents projects are negative. Consequently, they will have a negative view of themselves, as babies see themselves as their parents see them. Parents are like a mirror as babies are born with no self identity.

That is why it is very important for parents to love and help build their child’s esteem. If you often hear that you are bad, ugly, dumb, will amount to nothing or that you are useless, then that will be how you perceive yourself and you will surely believe what you have been told by your parents.

Unfortunately, low self esteem becomes more apparent within inter-mate relationships than any other area of a person’s life. People with low esteem can appear confident in their appearance, by the way they speak, class, position within their career and how well they carry out their duties at work. Deep down however, they have a negative view of themselves. 

When your esteem is low you choose partners that are mostly emotionally unavailable or dislike men or women that treat you well. As you are so used to being treated badly, you subconsciously attract partners that reinforce the negative emotions from your childhood. For example picking partners that are emotionally damaged so you can fix them; partners that are overly selfish so work hard for love by putting them as the main focus within the relationship; partners that continuously cause you emotional pain, to keep you more insecure, anxious and paranoid; partners that will abandon you if you have issues with fear of abandonment; partners that have fear of commitment or intimacy, so they can love you from a distance.

How to overcome low self esteem 

Love yourself 

Self love is important and is the most useful way that you can have more satisfying and fulfilling relationships. When you learn to love yourself, you’re more equipped to give and receive love. After all, you cannot give the best of yourself to others until you give your best to yourself first. This is called being self-nurturing, not selfish. Most people always put everyone else before themselves. When you act in this way, you will always be secondary within relationships, in addition to being drained and not having much to give to yourself. Make yourself a priority and create some ‘me time’ to recharge yourself.

Acceptance

It is essential to be aware and accept who you are as an individual (the good, the bad and the ugly). It is impossible to make the change that you want unless you know that have the problem in the first place. There is nothing worse than living in denial.

Take time to understand yourself 
 
The more you understand yourself, the more you will discover the root cause of the low self esteem. Once you realise the root cause, take responsibility to work on yourself and forgive people that have contributed to your low self concept, such as your parents. It’s not emotionally healthy to blame people – doing so can make you a victim and you could become emotionally bitter. Instead, learn to take control of your life and give yourself the love that you didn’t receive from your childhood

Evaluate your relationships 

Ensure that you are not giving too much within your relationships and receiving very little back. A relationship should be reciprocal. When you often give too much to another person, they lose respect for you, so if you want others to respect you then start by respecting yourself. If you don’t, then you can’t expect others to do the same. 

Learn to forgive

Forgiving others helps you to let go of the emotional pain which you may be carrying around. When you hold on to the pain that others have caused you, particularly your parents, you are more likely to be subconsciously drawn to a partner that has similar characteristics as your parents. Consequently, your negative experiences will be constantly repeated from an emotional level. If you find it difficult to speak to the person that has hurt you, you can always write a letter but don’t send it. Just bin it or burn once you have written it.

 

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Stop seeking approval in relationships

Unhappy pretty girl with complexes and broken mirror
Unhappy pretty girl with complexes and broken mirror

Stop seeking approval in relationships

Everyone has a desire to be liked, admired or loved. However, it is very dangerous when you constantly want acceptance and approval from others, as this can become a negative habit if it is not addressed.

People with low self-esteem usually want acceptance from others, because they don’t feel good about themselves. This could be a result of unresolved childhood issues or an experience that has lead one to believe that they are not good enough. Whatever the case may be, it is often hard to accept and even take ownership for this habit. No one really wants to admit that, they seek approval from others people. This can be a very pain revelation.

Some individuals often want to please others to be liked and may find it difficult to say no. The sad reality is that they are willing to put off investing in themselves and are more eager to make other people like, accept or notice them. I can appreciate how hard it is if you didn’t feel valued as child and as an adult you may be unconsciously seeking validation from others.

The reality is, you have a need to be liked and that need can not be met by someone else.  For instance, when you get satisfaction when that need is met, the desire will always remain over and over again. Therefore, you will constantly need that, need to be met all the time. It is like pouring water into a bucket with a hole, it will never be filled, unless the whole is sealed, which only you can do.  This habit can become addictive and you can easily develop a need for more.

How to avoid seeking approval from others

Acknowledge and accept that you have this problem, as you can’t change what you are not aware of.

