have your own additional, well-developed ways of not loving yourself. Unfortunately, many of us are world-class masters at the art. But whatever your method, each of these habits of low self-esteem is a symptom of something much deeper, something with roots in your childhood. And until you can look beneath the surface of your self-negating behaviors to see how you acquired them, it will be difficult for you to love yourself.
Whatever the form of your lack of self-love, you can begin to change it by understanding how you came to be so hard on yourself in the first place. Understanding is always the key to emotional healing.
THREE
How Did It Get to Be This Way?
Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed.
—Michael Pritchard
Children always follow their parents' example. We treat ourselves emotionally the way our parents treat ourselves emotionally the way our parents treated us. If your parents treated you as if you were unworthy of their love—even if this was unintentional— you will feel unworthy of your own love. This will be true until you consciously take steps to change the way you feel about yourself.
We've heard a lot in recent years about “dysfunctional families,” as if the majority of families actually function, as if it's only the rare or uniquely troubled family that's dysfunctional; but the truth is, every family is dysfunctional to some degree. Mine was. Yours is too. It isn't, in some ultimate sense, anyone's fault. It's in the nature of being human that our parents will have human failings. None of us has been loved perfectly, or even well enough. That's just the way it is. And that's why, as part of growing into our beauty as human beings, we must take up the task of learning to love ourselves. Ultimately, it's an inside job. It means going to the depths of yourself and getting acquainted with the lovely soul who deserves your support, care, affection, forgiveness, and compassion.
All issues of self-love are related to our sense of our own value, which is created very early on. When we're little, we depend on our parents to make life safe for us. When they fail to do so in some big or little way, our unconscious sense is that we aren't worthy of their love. We're not able to say that they're inept or inadequate parents, that they have human limitations. We can't say to ourselves that maybe they're still suffering from what they experienced with their own parents. Instead we say, If they're not loving me the way I need to be loved, it must be my fault. I must be unlovable. As children, we always interpret the lack of love we experience as somehow being our fault.
That's why the child who's left waiting on the stairs for food can't say to herself, my parents are in a bind, they're overwhelmed by their circumstances. Instead she says, it would be better if I had never been born. The child who's one of ten children feels like he's always in the way; the child of the busy brilliant professor grows up feeling she isn't smart enough; the son of the angry alcoholic father feels that his father wouldn't drink if only he behaved himself; the boy whose mother gave up her career as a fashion model feels guilty because being pregnant with him ruined her figure; the girl whose mother is deaf feels unworthy because her mother can't hear her; the teenager in the ghetto feels like a burden because her father disappeared.
Self-Worth and Fear of Death
In some sense, feelings of unworthiness are tied to our very sense of survival. Psychologically, it works like this: If I'm a good and perfect child, my parents will love me. If they love me, they'll take care of me. If they take care of me, I'll survive and thrive and become all that I'm meant to be. On the other hand, if I'm not good enough, they won't love me, they won't take care of me, and I won't survive. I'll be so neglected, I'll die.
This is not an entirely irrational fear. When we're young, we are completely dependent on our adult caregivers for our very survival. Somewhere inside we know this. Quite naturally, we feel that we'd better measure up … or else.
In my case, for example, my infant fear was that because she was overwhelmed and overworked, my mother would forget to feed me, and I would starve to death. My friend Tom, the son of a raging alcoholic, was frequently beaten with any blunt object that was handy, and he legitimately felt that his life was in danger. And my friend Jane, who learned that her mother had tried to abort her, correctly sensed that at some point her mother had wished her dead.
Whether the danger is obvious, or merely implied, the bottom line of all this is that, psychologically, we believe we have to be lovable in order to survive. In this way, our sense of our own value is related to an unconscious fear of death. This is one of the reasons why, in adulthood, our own acts of not loving ourselves can feel so deeply violating. Each time we don't love ourselves, we are re-creating the unloved feeling we had as children. This make us feel once again as if our very lives are in danger. We're afraid we might treat ourselves so badly that we will die from the lack of our own self-love.
Your Life Theme
Everybody has a life theme, a significant psychological issue which they are working out in this life. Your life theme is created when a powerful emotional chord is struck in your childhood, and it is reinforced when similar events—events which carry the same emotional charge— reoccur throughout your life.
If, as an infant, you were left out screaming on the porch because your mother thought you'd grow up spoiled if you got attention every time you wanted it, you very likely experienced feelings of abandonment you couldn't put into words. It may have been years—many experiences or many relationships later—before you realized how deeply affected you were. But fast-forward a few years, when your boyfriend takes his third business trip in a month and then forgets your birthday and you “suddenly” feel like screaming because you feel so abandoned. When this happens, you are experiencing your life theme—abandonment—at work.
Your particular life theme may stem from the configuration of your family, the particular characteristics and limitations of your parents, the emotional dynamics between you and your siblings, or other circumstances of your life. But no matter what your theme, it will profoundly affect your sense of your own value and your capacity to love yourself.
Although each of us has our own personal variation, life themes fall into six broad categories, and generally, a single theme is most significant to your development. The major life themes are:
Neglect
Abandonment
Abuse
Rejection
Emotional Suffocation
Deprivation
Each of these themes has a powerful effect on how you feel about yourself. In childhood, as we have seen, it was the reason you thought you didn't deserve to be loved; in adulthood, it becomes the basis for your inability to love yourself.
Just as a life theme evolves over time, your sense of your own value is also incrementally created. Abuse by abuse, disappointment by disappointment, you create a self-concept based on your life theme and in time you will confirm your life theme by doing to yourself as an adult exactly the thing that was done to you as a child.
Your Life Theme and You: Cause and Effect
Perhaps you still haven't identified your own life theme. Or maybe it is so excruciatingly painful that you feel it's really all you know about yourself. Either way, it is intricately intertwined with the way you treat yourself now. Whatever your particular scenario, it's important to become acquainted with it now. For when you identify your life theme, realize how it affected you in the past, and notice how you tend to perpetuate it in the present, you begin the healing process that will allow you to learn to love yourself.
Neglect
Were you neglected, in terms of your physical, emotional, or spiritual care? Was your most