The experience of trauma can have a significant impact on your self-esteem. With significant trauma, you can begin to think of yourself as damaged. These thoughts impact your ability to relate openly to others, and so you begin to wonder how other people are seeing you. Usually, that evaluation is negative. And when that happens your self-esteem goes down; you have less self-esteem than you did before.
For a long time, mental health professionals have held on to the belief that self-esteem is a sign of ideal mental health. And yet, we are learning that there are some problems with all this emphasis on self-esteem.
For example, self-esteem seems to be an either-or concept. You have good self-esteem or bad self-esteem. But what makes the difference between the two? You are going through the day feeling good about yourself. Something negative happens, and now you feel bad about yourself. It seems to me that our emotional development is much more subtle and nuanced than that.
In my work with people who struggle with trauma, they will talk about having low self-esteem and wondering what contributes to that problem. But when I ask them what makes up their low self-esteem, it is hard for them to answer. They may say something vague about not liking themselves, but it doesn’t go much deeper than that.
Another problem with self-esteem is how it is externally based. Good or bad self-esteem is based on how we think others feel about us or evaluate us. It is also situationally based. Depending on how well we think we did a certain task or performed in a certain area of life, our self-esteem can go up or down.
In her book, Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, Kristen Neff offers a meaningful exercise that invites you to consider the fallible nature of self-esteem. She invites you to list up to ten aspects of yourself that play a significant role in your self-esteem—things that either make you feel good or bad about yourself. Some of these could be job performance, your role as a parent or partner, you weight or some other aspect of your physical appearance.
Ask yourself the following questions as they relate to each item, and consider whether your answers change how you think about things. Are there ways in which the trickster of self-esteem is leading you astray?
1. Do I want to feel better than others, or to feel connected?
2. Does my worth come from being special, or from being human?
3. Do I want to be perfect, or to be healthy?
Neff’s exercise invites you to look at yourself and the trauma you have experienced from the place of self-compassion instead of self-esteem.
To get a clearer picture of self-compassion, think about how you act towards someone with whom you are developing a friendship or connection. You offer them openness and acceptance. You offer them emotional warmth. You express a genuine interest in their lives. You are generous with your time. When they are going through a difficult time, you don’t offer criticism or judgment. Instead, you offer them support and comfort.
If you take all of these behaviors that you display quite naturally to others and imagine giving them to yourself, you a simple description of self-compassion.
Even with the presence of trauma in your life, can give yourself openness and acceptance? Can you be warm and tender towards yourself? Can you express a genuine interest and curiosity with all of your thoughts and feelings, instead of evaluating and judging them as good or bad, right or wrong? When you are going through a difficult time, can you refrain from being critical of yourself and give yourself support and comfort?
Neff offers another exercise that offers a simple way to express self-compassion. The next time you find yourself in the grip of negative thoughts and feelings from the trauma, see if you can offer yourself some positive feelings as well. You can use the following phrases when you’re stuck in negativity. These phrases can validate your feelings while also focusing on your desire to be happy:
It’s hard to feel (fill in the blank) right now.
Feeling (blank) is part of the human experience.
What can I do to make myself happier in this moment?
Each of these phrases expresses an important component of self-compassion.
The first phrase acknowledges the difficulty of having negative emotions. The second phrase is a reminder that negative emotions are a normal, natural part of being human, so they should not be judged. The third phrase helps connect with your desire to be happy. This may enable you to broaden your perspective, finding creative ways to reset your buttons. You may take a relaxing bath or consider what’s good about your present situation (there’s almost always something good in any given moment). And remember, these are not attempts to resist your negative frame of mind. Instead, you offer them to yourself because along with the difficult thoughts and feelings, you are connecting with that part of you that wants health and well-being.
These simple practices can open you up to healing and change, even in the presence of the thoughts and feelings of trauma. You can visit my trauma treatment specialty page to learn more.