The Hideous Monster Called Low Self-Esteem
When you are on the road to mental health recovery, you can make a lot of startling discoveries. I’ve been actively working through this stuff for about eight years, but it truly started when I was about eighteen. I had to understand what anxiety really was. I had to learn about depression. I had to learn how I affected my wife and children. It was hard. It still is hard. I didn’t realize how low my self-esteem was until recently. I knew it was low but looking at its history and its impact over the years was staggering.
Here’s an example. My kids have all passed through their teen years. During that time, like most teens, they are concerned with their looks. They want nice clothes, and they want their hair to be just right. My daughter changed her styles, her haircut, her makeup and everything. She was finding herself. My boys, too. They are much more clothes-conscious than I ever was.
At some point, just a few years ago, I thought about this. I wondered what I was like in high school and beyond, and I wondered how the thoughts of myself compared to my kids. I assumed that low self-esteem manifests itself with a shitty opinion of your own body and looks. It’s common. My problem was, I never thought about it. At all. It certainly wasn’t because I was an empowered person with a progressive sense of self and a notion that beauty is relative. It wasn’t that. I also didn’t look in the mirror and immediately think I was ugly or gross.
It was neither. The truth is, I had accepted that I wasn’t worth looking at years before. Probably when I was a little kid. I accepted I was stupid looking so early that it was just second nature. I never wished to be like the handsome people because I might as well wish that I could fly or shoot spiderwebs out of my wrists. I was a poor kid with no cool clothes, either, and why would I need them. At least I didn’t beat myself up about it. I just knew I was gross. I was an amorphous nothing and anytime anyone noticed me, I was shocked.
Messed up, right?
Another one: Speaking of shocked, I can’t believe anyone remembers anything I’ve said or done. I mean anyone. My wife of 23 years. My three kids. The friends I’ve had for 25-30 years. My mother or brother. Anytime they bring something up from the past involving me, I am still surprised. Do you hear what I’m saying? I can’t believe my own wife remembers any story I’ve told her. In the back of my mind, I can’t believe she stored that information about me. If a friend quotes something I’ve said back to me, I am almost choked up. The feelings of validation and belonging are so foreign, that I have to remind myself that I get both of them on a regular basis now. But the low self-esteem never recognized that.
The next one’s a little darker. Strap in.
I was involved in one of those conversations about being stuck on a deserted island. Maybe a shipwreck scenario. What would you do? My brain chewed on the idea of what would I be able to provide if I was ever in that situation. What could I contribute? Well, I can’t build anything, nor do I have any medical expertise. I don’t hunt and I don’t fish. It wasn’t long before my mind concluded that the best way for me to help the other castaways would be to drop dead on the campfire and be the next dinner. My low self-esteem dictated that I was so worthless, that my only contribution would be as a slab of meat.
I still feel all these feelings. It's pretty brutal. But with meds and perspective, I can put them in their place.
I still remember this quote from The TV show Northern Exposure. The character Ed suffers from severe low self-esteem and his uncle informs him: ‘Low self- esteem is the root cause of practically all the pain and misery in the world. It's what drives war, and torture, and genocide. It's what evil is. Do you think Hitler liked himself? Or Cortez? We hate others because we hate ourselves.’
If it takes the rest of my life, I will strive to extricate it from my body like the tumor that it is.