Do I Have Low Self Esteem
Having low self esteem can have a major impact on the quality of your life and your level of happiness. It really is a big deal in the context of how you see and deal with life. There’s a lot of eye opening statistics around the media and it’s impact on teenage girls and women. About attempting to attain some unrealistic image that is projected everywhere we look. And all of that is true, it creates enormous pressure on girls growing up and women everywhere. But it’s even bigger than that. Low self esteem is a very common issue for both females and males. If you’ve ever let negative self talk get to you constantly about your weight or your level of intelligence or a multitude of other reasons, you may have low self esteem. Here shortly we will look at some checkpoints that may answer the question do I have low self esteem.
What Is Self Esteem
Before we look at signs of low self esteem let’s take a look at what self esteem actually is. Self esteem reflects a person’s overall subjective emotional evaluation of their own worth. It is a decision made by each of us that is basically an attitude towards our own selves. Self esteem is the positive OR negative evaluations of ourselves.
What it boils down to is someone with healthy self esteem values his or herself. It is the idea that we are inherently worthy. Someone with healthy self esteem will understand and accept that they make mistakes sometimes because it’s human to do so. That doesn’t make them any less valuable as a person. It doesn’t make them doubt themselves more or like themselves less. They understand and accept their own strengths and weaknesses and are okay with all of them.
A person with healthy self esteem is their own best friend. They see themselves in a positive light and treat themselves with self respect. Self esteem is important because it is like a lens through which we see our own lives. It affects our experiences and how we react to things in our world.
Low Self Esteem
As you might imagine having low self esteem will tend to color the world in a more negative light. It is often characterized by an overall lack of confidence and feeling bad about ourselves more than we should. You often see hypersensitivity with low self esteem and many times a fragile sense of ones own self.
When someone says something harsh to a person with lower self esteem it will tend to sting more or cause inner pain much more easily than someone with a higher one. These people really do tend to be their own worst critic. So now let’s look at some indicators that you may have low self esteem.
Signs
Take a look and see if any of these seem familiar to you.
Always Needing Reassurance
We all need to be reassured from time to time. No big deal. Sometimes it’s just a good way to validate if we are right about something. If you find yourself needing constant reassuring about most things, that’s a sign your belief in yourself isn’t what is probably should be.
Hard Time Saying No
Many of us are built to be people pleasers, myself included. I had to work long and hard to finally get that other people’s happiness is not my responsibility. Part of what goes along with not always being a people pleaser is the ability to say “NO” to someone. If you find yourself saying “Yes” to everything chances are you are doing that to try to get people to like you. And if you are always trying to get people to like you, well……you know…..you probably don’t like yourself as much as you should.
Overriding Fear of Failure
Most of us have a fear of failure to one degree or another. Heck, I wonder everyday if I am failing as a father to my 2 teenage daughters. Actually, I know I’m not, they are just incredibly frustrating sometimes. If you don’t believe in yourself and your abilities a lot of the time, this creates an ongoing fear of failure about many things in life. This then leads to an increased need for perfectionism, which is a sign that you are overly worried about outcomes and unsure of your abilities.
Putting Other People Down – A Lot
Someone who doesn’t feel very good about themselves will many times put other people down a lot. According to study author Jeffery Sherman
“When we feel bad about ourselves, we can denigrate other people, and that makes us feel better about ourselves.” Pretty much says it all. People who have self confidence in their own abilities are many times the targets of those who don’t. As you might have guessed someone who feels confident in themselves is many times viewed as a threat by those who don’t.
You Can’t Deal With Arguing
Remember when we talked about the people pleaser part? It applies here as well. When you feel less than confident in yourself and your abilities you give into arguments really easily. Conflict is something to be avoided at all costs. You have to remember that your opinion is worth something and don’t be afraid to speak it. If you don’t express your opinion you are hiding the real person away from everyone else.
Don’t Criticize Me!
Do you find yourself hurt or wounded every time your boss suggests you do something a different way? If a friend says they like a different color shirt on you better than the one you’re wearing are you going to pout all day? If you find yourself getting deeply hurt or insulted at even constructive criticism, this is another sign you don’t feel very good about yourself. It’s your own low sense of worth that makes you lash out angrily at someone who is in no way attempting to insult you. Your ego is interpreting it as a personal attack even when it’s not.
Wait, do I have to Decide?
Not feeling strong in your opinion of yourself will lead to having a tough time making decisions. If you’re one of those people that has a really hard time deciding what to do, this could be another sign. Again, it boils down to being afraid of making a mistake. The fear of failure. If you don’t make a decision about something then you can’t be wrong – right?! No, not really. But not making a decision you are actually making a decision. This is a big reason why people, women in particular, will wind up staying in abusive relationships. They don’t feel good enough about themselves to make the decision to leave.
