Low self–esteem is at the root of behaviors which make your life feel unproductive or unmanageable. The purpose of the twelve–step recovery program of Self–Esteem Seekers Anonymous (the SEA's program) is to assist you to get life under self–control so as to feel more productive and successful.

Developing chronic low self–esteem takes time. It takes a series of events and a chain of habitual behaviors to dampen the sense of personal worth.

For this reason the first step of SEA's requires that you accept a slow, steady program of recovery to overcome the low self–esteem which has resulted from your home, school, work, and social life.

The SEA's program does not dwell on the sources of low self–esteem except to identify the irrational beliefs, repressed or denied feelings, and unhealthy relationships which contributed to it.

What is more important in the SEA's program of recovery is for you to identify the negative impact of low self–esteem which has resulted in your feelings of being out of control, unproductive, and a loser in life.

What follows is the description of the negative impact of low self–esteem. To assist your understanding, use the flow chart in Figure 1 as you read this description.

Figure 1 - Impact of Low Self-Esteem [see source article]

Low self–esteem has its roots in a number of life circumstances. If you come from a family of origin where your mom and/or dad had problems with: alcohol; drugs; mental illness; inability to show warmth and affection; being overly critical; rigidity of religious belief; workaholism, then in all likelihood your self–esteem suffered.

If you were physically, emotionally, verbally, or sexually abused or neglected by: a parent; a brother or sister; an adult caregiver; your spouse or lover, or friend, your self–esteem was lowered.

If, in a relationship with a parent, a family member or spouse, you worked hard to overcome the other person's irresponsibility and yet no matter what you did it was "never good enough' to fix the other person's problems, this `"codependent' relationship negatively affected your self–esteem.

If, on the other hand, you were dependent on another person to make things right for you, your self–esteem was also hurt. If you were ever in a relationship at home, school, work or in the community which was disastrous and marked by ill feelings and bad will, your self–esteem was impacted negatively.

If you or a close family member have a developmental disability or chronic illness, your self–esteem was lowered. If you have ever experienced a personal failure such as failing a grade; dropping out of school; losing a job; bankruptcy, or divorce, your self–esteem suffered and was lowered. The origin of low self–esteem is more fully explored in Laying the Foundation.

These sources helped to distort your thinking, emotions and actions, resulting in lowered self–esteem. Your thinking was affected by irrational beliefs not founded in reality but motivated by the need to induce guilt, fear, mistrust, insecurity, and manipulation.

This thinking led you to believe that no matter what you did in life it would "never be good enough.' This thinking led you to believe that you were nothing unless you "did something.' This thinking did not allow you to love yourself unconditionally for just being the person that you are.

The concept of irrational thinking is covered in Tools for Personal Growth, Handling Irrational Beliefs, and Self–Affirmations. Irrational thinking led you to develop negative self–scripts which keep your self–esteem lowered and make you feel bad about yourself.

Your emotions and feelings were distorted by the sources of low self–esteem because you were not allowed to express feelings in a "normal' healthy way. You were expected to always "look good' in the public eye and not express anything negative.

You were not encouraged to be overly expressive if you had happy or positive feelings. If you spoke up and conflict followed, you soon learned to keep the peace and avoid conflict by keeping your feelings to yourself. The repression and denial of feelings have made it difficult for you to identify your true feelings today.

Another problem could be that your feelings are only expressed in exaggerated or explosive ways. Distorted feelings, be they repressed, denied, exaggerated or explosive, result in depression, a common feeling experienced by people with low self–esteem.

The issue of distorted feelings is covered in the: Tools for Personal Growth, Tools for Communications, and Tools for Anger Work–Out.

Distorted actions and behaviors resulted from the distortion of thinking and emotions derived from low self–esteem. These behaviors resulted in unhealthy and unproductive home, school, work, or social relationships. These behaviors taxed you so much that many of your relationships were void of health, stagnated, or dissolved.

Examples of these behaviors are need for approval, fear of rejection, avoidance of conflict, lack of assertiveness, poor problem solving, inability to develop intimacy, and overuse of power and control. The distortion of behaviors is covered in these books: Tools for Relationships and Tools for Handling Control Issues.

The end result of distorted thinking, feelings, and behaviors was low self–esteem which resulted in the development of a personal behavioral pattern or role, we call old unhealthy personality traits. These old unhealthy personality traits are compulsively driven ways of acting learned in family of origin, school, work, socially, or in the community.

You can have just one of these nine patterns or a blend of them. You could have one pattern as a child, another one as an adolescent, and one or more different patterns as an adult. The nine behavioral patterns are: looking good; acting out; pulling in; entertaining; enabling; troubled person; people pleasing; rescuing; and nonfeeling.

These personality traits are explained in greater depth in Laying the Foundation. These unhealthy personality traits are the basis for your personality make–up. They unfortunately contribute to your lowered self–esteem. In recovery the goal is to retain the positive and healthy aspects of the behavioral pattern and convert or eliminate the negative and unhealthy ones.

Directly related to these nine personality traits emanating from low self–esteem are seven negative behavioral consequences: unresolved loss and grief issues; self–destructive behaviors; problems with control; unresolved anger; faulty communications; personal adjustment problems, and interpersonal relationship problems.

