There are various factors that harm your ability to appreciate what you do and value who you are. The most important of these is having grown up in a family environment where each of the members had a hard time loving themselves.
Parents with a poor opinion of themselves generally pass on the same belief to their children. In their adult lives, many of these people keep practicing habits that propagate their lack of love for themselves. They are a sort of distraction or emotional shield. Habits that seek to reaffirm the idea that they have little value. So they raise a defensive wall against their own vulnerability. None of these habits helps.
Below, we will warn you about what some of these are.
A lack of love for oneself during childhood is manifested through mistreatment, emotional and/or physical distance, excessive criticism, putdowns, or indifference. There is no recognition of the child’s personal value. Without realizing it, the child learns that their feelings and needs do not have the least importance for the people who are the most important to them.
This situation leads to a series of associated events. Those who have little love for themselves are more exposed to abuse outside the home. They do not know how to defend themselves and they are not sure they have the right to do so. They also tend to put an inadequate level of effort into their work. They are distracted more easily and they fear success.
When you are the one who speaks badly of yourself, you are not doing yourself any favors. It is not a sign of humility nor of recognition of your mistakes.
Putting yourself down is being trapped in those critiques from the past and that you are now using so that you do not forget that you apparently have no right to see yourself in any other way.
But you are much more than everything that you were told. You have many virtues and skills to discover, you just have to start accepting and loving yourself so that you can see yourself in a way those others never could.
Giving absolute credit to what others say
You may feel like others “know more” or “understand better” or “have more authority” to say or do. Often you do not stop to evaluate whether or not what others say or do is correct; it is enough that they are the ones who say or do it.
If you stop for a minute and think, maybe you will discover that this is not the case. It is always a matter of connecting with your true perception and giving value to what you find.
Being a victim
It is possible that when you are faced with problems, your response is to feel sorry for yourself. You see yourself as a defenseless child who has to give in to negative situations without being able to do anything against them.
You have not discovered that you have resources to face adverse situations. That the most important thing is not the bad thing that is happening, but how you receive it and what importance you lend to it. If you stop feeling sorry for yourself and make an effort to think about solutions, you will find that even the worst times are also great opportunities.
Demanding more of yourself
Those who have little love for themselves tend to see life in terms of ideal models. It is hard for them to set modest goals and to value their achievements. They are always thinking that they have to achieve more and that what they have achieved is not important. This is an unconscious trap to always stay in debt to yourself.
If you do not love yourself, nothing that you do will be enough nor will it have value. Your successes will not be worth anything in comparison with the achievements of others.
But do not make this mistake: if you do not start by valuing yourself, it will not be so easy for others to value you.
Moreover, how are you going to start appreciating yourself if you are not capable of giving yourself a pat on the back when you move forward?
Do not be afraid to congratulate yourself for each step that you take. The great goals in life are made up of small links.
The content in this publication is presented for informative purposes only. In no sense is this information intended to provide diagnoses or act as a substitute for the work of a qualified professional. For this we recommend that you contact a reliable specialist.
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