Causes of Low Self-Esteem
Low Self-esteem is like a vampire that threatens to drain people of their will to live.
Self esteem is a very serious issue … and for good reason.
It is something you live with each moment of your life and it will crucially influence whether you will fail or succeed in life. People who are not strong enough to deal with low self esteem, can destroy their own life.
Each individual creates one’s own reality of life according to the filtering process, the values and the perceptions that the person has integrated either through personal experience or also very commonly, according to adopted or inherited scripting that is, the feedback, values and comments that are passed on to you especially when you are young and which influence your beliefs, values and attitudes about life.
These adopted scriptings invariably include the perception of self.
If a person is nurtured to feel competent, loved, appreciated and encouraged to grow, self-esteem is normally healthy. If on the other hand a person has stunted nurturing there is a possibility that self-esteem may suffer.
The end result of low self esteem will lead to self-limiting and self-sabotaging thoughts and behavior as well as a lack of self confidence and rational thinking.
In serious cases, low self esteem may be responsible for causing extreme emotions that can lead to mental and physical disorders, anger bursts, child delinquency, adolescent violence, teenage pregnancies, depression, self harm and even suicide thoughts or attempts.
Many people who suffer from low self-esteem may attribute their life situation to external circumstances. It does not occur to them to relate their problems to how they regard themselves at the deepest level. Instead, they may blame their problems on their rotten luck, a mean boss, sexual prejudice, abusive love partners and so on.
In this way, they tend to externalize the problem. However this merely moves them further away from the real problem, and consequently from a resolution. Thus by disguising itself as an immediate external problem , low self-esteem is never tackled and overcome. It remains free to create further havoc in each challenging situation.
Thus to get to the botom of the issue and successfully deal with this problem, one has to first determine the causes of low self esteem.
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Main Causes of Low Self Esteem
First of all let’s start from one important departure point:
Low Self Esteem is never born in us.
It’s not like being shy or blushing which may have some genetic factors linked to it.
Normally low self esteem is the result of negative incidences that occurred during our childhood which prompted us to go into an inner shell of aloofness. 
We normally form our world-view by the age of five. At this stage we will have already created a belief about whether the world is a safe or dangerous place , and whether we will react to events in a primarily positive or negative way.
Parents are our prime shapers and the main influence on our psyches at this time. However, the comments we hear from our friends, brothers and sisters, at school, within society and certain experiences we go through can play an important role. Normally, in the case of adult negative talk these may be part of their “facilitating” attempt to change us, their dependents, into socially acceptable individuals. As you listen to these comments you start forming your idea of your own self-worth through the assessment of others.
Suppose someone says, “You have trouble with speaking in front of adults, don’t you?” You may easily believe him especially if the person is older and smarter than you. Then for the rest of your life, whenever a situation arises where you have to speak in public your automatic reaction is, “Don’t dare! you always had speaking in front of others.”
Our later experiences in life merely reinforce the core impressions we gained at this very early age.
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Let’s now look at more specific reasons for lack of self-esteem:
- Influence of Parents and Family: Parents tend to influence a child’s confidence levels and positive or negative outlook in life. This may be a reflection of their unfulfilled dreams, disappointments and bitterness because of past negative experiences. They may be afraid to take risks or try out new things and in their effort to create security for their children, they may limit their independent thinking. As an example, they may make the mistake of influencing their childeren to take a career that the children are not happy to follow.
- Negligence in childhood: Children may be brought up in an environment that is lacking in love and affection. They may feel abandoned and insignificant and as they grow up they may find it very difficult to trust people and connect with them.
- Child abuse: In a good number of cases people with low self esteem have a history of physical and / or mental abuse during their childhood. The most likely culprit of child abuse are family ,friends, relatives, neighbors, strangers and foster or step parents. Mental abuse can be difficult to overcome and may require professional help. In fact in any situation where a child or adolescent is showing signs of depression it is important to seek professional help from a psychiatrist, psychologist, psychoterapist or counsellor.
- Excessive Criticism: When a child is constantly told off and reminded of his or her lackings this will have serious negative influences. This might not necessarily be adult related. If the peers of children (friends, schoolmates) are constantly critical, abusive or bullying the results of such constant harassment can lead to serious consequences such as depression, self-injury, lack of self-confidence, anger, bitterness and inability to believe that things can ever get better. Such events create a feeling of worthlessness, making them pessimistic about their future and hesitant from doing anything that requires risk taking. As years go by this negative influence creates the tendency towards constant self-limiting thoughts and behavior.
- Physical Appearance: The physical impression that a person has of him/herself is very important and influential. A person may feel inferior when compared with a better looking person. Comments by school children related to physical disparities that are highly accenuated may influence negatively the young child. Such comments can create a feeling of self-revulsion, which isolates the chlild from an active social life. Especially during adolescence this becomes even more important when the person is trying to establish an identity within a competitive society.
- Negative Experience: Some low self esteem issues are caused by past negative experiences. Children tend to take in the negativity around them. Adults too indulge in certain activities that can harm a person’s self-esteem.
- Lack of Success: People who look upon achievement and success outcomes as the ultimate result may suffer from low self-esteem when things go wrong. Unless they understand that they can make failure their friend and learn from it, they are bound to develop low self-esteem. Things can never go permanently well and mistakes and failures will happen. The question is whether the person is strong enough to get up again, understand what went wrong, appreciate the experience as a learning opportunity and move on.
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Other Factors that can Lead to Low Self Esteem:
- Dysfunctional families
- Insufficient emotional or physical comfort
- Unemployment or inability to hold a job which creates a feeling of helplessness
- Death of a loved one
- Divorce (especially a bitter one)
- Destruction or loss of personal or sentimental property
- Inability to manage finances
- Emotional, physical, mental, verbal… all types of abuse
The Importance of a healthy Childhood.
Because of the reasons stated above, it is really important that parents are aware of the consequences for their child of EVERYTHING they do, say, or even think. Often times, parents do not realize how they can unconsciously pass on their own limitations to their children. Apart from that they must also be careful to note any signs that their child is being bullied by his or her peers. We have all heard of the negative consequences of bullying. Children simply lock themselves up in a world of their own when they are being bullied. It is a dark world of despair and helplessness. A world where it seems that no one can understand the feeling of the young child- a world of hopelessness, fear and self-blaming.
So be careful for ANY signs of shiftiness, excessive anger or other signs of child abus and ACT immediately.
Make the child feel safe to talk and kindle in them the belief that there is hope for them, that there is a solution to their situation and make them feel comfortable to talk. In serious situations where there may be signs of extreme unhappiness, suicidal thoughts, hopelessness, physical signs like, lack of sleep, lack of apetite, headaches, anger outburst or self-harm it’s important to seek professional advice.
However it’s important to understand that YES you can win over Self-esteem issues.
The important thing is that you BELIEVE that you want to tackle it and you take the necessary steps to start the process of healing yourself and learning to fly with freedom again.
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