How One's Self-Esteem Can Be Systematically Undermined

Some issues of bad self-esteem may not stem from one's childhood.

It seems to me a fairly easy task to write a best selling self-help book on a continent where so many people share the language, marketing techniques have been refinded to a rather aggressive art, and people want fast results and a guidebook for each area in life. A book with at least a similar kind of content would in my country at best provide an author with bread on the table for a year or two. Is it any wonder, then, that one of the greatest avenues for getting rich in America is through writing a self-help book? I guess I'm pretty much repeating myself here because I am so up to my ears with a lot of the self-righteous talk that you have to listen to a lot of the time. I apologize to those who are reading my complaints and feel pinned down and trust that you understand that I am not picking on individuals. I am just weary of dominanant tendencies that are obviuosly unhealthy. Anyway, let me explain a bit if I may. I apologize if I sound whiney today though.

A book is something you can avoid. People can indeed avoid my blog too! But you can't avoid the marketing and the people on the internet who are only trying to make fast money. I find that there's a vast amount of people on the internet who are energy vampires, sucking you empty in no time if you don't immediately block their access to you. It's heavy to make so many decisions about others every day. One has to guard oneself a little against a lot of imperative statements and demands. When I opened the book that made Eckhart Tolle famous on Oprah I read that you shouldn't watch TV. I put it down straight away. I can't deal with that sort of imperative talk anymore. And anyway, why not talk about the internet just as well? It's just as ambiguous in its virtues and vices. I never understood people who didn't have a natural instinct to get away from something when there's an overload. I get that with TV, the internet, food; even with the making of art. I did in fact hear in a documentary that 60-70% of all addicted people get over their addictions all by themselves, when the time is right. To put everyone in the same junkie bag is not fair, but society does love generalizations.

Psychotherapy is still mostly concerned with childhood traumas and finding the reasons why someone's self-esteem is low in adult age. I come from a dysfunctional background so I'm aware that there are areas in me that are weaker than others. In general my self-esteem has been fairly good, though. I went through a lot of training in various areas because I believed in myself. When I had entered adulthood I also became aware that I had a lot of trust in my intuition and possible higher aspects of myself that would guide me to make choices that would be beneficial to my growth. The occasional set back in the arena of relationships was easy to understand, but I figured my mistakes were showing me what wounds to heal.

However, something happened when I was granted disability and also went through a bad burn out. The relationship I entered nearly killed me off, and I'm not joking. I looked anorectic though I was eating properly at the time, simply because I was using so much excess energy trying to manage the relationship to a choleric boyfriend and his troubled pre-pubertal son. When it ended I knew I was in for a crash-down. The anxiety of having to move out of a home and a life-style that had after all provided me with a sense of security and pre-occupied my mind in order to move into a completely different form of living in the middle of a forest, was among the worst sensations I've ever had. I was literally going through wave upon wave of ice cold ripples of shock. I knew I was in for something really bad. And I was. I was a complete wreck; traumatized, burned out and trapped. This was four years ago.

I suddenly had no sense of basic security. The house I was and am still living in was a cheap cardboard box type of construction and the electric heating forced me to apply for money every month from the social security. I used to live in old sturdy apartmentbuildings with central heating. The new arrangment proved fatal in every way: I felt very insecure living close to the ground with big windows, which I was not used to, and the social security did everything in their might to undermine my sense of self-worth. The doctors treated me like a junkie because I had insomnia and someone on whom physical rehabilitation would be wasted because my condition can't be cured. All in all, there was no real help to be gotten other than some supportive talks with a specialist nurse about once a month. I can understand that some of my ancient insecurities resurfaced during this time period but I am also wondering how much damage was being made to me by my ex who pushed me beyond my abilities, the circumstances, and the people who treated me like a second rate citizen with no rights other than to breathe the air of this town on the South coast of Finland.

