How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? - Psalm 13:2Recently I've been inspired by my amazing sister Sarah to take a personal inventory and identify the things in my life that are dragging me down.
After several long chats with her, and several tearful prayers, I finally decided that what it all comes down to is chronic low self-esteem.
Everyone's self-esteem fluctuates on a daily basis. We all wake up on the wrong side of the bed occasionally. Other days it seems like everything's going our way. But while it may be easy for most people to bounce back from the bad days, there are those like me who take every slight personally and file it away to remember later as one of the reasons why we suck.
That's because self-esteem is like an emotional immune system. If you have healthy self-esteem (not necessarily high self-esteem--that's narcissism), then the little challenges and trials don't affect you for long. But when your self-esteem is low, every blow damages you for much longer than it should.
Unfortunately, most people see low self-esteem much the same way that they see depression. "Well, just be happy with yourself!" they say. "You're wonderful! You have no reason to hate yourself! Get over it!"
If only it were that easy.
I found a study on the Psychology Today website (find it here) that helped me to see just why I'm struggling so badly. It gives me great comfort to know that it's not just me--this is a widespread problem that has cause and effect, and it's something that I can get over with a little TLC.
My problem for the last 15 years (if not longer) was that I was misidentifying the cause of my unhappiness. I always thought it was because I've struggled with keeping my weight under control. It wasn't until recently that I realized that I'm not unhappy because I'm overweight--I'm overweight because I'm unhappy.
Sure enough, the study showed that self-esteem is not necessarily connected to physical attractiveness. Overweight people can have great self-esteem. Thin people can have very low self-esteem.
I've experienced that firsthand. I've been overweight the majority of my life, but there were two years in there that I was actually really skinny. First was when I followed the Cohen Diet for seven months, the second was when I served a mission in Paraguay and was at my happiest and lost weight without even trying.
I used to tell myself, "If only I could go back to my freshman year of college--back to when I was so skinny that I stopped menstruating and my hair was falling out. I was happy then because I was skinny!"
Now I realize, I wasn't happy even then! I still hated every picture of myself. I still wished I could fit into a smaller pant size. I still felt unable to climb Y mountain. I still didn't think I was worthy of a boy's attention. And because I still felt that way, despite the fact I was too skinny, as soon as my strict diet was "over," I gained all the weight back by the end of sophomore year. I thought, "What's the point of dieting? I'm a loser! Chocolate makes me feel better." And that was that.
The same thing happened after my mission, when I came back at my healthiest natural weight. I still thought I was fat, I still thought I wasn't worth taking pictures of, and so I started gaining weight only a few months later. And as soon as someone pointed out that I was gaining weight, I promptly got depressed and gained ten more pounds. I can literally trace my weight back the last seven years and show you how spikes in my weight coincide with peoples' comments and the poor way I handled them emotionally.
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| Fall 2008 - 150 lbs My thoughts: "Amanda is so much smaller than me!" |
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| Summer 2010 - 220 lbs My thoughts: "Better turn to the side because I'm such a cow." |
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| Fall 2012 - 180 lbs (my healthiest weight) My thoughts: "Ugh I have so much weight to lose. Look at my hips." |
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| Now (Spring 2015) - I'm still too insecure to tell you my weight My thoughts: "I'm dying a little inside. I hate picture day." |
Before you start leaving comments that say, "You're beautiful the way you are! You're so amazing and we love you and just want you to be happy!" let me point out something else that the study showed:
People with low self-esteem are resistant to positive feedback and positive affirmations only make people with low self-esteem feel worse.
Sounds crazy, right? Yet it's so true for me. It's gotten to the point that when you tell me all the good things about me, it's so far from the way I perceive myself that I just don't believe it. When I feel completely weak and helpless, telling me how strong and powerful I am only reminds me of how I feel the opposite. Positive feedback doesn't reach my self-esteem at all--I just block it out and think, "Either they're lying or they just don't really know me. I'm not worthy of their compliments." Plus, I get stressed out by positive feedback, because I'm afraid of letting people down.
"Well, Carly," you're thinking, "What's gonna happen to you, then, if you won't take our advice or our compliments? Are you just going to wallow in self-pity for the rest of your life?"
No.
I AM going to make goals for myself, despite my past and despite my tendency to give up. One of my favorite quotes is by Winston Churchill: "Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts."
There's this article about the "7 Habits of Highly Emotionally Healthy People" that I'm going to use as my foundation for my goals.
