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Justify Your Existence - A Cry For Help!
This article is about self esteem and why healthy self esteem is so important. It may seem painful at first because it points out the problem of low self esteem and what causes it. However, please read through to the end. There is help and hope to restore a sense of empowerment and healthy self esteem, and it is a lot easier than you might imagine!
With the proper self motivation and some psychological tools, anyone can recover and empower the confidence and joy in life that comes from healthy self esteem that is our natural birthright. No matter how badly self esteem may be damaged, it can be restored.
The Problem: A Painful E-Mail
When we first launched the subliminal message DSPP program series, which we were expanding based on customer requests, we received an e-mail from a customer asking for a program to address a particularly painful problem. Here is what the letter said:
"Dear ClydeSight Productions,
I am writing in hopes that you can develop a program to help me heal a wound I received as a child. It has been hurting me for many years. Please help me.
When I was in grammar school -- a parochial school in a large city -- the teacher, a Catholic nun who was a "Sister of Charity", called on me to stand up in front of the class. As I stood there, she pointed her finger accusingly at me and demanded:
JUSTIFY YOUR EXISTENCE!
I will never forget the look of pure rage and hatred on her face as she said this! The entire class burst out laughing and I felt ashamed and flabbergasted. I was only 10 years old! I broke into tears.
The nun was trying to make a religious point in her belief system -- that all people are sinners, that all will come before the "judgment seat" of God and have to justify their existence or be cast into an eternal lake of fire. Naturally, she had a solution -- unquestioning obedience to the Church and all they taught would provide "merciful redemption".
For whatever reason, she had decided to use me as an example. In her twisted method, she not only made her religious point, but also, by innuendo, implied that I, of all the class, was in particular need of "justification".
Even as a child, I felt this was spiritual coercion, terrorism, psychological and religious abuse. I had no protection, and I certainly had no way to respond. No one listens to a child.
Unfortunately, the rest of the class took up the "lesson" and teased me for months, bullying me and making the same idiotic demand in the schoolyard until it no longer amused them.
I was miserable, depressed, hopeless. I hid in my room, and my mother was particularly concerned until she finally got me to tell her what happened.
She called the school and demanded an explanation. This only started more trouble. The arrogance of the school and teachers was almost legendary in our "parish" and no one was supposed to question their methods.
She did not know what to do, other than to love me and try and make me feel better with platitudes that God actually did love me and that the other children were somehow "jealous".
I have suffered for years from a sense of worthlessness, alienation and social isolation. Of course, I left the church at the first opportunity and found other spiritual comfort, but the pain is still there. I still have a terrible feeling of weight on my shoulders, and feel worthless. It affects everything in my life, my job, my family, my friendships. I see others around me who are happy, and I feel I was robbed.
Is there any way you can create a special DSPP program to help me with the pain I have suffered from this experience? I would be ever so grateful. Thank you in advance."
It is easy to see from this e-mail that the teacher, in order to instill a religious principle, attacked the child's sense of self esteem, and wounded him for life. She may not have realized the harm she was causing, but the result is a person very much in need of help. She probably did not know she was using psychological terrorism. Sadly, the writer is probably not suffering alone, as the "Justify Your Existence" concept is well known in many religious belief systems.
The core of the problem is not religious, philosophical, moral, or spiritual... it is psychological -- the erosion of healthy and natural self esteem.
We realized this, and developed our Self Esteem DSPP program to help this writer and many others who are struggling with the persistent and uneasy sense of not belonging that comes from low self esteem.
We wrote many e-mails to this person as he slowly progressed on the road to healthy self esteem using our program. Our experience has inspired us to write this article to help educate others about this important subject. It can be summed up in one sentence.
Psychological Terrorism Erodes Self Esteem!
What IS self esteem?
We are all born with self esteem. It is the inner knowledge of the truth and value of of our strengths, the fair assessment of our weaknesses and a grounding point that helps us know who we are and our place in the world. It is essential to good mental health.