I’m Sorry
I’m sorry. Again. Saying you’re sorry even when you had nothing to do with what happened is another indicator. What’s happening here is a defense mechanism against people being mad at you. You really can’t stand to be the target of someone’s anger so you do a preemptive strike and say you’re sorry, even when there is nothing to apologize for. On the other hand humility in the form of apologizing is a great trait to have. It shows self awareness and the ability to accept responsibility.
Recap
Well, we’ve looked at some the signs of having low self esteem. It’s a fairly common personality trait. Remember, self esteem is your overall evaluation of your own self worth. It’s how worthy you see yourself, whether that’s in a negative or a positive light. In my next article I will share some ideas on how to improve self esteem.
Resources
Here’s a few options to look at for further insight into this fascinating and very important topic.
Ten Days to Self-Esteem: By David D. Burns, M.D.
The Mastery of Self: A Toltec Guide to Personal Freedom – by don Miguel Ruiz Jr.
The Self Esteem Workbook for Women: 5 Steps to Gaining Confidence and Inner Strength – by Megan MacCutcheon LPC
In good mental health,
Mat A.
Great article, many people have a Low Self Esteem, sometimes they don’t trust themselves, your analysis is really good, trust yourself is a very important thing, it can change everything ’cause sometimes we fail is because of we don’t get through ourselves, great article, thank you, makes me start reflection, I will share this to the friend needs it.
Thank you – it’s great to hear that. Most of us tend to doubt ourselves instead of trusting ourselves. Took me a long time to learn that lesson.
I am definitely one of those people that have low self esteem because I have many of the signs, especially the inability to say no and argue. I find it hard to stand up for myself in arguments because I never have the right words to say and I always end up sounding inarticulate.
I would be interested to know how to improve all this, I look forward to your next article which hopefully will offer me some good tips. Thanks for the article.
Son – thanks for stopping by and sharing your story. Look for the next article on self esteem out soon.!
Very insightful article over here.
As I read through all of the signs of self-esteem, I also did some self-reflection.
I realized I had some of the traits you mentioned and I like that you further explained when these points could be a sign of low self-esteem or just a sign for humility or something else.
I really needed to go deep into my intention of certain actions, the intention is really what matters.
Thanks for this awesome content
Etah,
Appreciate you sharing your insights! Thanks,
Mat A.
Thank you very much for doing great justice to this topic. Low self esteem is real and is a major cause of crime both in high schools, colleges and even in our society. I agree with you totally when you said “Low self esteem is a very common issue for both females and males. If you’ve ever let negative self talk get to you constantly about your weight or your level of intelligence or a multitude of other reasons, you may have low self esteem”.
i find this post very educating and impactful, thank you very much for sharing this article.
I’m glad you enjoyed it! I think as a whole society tends to think it’s primarily females that have low self esteem. Once you dig into it a bit you see it’s really a universal issue. Thanks!
Great article on low self esteem. This has been one of the problems of many people over the years. People of low self esteem are not confident enough to make decisions for their life, they tend to be fearful of what other people may say about them. They have high chance of conformity even if it is against their nature. I have seen all the points you mentioned, i have seen signs of this in my cousin. Though I am really helpful her to build self confidence. Great and insightful article.
Brent it is great that you are a ready and willing resource for your cousin, I hope he appreciates it. All the best.
Thank you so much to the author who has written down this kind of such a beneficial article. This article opened my mind to the fact that low esteem isnt encouraging at all. This is one of the qualities i have overtime but i tried my best to overcome this and i am highly satisfied now. The signs you mentioned here are very perfect and i appreciate you for sharing this with me
Hi Tracy – glad you enjoyed! Great to hear that you are highly satisfied now!
Hello,
This is a very interesting and insightful article that will help people notice if they have low self esteem. For me, the ones that relate to me the most were the last two. Sometimes I have a hard time making decisions and then regret the option I chose. I also say I’m sorry too many times, even when I know it wasn’t my fault.
I know this blog is directed to men, so I thank you that you raised awareness about this situation for men too. Most people may think that just women feel this way, when actually it could be anyone.
I hope I can read more about this in your website and what can people do to change their low self esteem.
