Tag Archives: Confidence

self-esteem

Your Low Self Confidence is a Signal of Emotional Damage

emotional damage

Are you presenting a “nice person” image of yourself
only to avoid all confrontations and
yet somehow still feeling unhappy or left out?

Is emotional damage now hidden in your present life? As a child you always wanted to be accepted, and you learned some tricks that gave results for a while. Creating a strong image of a Nice Person helped you to feel more accepted by your parents, siblings, and friends. This nice person always molded to fit the group, accepting the ruling of others without asking for the chance to include your own needs into their agenda. Doing that, your own needs became ignored by others and second priority to yourself, sometimes having to be suppressed completely.

This may be what others expected from you, providing a sense of ease, but you paid a very high price in emotional damage.  After many years of doing the “nice person act” you find your energy is sapped, that you feel empty, devoid of all motivation and sense of purpose.

It is at this moment that you realize the need to choose between pleasing others and losing yourself, or fulfilling your own needs and claiming what you really are, what you really want … and repair the emotional damage.
But fulfillment of your needs is only possible if you learn how to assert yourself effectively and grow your own identity: Self-assertion that is too strong, or aggressive, will provoke powerful reactions that can be stressing or even damaging to your relationships, and being too passive or having a weak self-esteem will leave you very vulnerable to whatever others need or want, sending you back to the starting point.

HAVING BETTER SELF-ESTEEM:

If you gradually build self-esteem, you will :

  • Feel adequate, no matter the circumstances
  • Accept and celebrate your own merits and accomplishments
  • Always feel security and a sense of direction.
  • Stop emotional abuse and mistreatment from the start
  • Attract the happiness you dream of
  • Be able to confidently negotiate any difficult issue.
  • Communicate your views with ease, even in stressful situations
  • Establish your needs and boundaries

To your happiness!

 

emotional abuse

How Fulfilling Your Human Needs Helps Boost Your Self-Esteem


Women tend to be the nurturers in their relationships and families.  Being the nurturer frequently means putting her own needs on the back burner.  This is where problems with reduced self-esteem can begin.  Many times the people being nurtured take the nurturer for granted; if the nurturer doesn’t have enough confidence in her own activities, self-esteem can plummet.

How can self-esteem be boosted in this type of situation?

1.  Always do your best no matter what you do.  There is a certain satisfaction that comes from “a job well done.”
2.  You cannot force anyone appreciate you.    Make sure that you can derive satisfaction from much of what you do.  If you don’t value what you do, it’s likely that no one else will.
3. If you are not satisfied with much of what you do, actively think about ways to change those things.  Make sure you are not doing things that others could do for themselves.
4.  Shake things up periodically.  Humans need challenges; something to reach for.  Consider things you dream about doing, pick one and go for it.  Whether it’s taking a class about something you’ve wanted to learn, skydiving, or learning a new computer program.
5.  Connect with others.  Connect with friends, relatives, or people you meet in your “shake it up” activity.
6.  Speak positively to yourself and about yourself.  Sometimes this can be difficult.  You need not be self-aggrandizing, simply positive.  If you speak poorly to or about yourself, you won’t be setting others up to think positively about you.

7.  Contribution is a human need.  Doing for others instead of just yourself requires you to go beyond your own needs and focus on others.

Remember to help build your self-esteem, you must take care of your human needs which include focusing on your positives, growth, contributing to others, and understanding your own significance.

Learn more about increasing your self-esteem in Boosting Self-Esteem:  Be Your Own Heroine which can be found here

abusive behavior, healing from abuse, healing from emotional abuse, verbal abuse

Creating a new, more positive self-image day by day

Developing your self-image is a task that you need to do today! Nobody can replace you in this, and its time that you can see the huge difference it makes in your life having a positive self-image compared with the one your overly critical parents gave you…

How you see yourself goes a long way to how you feel about yourself; how do you present yourself to others and how others see you and think of you. If you think positively on the inside then you will glow with confidence on the outside and will come across this way to others. Feeling good about yourself is essential if you are to be happy in life and make the most out of life. It can make the difference of you being successful or failing, and it is in your hands.

People suffer from low self-esteem for many reasons, and if they have been brought up perceiving only negative aspects to themselves, then developing a positive self-image will be difficult, but not impossible. Developing a positive outlook is about changing your thoughts and feelings about yourself and if you have been thinking negative thoughts for a long time changing the habit will take some time.

However by creating a new way of thinking and sticking to this new way of self-perception you will eventually banish unwanted negative feelings and will automatically replace them with positive ones in your day to day life. When this happens your outlook changes and with your outlook, you change. Where once you might have thought something would be beyond your capabilities you will now look at it in a different light and begin to realize that having a strong personality is within your grasp.

There are many ways to develop a more positive self-image and esteem. There are self-help books available dedicated to the subject, audio sessions which you listen and follow, DVDS, hypnotherapy audio or attending counselling sessions. They all however rely basically on the same principle, understanding what confidence really is, gaining confidence in yourself, ridding yourself of negative beliefs and replacing them with positive ones and learning strategies which allow you to remain confident in any situation.

