What do you call a god with low self-esteem?
An atheist because they just don’t believe in themself.
Every weeknight when I prepare my son’s lunch for the next day, I tuck a little note inside. It has evolved over the years from little sentiments and encouragements to silly jokes. It’s a way to let him know during the school day when he is there on his own, that he isn’t on his own. That he matters and is loved - a daily reminder for him to hold onto in absentia that he is never far from thought or regard, no matter where he may be.
Mattering to others, as explored in a previous educational series article, is part of learning to matter to ourselves. It is a building block of self-esteem.
“We decide who we are when we look into the eyes of the people we love.” (4)
Self-esteem.
It is a term we have all heard throughout our lives. We heard it in school from our teachers. It is in the media in movies and TV shows and as the subject of consumer brand campaigns. We heard it whispered by our parents as they exchanged their evaluations between themselves or with other parents when they thought we were out of earshot or were unbothered to care if we were not.
Many of us have judged ourselves against a nonexistent measuring stick of whether or not we possess this seemingly inborn trait and often appraised ourselves as seriously lacking.
But what is it really?
According to Google AI, self-esteem is “how much you value and like yourself, and it's made up of your beliefs about yourself and your emotional state.”
According to academic research, self-esteem or self-concept refers to "an individual’s perception and understanding of themselves, encompassing their physical characteristics, abilities, social roles, beliefs, and values" and their "subjective evaluation of her or his worth as a person." (5, 3)
Basically - how much do you like you? How much value do YOU believe you intrinsically hold?
In order to have self-esteem, it stands to reason that one has to have a sense of self to actually hold in some measure of esteem. For those of us who grew up in dysfunctional families and had to suppress so much of ourselves in order to keep ourselves safe within it, that isn’t necessarily the case.
Safety in the context of a dysfunctional family isn’t specifically physical safety, though that can be a significant component for many.
It is in the sense of emotional and relational safety.
How safe did you feel as a child to express yourself? To BE yourself? To try on different things and explore what that sense of self is or could be? Who was there to catch you and dust you off when you stumbled in the process? What did you quickly learn that you risked within those relational dynamics when you dared to engage in that exploration?
The ability of children to explore and form their individual identities starts from the establishment of healthy and secure attachment to parents and caregivers. In attachment theory, secure attachment is what establishes a sense of resilience and being good enough. It is "characterized by trust in the caregivers’ availability and sensitivity, providing children with a sense of emotional security and protection.” (5)
Secure attachment provides the home base from which to test and expand our own comfort zones. A reliable soft base to land, recover and regroup.
This process starts from infancy, but really comes into play in adolescence and is dependent upon that attachment foundation. Those “early experiences of secure attachment can have a lasting impact on a person’s self-esteem.”(5) The quality of that formative bond and the family environment also forms our constructs and references for attachments in other relationships - our ability to trust others as well as our resilience to adversity.
How our parents and caregivers respond to us and support us in these internal developmental stages is critical for our relational functioning as well as in how we form those values and judgements about ourselves that continue well into adulthood.
They can either be the safe, supportive harbor from which we can gain confidence to venture outward and explore, or they form a maelstrom of harsh, critical or perhaps absent voices that penetrate sharply inward to keep us self contained on one end or wildly resistant on another.
“We never outgrow the need for validation and to be seen and accepted in our vulnerable places, in all our places, by someone we love.” (4)
For many of us who had the incessantly resounding critiques of being too much or too little of one thing or another, there was never a firm, reliable anchor from which to launch an exploration of self. There was no safe harbor to return to but rather turbulent, unpredictable squalls to quickly and independently learn how to forecast and then maneuver around while somehow simultaneously finding a way to keep our head above water.
There is no energy for self exploration when all of that is needed for self preservation.
Instead of being able to develop our sense of selves, we developed coping mechanisms and survival strategies that served us then, but may constrain us now. There eventually comes to be a realization of outward manifestations of people pleasing, perfectionism and under or over achievement tangled with the masked internal realities of loneliness and insecurity resulting in an unmoored identity.
It can be a long journey and yet another part of our healing to untangle all those coping mechanisms that no longer serve us while also attempting to dig out that self that is still trapped under those layers of protective self repression.
As one commenter within a social media thread stated, “rediscovering myself feels like a mind game playing against an enemy they conditioned.”
The journey to rediscovery is as unique and individual as we are, and is often grounded in reflection and examination of what was experienced during those formative years. What did we end up being steered away from? What did we lose confidence to pursue? How were we beginning to see ourselves and what was the ideal self in our minds eye that we have since lost sight of?
