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Breaking the cycle of Low Self-Esteem
by Frances Loftiss CarrollE-mail: cauthor1941@yahoo.com
Self-esteem is something you acquire from those people who were your care givers, those who were suppose to love you and raise you and help mold you into the first person everybody sees and recognizes as who you are. They are the people who give to shape your character and help build the image you see of yourself as you grow and mature. These people can give you with an image of self-worth or cause you to waver and make you feel utterly worthless. They can cause you to have low esteem and they are your character breakers. They are tucked away in a corner of your thought process and whatever image they painted of you is likely the way you see yourself. They seemingly wander in and out of your life from early childhood all through your adult years and sometimes into old age. Even though they may die they never really die because the impressions they have made are stamped upon your soul.
I’ve looked back over sixty-five years of life and questioned why some children are targeted to be the “one’s” badgered and beaten down in the family. Many families, maybe even yours, have horrible family secrets and some of us still haven’t faced up to abuse within our homes. In my own family, my brother, claims he was always treated with love by the abusive parent that beat me down. On the other hand, I seem to have been the one she selected to be crushed by verbal abuse. Yes, “selected”, I say this because they know how to pick their victims. They know who the fragile family members are and who is most likely to be cave in under their overbearing spirit. And make no mistake about it anyone who abuses another person in any way is seeking to control that person’s mind, thoughts and actions. I was younger than my brother, he was 8 yrs. older than I and knew how to throw off insults, cursing, put downs, screaming, and all the other stuff that goes with abuse. Or did he? He seems to be still dealing with childhood issues he won’t talk about and so he remains a closed book. Contact with him is practically non-existent.
As I share with you at this moment in time my brother remains angry and says that my mother just couldn’t have done the things I say she did. But she did! I don’t know when it began but from the things I see now I think it all began before I was ever born. Mother fell off a chair one day and I was born two months early with little hope to survive. It caused a hardship on the family. The doctor’s said, “Go ahead and take her home she’s going to die anyway.” That was in 1941.
Time and time again mother would say to me that she wished I had died. I was, after all, “a mistake.” I shouldn’t have happened. I recognize now that mother always picked the times that she targeted me with her abusive behavior. That is one of the methods used by those who attack others, choose your moment and then go for the kill. She made sure we were alone, and there were no witnesses to hear what she said.
When I was 8 years old my twelve-year old sister died. I can’t suppose what that must have done to my parents but I do know mother was never the same again. The insults picked up after sister’s death. Over and over again I heard, “I wish it were you. You’re stupid. You can’t do anything, ______ was so sweet and good and just look at you.” Folks that is just down right cruel and wrong.
“Your sister was so smart and you are so dumb. Your sister could sing like an angel and play the piano by ear” and all you do is want to climb trees and hide.” Of course I wanted to hide. Wouldn’t you?
Can you see where a person can get a low self-esteem from having rubbish like that pounded in their head for years and years? Well it didn’t improve when I got married, co-dependent character that I have. I managed to find a man who was sweet and charming to other folks and always making fun and laughing with others but at home it was awful. He would give me cunning put downs and abuse me verbally. Should we have a dispute he would say, “You can’t even fight with me intelligently, I’m so much smarter than you are.” Or even worse “ You’re no challenge to me because I can out think and out do you in anything you do.” He was nice enough to tell me that I was good at one thing though and that was being a good mother.
I determined when I became a mom and I saw myself drudging up that same cruel behavior that time had come to break the cycle of abuse. It was time to draw a line in the sand and to break the pattern of devastate character and tearing apart another person knowing it could crush their characters. I wanted them to have a better life than I have had and so I turned to the Lord and plead for help in destroying the cycle of abuse; and it happened.
God taught me that if I were to love as He has loved me then I must adjust my thinking about who I am and who He is in my life and my decision making process. I began reading the Scriptures more and more. I would get up at four in the morning and start praying for my children, my marriage, home and life. And, God blessed those prayer requests.
I found that in looking outside of myself and looking at the Lord that I have found meaning and worth. That is the only place to find those things, in God. The Scriptures have so much to say about God’s love and our association with Him as His children. I learned that much like I had done to most of the people in my life that I had pushed God away too. I felt that I couldn’t live up to what He would want of me in my lifetime so I ran away from knowing God until I ran right into His loving arms. And then I began to understand part of the reason I didn’t have much self-esteem, it was because the Lord was not personal and real to me. I was a lukewarm Christian.
I saw that the Lord has been waiting a very long time for me to open my eyes and comprehend what being a Christian is really all about. Yeah, I believed. I had
even confessed my sins. I had acknowledged the understanding of salvation in the way I realized it but now I recognized there is more than saying you are a Christian and that is really living like a Christian.
Being a Christian means our lives must be different. We can’t continue to straddle the line between living like an unbeliever and still walk in the light of Christ. It can’t be done. Change is necessary and that means I have to think and behave differently. The “old me” died when I became a follower of Christ. The apostle Paul says we are a “new creation” so that means we have to start learning God’s ways and set aside all that nasty, rotten stuff that had hold us before we came to a belief in Jesus Christ as our savior, our Lord, and our King. I quit playing games with God. I got real with God and He had mercy on me.
Let me say here friends this has taken years and I am at last beginning to live committed to Christ realizing He is my basis for worth. Developing a new point of view on life and our perspectives and realizing God is the ONLY one who can handle these things gives life greater meaning. Recognizing that God is remolding us, making us into useable vessels to serve Him carries a conscientiousness to seek God’s point of view over my own selfish desires.
Because what God has for us is far better than any life we could have had before we knew Him we should walk nearer to the footprints of Jesus. We have to really understand that God wants to take all those unconstructive things we were and turn them into positive issues usable to God. When we have God at work in us in life touching encounters we can say to others --- “Let me tell you what God has done for me”.
This is our true Christian witness and what being a Christian is about; God working to eliminate the ugly and change us into something beautiful.
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