The basics behind developing a more positive outlook and self-image are:

• Thinking about the positive aspects of your self-image and understanding what they mean to you;
• Getting to know yourself better, recognizing your strengths and building on those strengths;
• Moving forward and constantly changing negative thoughts into more positive ones;
• Reflecting on what you have learnt and seeing the positive changes you are making to your life, and feeling pride.

We all talk to ourselves at one time or another and we may find ourselves continually putting ourselves down and are very slow to praise ourselves. We are doing to ourselves the same nasty, discouraging lack of appreciation our parents did to us! This must be changed now. We want to change unhelpful self-talk and replace it with positive and encouraging self-talk.
The easiest way to do this is by:

• Getting rid of irrational thoughts (“I’m always the worst”) and replace them with rational ones
• Replace negative thoughts and feelings with positive images
• Give yourself credit and be proud of your accomplishments
• Repeat positive affirmations to yourself when needed throughout the day

You need to be consistent in replacing negative appreciations with positive ones….In this way, you will balance the weight of past critiques with appreciation and self-esteem, which in turn will make doing great things possible!

abusive behavior, emotional abuse, healing from abuse, healing from emotional abuse, verbal abuse

Steps to healing: accepting yourself

In the process of recovering our self-esteem, there are several little steps that bring a lot of joy. Once you have decided that the view of you that he is promoting has more to do with his sick fantasies than with your reality, then you begin to detach.

Detaching is making some space between his perceptions of you, and who you are. The person who you are is not decided and described by him; now you have begun to be your own person.

Good or bad, you are who you decide to be….it is exhilarating to realize that you can be yourself and not depend on anybody else to tell you how valuable or unworthy you are…

Once you take stock of who you are, warts and all, you can begin by rejoicing of your new freedom! Be happy about freeing yourself; of only depending on yourself for deciding about your life. You can even allow yourself a bit of panic thinking: “what if I need something and I can’t get that by myself?” and the answer is…..’I will find a way, because I’m a resourceful and resilient person!”

Feeling secure and happy about yourself is one of the strongest points in having a healthy relationship with any partner. Remember: you are your own person, and you make yourself happy with your decisions…

For instance: Taking care of yourself by eating right will boost your self-esteem. With a high self-esteem, comes confidence and happiness within yourself. When you are happy about yourself, it’s easy to be happy towards others especially your partner. You are sending the message that you can provide your own peace of mind, so others don’t imagine that it would be easy to control you! This is a shield of protection around you that sends a strong message to potential mates.

Being carefree and self-reliant has also more benefits… You are self-centered in a good way; when you are with or without your partner, you don’t worry about what she or he is doing. Fill self-confident about yourself and carefree about the relationship because you expect good things only.
Of course, you already know how to spot signals of abuse, so now you can say: “I’d prefer you not to treat me in this way: I’m too valuable to be here waiting for you to finish having a conversation with your friends while we postpone going together for dinner. Can you make up your mind and tell me if we are going together, now? There are other things I need to pay attention also…”
And here you are now: positioning yourself in a place of equality and respect….congratulations!

healing from emotional abuse

How to Stop Relationship Abuse

  • In order to stop relationship abuse, you have to be firm and committed to what changes you want to see. If you waver, you lose the asset of believability, and you lose confidence in yourself.
  • Be optimistic. Instead of seeing the relationship as a dead end, you can view yourself and your partner as good people who have simply not learned how to behave in a healthy way. As you are working together to resolve the relationship abuse, progress will be faster if you both have confidence that resolution is possible. If you cannot do it by yourselves, you may need a professional, either alone or with both of you present. Remember that blame is optional – you have the choice to pursue a happy, vibrant relationship without keeping the blame and punishment machine going.
  • Don’t be afraid to confront the other scenario: that sometimes, no matter how optimistic you began, your partner’s heart may not be in it. An unwillingness to change, or an escalation to physical violence as well as emotional abuse, is a sign that it is time for you to take your leave. If you feel you are in danger, it is important to go somewhere you will not be followed, and seek professional protection.
  • It is important that if you do choose to leave, you have somewhere to go. Build your support system in advance, so that you are not lost and alone, going from one bad situation to the other. And if you don’t have to leave, well, now you have friends to fall back on when you need advice.
  • It is also important that, for your emotional sake, you do all you can to severe the relationship on proper terms, so that you don’t leave feeling guilty or blaming yourself for ruining an emotional  relationship that could have been saved.
  • There is never any shame in leaving and asserting your right to stop an emotionally abusive relationship. Unless you are a child under parental care, you are not bound by law or force to stay. However, it is important that whether you leave or not, your immediate family knows of the situation. This is especially important for children, seniors, or others who own limited self-reliance.
  • Although it is hard, you must recognize and own up to your own faults as well. Learn what you may have done (not necessarily what your partner says you did) to contribute to the abuse. For example, if you know that you accept abuse as something normal and expected, address this issue so that you do not come across it in future relationships.

Nora Femenia, Ph.D is passionate about supporting women’s recovery from emotional abuse once and for all. Nora has created a powerful set of tools for helping women break out of the mind-set that keeps them in a toxic relationship by first discovering unconscious beliefs and family blueprints.

To know more about her latest book “Recovering From Emotionally Abusive Relationships” go to: http://www.healingemotionalabuse.com