Self Esteem: A Family Matter

How do you raise a child with high self-esteem and confidence when they tackle life's inevitable challenges? It begins with you, or maybe with your parents. Turns out, everybody has a cup for self esteem, and it can be empty, low, mid-range or high.

Family therapist Virginia Satir was an expert in training other therapists in the communications theory model of family therapy, and wrote the book Peoplemaking. Satir observed in her long career counseling families that people are likely to partner with someone who has a similar level of self-esteem. We are also most likely to raise our children to have the same level of self esteem that we have.

Be aware that your children are listening to your self-talk. If you make negative self-statements, your children are likely to absorb this role modeling. Someone with good self esteem makes mistakes and can take responsibility, learn from it and let it go. They don't verbally beat themselves up, saying "I'm so stupid" or "I'm fat", etc. You may want to pause and consider how you respond when you make a mistake or don't get something you wanted.

You may want to address your own self-esteem level if it is low. You can decide to have a family legacy of insecurity or low self-esteem stop with you, and not pass it on. You may want to imagine what you would be doing, how you would be behaving if your self-esteem were higher and challenge yourself to grow some.

Besides working on your own self-esteem, there are other ways you can help your children master higher self-esteem. Here are a few tips to get started:

1. Teach your child life skills that are age appropriate. Confidence is built by feeling capable of doing as much for yourself as you can. Even toddlers can be encouraged to pick up after playing with toys. Grade school children need some chores at home. I like middle school students to learn practical skills like cooking and laundry. Make sure both girls and boys get experience with inside and outside chores.

2. Encourage your child's developing of their hobbies and interests. Let them choose, rather than making it about your needs and unfulfilled leftover dreams. A well-developed set of interests outside of academics helps protect a child's self-esteem even when they have a difficult class or teacher that they are dealing with.

3. Help your child find a way that they like to get outside and get regular exercise. This will help their mood and give them a regular outlet to cope in a healthy way with the stress kids and teens feel, and build lasting strategies that will serve them well in college and as an adult.

4. Encourage your child's friendships. Make your home a place where friends can come over at all ages. Get to know their friends. Serve snacks. Developing friendships and social skills helps protect self-esteem.

5. Help your child develop boundaries and learn to voice their opinions appropriately. Family meetings once a week at dinner are a great place to practice.

6. Support your child develop their faith and spirituality. This aspect of self is grounding and will help when they are dealing with difficulty and disappointment.

7. Help your child learn to be grateful, and express appreciation to others.

8. Encourage your child to give back to others and contribute. Children and teens who learn to transcend selfishness end up having not only better college application essays, but more successful  relationships and self-esteem. You can volunteer together with your children at a food bank, or some other cause you care about.

9. Role model healthy relationships, and working through conflicts fairly.

People with higher self-esteem still encounter difficulty and disappointment, but they attribute the set-backs differently and don't see it as a never-ending pattern of defeat. You are your child's first and most important teacher when it comes to self-esteem. This is just one more way, if we choose to accept the challenge, that being a parent can be a growing experience for the parent as well as the child.

Difficult Conversations: Let's Be Honest and Direct

Things are so much less complicated and simpler if you are honest in your relationships. Don't wimp out by avoiding difficult but potentially healing conversations. By going direct, you talk with the right person who can potentially do something different in response to your concern. By being indirect and talking with a third party, you triangulate and make any relationship problem more difficult to solve.

In my counseling practice, I often see relationships get damaged when people break trust by not being brave enough to be honest and direct. All grown ups need to develop their courage enough to have difficult conversations that need to happen. While going direct can seem intimidating or scary, it usually works out with a better ending. Being direct, honest, and transparent with those you love makes you respect yourself more, and ultimately shows more care for the other person. It gives them a chance to do things differently with you and perhaps open up with more of their true feelings.

The poet Mark Nepo writes that when we aren't honest it is as if we put on gloves that separate us from the people and events in our life. There is something unnatural coming between us.

When is honesty and directness needed?

• When we are unhappy in a relationship, or feel our most important needs aren't being met.

