As a member of several support forums I have noticed something that's very common among nearly all abuse survivors including myself. I am talking about a poor or diminished sense of worth and self-esteem. I have seen some of the most beautiful people I have ever seen both inside and out in online support forums and blogs that have an unfavorable opinion of themselves. I have seen the same thing with people in my real life support group that I go to every other week. There's one woman in my support group that looks like a model, but if I was to ask her if she thinks she is pretty she would say "sort of". I have had several people compliment me and tell me that I am pretty, but I don't feel pretty. When I look in the mirror I don't see the same person other people see, I see someone who is stained, damaged, defiled, and generally undesirable.
Why do we as abuse survivors have a low self-esteem? Why do we often feel so disconnected from the world around us that we have thoughts of suicide and often use acts of self-harm such as cutting to feel like we are still alive? Although many of us have strong support structures it often isn't enough to keep us grounded and feeling connected to the world. I have a very strong support structure, but I still have a very low self-esteem. I have even tried to commit suicide before. Thankfully my dad stopped me before I could pull the trigger.
I think there are several factors that affect our self-esteem. They are, but not limited to, PTSD, anxiety, depression, substance abuse, personality disorders, dissociative disorders, and injuries or illness. Although all of these contribute to a diminished self-esteem, I want to focus on the three in my humble uneducated opinion that affects our self esteem the most.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a severe anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to any event that results in psychological trauma. This event may involve the threat of death or threat and actions of physical or sexual abuse toward themselves or to someone else. Symptoms include flashbacks or nightmares, avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma, and increased difficulty falling or staying asleep, anger, and hyper-vigilance.
Dissociative Disorder is defined as conditions that involve disruptions or breakdowns of memory, awareness, identity and/or perception. People with dissociative disorders are able to escape from reality involuntarily. Typically the development of this disorder is the reaction to some sort of trauma. It may also be an automatic coping mechanism to avoid thinking about difficult memories.
Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person's thoughts, behavior, feelings and physical well-being. Depressed people may feel sad, anxious, empty, hopeless, helpless, worthless, guilty, irritable, or restless. They may lose interest in activities that once were pleasurable. They may experience loss of appetite or overeating, or problems concentrating, remembering details or making decisions. Often depression leads someone to contemplate or attempt suicide.
I think these 3 contribute more to our diminished sense of self-esteem than anything else. To me it's no surprise. When we suffer from severe anxiety as a result of what happened to us during our abuse, we become hyper-vigilant of everything around us. We become hyper-vigilant because we want to protect ourselves from further abuse. This hyper-vigilance can drive us crazy. We understandably become so fearful and anxious of everything around us that our stress level remains high.
This increased stress level as a result of hyper-vigilantes will tend to keep us separated from the world in an attempt to limit emotional and stress triggers. This compounds the often dissociative disorders that many survivors of abuse experience. When we avoid thinking about the things that happened to us, we essentially avoid dealing with them. When the anxiety attributed to PTSD causes us to purposefully and often obsessively avoid emotional and stress triggers, we tend to keep to ourselves isolated. We drastically limit our in person interaction with the world around us. All of this draws us further into a state of isolation. We gain the mindset of, "I may be alone, but I am safe."
This increased acceptance that we need to remain separated from life in order to remain relatively trigger free and safe leads to depression. As we become more and more isolated from family, friends, and society we become depressed. We become accustomed to being alone and watching the world seemingly passes us by. At this point what are we left with? We are left with our own thoughts, our own negative influences, and our own memories of our assault to deal with on our own. We get so use to listening to our own negativity and self-blame that we laterally become ashamed of what happened to us. We look back at all the things we could have done differently that may have changed the outcome of our abuse, but we seldom accept the fact that hindsight is always 20/20.
As a result of this self-contrived isolation we are denied the positive influences of real-life friends. Leaving us almost exclusively at the mercy of our own negative thoughts and it causes us to sink even further into a state of depression. It's no surprise to me that all of this leads to abuse survivors having a poor self-esteem.
How do we counteract our poor self-esteem so that we can heal? I think the answer is so simple that each and every one of us already knows the answer. We need to let our voice be heard. We need to let family and friends into our lives and our thoughts so that we can hear and feel their positive influences instead of only our own negative influences. As we let other people's positive influences become a part of us, our own negative influences and shame start to diminish. In time, this will help rebuild our sense of self-worth and self-esteem.
I have so many negative emotions bouncing around in my head that sometimes I feel like I am to blame for everything that is wrong in my life and the world. Irrationally I accept responsibility and shame when in fact the responsibility and shame lies with the execrable person who hurt me. However there's responsibility where it does lie with me, which is the healing process. A process that more often than not is a life long process that's very difficult at times.
As survivors if we want to have a favorable opinion of ourselves, and we need to let others into our thoughts. We need to share our feelings and listen to the encouragement of the family, friends, and other survivors we encounter. It is hard to let other people's positive influence affect us, but it is very easy to believe our own negative influences. That's why support forums, support groups, and the positive influences of those around us are very important. As survivors let's do what we can to heal, let's surround ourselves as much as possible with people who give us the positive reinforcement that we deserve and need.
