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ToadOfSteel
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22 Sep 2009, 11:00 am

There have been so many times over the years where people keep telling me that I have self-esteem issues... that I don't love myself enough or something... and moreover, I've heard more than once that this is what's keeping me from finding love in my life...

Perhaps they're right, but the thing that's bugging me now is that I've been trying to feel good about myself unaided, and it feels incredibly dirty... not in the sense of "sexually arousing", but rather it makes me feel like I'm standing naked in front of a crowd everytime I try to feel good about myself.

Also, I still feel like I'm abandoning all reason in the process... the scientific method would dictate that if I see myself in a positive light, it should be repeatable and thus everyone should see me as such... otherwise the hypothesis fails under experimentation and I have no right to feel good about myself...



Hmmmn
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22 Sep 2009, 11:34 am

I didn't understand the 'naked in front of crowd' metaphor any chance you could explain further?

Reason needn't be abandoned it just needs to be applied correctly. A small tip - Before seeing themself as a confident person someone with low self esteem needs to project confidence, ie fake it. People will take your fake confidence as real confidence and will treat you like a confident person. Once people treat you in this way you may find you have some real confidence to play with. Even confident people do this to get things done when they don't feel up to it.

The same technique can work for lots of other things too ;)



ToadOfSteel
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22 Sep 2009, 11:40 am

Hmmmn wrote:
I didn't understand the 'naked in front of crowd' metaphor any chance you could explain further?

That was just a means to try and convey the feeling I get when I try to actually raise my self-esteem... it just feels incredibly wrong...

Quote:
Reason needn't be abandoned it just needs to be applied correctly. A small tip - Before seeing themself as a confident person someone with low self esteem needs to project confidence, ie fake it. People will take your fake confidence as real confidence and will treat you like a confident person. Once people treat you in this way you may find you have some real confidence to play with. Even confident people do this to get things done when they don't feel up to it.

The same technique can work for lots of other things too ;)

If I do that, I'm just deceiving myself...



Hmmmn
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22 Sep 2009, 11:47 am

ToadOfSteel wrote:
That was just a means to try and convey the feeling I get when I try to actually raise my self-esteem... it just feels incredibly wrong...



Yes that's just your low self esteem making you feel that way, it doesn't want you to get rid of it so it's doing all it can to make you give up. It's fighting for it's place in your psyche.


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If I do that, I'm just deceiving myself...


Yes but if you don't people will tell you you have low self esteem for the rest of your life. You only have to fake it for a short while until you have some of he real stuff as I say it's how everyone does it, what makes you different? Think of it as creative self-support rather than self-deception.



Last edited by Hmmmn on 22 Sep 2009, 5:29 pm, edited 2 times in total.

southwestforests
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22 Sep 2009, 12:13 pm

In some coincidence to this topic, this was linked from AOL today.

http://www.attractionmindmap.com/how-to ... n-17-ways/

Starts off this way:

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But I soon realised that my search was meant to fill the void or emptiness I had inside. Finding a good relationship with myself seemed to be an even harder task! However, as things turned out, I realised that I failed miserably in my early relationships because I had insufficient or little self love.

If you’ve suffered from low self esteem, then it goes to show that you are lacking in self love. You may even find it difficult to even search your heart for that little bit of love you have for yourself. I dare say that your mind has been so ingrained with self sabotaging thoughts for the longest time, that loving yourself sounds unnatural to you.

However, nothing is going to happen if you do not make a conscious decision. And that includes Attracting Abundance. When you don’t love yourself, you are basically telling the Universe that you are unworthy or undeserving of any love or positive outcomes that have the same vibrational match as love.

Learning to love yourself starts with making a conscious decision, an intention to become happy and lead a fulfilled life. When you do not love yourself and suffer from low self esteem, you can find that it impossible to ever reach the potential that you suspect you have.


Don't know about you, but this one is quite relevant to me!
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2. Eliminate Self Criticism. Do you often berate yourself over the tiniest thing? Is there a little voice inside your head that often tells you that you are no good because you are stupid or make mistakes. If you find that you criticise yourself often, make an effort to stop the self criticism.

“I CAN is 100 times more important than IQ.” — unknown


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MommyJones
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22 Sep 2009, 2:58 pm

I had horrible self esteem growing up. One of the things that I did to help with this was create goals for myself. Goals that are attainable, and it doesn't matter what they are. I started small and worked my way to bigger ones. As they got bigger, I stretched myself more and made things harder, but still kept them attainable. Eventually what I learned was that I was a capable person. This exercise took me several years, but the more I accomplished, the more I felt I was worth. I did get to the point where the goals were too much, but by the time I got there it didn't matter. I can only do what I can do.

Self esteem has nothing to do with how you project yourself to others. It is how much you value yourself, and how comfortable you are in your own skin, and how comfortable with who you are and what you are good at and what your limitations are. The key is to be OK with that. Eventually when you get to the point that you value yourself, when people criticize you, you can say to yourself that THEY are the one with the problem, it's only their opinion....you can take what they say and use it, or throw it away. Either way, what a person says is about them, and what their perceptions and filters are, not about how YOU really are. You don't take things personally, the self down talk goes away and you become more confident. In turn, other people see that.

