Self Esteem

Case Study 1

Mark was an energetic, enthusiastic and curious little boy. As soon as he could walk, he was running around getting into everything. Whenever something caught his eye, he would be off like a shot to investigate. He had very little fear and even as a toddler was climbing trees and plunging into deep water without a second thought. His mother used to say she needed eyes in the back of her head to keep track of him. Mark’s parents were proud of his enquiring mind and found him funny and endearing.

When he was three, however, twin babies arrived. At the same time, Mark’s father lost his job and he was forced to take on lower-paid work. The family moved from their house with a little garden to a small flat on the fourth floor of a tower block. With two new babies’ things were chaotic. Mark’s father wasn’t as content in his new job and became morose and irritable. His mother was constantly tired. In the confined space there was no room for Mark to expend his energy and his intense curiosity only led to destruction and mess.

Mark’s parents used him as an object of their increasing anger and frustration. As he was only little, he did not understand why this change had occurred. He tried to sit still and be quiet but again and again, he was shouted at and often smacked. It was no longer possible for him to be himself without constantly being told he was naughty, disobedient and bad.

CONCLUSION – UNACCEPTABILITY

Case Study 2

Sarah was seven when she was adopted by her uncle and his wife after both her parents were killed in a car crash. Her new stepparents already had two older daughters. Sarah became the family scapegoat. Everything that went wrong was blamed on her. She could do nothing right. Sarah was a loving little girl who liked to please people. She tried desperately to be “good”, but nothing worked. Every day her stepfamily found new ways to chastise her. She was forbidden from seeing her friends, made to give up music, which she loved, and forced to do more than her fair share of work around the house. Sarah became increasingly confused. She could not understand why everything she did was wrong.

CONCLUSION – I MUST BE BAD

Case Study 3

Hannah was raised by elderly parents from a strict middle-class background. Both parents were good people who tried to give their daughter the best possible start in life. However, their upbringing meant they had difficulty in openly expressing affection. Their only means of showing Hannah they cared was through caring for her practical needs.

As she grew older, they made sure she went to a good school, took her to girl guides and swimming lessons and paid for her to go on holiday with her friends. However, they almost never touched her – there were no cuddles, no kisses or caresses, no pet names.

At first, Hannah was hardly aware of this but once she began to see how openly loving other families were, she began to experience a sad emptiness at home. She did her best to change things. She would take her father’s hand as they walked along – and noticed how he would drop it as soon as he decently could. She would put her arms around her mother – and feel how she stiffened. She tried to talk about how she felt – and saw how awkward her parents looked, and how swiftly they changed the subject.

CONCLUSION – I AM UNLOVEABLE

Case Study 4

Matt’s early childhood was happy, but he began to experience difficulties as soon as he went to school because of undiagnosed dyslexia. While all the other children in the class seemed to be racing ahead with their reading and writing he lagged. He just could not get the hang of it. He was assigned a teacher to give him special help and had to keep a special home reading record that was different from everyone else’s.

Other children started to laugh at him and call him “thicko” and “dumbo”. He compensated for this by becoming the class clown. He continually disrupted the class with wisecracks and silly pranks. The teachers began to lose patience with him and concluded he was lazy and attention-seeking. When his parents questioned why they had been summoned yet again to the school he responded: “What do you expect? I’m just stupid.”

CONCLUSION – I AM STUPID

Case Study 5

Brian’s father was an insurance salesman. He had never realised his ambition to become a manager and put this down to the fact that his parents had failed to support him during his school years. They had never seemed particularly interested in what he was doing, and it was easy to skip school and neglect his homework.

Brian’s father was determined not to make the same mistake with his own children. Every evening at the dinner table he would interrogate them on what they had learned at school that day. He would not rest until everyone had responded adequately.

Brian remembered dreading the sight of his father’s car in the driveway when he came home. It meant another grilling. Night after night his mind would go blank and he would struggle to think of anything to say. When this happened his father’s face would fall in disappointment. Brian could see that he was letting his father down. He felt that he fully deserved the cross-examination that followed. “If you can’t do better than this,” his father would say, “you’ll never get anywhere in life”. In his heart of hearts, Brian agreed. It was clear to him that he was not good enough and he would never make it.

CONCLUSION – I AM NOT GOOD ENOUGH

If you do this and decide you want to shift the conclusion your feel around your self-esteem get in touch with us. We offer one to one sessions. We also offer personal development workshops four times a year which includes self-esteem, confidence building and assertiveness. We will use worksheets, written exercises and directed reading to effect change. Working to improve your self-esteem takes time and effort. It requires courage and honesty to confront the things in yourself you don’t like but long-term it is a worthwhile task that will help you to build a better relationship with yourself based on compassion and respect.

What happens when you challenge a bully?… they back off. The bully within hates challenge, when we identify what the bully is saying and who you hear saying it the myths are broken forever.

“There will always be someone who can’t see your worth, don’t let it be you”
Mel Robbins