Many other things happened during this time that were not beneficial to me, for instance some pretty awful attempts at dating and an attempt to go back to my old relationship. At one point when I got an adsl line I started to renew the connection with my spiritual side by taking part in internet sites dedicated to people like me. But when The Secret came out and people started to go all crazy about the law of attraction, I was made into an easy target for their own insecurities. Let me recap; I had finished several educations through the mere force of my will despite the fact that I was chronically fatigued and in terrible pain. I had spent years and years writing a journal in which I was attempting to sort out my issues. I was really doing a good job in both areas. But once I came to this small town and had to obey to the laws of social security, I lost any means of getting out of a bad financial situation. I was trapped. Then along came all these pseudo-spiritual people with their great advice about manifesting all the health, success and money that you could possibly ever want. Most of these people actually came from America... In my naivité I didn't realize that I shouldn't ever have even breathed about problems. However, honest and straightforward about myself as I am, I did try and talk to people in order to see more alternatives and solutions to my issues. Some were understanding but many labeled me as one who likes to victimize herself. Honestly, don't we all feel a bit sorry for ourselves sometimes? Come on, have mercy - I am perhaps having one of those days today. Anyhow, any talk about how hard it really is to get out of the social trap that disability in this country puts you in, was to no avail. There were also some sneaky argument that basically made me feel more disempowered and guility. These people had no time and interest for understanding and compassion, since they were so busy justifying their own choices in favour of joy and money, and persuading others about how happy they were. In short, they demanded that I perform as if I had the abilities of a normal person.

The main rhetoric is that we are all co-creators of the universe and thus responsible for our own happiness: there is abundance in this world and any situation of poverty and suffering is merely the result of our own faulty thinking and a sense of not deserving anything better. This was no news to me at all; my thesis at the university was about this kind of New Age dogmas. The trouble was, I could not completely disagree because I could see the logic in what was being said. Unfortunately I also felt that for many of these people, science was only a great tool when it was supporting the quest for money and success and that many ancient truths had been neatly repacked and simplified for the busy modern individual. Oneness was and is a great concept but I didn't see how it could come into life in this sort of ruthless environment. Whoever came up with the guide for dummies? I bet there's a guide for dummies about the great Law of Attraction that simplifies what has already been simplified...

I have a busy mind that attempts to see many options. It's called being creative. With creativity, however, you usually get a volatile personality. The reason is that you need periods of introspection in order to allow the subconscious mind to re-evaluate things, and question current beliefs. When you look around yourself with a perceptive mind, you see quite a lot of things that are not right with the world the way it is today. It's funny that despite all the talk about the importance of co-creation and the assumption that creativity has an ontological status in this world, people don't seem to take charge of their lives in creative and unique ways but prefer following the stale dogmatics of the self-help books. I know very well that New Age people don't consider their belief-system a religion because their approach is universalist (i.e. it's that famous smorgasbord where you pick what you feel to pick). Technically speaking, there's plenty enough evidence that it does rely on a certain set of dogmas that makes it into one from the point of view of systematic science. Though I have been inspired by some parts of it and have had a lot to do with people who believe in reincarnation and constant self-assessment for greater personal growth just like me, something has always bothered me. I have no doubt that it's due to the movements reinforcment of tendencies that are noticable on all levels of life today, i.e. "me first" and "I want it now". Compassion is often rationalized into the more abstract and (paradoxically) distant concept of unconditional love, which many believe they own but don't seem to have access to when someone trods a different path and has a nerve to question these beliefs. I noticed when I was on these sites that people bothered very little with the definition of the semantics they were using and so people were talking on top of each other without any regard for the exact meaning of the words that were being used. When on the one hand people loved to use words such as "I love you" to great excess there were also elements that were clearly menacing. Each takes care of him or herself and if you miss the ascension boat, it's your own fault for not having worked hard enough towards it. I also gave an example of this in my last blog. I still wonder how someone who pretends to be a loving spirit can insinuate that "some people" (very possibly you, in other words) have succumbed to the dark forces and are in fact hampering the evolutionary shift towards a better world. The only thing one can do, according to them, is to pray by an altar that you create for this particular purpose. Unique advice, eh..?

What has become clear to me during my years online is anyway the fact that instead of building me up as one expected them to, these groupings have helped undermine my own sense of self and my self-esteem. Not that anyone meant to on purpose, of course... but there's ignorance and its ugly head. I know that this statement can be met by plenty enough arguments. For instance: I'm resisting, I am not practicing spirituality the way it should be done, I'm not following any self-help methods, I am not positive enough, I focus on problems instead of the solutions, I am not disciplined enough to change my attitudes, I don't allow myself to be alone in silence and develop more love of self and God, and so on. But you know what? I am bloody tired! I have worked very hard all my life to succeed, to be a better person, to take the blame or the responsibility for my misfortunes, to open up my energies, to take care of my health as much as possible despite the poverty, to declutter every area in my life, to express abundance in everything I do (and this I actually do spontaneously), to overcome my shyness and social anxiety... I have tried being lonely and I have tried being in relationships. If someone sends me yet another link to some revolutionary self-help method I shall scream! I just can't anymore... Please, just allow me a little normality at least. What have I honestly done to deserve a lonely life in confinement? Well, to be honest I don't think it's a question of whether I've deserved it or not.

