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Also sometimes we think we have less than what's needed to be happy. Could this be your case? Growing up my parents taught me that I was always incomplete - There's always something to do, something to be, something to see, I could never just chill and appreciate life for what it is. So this made me into a very anxious adult and one that is always unsatisfied with the current state of things as well, exactly like my parents. I've been trying to destroy this mindset ever since. I guess realizing the problem was a step forward into solving it altho I would be lying if I told you that it's easier done than said xD |
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And, yeah! I’ve always been passionate about helping people, animals, and the environment. And I guess I do value my ability to empathize and be compassionate towards others! I do have pretty decent self esteem for the choices I’ve made regarding charity, volunteering, and activism. It’s just hard to make those external accomplishments meaningful internally too, ya know? And sometimes empathy can be rather painful in and of itself too. Relate so much to growing up being an anxious adult tho, omg. |
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Yeah, I get it. You don't feel like you've made any kind of progress inside of you, right? In that case I don't know what to say, there might be a bigger issue down there =O Oh yeah, empathy is like managing fire, if you're not careful it can burn you badly! But other times it serves as a way to light our relationship paths. I guess it's a matter of learning how to tame it. Oh right? The world doesn't help it either. So much pressure to be a good son/daughter, to have a job, get a house, a family...oof >< |
I struggled with self-esteem issues for a very long time and mine is still not as high as I'd like it to be. But I've gotten way better. The best thing that's happened for my self-esteem is to do something I assumed I'd fail, and not fail. It helped realizing that I didn't fail. I didn't shine bright either, but that's not what mattered. So I kept trying, and I kept not failing, until I finally started to shine. And, as time goes on, I try to shine brighter. That's how I've developed my self-esteem: beating the idea that I'm doomed to fail. Baby steps.
If your self-esteem is low, it's likely because you are critical of yourself - and that's good. It means you expect a lot of yourself, and that's admirable. You should be proud. |
I like to think I have a high self-esteem at this point in my life. It used to be at the bottom of the barrel, but slowly over time I built up more and more self-esteem as I grew more confident in doing things.
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I had and still do at times, difficulty with my self-esteem but I feel like I'm in a place where I can say it has improved a lot over many years of work. I did not value myself for years. I would never feel good enough no matter how hard I worked or how much I achieved in my life, I always thought about how I could be doing better. It never occurred to me to appreciate my own effort. I used to say that I wanted to make my parents proud and that's why I overworked myself so hard but in reality, it was my own self-imposed standards of who I wanted to be. My self esteem depended a lot on how productive I was being but it created cycles where I would get incredibly depressed, become more unproductive and then beat myself up for it. To this day I still struggle with not attaching my worth to how much I achieve and I am trying to learn to let myself rest, recover and take free time.
I also struggled with who I was and why people wanted to be around me. I didn't feel like I had anything to offer and would wonder when the facade was up and people would leave. I didn't feel like I had anything to say. Most of my time I spent working hard, when it came to talking about myself - it scared me that at the time I had nothing I was genuinely interested in or found worth sharing about myself. I felt like I was pretending to be happy and excited about life. I thought at the time that I'd never get over being anxious/depressed and that people would tire of it and tell me they didn't want me to be their friend anymore. So I often thought about cutting people out and disappearing to save them the trouble, tried it a few times and realised my depression would get out of control in that time and came back, resigned. A challenge I've also faced in particular is imposter syndrome and not feeling good enough in a lot of situations. I would hold myself back from opportunities thinking that I didn't deserve them. Getting into my academic high school was a fluke to me. Being accepted to study law recently resurfaced my imposter syndrome but once I started recognising and becoming proud of how hard I have worked in my life to earn both of those, it helps with dealing with those feelings of doubt of if I deserve it. I can genuinely celebrate my achievements now. In regard to how I built up my self esteem again, I realised at one point a lot of my unhealthy behaviours. I was dependent on people to make me feel like I had a happy and satisfying life since I couldn't stand myself. But in reality attaching your happiness to what other people do is never a long-term solution. Last year, the one benefit of quarantine was learning to be happy by myself and confronting spending time alone. Starting uni also helped create a fresh start where I felt motivated to try push myself out of my comfort zone, try something new and get a better idea of who I was as a person. Getting over imposter syndrome was hard at first but I'm proud that I went out my way to sign up to different clubs, jobs etc. that I would have said I was never good enough for. Did I get everything I applied for? Absolutely not but I was happy to learn that I could deal with failure and I started seeing setbacks as an opportunity to learn rather than a be all and end all. I also learnt how much it was nicer to be forgiving to myself rather than critical and harsh - I respected times I wasn't in the mood to work and learnt to start enjoying my free time. I learnt to be proud of my work ethic, resilience and so on slowly but surely. The flexibility of uni also meant that I had more time where I was free to finally get a grip on who I was, what I like about life and myself... finding hobbies that didn't depend on other people has made my time alone with my thoughts much better. For example, I rediscovered how much I love reading. I found out through university clubs that I'm really interested in working in social impact/human rights and I'm finally excited and happy about what I'm studying. Smaller things like starting to care about fashion and feeling good about it is nice when you've spent years not caring about yourself. I think before I was super reliant on other people for happiness and affirmation of my worth but once I started realising how toxic my past thoughts were and improving my relationship with myself, that is when I saw the most improvement in my self esteem. I still struggle a lot with it some days but I feel like I'm doing much better than I was in high school. :) |
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