I Love Myself

Chapter 1: When Did I Sart To Stop Loving My-self?

"No one else can take risks for us, or face our losses on our behalf, or give us self-esteem. No one can spare us from life's slings and arrows, and when death comes, we meet it alone." Martha Beck

Whether you realise it or not, you started to develop your current level of self-esteem (whatever it may be right now) at a very early age. You have been on a lifelong journey that has moulded, shaped and impacted the depth of your love for yourself. Your relationship with yourself has been influenced by numerous components throughout the years of your life. Let’s take a trip right back to where it all began – your childhood.

Our parents, or our primary caretakers (who may or may not have been immediate family), were the very first influences on our lives. Therefore, they were the first people who influenced us when it comes to understanding and loving ourselves. Most of the people who took care of us when we were children commonly did so with good intentions – they had our best interests at heart, and at the very least, they cared about us. Most parents and or caregivers want their children to grow up with a strong, healthy sense of self-love. Parents do love their children and they want them to succeed in life – and live a fulfilling life. Most parents are doing the very best that they can with the best that they've got at the time – their resources, beliefs, and opportunities – regardless of how much or how little that may be.

The reality is that, just like you, our parents were caught up in patterns that were connected to their own upbringing. Our parents were influenced by things they probably didn't realise they were, and elements and situations that they probably couldn't control. They did what they knew, and they did the best with what they had at the time.

Now, most parents don’t hold the intention of wanting to lower the self-esteem of their children, even if that is the end result of their actions. The realities of life might have made it so your parents couldn't offer you all of the things that you wanted, deserved or even needed to develop with a full sense of self esteem. Your parents might have had to struggle with their own issues while they were raising you. These problems your parents had may have been problems with work, money, raising your other siblings, managing their own emotions and feelings, and even external family pressures. All of these things impact the quality of life in ways that we can't completely comprehend as children. And all of these factors affect how our parents interact with us, which leads to how we develop self-esteem as we grow into adults. In our perception, through our child-like eyes, we don’t think about what our parents might be dealing with elsewhere in their lives – we only see the result of it, which comes through in the kind of relationship they have with us while they are raising us. We only saw it from the outside, from what we thought their actions demonstrated.

Think about a small child who is dancing around, wanting to show their mummy how well they can twirl – because they love to dance! But mum, who is completely exhausted from a long, tiring day of work, responds with a flat and distracted ‘Great’. No matter how old the child is, they can tell that mummy really isn't interested in their dancing at that moment. For children, this can be a painful and damaging experience. In that child's eye, the unconditional love did not pour out of mum for her. This can lead to that child starting to wonder if they are really worthy of what is perhaps the most important thing of all in their life – love. A query like this is the very start of the ‘self worth’ journey, if you want to call it that.... the introspective journey where the child questions who they are, and if they are valuable. A situation like this can hurt even more, since not only does the child feel rejected, but they feel rejected from someone who means the world to them – their mother.

Take another situation. Imagine you are in a moment where in a moment of stress and frustration a parent shouts at their child and tells them to shut up. That child might have thought they had something that was both important and vital to say. In being harshly silenced like this. Their self-esteem takes a painful hit. They begin to think that their own voice isn’t important – and thus begins what could be a lifetime of suppressing their true self, hiding their true feelings, and speaking up to take a stand for themselves. These seemingly insignificant occurrences can have long and deep impacts on life. For the parent, these instances are forgotten in a few moments, but for a child who is just starting to develop a sense of self, they can last a lifetime. The parent isn't to blame, this is part of life. But understanding this process can help women to undercover their pain points, or places of wounding, in order to take back their self-esteem.

I remember as a little girl feeling that me sometimes good and at other times I was bad. Why? Well, I remember being told that from my parents and other members of my family! I also remember that when I did something ‘they’ wanted me to do, that I was labelled as ‘good’. And on the flip side, when I didn’t do as I was asked or as I had been told, I was labelled as ‘bad’. Being told that I was ‘bad’ also came with other things like yelling or stern body language like a raised finger. These expressions of their disappointment told me that I was wrong.

The harsh reality that we need to face is that for many children, the examples that I gave above were on the good or better days. The truth is that many children experience a childhood filled with events that are much more severe than being told to be quiet when they wanted to say something. Too many children experience physical, emotional, or even sexual abuse as a part of their day to day life. They have been put through events and experiences that would be difficult for any adult to handle, let alone a child who isn’t anywhere near finishing their development in either their mind or body. The metaphorical scars to the psyche that are incurred from these environments are much deeper than physical scars. One challenging, adverse experience like this can almost completely obliterate any shred of self-esteem and send their self love plummeting through the floor. And girls are more likely to suffer abuse than boys.

Add to this mixture the siblings who might have attempted to push their developing sense of authority onto us, teachers at school who held a powerful influence on our thoughts and beliefs about life, the peer groups who helped us to shape our ideas about the world, and the pressing, greater societal expectations about who we are supposed to be as women, and it is no surprise that women have issues with developing and maintaining self-love and self-esteem. It’s not always easy to be yourself in a world where there are so many outer influences pulling you in so many different directions all the time – let alone love who you are on a very deep level.