Recovery is a two-step process!
FIRST STEP!
When our self-esteem is low, it’s because we’ve been living with others who don’t understand how life works.
They caused us to hurt!
They expected behavior from us that was impossible in real life!
To please them, we needed to abandon the connections to our own feelings, instincts, needs, and inner strength.
As we can appreciate now, even that wasn’t enough.
Once we have lost connection with our inner life though, our opinion of others will be wrong as well!
That won’t be our fault. It just happens.
We will be expecting behavior from others that we have no right to expect.
In this condition, we are not going to get the Support of the very people we need.
We need the support from people who feel powerful and confident.
But they will avoid us for their own protection if we don’t understand real life!
Support from others that are without self-esteem is of absolutely no help to us! They won’t support our strength. They will support our obedience!
If we are to recover our self-esteem, we will need Strong people and therefore have to change our expectations of others to match their more accurate viewpoint.
If we’re not willing to do that, we must settle for low self-esteem!
That’s because our self-esteem is critically dependent on the approval of others!
It always will be!
Approval from others can take our feelings from absolutely wonderful to wishing to take our own life.
HOW LIFE WORKS
Our attitude and behavior will need to match that of someone still possessing inner power and confidence.
Our opinion of others must be reset to its original condition.
LIFE
Life is designed to find its own way, surviving through its own determination and will.
It is incapable of being obedient!
Life should never have to be obedient!
Strength always wins. Health wins. It is never malicious, if healthy.
From the moment of conception, life knows what it is doing! It’s self-driven.
PEOPLE
From the moment of conception, infants know what they need. They can feel it. They live their identity and enjoy the power of their instincts and inner strength.
In this condition they are not only as healthy as they can possibly be, but also loving, compassionate, trusting, completely open with their feelings, and ready to do absolutely anything for others, even at the cost of their own lives.
Their need is to be respected and valued for all that they are.
If we can support all of that, we get the most wonderful, loving, honorable, and loyal human that can exist.
We need to relearn how to see others in that way!
Someone else’s self-esteem will get crushed if we can’t!
OUR OPINION OF OTHERS
We are fellow travelers in life, not overseers!
We become authoritative only after becoming hurt and isolated.
Our job is to recover, not to destroy everything around us!
STRONG AND CONFIDENT!
If, and when we can see others in this light, we have removed the strongest barriers to our own recovery!
Our next job is to reveal everything that we are once again!
SECOND STEP!
It will probably come as no surprise to us that we conceal most of who we really are!
This is our only remaining barrier to the recovery of our importance and power!
SUPPORT!
We cannot succeed at this without the support of others who see life as it really is!
They must be capable of seeing us as independent, and satisfactory just as we really are, and approving of us in that condition!
If they can’t do that, we can’t recover!
We need approval for all that we really are! That is critical!
We must find those capable of doing that!
Whether we find those people in therapy or socially does not matter!
We need both those people and the courage to reveal everything that we are!
We do that one step at a time, revealing our secrets. Each step will be filled with bad feelings and memories.
We didn’t give up connection with our inner life easily. We went down hard, crying at first, and hurting all the way.
The way back will include this hurt.
Fortunately, under these conditions, the need to hide anything at all has completely vanished!
The results are real life! This is feeling good!
We can return ourselves to the way we felt in our infancy!
We can return ourselves to the way all other life feels!
Thanks for listening.
This post is part of https://clarity-of-innocence.com It may yet get a few revisions to make things clearer.
Good luck on your own journey.
Take care,
Norm Cormier
The post How can we become strong and confident again? first appeared on Clarity of Innocence.
