Recently I complimented a young lady at work, and she started saying that she didn’t feel beautiful at all, that her friends were much cuter and that she’s always had low self-esteem. Someone else was close to us and she joined the conversation saying the same thing.
I understand a lot about low self-esteem. As I was growing up, I had curly brown hair and freckles. I dreamed of waking up one day with straight and brunette hairstyle. That was before flat iron hair tools, so I would wrap my hair around my head, and it would make it straight for a while, but not too long. It didn’t help it that when I was in first grade, older kids were singing a bad hair song every time I passed by, or that I didn’t know what to do with the curly hair. In addition, I always enjoyed sun bathing, which increased the number of freckles I had. Since there weren’t many people around with freckles, except in my family, I dreamed that someday I would have so many freckles they will join together and I’ll have a brown skin color and no freckles. I still remember when I was at school in 5th grade, and a boy asked me if I was really this ugly or if I had eaten a frog. Not a great self-esteem booster, is it?
I never knew that all of the feedback I received was a confirmation of how I felt in the inside, probably until adulthood. When young adults start telling me that they have low self-esteem I wonder what brought them there. How did they grow up? What was said to them that confirmed their beliefs?
We didn’t have much time to talk about it, but I did talk to them about the importance of loving and accepting oneself, of understanding who they are and of appreciating and accepting who they are every day of their lives. That’s the only way to see themselves differently and to help others see them as they are as well. A few affirmations I’ve used have been: I love myself, I accept myself, I’m here for myself, I acknowledge my talents and gifts, and continuing towards I’m beautiful, or looking in the mirror and saying You are beautiful. If you are next to me and there is a mirror around, you may hear me saying “linda” to myself, it’s been quite some time since I would have to wait to hear it from others.
You can do a scan within yourself to see what you don’t like about yourself, and start embracing it and all parts of yourself. The book The Seeker’s Guide by Elizabeth Lesser, has a great body meditation in which you appreciate and thank each and every part of your body as is, and it’s very powerful.
As for my curly hair, with age, it stopped being so curly and I totally miss the curls. I learned how to take care of it, the comb that works best, the organic shampoos that keep them healthy, and the natural leave in that makes it shine. As for the freckles, a few years ago, I went to see a dermatologist, and he spent 5 minutes talking about the reason I was there, and 15 minutes showing me a PPT presentation of how he could reduce my freckles or remove them. I ran out of there as fast as I could and never looked back. If he had been in my life 30 years earlier, my reaction may have been different. But today I embrace my freckles, and it’s a reminder that I earned every one of them by doing something I truly love: sun bathing, swimming, being at the beach.
How can we help children and young adults to understand and love who they are today, so that they don’t need to take 20, 30, 40 years or all their lives feeling less than? What are your thoughts, traumas, suggestions?
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