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Struggling with feeling good enough can all at once be both a lifelong struggle and also something you tend to forget about on a day-to-day, conscious level. So instead of being aware of how your low self-esteem impacts your life, you may be prone to moving from one self-esteem crisis to the next. This is exhausting and all-consuming, so much so that you may lose sight of how your self-esteem might be what is perpetuating your unhappiness.
Feeling not good enough, like you don’t quite measure up or you don’t belong, or that you need to dupe people into thinking you are enough, all define low self-worth. For most, these kinds of thoughts start in childhood and eventually become a default mental state. You may not even be conscious of these thoughts as they play out, yet they have a great deal of power and contribute to your distress.
Frequently, people with low self-esteem look like they have it all together on the outside while on the inside they quietly feel that the ground below is shifting. As a way to gain stability, they may obsessively try to keep themselves and their lives in check. The inevitability of this strategy eventually giving way reinforces their sense that they are not good enough and must be hypervigilant to avoid the next misstep.
When you struggle with low self-esteem, you are probably focusing more on the ways to keep striving and how to keep tight control than the costs of this strategy. The first step in increasing self-worth is to take stock of how it influences the decisions you make.
How low self-worth can quietly shape your life
Here are four ways low self-worth can quietly shape your life:
- Friendships: They become a drain if your goal is to keep everyone from thinking something is wrong or bad about you. When your expectations for yourself are almost impossible to meet, all you will be able to see in yourself are shortcomings. After social interactions, you are left with a gaping hole. The hole could be comparing yourself to others, feeling judged by others, or second-questioning what you said and did. All of this makes you less excited about your friends or able to reap the psychological rewards of having close others in your life. Rewards as in health and longevity benefits, connection, shared joy, and meaning
- Romantic Relationships: When in a close romantic relationship, for you it is almost second nature to project your insecurities onto your partner. If you struggle with low self-esteem, you may question and criticize them. He/she may feel as if they can never measure up to what you want or need. Or, you may find yourself so overwhelmed by self-doubt that your partner is constantly having to reassure you, or they become resentful that the relationship revolves so much around your needs. Alternatively, you may hide your true self even from this person so that the relationship feels empty or one-sided, where your needs aren’t being met.
- Professional Life: Low self-worth in the professional space can mean you are consumed by self-doubt. You may hold back from challenges and feel as if you aren’t living up to your potential or alternatively have a kind of frenetic energy to prove yourself and do more and more until there is little left for yourself. You may be successful, but so much of that is built upon anxiety and hypervigilance that it is hard to feel safe and secure in your success.
- Your Sense of Joy: When your mindset is to evaluate your worth based on your output, the process of living gets left behind. As a result, the wonders and gems of your life, the little moments of meaning and joy and peace may all pass you by. You are aware that there is “good stuff,” so to speak, in an intellectual sense, but for your nervous system to deeply encode the good stuff, you need relaxation and pleasure.
For more: check out my post on How to Reset a Low Self-Worth Default.