Shit happens. I'm sorry this is another lament on life's shittyness... I am mostly venting and sharing, not asking for pity. Sure I've asked for help too. But I know it's wrong to ask to be saved by anyone, so I've got to keep it general. If anything has come recently, it's been too subtle for me to take notice. Last year was especially trying. Dark, confusing and exhausting in every way. I can't make sense of things the way I used to. There's an oppressive feeling in the air. Or is it just me? Yet good things happen to people all the time, regardless whether someone actively tries to manifest them or not. How can anyone really know for sure that their power of manifestation was so great that it brought certain things into their lives? Where's the absolute evidence? Maybe a certain person had it all in store on a karmic level, for instance. Maybe they were even genetically disposed to (haha). I know that I would be in quite a different position if I didn't have a condition that cannot be cured. I also know that I could feel worse and that I could sit here without a degree or a career as an artist unless I had struggled to overcome certain obstacles. I also know that my chances of getting out of my current situation are slim, because society does not support it in any way and I am now out of willpower and motivation to make more efforts. Let's not even talk about what the three months in Kansas last year did to me, let alone the tedious after-math that is still without closure. This guy is not sending me my things back and I am seriously worried about some art and some items that are true heirlooms and that I should never have brought there in the first place. Stupid me!

The other day I spent a little time on Twitter but I'm not sure I fit in though I've tried to mimimize the amount of people I follow and protect my updates from unwanted comments. I'm struggling to fit in but in fact what happens is the exact opposite, which is that I am losing self-confidence. Exposure is a good method when facing fears, yet what I wanted to say in this blog is that there are times when exposure induces fears and that maybe some of them are new ones. This is not a good time in history; it's one of extreme chaos, menace and self-absorption. Beware!

I was invited to a kindness party on Twitter. The subpersonality in me who wants to be accepted exclaimed, hey, how nice! But another part of me started to rebel. Why do I have to be kind because someone institutionalized a day for it? No, no, no, no. I wonder why anyone feels the need to ask people to be kind though. Do people really need to be told that? I liked the rhymeday better, however no one commented on my rhymes.

Here are some of my humble and rather silly contributions that nonetheless felt like fun:

My life would be empty without my cats, all of my clothes would be hollow, including my hats.

The love of my life, is absolutely Robin, without his attention, I'd be constantly sobbin'.

Marius, is my pain in the ass, but in a funny sort of way, he has charm and some class.

Beatrice is dainty, the queen of the lot; her attitude is sweet but rather cooler than hot.

My computer's attraction is bigger than life; but without it my life would be akin to a strife.

How often is a rhymeday; I'm curious to hear? I'm taking a liking, and getting rid of some fear!

I apologize for my rude intrusion as a stranger, but English makes my heart beat faster and my mind gallop like a wilderness ranger.

As intriguing as paradoxes may be, sometimes the issue is that we don't know our motives or what we really see!

Creativity is a flow; it can be high;it can be low; but it is eternally there, for it is all that there is and it is everywhere.

Just as I wrote nice things about my cat Robin he peed on the floor. I had thought he'd gotten over it. That drop of pee was like the last drop...

Please read more about self-esteem on this blog.

Artwork: "Dereclict House", digital photograph by author, all rights reserved 2008

When Self-Esteem is Wavering...

I woke up too early and the events of the past year were rushing by as my breathing became rushed as well. A weird gray host of shadows of the past are fleeting by, haunting me. I never really had an issue with self-esteem to speak of, but this morning I felt that something was about to tip over and that I was losing a certain innate dignity that I always had. On the one hand I've had to deal with a lot of pretty self-righteous and ignorant people, on the other hand I've had to listen to the New Age take on the law of attraction and the likely reasons I've been "unfortunate" in this regard. It's all more than I can deal with. I'm having self-doubts. I'm not saying this is the first time. But let's just say this has been a particularly bothersome year starting with the visit to the USA where I nearly married a man I didn't love! Followed by a line of people who let me down emotionally in a more excruciating way than I've ever experienced from half-strangers before. Coming onto me strongly with all their friendship, love and at times even wise words, as they claimed, from some higher source, and then getting really nasty because I didn't comply with their expectations or I wasn't interesting as a friend. And the waiting... for many things and people. But mostly I've waited for almost a year to get my stuff back from the USA and I am really worried about them since there are some real heirlooms among them. I said in my last blog that I don't "do" self-blame. I was wrong. I do blame myself for trusting that guy's eloquent promises and leaving such precious items in his care. Isn't all this enough to make a person doubt him or herself?