Human beings are not isolated creatures. We have an ego, a sense of self that needs to be healthy and vibrant. We often measure this by interaction with others. From this, we develop our sense of self esteem.
If it is strong, we are effective in the world, courageous and outgoing.
If it is not, we feel alienated, withdrawn, out of place, unwanted and become the easy targets of others who seek to establish dominance and control.
Self esteem is a constant balancing act. Life is endlessly variable, and so we have constant influences on our psyche. Many of these influences are destructive to self esteem, so we must constantly work to recover from the damage. The more arrogant and aggressive the psychological environment, the more dangerous it is to healthy self esteem. We must change this, find ways to manage it or we will become psychologically lost, ungrounded and feel out of place in a world where we truly belong.
Self esteem can be self healing. If we have good self esteem to begin with, if as children we have been empowered, loved and respected, we have the foundation of good self esteem that can recover after an attack.
But if we were psychologically damaged during our development, as children often are, we may not have the inner strength, the empowerment to recover when our self esteem is attacked, no matter what our age. At that point, we do need outside help, just as we need help setting a broken bone, so the body can heal.
Fortunately, there is plenty of help available.
Knowing the enemy is the first step.
The Self Esteem Killer
There are two important concepts to understand in dealing with self esteem:
Guilt - I have DONE something wrong.
Shame - I AM wrong.
Feelings of guilt do not attack self esteem, in fact some can come from healthy self esteem when we realize that our actions are at odds with the world as we know it. When we feel guilty over our actions, we can take steps to correct things, to restore, to repair, to apologize, etc. These actions relieve guilt, arrive at forgiveness, and restore balance. This is psychologically healthy. We take responsibility for our actions.
Feelings of shame always attack self esteem. When we feel shame, we feel that we ARE wrong. We feel that our very being is wrong and out of place. We feel fundamentally flawed and incorrect. We cannot fix this because we feel we are inherently defective. We need to be "re-made" somehow, to be "fixed". Shame is toxic to self esteem because self-esteem assesses our strengths and weaknesses and gives us a centered view of our place in the world. Shame attempts to put us out of the world - in the "junk heap."
We are not junk.
Unfortunately, many people are very "hooked" on control and establishing dominance. This causes them to attack self esteem in others and they use shame and other tools in their efforts, sometimes without knowing it because aggression is frequently an unconscious reaction to a situation.
A good and natural leader stands out from the crowd and inspires others to follow, either by example, by charisma or any number of other healthy principles. A good friend inspires friendship, a good lover inspires love. Like attracts like. All these boost self esteem in self and others through healthy mutually supportive social interaction.
But the bully, tyrant or person fixated on dominance and control tries to rule by intimidation and shame and often attacks self esteem.
Such people use insult, self-righteousness, judgment, belittling, disrespect, and manipulation. They attack self esteem constantly using any weapon available, especially demands that defy reason and logic because this knocks the other person off balance in a form of cognitive dissonance.
"Justify Your Existence" is a perfect example of this. It is an illogical demand because justification applies to actions, while existence is a state of being. The two cannot go together. But by shame implication, they can be illogically matched and throw the mind off balance. This is what happened to the writer of the e-mail when he was only 10 years old.
Criticism and shaming are often the prime weapons used against self esteem.
Anyone who uses the Internet has probably seen these tactics in forums and posts. It is called "flaming", and usually results when there is a discussion about a controversial subject. The bullies are out in force often using self esteem attack tactics in writing against others. But this problem goes much deeper than that.
The abusive spouse who finds constant fault, the controlling parent who punishes endlessly, the insulting colleague or competitor -- these are the destructive behaviors of the tyrant. The goal is always the same; instill unquestioning obedience and loyalty by eroding self confidence and destroying self esteem.
It is a horrendous way to behave, and these people are all around us. We see them at work, on the roads, in our relationships. Somewhere along the line of their lives, they learned to intimidate and control.