Each of these seven problem areas not only results from low self–esteem but contributes to low self–esteem in its own way and to your compulsively driven, unhealthy personality traits.

Unresolved loss and grief occurs when you repress or deny feelings. Because of low self–esteem and the need to "look good' for others, you may have never gone through the wrenching emotional response to: a death of a loved one; a lost relationship; a failure experience; the inappropriate way you were treated by others, or your nagging doubts about the quality and success of your life.

The loss and grief response is addressed in Tools for Handling Loss. The void in your life created by the lack of accepting and letting go of the loss may have created emotional barriers which affected your thinking, feelings, and behaviors resulting in lowered self–esteem.

Self–destructive behaviors both contribute to and are the result of low self–esteem.

A complete list of self–destructive behaviors is contained in Tools for Anger Work–Out, "Self–Destructive Behaviors.' A complete review of the self–destructive pattern and ways to remediate it are contained in the SEA's Tools for a Recovery Lifestyle, 

Many self–destructive behaviors such as overuse of: alcohol; drugs; food; gambling, or sex need specific and direct help to overcome the addiction. These behaviors can leave a devastating impact on your home, work, and social life. They are often only the visible symptom of the bigger problems emanating from your low self–esteem.

These behaviors require a lot of energy, persistence, and self–love to overcome. It is almost impossible to eliminate these behaviors unless you fall in love with yourself, forgive yourself for your past self–negating behaviors, and enhance your self–esteem.

Problems in handling control is a direct result of low self–esteem.

In order to keep your sanity, you may have tried to over–control people, events, and circumstances. On the other hand, you may have found greater acceptance for yourself by being helpless and dependent on others. In either case, these control behaviors were unhealthy and negatively affected your self–esteem.

The road to recovery emphasizes letting go of the uncontrollables and unchangeables. It also emphasizes taking self–control over your thinking, feelings, and behaviors so that you assume personal responsibility for yourself and enhance your self–esteem. The control issues are explored in Tools for Handling Control Issues.

Anger is a healthy emotion which gets distorted as a result of low self–esteem. You may have beliefs which block your expression of anger leading you to be depressed.

Or your anger is so hostile and explosive that it hurts others. You may have denied anger so much that just the thought of getting angry scares you. Because unresolved anger contributes to a faulty belief system, inadequate emotional life and unhealthy behaviors, it contributes to the lowering of your self–esteem.

Anger work–out, which is vented on inanimate objects, doing no harm to any person or thing, is a way to regain an emotional balance, gain emotional energy, and free yourself up to love and enjoy yourself. Coverage of anger issues is contained in Tools for Anger Work–Out.

Faulty communications arise as a result of having received faulty communications role modeling in the past. Your inability to express feelings openly was due to low self–esteem.

The ability to listen to others and reflect back their feelings was also a missing skill. These faulty communications resulted in poor problem solving with a sense of failure and lowered self–esteem. In order to gain new skills at communication, you need new role models of healthy interaction.

You will need to learn to focus on feelings rather than the content of what is being said by another person. An overview of a model for healthy communication is presented in Tools for Communications.

Your personal adjustment is affected by low self–esteem because you lack the self–confidence to believe in your own abilities and worth. As a result you have either worked harder to prove yourself or you have given up to a sense of failure.

Because of your low self–esteem, you have sabotaged your own efforts to be successful in life. You may have problems dealing with stress and burnout and don't know how to relax and have fun.

You may have severe insecurity and lack of trust in self which inhibit your ability to take a risk. You may find yourself going in circles with no way out of lowered self–esteem.

Negative self–scripts may have you captive in a lack of belief in and hatred of self. Self–affirmation and changing old behavioral scripts not only leads to enhanced self–esteem but also to the ability to accept personal responsibility for a healthy self. Personal adjustment issues are discussed in Tools for Personal Growth.

Relationship problems at home, school, work, socially, and in the community result from low self–esteem. These unproductive and unhealthy relationships contribute to the lowering of self–esteem.

Low self–esteem is often the root cause of failure of most relationships. It takes two people to make a relationship work and it takes two people to ruin it. Both parties in a relationship need to have healthy self–esteem in order for the relationship to be healthy. If they do not, then the relationship has barriers to its growth and productivity.

People with low self–esteem seem to seek out others with low self–esteem to establish personal, work, or social relationships. These relationships start out on a fragile foundation which often results in disastrous consequences.

As you work at loving yourself unconditionally and building confidence in your ability to sustain healthy relationships, then you will attract healthy parties in your personal, work, and social life. Interpersonal relationship issues are addressed in: Tools for Relationships and Tools for Handling Control Issues.

Low self–esteem has its origin in dysfunctional environments and other disastrous relationships. These negative situations distorted your thinking, feeling, and behaviors which resulted in low self–esteem.

As a result you develop an unhealthy personality traits which exacerbated your low self–esteem. You then experienced unresolved loss, grief, self–destructive behaviors, control issues, unresolved anger, faulty communications, personal adjustment problems, and interpersonal relationship problems.

These problems not only resulted from low self–esteem but also contributed to it. Low self–esteem has had a major impact on your life and stands as a barrier to your current personal health, serenity, and happiness.

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Source page with figure & links:
http://www.coping.org/selfesteem/model.htm