Are you In an Abusive Relationship with…Yourself?

Feb 14

The past couple of years have been hard for most people in one way or another. And for my clients who went into the past two years already struggling with anxiety, depression or other mental health struggles it has been such a challenge for them to find ways to cope. One of the biggest challenges I see in my work with clients is low self-esteem and the habit of negative self-talk that often accompanies feeling less than.

In this post I want to talk about self-compassion, reasons for low self-esteem, and to give you some ideas for kicking the nasty habit of negative self-talk. But first, I want you to take a few minutes to read and answer some questions. You can answer them on paper or just in your mind.

1. When was the last time you felt proud of yourself? What had you done or accomplished?

2. What’s the difference between arrogance and confidence?

3. When do you feel most confident?

4. What makes a person worthwhile? Where do your beliefs about this come from?

How Do You Want to Define Worth and Success for Yourself?

Often, when I ask clients about times they felt proud of themselves, the times they remember are ones in which they won an award, graduated with a degree, started a business, volunteered for a cause about which they’re passionate, bought a house or got a promotion. It makes sense, right? We feel good about ourselves when we achieve big things. But what happens when we can’t achieve something big all the time? Do we become worthless? Logically, I don’t think any of us would answer yes, but I think many of us only feel worthwhile when we are achieving something big. This is a problem. We can’t always be achieving or producing. Sometimes we are just living.

And some of us really need to hear this: being human and living day to day is enough to make you worthwhile and valuable. You don’t have to do more and accomplish more in order to be enough.

But doesn’t that mean I’m just giving up? Or wasting my potential?

In American culture, we often equate productivity with worth. But it isn’t just productivity of any kind that makes us worthwhile. It has to be measurable, monetary productivity. If it doesn’t make a lot of money, it’s not worthwhile. Money, power and immortality (fame) are the main characters in our American story of what makes a truly successful person. Do you buy it? By these standards, those working in education, mental health care, the non-profit sector and many service, retail and manufacturing industries just aren’t worthwhile and they can’t achieve “success”. Sadly, it tracks. It is clearly reflected in where we allocate funding as a country. Many workers in these fields are barely able to afford to live in cities in which they work and aren’t afforded top tier health insurance plans, if they have access to health insurance at all. How does our socioeconomic class system affect our feelings of self-worth? For that matter, how does a culture of white supremacy and racism affect our feelings of self-worth? Even those who “should” feel worthwhile based on this system: those who have financial security, a degree in a respected field, those who check all the boxes in the “successful” life list, still often talk of feeling empty, lacking purpose and feeling they should be doing more or achieving more.

So, is there something wrong with everyone? Or…is there something wrong with the way we define worth and success?

Well, you can probably guess what I think about it. I believe the way we collectively define worth and success is often what causes so much suffering. What if we agreed that worth is inherent and success was defined by finding meaning and purpose in our lives? And what if the definition of purpose and meaning had nothing to do with how much money it brings you and everything to do with feeling fulfilled?

And…we need money to live.

That’s the reality we exist in right now. So, how can we balance making sure we can afford to live while also learning to unwind our self-worth from the pillars of productivity, wealth and consumption culture? I’ll say it again: your worth is not dependent on your productivity or your wealth or what you own. Your worth is inherent.

You Nailed It!

When was the last time you felt proud of yourself? For something that just felt good, for a time when you felt connected to purpose or stood up for something in which you believed? Maybe the thing you’re thinking of also brought you wealth (or at least some income) and community recognition and that’s great! But was it the money and recognition that made it worthwhile or was it the feeling of purpose and connection or the feeling of being in alignment with your values? If your self-worth is always tied to wealth and recognition, you will always be chasing that high. You’ll climb one mountain and find yourself at the bottom the next day. Great if you love climbing mountains, but not so great if you just want to feel worthwhile, valuable and enough. Conversely, what if you feel your work and/or your everyday life is in alignment with your values, but you find yourself doubting your worth because you aren’t making a lot of money and can’t do some of the things that your peers are doing? Guess what? Yep, you guessed it, you are still worthwhile. You may have to remind yourself of this a lot because the world out there may consistently tell you otherwise: money, status and stuff doesn’t define human worth.

Arrogance Versus Confidence

Several of my clients who struggle with low self-worth are working from a story that confuses arrogance with confidence. Somewhere along the way, many times from childhood, people learn that being confident is the same thing as being a braggart or being arrogant. In an effort to be, or at least to appear to be, humble, we learn to be self-effacing, diminishing, and small. When a client shares this story, I usually make a column in my notebook with arrogant on one side and confident on the other and ask them to think about someone they know who seems really confident. I ask them to tell me about this person—how do they carry themselves? What kinds of things do they say? How do they treat others? And then I do the same with the other column. And a funny thing happens. We start to see how very different an arrogant person is from a confident person. That’s probably why there are two different words for these traits, right? My clients have described arrogant people as having traits such as: low self-awareness, low empathy and poor listening skills, where they describe confident people they know as having traits including: good leadership, desire to teach and help others and a positive attitude. How did you answer the question, when do you feel most confident? How do you think your confidence is different from arrogance? When you portray confidence, does it come from a place of wanting to prove your worth to others or does it come from a place of appreciation and gratitude for where you are in life?

In a way, arrogance is a defense mechanism for some of us who are worried we don’t measure up—it’s a preemptive strike against judgment by shouting from the rooftops: “You can’t judge me because I’m amazing!” But inside, we don’t feel so amazing. Confidence however, is the expression and attitude of those of us who DO believe we measure up. It doesn’t have to be shouted: it’s calm.