Their inner lives are empty, because, ironically, many such people suffer from low self esteem themselves! Rather than bear or deal with the pain of this, they lash out at others in an attempt to boost their sense of self worth through lowering the self worth of others. It is a game of "lose-lose". No one can ever win in such a situation.
Yet these people can get help, if they can see past their arrogance. If they healed their own low self esteem, they would end their attacks and become happy and vibrant people and their tyranny would melt away. They could become all they wish to be without harming others.
Inner Talk - The Self Erosion of Self Esteem
All human beings have intelligence.
Intelligence is the ability to learn, and to apply what has been learned. Like a coin, it has two sides.
On one side, intelligence gives us the ability to learn and grow, to spark imagination and inventiveness. This is how we can contribute to our lives and the world. But on the other side, intelligence gives us the ability to apply the negative lessons we have learned, to hurt ourselves and others as we have been taught to hurt.
It is a tragic but natural outcome of the erosion of self esteem that a "victim" will begin to mentally support critical, shaming and irrational thoughts through self talk -- the "inner dialog" that is a constant part of our mental lives. This is especially true when children have been exposed to self esteem eroding critical thinking and made to adopt it as a belief system. It is ironic that intelligence is the natural contributor to this painful process.
Have you ever pressed the wrong key on your computer, hit the "delete" key by accident, or somehow thrown away a valuable file? We all have made this mistake. The difference is what we say to ourselves about it.
In such a situation, have you said to yourself:
"Oh, I am so stupid!"
or
"I can't believe I did that!"
"Oh, I am so stupid!" is shame based self talk. It says that you are inherently flawed because you are "stupid". How can you fix being "stupid" which is is a state of being? What does saying this to yourself say about your self talk?
"I can't believe I did that!" is a healthy response. It acknowledges an action and expresses incredulity. It does not define you as a person, it describes how you feel about your action. It is a healthy form of self talk.
Now think about it. How many times a day do you tell yourself things in response to actions and experiences?
To heal self esteem, we must change our inner talk as well as manage our external situations. "Inner talk" is a constant dialog. It goes on "in the back of our minds" while we are awake, and it takes place in dreams. The mind is constantly trying to "figure itself out", and inner dialog is one method to achieve this. The quality of self talk is extremely important. People will "block" certain TV programs because they may be harmful viewing. Yet how many of us are as vigilant in monitoring our inner dialog?
Hope and Help For Self Esteem Empowerment
Fortunately, thanks to psychological research and therapeutic practice, there is hope and help for anyone who suffers from low self esteem.
Therapeutic Counseling
Counseling is a great resource, although it can be expensive and take some time. In a counseling session, a qualified therapist can help anyone with low self esteem look at his or her life from a perspective of empowerment. The therapist can help develop self motivation to boost self esteem. Often, this will involve a conscious realization and remembrance of the cause of the low self esteem, developing conscious ways to heal the event, and creating strategies to maintain self esteem on a daily basis. Some of these approaches require behavioral modification or other cognitive efforts as well as a deep level of guided understanding. It can be a lengthy process, but it can also be highly beneficial.
Change Your Social Environment
People in abusive relationships that harm self esteem can end them, get away from the source. This requires a great deal of courage and self motivation, but it can and often must be done.
A friend who is irrationally critical is no friend at all. While changing a living situation can often be complicated by social environment, marriage or other relationship issues, it can become absolutely necessary for personal safety.
Many women have had to seek shelter and legal protection from abusive partners. Besides the physical damage of these situations, these women can mentally suffer, and self esteem for women is particularly important in an abusive male dominated culture.
In some situations the abusive partner might be able to attend counseling and even re-education to become a more effective and beneficial person, rather than a tyrant or bully. In such a situation, low self esteem issues may be found as the cause of their negative behavior.