Here are the habits:
1. Gain control after a failure
As I mentioned before, I take every hit hard. I don't roll with the punches. I need to learn to identify the things that I can control, and then be satisfied when I do, no matter what outside factors interfere. And I need to remember that Winston Churchill quote, to continue trying even when I feel like I've failed too much.
2. Find meaning in loss and trauma
You would think that this would be easier for a Latter-day Saint who believes that every trial in life has a purpose in God's plan, but it wasn't until I read this article that I realized my self-inflicted trauma was something I needed to accept and move past.
3. Disrupt the urge to brood and ruminate
I honestly think I've become addicted to self-pity. I'm the kind of person who replays my mistakes and my hurts over and over in my head, feeling justified as the "victim" to be unhappy and not let anyone know about it. The article says I need to distract myself from those thoughts by concentrating on something else. Like Sudoku.
4. Nurture your self-esteem
How do I do that without positive affirmations (since we already established that they don't work on me)? Basically, instead of just distracting myself from brooding, I need to develop self-compassion. I need to comfort myself like I would a friend. Instead of going, "Of course that guy didn't want to go out with you! Look at yourself, you pig!" I need to be my own best friend and convince myself that I do have eternal worth and no one can take that from me. That's gonna be a challenge for me, but it's something I need to start doing.
5. Revive your self-worth after a rejection
This is the step where I learn to make positive affirmations work for myself. Instead of justifying someone's rejection by pointing out my own flaws, I need to focus on the qualities I like about myself. The problem is, I so hardly ever get rejected anymore because I just avoid any and all possibility of rejection. See habit 6.
6. Combat loneliness by identifying self-defeating behaviors
I've gotten to the point that I'm so terrified of rejection that I just lie about everything. I lie about what I eat, what I think, what I like to watch on Netflix, who I think is cute, and even what I write about. I've been a compulsive liar for as long as I can remember, and it's always in the name of self-preservation. I'm crippling myself by letting past slights determine my present and future. This is especially evident in my social life. I tell myself I can't go out because I have nothing to wear, because I hate shopping, because I'm too big to fit into anything cute. I tell myself that my friends don't really want me there--they'd just judge me for my clothes or how much I eat or who I dare think is cute. I told myself this when I was 150 pounds, and I told myself this when I was 220 pounds. It's all internal, an the more I tell myself this, the more I cement myself into that mold. I need to stop preemptively criticizing myself and instead fill my social calendar with visits to people who I know love me no matter what. I need to surround myself with people and stop feeling unworthy of their company. This one will be really hard because I've gotten so used to my "me time," but if I ever want permanent change, I know this is the way to do it.
7. Shed excessive guilt by repairing damaged relationships
This is the biggest goal for me. This should be #1 on my list. Because I've been such a liar and been so low on self-esteem, I've severely damaged a relationship that I care very much about. This person has tried to help me be happy so many times, and it always ends with me being offended and doing nothing to change. I need to repair that damage, and soon.
And that's really the point of this blog post: to stop lying about how I'm feeling and to start forgiving everyone who I feel put me here. In reality I put myself here. No one is to blame but me. And I'm so grateful for everyone who loved me enough to try to give me constructive criticism. I'm so sorry that it seemed like I just threw it back in your face and continued my self-defeating behaviors.
As I said before, I take failure very badly. So when I say that I'm making goals and trying to improve, please don't give up on me when I don't look like I am. I want to be healthy and happy, but I've always had such an all-or-nothing attitude that if I mess up even once I feel like an absolute failure too pathetic to stick with it. I cope with lack of emotional control by overeating and rebelling against everyone's wishes for me to get in shape.
I'm a wreck. I have a lifetime of emotional damage and bad habits to get over, and it's going to take some time. But I'm tired of being the object of pity and disappointment--the one who cries whenever my weight is mentioned. I'm tired of hating myself. I'm tired of putting on a mask of okay when I'm not okay. I'm tired of giving up on myself.
I don't want pity, I just want love and understanding. I don't want help, I want encouragement. I don't want people to give up on me; I've already given up on myself. I want people to have high expectations for me but continue to cheer me on when I stumble. I want you to have faith in me, especially when I don't have any in myself.
If you've even read this far, thank you. It means a lot to me. I don't really know how to end this post except to say that I know it's possible for a person to change. Nothing is set in stone. No past can't be overcome. I can never go too deep or too dark to be out of reach of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, and I know that ultimately it will be by His grace that I'll be able to put aside my hurt and my anger and be free of the chains that drag me down. Especially as Easter approaches, I'm so grateful for His loving sacrifice on my behalf, and for His support every step of the way.
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