Take time to value your own beliefs, values and ideas. When you constantly want others to approve who you are, you are giving away your power, diminishing your self-concept and making other people’s opinions more important than your own.

Learn to say no

It is important to help others but it’s also unhealthy to do things you don’t really want to, in exchange to make other people happy. If you spend your time making other people happy, more than yourself, you are only causing yourself more stress, and emotional pain. This could lead to suppressed anger, especially when you give so much and don’t get it in return.

Learn to be assertive

It is important to speak up when you disagree or when you feel that someone is taking advantage of you. The more you allow people to take advantage of you, the more they will. You do not want to spend your life being a victim and over analyzing how unfair you have been mistreated.

Give yourself the love that you need

Give yourself what you seek from others such as acceptance, approval and love, and you can only find it when you stop seeking approval from others. This process will increase your esteem; self respect and will help you feel more at peace with yourself.

 

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How to avoid low esteem

• Always value yourself, if you don’t then no one else will.

• The only person that is responsible for creating your destiny is you, and no one else; so you can’t expect other people to make you happy, if you are not happy with yourself.

• You can’t truly love or receive love without falling in love with who you really are.

• Improve your esteem by treating yourself as you would treat a valued friend.

• Learn to identify your full potential, and your purpose in life. (learn to focus on your strengths and work on areas of development).

• Setting goals gives you a purpose, vision and direction in life. You can do one thing daily towards your desired goal.

• Take care of yourself by, exercising, having a balanced diet and getting enough rest.

• Be conscious of what you feed your mind with.

• Be aware of what you focus your time, money and energy on. It is mostly positive or negative?

• Stop trying to please people; it is not good for your emotional well-being and you can never please everyone, even if you tried to.

• Be positive, negative energy can be draining.

• Enjoy your hobbies

• Consistency is the key to success.

• Challenges are part of life. It helps to develop your character, grow and come out of your comfort zone.

• There is nothing wrong with making mistakes, but avoid making the same mistakes over and over again. If something you are doing is not working, then you must learn to do things differently.

• Create time to nurture yourself , even if you have a busy schedule.

• Learn to give yourself, what you desperately need from others (LOVE)

Never ever give up on yourself.

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What is low self esteem

What is low self-esteem?

Low self-esteem is how a person values themselves. The more positive you are about yourself, then the higher your self-esteem will be.

So when you keep telling yourself all the things that you are not good at, you are actually decreasing your self concept.

It is highly important to realise that having a high self-esteem is not based on, how attractive you are; it is all about how you feel about yourself.

Even the most beautiful women in the world suffer from low self-esteem.

Research shows that the people you attract into your life are a reflection of your self value. Women with high self-esteem have a tendency to attract men that have a high self concept and vice versa.

Signs of low self-esteem

Attracting abusive partners in relationships (whether it is verbal, physical or emotional).

Constantly seeking approval of others, attention seeking or people pleasing.

Avoiding conflicts, because you are afraid of how other people will perceive you.

Constantly worrying, and not being able to relax or have a sound mind.

Comparing yourself to others, who are above or below you, based on your ego needs at the time.

Being highly critical of yourself.

Not making your own decisions or letting other people make important decisions for you.

Constantly complaining about your circumstances, which you know you’re able to change.

Not forgiving yourself or others.

The more positive view that you have of yourself, the higher your self-esteem will be, and also the more negative view that you have of yourself the lower your self-esteem will be.

It is very important to get rid of things that make you highly unattractive to yourself.

How to increase your self-esteem.

Learn to appreciate who you are and the blessings that you have in your life, (show gratitude).

Stop setting yourself up for stress or failure. You don’t need more stress to get the adrenaline going, unless you think this is the start of boredom?

Don’t try to become someone that you are not and just be yourself – so idolising superstars is very unhealthy, just be who you are and develop yourself.

Taking care of yourself by eating well and exercising on a regular basis will give you a sense of well-being.

Get into a habit of thinking and saying positive things to yourself.

Negative people can be draining, so spend more time with positive people, who are encouraging.

Be assertive and don’t allow people to treat you with lack of respect.

Engage in your hobbies and interest.

Learn to accept compliments, no matter how hard it may be.

Know what you want and say so.

Learn to give your self ,what you desperately need from others  (LOVE)