The art of self-acceptance

Dr Robert Antho­ny believes that recognition of your own true worth is another crucial factor in building total self-confidence. He says that it is a demonstrated fact of life that you can never be “better” than your own self-esteem; that is, how you feel about yourself in rela­tion to others, based on your sense of self-acceptance. “These feelings are basically unconscious and have been programmed into your sub­conscious since early childhood.”

Positive self-esteem is not the in­tellectual acceptance of one’s talents or accomplishments. It is personal self-acceptance. Developing posi­tive self-esteem is not an ego trip. You are not in love with yourself in an egotistical sense. You simply realise that you are a truly unique and worthy individual; one who does not need to impress others with your achievements or material possessions. In fact, the person who constantly brags and boasts has one of the classic symptoms of poor self-esteem.

Dr Anthony believes that one the tragedies of our time concerns those leaders, teachers, inventors, artists and people who have made great contributions to humankind and yet are victims of their own low self-esteem. “Some of the most admired people in history have become drug addicts, alcoholics and even committed suicide just to escape from a self that they could never quite accept and often grew to hate.”

Developing positive self-esteem is not just a matter of making your­self happy, it is the foundation on which you must build your whole life. If you ever hope to be free to create the life you desire, it is a task that you must take seriously. If you do not, you can only expect your low self-esteem to get even worse as you grow older.

One of the best ways to build high self-esteem is to know how low self-esteem is developed and how it manifests itself in others. You will then be able to see what you can do to raise your level of self-esteem.

There are three major causes of low self-esteem. The first is a series of self-defeating concepts, beliefs, and values that you have accepted from your parents. The second is a unique set of put-downs, received throughout your school years, from false and distorted concepts of teachers and such things a vocation­al placement analyses and IQ tests.

The third stems from negative religious conditioning with its over-emphasis on feelings of guilt and unworthiness. While there are many other contributing factors to low self-esteem, these three are the most important.

By far the strongest single con­tributing factor to our low self-es­teem is the low self-esteem of our parents. This is true especially of our mothers, the person with whom we usually spend our most impres­sionable years. Since most adults labour under false concepts, values and beliefs, these are passed on to children through attitudes, actions and reactions like a contagious dis­ease. If our parents feel inadequate and inferior we, as children, will feel unworthy and, as a result, unable to cope with even the simplest problems in home or school. In essence, the “false” assumptions of our parents become the “facts” of our existence.

From the time you were born, to about five years old, your brain was developing rapidly. This period of rapid growth is referred to by psychologists as the “imprint peri­od”. During this time, your brain received crucial and permanent impressions, which helped formu­late your behavior patterns. You can readily see that if one or both parents were suffering from low self-esteem during this time, how easily this might be absorbed by a child’s impressionable mind.

A low or negative self-esteem is further developed through the com­mon habit of belittling by compari­son. When parents compare a child with a brother, sister or, particularly, someone outside the family, the child’s sense of inferiority is com­pounded. In the light of the flaws he has come to accept as part of his own make-up, he compares himself to children of the same age whom he admires. Believing that they are endowed with more strength, abil­ity, popularity and self-confidence than he has, a devastating sense of inferiority overpowers him.

Lack of recognition or apprecia­tion of the child’s uniqueness is an­other parental failing. Most parents pay little regard to their children’s feelings, desires and opinions, re­buffing them with such maxims as, “Children should be seen and not heard!” and “Mother/Father knows best!” Often, they take disagree­ment as either a personal affront or an out-and-out disrespect. Leading child psychologists agree that this attitude is due to the parent’s low self-esteem that manifests itself as the need to always be right.

It is a disturbing fact that a large number of parents lead their lives vicariously through their children. Having decided that their child should be everything they secretly yearned to be and are not, they push the child beyond their capabil­ity. They want their own unrealized dreams of accomplishment to be­come reality through their children. Of course, this is done at the child’s expense. What such parents fail to recognize is that the child is unable to meet their unreasonably high standards simply because they have not developed – or may not even have – the emotional, mental, or physical capacity to do so.

Physical appearance, much more than is realized, is also a major cause of low self-esteem. A number of children suffer from physical, mental and emotional handicaps because of unusual or abnormal physical appearance. By constantly bringing this to their attention and telling them that they are “too fat,” “too tall,” “too slow,” etc., they develop deep feelings of inferiority that are difficult to overcome.

Over-powering, over-permissive or over-possessive parents are usu­ally the ones who turn their child into an emotional cripple. Deprived of the necessary motivation to face life situations with self-confidence and poise, the child procrastinates and takes the path of least resis­tance. Lack of self-reliance fosters feelings of inadequacy, which in turn also forms the basis of low self-esteem.

Contrary to common belief, rais­ing a child through a system based primarily on reward and punish­ment is guaranteed to perpetuate low self-esteem. The child must be permitted, without fear of punish­ment, to make as many mistakes as necessary to learn his lessons. Once he has learned them, most likely, he will never have to repeat them. He will know that, whatever he does, he either earns his own rewards or suffers the consequences of his mistakes. The earlier he realizes this, the better.

The most damaging aspect of low self-esteem is that we pass it from one generation to another. Research has tragically demonstrat­ed that suicides follow along family lines. After what you have just read, this should not surprise you. It is easy to see that, if low self-es­teem is inherited, in some cases the resulting manifestation will be extreme.

Besides contaminating our chil­dren with our low self-esteem, we tend to contaminate everyone with whom we come in contact. If we are in a position to influence others, such as teachers or clergy, we spread the disease to those who look to us for leadership and inspiration. They intuitively sense our lack of self-worth and poor self-esteem and inevitably begin to take on portions of what they identify and associate with us. Dr. Robert Anthony has counseled hundreds of individu­als who have lacked the necessary self-confidence to meet life situa­tions successfully. He reveals, “each one of them was the product of the low self-esteem that was passed on to them from home, school and/or negative religious conditioning.”

Low self-esteem has many manifestations or addictions. These can be described as the means and habits we develop to escape the de­mands of everyday living. They are simply alibis that permit us to tem­porarily avoid facing up to personal reality. The severity of the addiction we choose is in direct proportion to our sense of inadequacy and fear of having to justify who and what we are.

• BY CAPT SAM ADDAIH (RTD)

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