Best,
Mariana
Hi Mariana,
Appreciate you sharing your thoughts. Low self esteem is very much gender neutral, everyone has been impacted to one degree or another. I wouldn’t worry about the regrets of making decisions. I read a wonderful book called “Feel the Fear and do it Anyway” by Susan Jeffers that really helped put this into perspective for me. The bottom line is there is no right or wrong choice. In any choice you make you’ve either discovered something you like or don’t like. It’s that simple really. No need for stressing about it to a huge degree. Plus we all make mistakes.
Cheers!
Dear Mat,
May I not congratulate you on your persistence on creating this helpful article. Any man who devotes that much time must of necessity make discoveries of great value to others. This was a highly informative article and I learned a lot of new things.
Its been a great ride and do a self-evaluation test, thanks a lot and to be honest I need to implement many things I learned from your article. I need to say No and I often say yes to everyone and struggle to keep my words. I thought saying sorry although I didn’t made any mistakes is a great attitude but I got new insights from your post and realized my mistake.
Putting Other People Down topic is an eye-opener for me and I can relate it to many things.
This post is a must read for everyone and I am going to share this post in my church youth team meeting and for sure they gonna find a lot value.
Much Success!
Paul
Hi Paul,
Glad you enjoyed, thanks so much for the comments!
Hi Mat,
I thoroughly enjoyed reading your article. I think once in a while, it would be a good thing if we would ask ourselves that question “Do I Have Low Self-esteem” and try to honestly answer that question because even though we might start off this year with high self-esteem, events that happens throughout the year,week or even month can deal a great blow on our self-esteem before we realize it,we are already so down, it would need a lot of conscious work to get us back.
I would always use this post here to evaluate my self esteem from time to time. Thanks a lot.
Thank you for the thoughts Vapz, I greatly appreciate it. In my opinion in takes a stronger person to be able to look at themselves and do the deep self reflection necessary to answer that question. The payoff is great.
Thanks for sharing this great article, i have once suffer from low sekf esteem when i was a kid but with the help of my good friends and family i was able to overcome my low self esteem. Thanks for sharing this article it is very informative and educative. Thanks for building this website and investing your time. It’s a great site.
So glad you enjoyed Musbau! The good news is, like you found out through hard work yourself, is that once can overcome low self esteem. Well done!
Omg this hits me hard Mat,
I never knew that I have low esteem until I read your article. I sometimes have a big heart and I tend to always help people at the cost of my own well being. People want to borrow my stuff, I lent it and never got back. My friends called me and needed money, I gave them $5k just like that without any agreement or anything and they never answered my call. And the list goes on and honestly, it is making me hate myself every day when I wake up.
Can’t wait for your next article on improving one’s self-esteem, I think I’d really need that.
Well Riaz I appreciate you sharing your thoughts. I wouldn’t jump on the wagon and say you have low self esteem just yet. If you enjoy doing things like that for people there’s nothing wrong with that. Just don’t let yourself get taken advantage of. CheerS!
In most cases, low self-esteem has its bearing from our upbringing; so it is safe to say that families play a big role in managing self-esteem. In a scenario where a child is scolded for poor grades in class so often, he or she becomes less likely to share his or her school experiences. This can lead to anxiety, mood disorders and loneliness, which lead to the development of low self-esteem.
I believe denying children the freedom to express themselves and punishing them for every mistake they make eventually turns them to adults with low self-esteem. They will have all the majority of the eight signs of low self-esteem you shared if not all.
Edgar,
Thanks for the information sharing. I tend to believe with you. All the best,
Mat A.
Excellent article. I really liked how you included putting other people down. I do find people who do this to have low self-esteem. But I also find people with low self-esteem to brag about themselves a lot too. Some people, like my mother is always negative and puts herself down, but I also know people who have to validate themselves by listing accomplishments often and with some exaggerating, they’re better than everyone else and can do no wrong, but they cannot take constructive criticism at all without getting defensive and argumentative. Luckily, I do okay with my own self-esteem now. But my younger years, I was always criticizing myself. I’m also a people pleaser and avoid arguments, though now it isn’t fear, but just because I don’t want to hurt other people or get embroiled in drama plus I have a big heart. I rescue cats and help people often, but I can say no. It’s just I don’t want to cause inconveniences to people by being run and I’m not very selfish. It’s harder to break that habit when it’s kindness not fear making you so nice!
Again, lovely article thank you!
Thank you for the comments Selenity. It’s an interesting trend that people who have lower self esteem tend to put other people down a lot. One way to make their ego’s feel better.
I am one of those people have low self esteem because I have many feature I do not speak respectfully with anyone , do not contact anyone, I like to be alone .Your article realized me now more alone because I do not contact with anyone. Thank you so much.
You are most welcome! I am glad you got something from the article. All the best!