Posted by: Uticopa in self esteem, confidence on
Jul 14, 2009
There are times when many of us can feel particularly worthless, depressed, discouraged, sad and defeated. Life is hard.
The way to deal with it is to tell yourself how special and important you are.
Each of us is unique: some of our mental components are handed down to us by our genetic ancestors, others by what we have experienced in our own lifetime. Do you have any idea of some of the gifts you have within you? My guess is probably not or you wouldn't be feeling the way you are feeling. Indeed, when you are feeling better, who better than you could offer to assist others? You've been through the mill and therefore know exactly what others may be experiencing.
There are many instances in literature and history that show how individual vulnerability can turn to amazing, even heroic, feats in overcoming disaster. Think of Viktor Frankl who was able to find it even in the Nazi concentration camps. You can read his book "Man's Search for Meaning."
Think of the great love poets. To my mind, how could they have experienced so much intense emotions had they not experienced so much emotional pain? In fact many poems express this pain and many of the great poets themselves had mental health disorders.
There has been a tide of media interest in young people recently - from fathers at thirteen, to earlier and earlier sex-education in schools, to the cervical infections surrounding the tragic Jade Goody.
Sex is once again in the news, if ever it really left.
The sexual conduct of young people has long been vigorously debated, but what of the inevitable mental health issues that are caused by such behaviour?
All are agreed. 2008 was a terrible year. Woolworth's has gone, stock markets have crashed, house prices have collapsed and we're all a little poorer. To pile on the agony, it's making us feel old and ever more weary. Any one of these things is enough to send us into a spiral of depression leading to the very nadir of despair.
But help is at hand.
Hot off the presses is a book called ‘Pensioners in Paradis' by Olga Swan. It relates the story of how a couple reach that fork in the tree of life called retirement. They had lived their whole lives in the West Midlands - a place endemic with self-deprecation, pessimism and laconicism. And then disaster struck. Read what the Connexion, a national newspaper in France, had to say when they reviewed the book in December:
Work on your Confidence and Self Esteem
Having good self-esteem provides a robust support system that enables you to deal well with day-to-day problems that can otherwise have a negative and in some cases detrimental effect on your emotional and physical health. Confidence and self esteem is something that you can work on and there are number of therapy and life coaching techniques that can help with that.
Make sure your expectations are realistic
Your expectations and judgement of a situation are very important when trying to create a healthy outlook and perception of any given situation. In psychology it is called ‘appraisals'. Situations such as ‘long queue at the Post Office' or a ‘traffic jam' aren't a problem unless you perceive them as such. When your appraisals are realistic, then you will be able to respond to daily challenges better and keep a sense of perspective.
Irrational Belief Systems
The ‘appraisals' you make come from your long formed belief system. If you have rigid and unrealistic belief system, then your judgement might not be suitable for the given situation. An indicator of the rigid belief system is when you often use ‘musts' and ‘shoulds' or ‘have tos', stressing importance of perfection, which is often difficult or impossible to accomplish (especially if your idea of perfection is distorted). 'I must be looking immaculate all the time' or ‘I always have to be liked by people around me'.