And maybe I'm getting old.

Christmas is becoming more and more of an arduous affair. Here in Scandinavia, some people go for it as it's an "excuse" to create a wonderfully cosy atmosphere and a silver edge on the cloud, but for most it is devoid of spiritual meaning and a stressful time dominated by commercialism that more and more people are choosing to avoid altogether. Strong memories are triggered by holidays and plague many - they haunt me too. Many have demanding family meetings that are more stressful than fun. For someone like me who doesn't have children, the whole undertaking is one that creates very mixed feelings. I love the candles and the glitter, and they don't even cost that much. But Christmas does tend to cost money that I don't have and the odd Christmas cards and gifts can create stress. Some kind of fir twigs as a stand in for a tree that we cannot afford has to be gotten so that one has something to hang the decorations on. The decorations are mostly things my mom picked while she was working in a Christmas decoration factory for a number of years, so many of you have balls that she tinted. Anyway... it's just getting more ridiculous with each year, and maybe the fact that we couldn't find any worthwhile stand-in for a tree this year was an indication that it's got to stop... I'm joking - I don't really mean that I see meaning in such things but who knows.

There seems to be too much to do and too little joy in the doing. Most of my adult life I've spent Christmas alone with my mother, which is fine since we do care for each other a lot. But I tend to get tired so easily and she loses her nerves. To try and keep a happy balance during this time becomes a task even when the "chores" have been reduced to an absolute minimum. Here in my country we celebrate Christmas Eve and so it tends to get a bit hurried and intense. The next day I mostly feel hollow. I always get some really great technical gift from my mother that is much needed but usually I don't have a joyful feeling about it until later when it comes to regular use. I feel guilty about not being able to show all my gratitude. Because at times I cry my eyes out when I think of the fact that my mother is the only person who has ever been truly supportive of me. I tell myself that I did my part when I was little, but I am not always so sure. Uh, did I just say I don't self-blame... We also share a belief in loyalty, and though at times it becomes a suffocating affair, in general it's something to feel proud of.

They do say that Christmas brings in especially strong energies so maybe that is another reason why it can be a mellow experience.

A lady I've been in touch with over the internet has a way of expressing herself that always resonates with me a lot. She wrote to me today about some observations regarding the incident with the other lady who came onto me very strongly about her guided messages to me (see my previous blog). I am clueless as how to deal with these incidents emotionally. I feel I will start to scream my head off if it ever happens again. I'm wrecking my brain as to why I attract these people but I truly think the main issue is that I am sometimes too intense in the way I express myself and that somehow I manage to use words that set off the alarm system in people who have a need to rescue others. The lady who wrote me today said things that I had observed for myself too, but she also added that apparently the one who wanted to rescue me cannot bear to witness suffering in other people. I have no doubt that she must have felt this very strongly, she did display a whole array of symptoms of great distress, hurt and desire to fix the "bad" although she herself denied it completely. I was thinking, how terrible it must be to feel that involved in everyone who is hurting! To me the spiritual lesson number one is to allow people to follow their crooked paths and not interfere other than with the utmost care and respect for the other person's will. I was wondering how anyone who claims to have seen the light can be ignorant of this sacred truth? But then again, the world is indeed full of people from every walk of life. What I need to do is to learn not to let these things bother me so much. It's easier said than done because one of the great lessons in my life has been a limited life in which I have to rely on the goodwill of other people to live a livable life. When I walked into the relationship that lasted a couple of years and then moved to this small town resort, things have been extremely difficult in this regard.

Am I only in a phase? Will things change? Is my weird role as a shadow-triggerer of real purpose or is it just whatever? I mean, I can understand that many who have a tendency to be Rescuers or Redeemers need people to "practice" on who actually refuse to be part of the constellation. If these people's souls are craving for lessons then surely I have a job to do? On the other hand I'm having to learn something too but other than the need to be more quiet about my occasional angst I'm not quite sure yet what the purpose is. I used to be so darn clever in analyzing my own faults and what I need to do in order to correct them, but I'm either too overwhelmed or tired or then it's just not something I need to do anymore. Who knows. I know that I am not alone in having had a particularly strenuous year. I personally could use some breathing space and happy events without any brooding undertones. They have promised "new beginnings" during 2009. Let's hope for those!

Artwork: "The Past Comes Crumbling Down", handmade collage by author, all rights reserved 2008