What is the emotion associated with low self esteem

To respond to the emotion question, I’m almost certain that most of my negative self-talk comes from a fear of rejection. The more I write about my childhood, even from its earliest days, the more I learn how much I was afraid of being rejected by my parents and then, later, my peers. My parents didn’t mean to make me feel that way and my mom loved me unconditionally (my biological dad was not good at love at all and did actually drift away into oblivion after my parents got divorced when I was very young). In my case my dad’s slow fade out and lack of interest in fatherhood coupled with my mom’s hot (but not abusive) temper made me terrified that I’d already lost one parent and might lose the other if I made it too hard on my mom to parent me. Children are really good at figuring out how to belong in their family - it’s something they do as intuitively as they learn language.

Whatever your little child self decided about how to fit and why, maybe all of that internal barking at yourself is how you try to snap yourself into line, make yourself lovable and acceptable, and safe. It can feel DANGEROUS to accept ourselves as we are if we fear that letting our guard down will make us unlovable (even if that fear is very deep in our subconscious). And in that way, you’re right, the very thing you need to do to heal becomes your stumbling block.

So for me it’s fear. And on paper I had a pretty happy home life as a kid. Maybe that can help with your digging!

 

I should emphasize that this is not something my mom consciously made me feel. She didn’t say things directly that made me fear her rejection. She tried really hard to let me know she loved me, actually, and was wonderfully warm. But I feared her strong negative emotions and when I was punished I felt really, really bad. The fear was already there, founded in the overly-simplistic logic of my toddler brain, and now it’s time to soothe it.

 

I was going to suggest something like this! I can't tell you all exactly how I managed to figure this out when I was doing the work six years ago, but at some point I really found myself at a very young age. Realizing just how lonely and insecure and awkward I felt sooo long ago, I was able to comfort my young self by imagining my mother doing exactly that. She was a caring mother, but she had two younger kids by then and another on the way, so I think she kind of ran out of time and energy. I visualized her nurturing and comforting me in a way that I must have been missing. In reality, we all miss it at some point, because we have to grow up, right? That's part of what Freud tells us. Find a way to love the little girl of your childhood - she's the one that needs the most comfort.

 

This is definitely true for me. My emotional reaction to pictures of me from childhood, to any guided meditations where you imagine your inner child.

I realise the love I have been missing is my own. I think it has a lot to do with my mother and feeling judged by her my entire life.

It's hard to learn how to be kind to yourself, sometimes I feel kind of silly when I try and talk to my inner child. Like a part of my brain is saying 'come on, this isn't possible.'

Last night though, I was in bed and having some pain in my head. I pictured my inner child and imagined soothing her and telling her everything would be okay. Right in that moment the pain in my head felt like I was buzzing or bubbling (hard to explain) and then kind of moved outwards as if it was dissolving, and I was left with some tension but not the same level of pain. Crazy!

 

colls, earlier on this thread I referenced ISTDP therapist Jon Frederickson on perfectionism that leads to constant self-attack. What you now say about your childhood relationship with your mother prompts me to provide a link to something else he said about perfectionism. It was written to a fellow therapist and contains some ISTDP jargon, but I think his points are understandable nonetheless. I hope his analysis will resonate with you and help you better understand and deal with what you call your inner child. If not and I am overstepping or otherwise offending you, I sincerely apologize. Anyway, here is the link:

http://istdpinstitute.com/2013/perfectionism/ (Perfectionism - ISTDP Institute)

The habitual defense mechanisms (as ISTDP calls them) that we developed in early childhood to cope with difficult situations were the best that a young child could do in the circumstances, but as adults we have the knowledge and skills to quit using habitual defense mechanisms like perfectionism. Dr. Sarno viewed perfectionism as a personal trait (who we are at our core) that we could do little to change. ISTDP says otherwise.

 

@Duggit I had a read of this, all seems very relevant, thank you.
And you could never offend me by trying to help me work through all of this
I love my mum so much and have lots of happy memories as a young child.. then in my teenage years I found her unbearable and her judgement was too much for me. I keep asking myself what changed.. perhaps she was always that way but as a teenager I became a lot more aware of it.
I am very resistant to journalling about it. Actually I'm very resistant to TMS work in general. I get overwhelmed by feelings of 'this won't work' and 'there's no point'
I was seeing great progress and I have fallen off the bandwagon so to speak, so thank you for trying to help

 

It is not an emotion that is associated with self-esteem. But people are a little skeptical about using Self Esteem Affirmations in their day to day life. We do not think about how important it is to remind ourselves regarding the positivity and encouragement. Although we cannot surround ourselves with an optimistic mindset people every time, so we can use Affirmations daily to tackle the pessimistic pattern of our thought process.