Adolescence is a time of idealism and formation of beliefs and values, but if we never felt safe to fully express those emerging thoughts or were diverted from them because they didn’t align with those of our parents or family, now as an adult, those parts of ourselves that were denied may yet remain underdeveloped or unexpressed.
What recourse is there to address a childhood impaired by insecure or disorganized attachment? A therapeutic modality previously referenced within the educational series is Internal Family Systems (IFS) which can provide guidance and strategies to foster internal attachment.
One of the ways to do that is through reparenting - another term often heard in discourse around healing from dysfunctional family systems. This is again something that can be done in concert with an IFS and/or trauma informed therapist or independently. It is essentially the process of identifying and meeting those emotional and physical needs that went unmet in childhood. It is learning to give yourself the love, respect and compassion you never received or never received enough of.
This can be as simple as giving yourself permission to listen to yourself - learning to recognize your own inner voice versus that of the intrusions that are ingrained embodiments of the harsh criticisms and deprecations of parents and family members. Meditation practices can be helpful in separating out those voices.
Reparenting can involve remembering and reengaging those abandoned interests from childhood.
Developing self-compassion is another path along the healing and reparenting journey.
“Self-compassion means being kind and understanding toward ourselves when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate." According to Kristin Neff, researcher, professor and self-compassion pioneer, it is composed of three main elements: self-kindness vs self-judgement; common humanity vs isolation, mindfulness vs over-identification. (6)
Avoiding isolation and finding community with others who have also come from dysfunctional families is another very important component to the journey back to self. It provides a vital space to be able to see your own experience mirrored in those of others and not feel alone or out of place. It can become a much needed stand-in for the safe harbor and stability that was previously missing.
For myself, showing my son all the ways in which he matters - being one of the reflections back to him of his value and worth - helps heal the parts of me that never received that from my own family.
Separately, stepping off the precipice in crafting vulnerable content to share out into the ether as a member of the Together Estranged content creator team, and realizing how that has allowed me to shed weights I didn’t know I carried, has been healing in a myriad of other ways. It has allowed me to reclaim parts of myself that I had abandoned while also stretching towards others I have long found daunting.
The journey has no specific roads, and none are linear. Some may start, stop, and then start again. Some grow abandoned. New ones materialize. Respites are required along the way.
In the words of poet Ellen Kort in Advice to Beginners, “Begin. Keep on beginning. Nibble on everything. Run naked in the rain. Pull up anchors. Put your hands over your face and listen to what they tell you.”
Imaginary Bonds
Bonnie Michael
Like rings around Saturn
the furies of her life encircle her.
Not knowing she is the planet,
she gives them power.
Her prison sky looms endlessly.
Her other lives were long ago;
she cannot seem to remember them,
cannot seem to find their moons.
When the time is right, she will know
the galaxy is more than Saturn -
she is not held by imaginary bonds
nor blinded by falling stars.
For further exploration, here are some resources to explore for more support and information around self-esteem, self-compassion and finding community:
[Please note: This article is a reflection on the annual observance of Self-Esteem Month. The educational series columnist is not a licensed mental health professional. The articles under this series are written from a peer to peer perspective.]
Sources and references:
Graham, L, O’Hanlon, B, Buczynski, R. “How to Rewire the Self-Critical Mind,” National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine (NICABM) training program, Working with Core Beliefs of ‘Never Good Enough’
Haldeman Martz, Sandra, editor. If I had my life to live over again, I’d pick more daisies. Papier-Mache Press. 1992.
Krauss S, Orth U, Robins RW. “Family environment and self-esteem development: A longitudinal study from age 10 to 16.” J Pers Soc Psychol. 2020 Aug;119(2):457-478. doi: 10.1037/pspp0000263. Epub 2019 Sep 19. PMID: 31535888; PMCID: PMC7080605.
Johnson S, Buczynski, R. “How to Repair an Attachment History that Fosters Loathing,” National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine (NICABM) training program, Working with Core Beliefs of ‘Never Good Enough’
Martín Quintana JC, Alemán Ramos PF, Morales Almeida P. “The Influence of Perceived Security in Childhood on Adult Self-Concept: The Mediating Role of Resilience and Self-Esteem.” Healthcare (Basel). 2023 Aug 31;11(17):2435. doi: 10.3390/healthcare11172435. PMID: 37685469; PMCID: PMC10487025.
Neff, Kristin. Self-compassion.org
Neufield Institute, “Making Sense of Adolescence Part I - The Seven Rites of Passage,” Self-paced study program.
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