Arrogance in a leader looks like a manager who so fears their ability to lead that they have to micromanage to remind you they’re leading you and have to vocalize their accomplishments to everyone for fear others won’t see them otherwise.

Confidence as a leader looks like a manager who leads by example; she gets in there and does the work with her team; she inspires; she builds people up; she knows that not knowing the answer to everything is ok. So, if you have worried that being confident will be seen by others as being arrogant, do you now see the difference? Let’s move away from a culture of self-effacement and diminishment and move toward a culture of confidence.

When someone compliments you, instead of giving them all the reasons the compliment doesn’t fit or isn’t justified, practice simply saying “thank you.” When you reject a compliment, it’s like throwing a thoughtful gift in the trash right in front of the person who gave it to you. Cultivate healthy humility. Let’s continue admitting when we don’t know the answer and keep learning from one another. In one of my favorite and most-often-recommended books, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, by Pema Chodron, she writes of this kind of healthy humility:

“To have a few seconds of doubt about the solidity and absolute truth of our own opinions, just to begin to see that we do have opinions, introduces us to the possibility of egolessness.”

She goes on to say, “Cultivating a mind that does not grasp at right and wrong, you will find a fresh state of being. The ultimate cessation of suffering comes from that. Finally, never give up on yourself. Then you will never give up on others.”

Pay Attention to How You Talk to You

Try an experiment today: make a note of how often you notice negative self-talk happening. Maybe even make a check mark in a notebook each time you notice it. I’ve asked clients to do this and even to note what their thoughts are saying for a whole week. Then, we’ve looked at the thoughts together and read them out loud. What if another person in your life was telling you these things all week, every week:

“You’re such an idiot.”

“God, you are so disgusting.”

“What is wrong with you? You never get anything done.”

“Why can’t you get your sh*t together?”

“You’re so lazy.”

“You’re a moron.”

“No one really cares about you. They’re just too nice to ghost you.”

“Everyone else is doing something with their lives but you.”

Yikes. This is hard to read, isn’t it? If someone else was telling you these things all day, every day, we would call it abuse. We would say: you’ve got to get out of this relationship!

How do you stop this negative self-talk cycle?

The first step is awareness. You can’t change what you don’t first see clearly. As you spend the next week or so tracking your negative self-talk, see if you can make one, small change in the thoughts. Where you normally refer to yourself as ‘you’ or ‘I’, can you switch the pronoun to something outside/external to yourself? For example, when you have the thought, “You’re such an idiot,” can you change it in your mind to, “Anxiety says that I’m such an idiot” or “Depression says that I’m such an idiot”? Often the reason we tell ourselves these terrible things is because our brains have been hijacked by anxiety, depression, grief, or plain old fear. This may sound weird to you, but bear with me. This simple technique called Externalization, taken from Narrative Therapy, can, over time, help you to manually rewire your brain. By disconnecting who we are from our problems, we can start to see them more clearly.

Breathe, Reframe and Breathe Some More

I know, you’ve read it before, whether it was on my blog or a zillion other sources, but meditation and breath work really do help. Once you’ve worked on bringing more awareness to your thoughts and you’ve practiced the externalization technique, let’s trying pairing these with awareness of your breath.

When you find negative self-talk is present, breathe in through your nose, hold your breath for a few seconds and then exhale through your mouth. Notice where in your body you feel negative self-talk. Is it a pit in your stomach? A lump in your throat? A tightness in your chest? Wherever it is, direct your breath into that place. Take a few deep breaths in through your nose, hold, then out through your mouth. And hear yourself saying: “these are thoughts. They come and go.” If one thought is particularly sticky for you—like “Depression says things will never get any better,” try practicing some reframing of these stickier thoughts. For example, “Depression says things will never get any better, but actually, depression can’t predict the future.”

Again, this may feel kind of weird or corny at first, but what you’re doing on a psychological level is providing your brain with more neutral and positive data to counterbalance the negative data on which it’s been living.

Over time, increased externalization and reframing will teach your brain not to buy into old stories about success and worth. Over time, you will start to see that your thoughts are just thoughts, not facts. Facts are backed by evidence. Thoughts are often built on the input of only negative data. For example, if you don’t receive responses to your resume after applying for a couple of weeks, and have the thought that, “I’m not good enough to work anywhere; no one will ever hire me,” is that a fact? Or is it based on feeling scared and insecure because you’ve been waiting a couple of weeks to hear back? You can try reframing in this instance, and telling yourself, “last time I looked for jobs it took a couple of months and maybe I’ll hear something tomorrow or next week, who knows?”

Healing Takes Time

I wish healing was a fast process. I really do. I wish I could give you “5 Quick and Easy Steps to Change Your Life” (and there’s plenty of that out there) but healing isn’t quick and it’s certainly not easy. Imagine your brain is like a super complex computer program (I mean, it pretty much is, right?). You received some basic programming from childhood and from all of your other life experiences up until this point. In order to go back and change or update the program, you first have learn the program that’s already in place, then you have to learn how to program and then you have to start the work of writing the new program.

Though it’s not easy, healing is SO worth it. Healing, post-traumatic growth, the creation of new habits—these things happen all the time. Trust me, I see it happen! And I’ve experienced it in my own life. It comes in spurts and then waves and it’s a life-long process.

If you find that you’re having a rough time healing on your own, consider reaching out to a licensed therapist in your area. I’m a Denver-based counselor, specializing in Grief & Loss and Caregiver Support and offer a free, 15-min consultation. You can request a consult here. I’m passionate about helping people learn to treat themselves better. A world with healthier people is a healthier world.