Change Your Working/Career Environment
People in abusive jobs can find better employment or seek help from within their organization. This requires a strong sense of self motivation, as approaching an employer for an organizational change can be very challenging. Many people would rather leave the workplace than deal with it.
While workplace politics can get in the way of success, many employers practice a zero tolerance policy concerning abuse from others, on many levels. Psychological and verbal abuse that erodes self esteem are very real and very serious. They can be career killers, and ultimately hurt the organization by eliminating a talented employee.
Employers are becoming increasingly aware of how this damages the work environment and are finding ways to deal with it. Their motivation is of course, economic. It is far more sensible and economically viable to maintain a valued employee than replace one who has left because of psychological abuse from others, especially overly competitive colleagues or incompetent managers.
Self Esteem Boosting Empowerment Workshops
There are many self esteem empowerment workshops available. Some are adult education classes, some are motivational seminars and support groups. Although they often come under the genre "New Age", these workshops can provide a beneficial and empowering environment that helps people restore their self esteem. They can be expensive and involve some traveling. Some of these workshops are available on video or audio format for those who can't physically attend them. They empower self motivation for beneficial change, although they use different methods to achieve this goal.
Self Esteem and Positive Thinking Inspirational Books
There are many books on the topic of self esteem and getting free of toxic relationships. While these books must, by nature, use a cognitive approach because one has to read the book and absorb the information, they can be extremely inspiring and helpful. Many of these books are also available on audio format. These books can be very helpful in giving one a conscious understanding of the issues that effect self esteem, and many have exercises or practices one can use to effect a change in their thinking and feelings.
There is a series of books by the author, John Bradshaw, which deal specifically with "inner child" toxic shame issues.
Self Esteem Subliminal and Self Hypnosis Programs
Modern technology provides a simple and often very effective means of restoring self esteem through a relatively new method - the empowerment and self motivation of the unconscious mind through subliminal messages.
This approach does not examine the past or change the environment, but seeks to instill change immediately by "re-programming" self awareness.
It has a distinct advantage over other methods because it changes the unconscious response to situations by replacing harmful self talk with positive affirming self talk on the unconscious level.
For these programs to be effective, they need to be used many times in order to fill the unconscious mind with positive affirmations it can use.
There are many self esteem self hypnosis and subliminal message programs available. Their use is simple and straightforward. One views or listens to them every day. Over time, the affirmations in these programs change the inner dialog so self abuse through negative self talk stops. Through unconscious self motivation, the user restores and boosts self esteem.
As the self erosion of self esteem ends, people are less likely to tolerate attacks on self esteem from others, so they naturally and automatically make necessary and healthy changes in their lives, change their environment and also resolve issues that are the result of past experiences. The process tends to be easy and automatic because it is unconscious, rather than behavioral or cognitive.
ClydeSight Productions Self Esteem DSPP is one such program that uses a unique visual subliminal message approach for achieving this goal.
The Benefits of Healthy Self Esteem
The benefits of healthy self esteem are many. When we are self actualized people, we are effective people. We build healthy relationships with others and accomplish our goals.
When we have healthy self esteem, we have the courage to create, to try, to challenge ourselves and improve our positions and lives. We are able to "stand tall" and meet others face-to-face without shame or fear.
Our anxiety lessens, our confidence grows. We take charge of our lives and enjoy them. We are more willing to take sensible risks, to find alternative solutions to problems.
We feel happy and complete, centered and balanced. We feel good about ourselves and good about others. It also becomes much harder for a tyrant to "get in". We put the tyrant away from us, overcome the abuse through powerful rational thought. We can be bullied no more.
It is well worth trying any or all methods to restore and boost self esteem. We only have one life; the quality of that life depends on what we do with it. It only makes sense to have the highest quality of life possible.
One way to enjoy that is through pro active and positive self esteem.
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●Healthy
Weight ●Inspired Marketer ●Love and Romance ●Lucky Winner ●Power Writing |
●Psychic
Pet Control ●Self-Esteem ●Smoke Free |
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