I did this with the guidance of a therapist by the way and it really changed everything in my life. I still struggle in certain areas, but hey...that's me 8)



SINsister
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22 Sep 2009, 3:05 pm

MommyJones wrote:
...how comfortable with who you are and what you are good at and what your limitations are. The key is to be OK with that.


It's tough, though, if one's not really very good at anything (especially the things one values or wishes to master). :(


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billsmithglendale
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22 Sep 2009, 4:08 pm

The easiest, simplest (and most juvenile) comparison I can think of is Dumbo and his magic feather. Could Dumbo fly before the feather? He didn't think he could (though of course he did to get up in the high place in the first place). Did the feather make him think he could fly? Yes. Did the feather do anything other than trick his mind? No.

So that's what's so frustrating about this to guys who are used to taking a scientific or empirical approach to this -- it's about a house that starts out with no foundation, but gets one the longer it stays up. If you let it fall, you start all over again, but if you can keep it up, the foundation starts forming underneath. And it's a positive feedback cycle -- the more you win, the stronger the foundation gets, the sturdier the house (your ego and self-confidence). Work on small wins, and convert those to bigger ones.

So it's not Science -- it's poker.



Janissy
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22 Sep 2009, 4:26 pm

ToadOfSteel wrote:
[
Quote:
Reason needn't be abandoned it just needs to be applied correctly. A small tip - Before seeing themself as a confident person someone with low self esteem needs to project confidence, ie fake it. People will take your fake confidence as real confidence and will treat you like a confident person. Once people treat you in this way you may find you have some real confidence to play with. Even confident people do this to get things done when they don't feel up to it.

The same technique can work for lots of other things too ;)

If I do that, I'm just deceiving myself...


Deceiving yourself is actually a good and helpful thing. What is being advocated here is the placebo effect, which is very real and works.



SINsister
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22 Sep 2009, 5:05 pm

Janissy wrote:
Deceiving yourself is actually a good and helpful thing. What is being advocated here is the placebo effect, which is very real and works.


It's very uncomfortable, though, and feels false. I'm not into self-deception - or any deception, period. *Shudder*


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Apple_in_my_Eye
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22 Sep 2009, 5:07 pm

I think self-esteem can feel like 'undeserved' arrogance at first. But a little arrogance and egocentrism is not a bad thing -- the world is designed to expect a certain amount of it.

For a while I wrongly believed that people (like out in public) were being their 'authentic' selves most of the time. Later I realized that people put up fronts and bluff and so forth A LOT OF THE TIME. The social world is a big theater, and most people are bluffing at least a little bit. Like that Shakespere quote that life is a stage and everyone is an actor -- literally true.


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sarbear1987
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22 Sep 2009, 5:22 pm

Exactly. My problem is that, whenever I think anything even remotely positive about myself (like "wow, what I just did was funny" or "this looks really cute on me") I feel conceited and not good about it. That and I have a hard time looking past the nitpicky things that I don't like about myself. And I always worry that I've angered or annoyed someone, for no reason.

:roll: Issues. I have them.


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SINsister
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22 Sep 2009, 5:41 pm

sarbear1987 wrote:
Exactly. My problem is that, whenever I think anything even remotely positive about myself (like "wow, what I just did was funny" or "this looks really cute on me") I feel conceited and not good about it.


YES. :? And do you think NTs give that kind of thing a second thought? Hardly.


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Hmmmn
Deinonychus
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22 Sep 2009, 5:57 pm

SINsister wrote:
sarbear1987 wrote:
Exactly. My problem is that, whenever I think anything even remotely positive about myself (like "wow, what I just did was funny" or "this looks really cute on me") I feel conceited and not good about it.


YES. :? And do you think NTs give that kind of thing a second thought? Hardly.


:lol: of course they do. I could be wrong but I'll go out on a limb and say that the phrase low self-esteem was in use before aspergers was first described.

Cognitive behavioural therapy is the best way of combatting those insistent negative thoughts, I think it's helpful for a lot more too and is fairly logical and straightforward so works well for aspies. It doesn't feel natural and you need to keep making yourself do it but soon enough you're doing it without thinking.



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22 Sep 2009, 6:23 pm

Janissy wrote:
Deceiving yourself is actually a good and helpful thing. What is being advocated here is the placebo effect, which is very real and works.


I would replace the word "is" with "can be". The placebo effect definitely works, but it is possible to take "deceiving yourself" too far. The difficult part is getting the right amount to get things improving again without getting derailed by it.


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KnightGhost
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22 Sep 2009, 7:28 pm

I have 0 self esteem. However, I'm a Consultant (work) so must project calm confidence at all times. Its an act but necessary for working with NTs - both at work and otherwise.

Another piece is the realization that you'll survive any mistakes. Yes, it'll be uncomfortable at first, but so is any new exercise. I'm still struggling with that one given that I'm far to much of a perfectionist and any mistake is almost physically painful.