• When we are hurt by someone's behavior who matters to us.

• When we feel we are being taken for granted.

• When we need to set a limits.

• When we need to do something different.

• When we feel disrespected or misunderstood.

By being honest, we allow the other person to help in making things better, more fun or upgraded between us. It is a shared responsibility to make a relationship vital, engaging and supportive. While it might be scary to be honest, it gives the other person the respect they deserve, a chance to improve things rather than be blind-sided, or just notice that you fade away. Relationships are dynamic and always changing and without healing conversations, the relationship can't grow.

We need to encourage our children to be brave, direct, and honest as well. Whenever possible, help  empower your child to role-play with you, and handle situations directly at school, with family or with friends as it is age appropriate. If you do it for them, they don't get to build their confidence in relationships.

Having the courage to go direct to the person that you have a problem with makes you grow stronger and more confident. As psychologist and writer Barbara De Angelis wrote, "Living with integrity means: not settling for less than what you deserve in your relationships. Asking for what you want and need from others. Speaking your truth, even though it might create conflict or tension. Behaving in ways that are in harmony with your personal values."

In your relationships, whenever possible, go direct and lead with honesty and your true feelings. Being able to master the ability to have difficult conversations with your partner, your parent, your sibling, your close friend or your child is a key skill for building deep lasting relationships. Avoiding difficult conversations causes relationship atrophy and short circuits your emotional growth. Be brave.

Owning Your Own Power

I see people give away too much of their own personal power. While I'm not interested in power over other people, I see it as highly desirable to exercise your own power over yourself and your own life choices.

Mastery of our own power seems difficult for most people, but especially challenging for women. As women, we are socialized with the feminine archetype of the all-sacrificing, demure, other-centered mother who puts herself last. Most young women have trouble developing their own voice within relationships, advocating for what they need and want in an assertive way.

It always shocks me to be treating a bright, educated, talented young woman who allows herself to be verbally abused or otherwise mistreated in a love relationship. Many other young women are in relationships where they are so grateful to be loved and accepted that they pack away and sublimate their own desires, goals, and interests. It's as if young women believe we have to make a bargain, and give away part of ourselves to be in intimate relationships. You shouldn't have to do that, but first you need someone to remind you that you need to be yourself in close relationships, or it's not the right relationship for you.

How do you empower yourself?

1. You ask yourself what would you REALLY be doing or wanting if you were not afraid. Don't operate out of fear.

2. You keep working on your own personal goals, even when you are in a relationship. This might include career goals, more education, volunteer service, making and maintaining friendships, financial health, physical fitness, learning new things, developing your interests and passions, cultivating your spirituality, traveling, or learning a new skill. Remember, whatever happens in your relationship, you are with you, either way! Keep making you interesting, and keep growing.

3. Give up blame.

4. Take responsibility for yourself, your attitude, your mistakes, and your part in things.

5. Get some support. Most people feel more courageous when they are encouraged. Build your own supportive community. Find a therapist who can help you identify how to build yours. Consider deepening your existing support system by joining a support group, a meetup group, a women's or men's group, a book club, or a religious or spiritual group.

6. Give up playing 'victim'. Don't use victim language. Don't hope for a rescue, make some plans and set some goals. Act like you believe in yourself.

7. Learn to negotiate, and do it at work as well as in your close relationships. You may not be able to get what you want, but how do you know unless you try? Many partners and supervisors respect you more if you advocate respectfully on your own behalf.

8. Say hello to 'NO'. Boundaries have to be set and maintained with other people. Having limits gets you respected. Your yes means nothing if you aren't free to say no. Don't be a doormat. They get walked on.

9. Show some confidence. This isn't the same thing as arrogance. It isn't boastful or prideful. Humble confidence means you respect yourself.

10. Focus less on what other people think of you. People pleasing is overrated and exhausting.

11. Appreciate your unique qualities.

12. Work on accepting yourself, and speaking kindly to yourself on the inside. The power of our internal dialogue is huge. Become aware of what your inner voice is saying to you all day, and upgrade that criticism to encouraging, supportive self-talk.

13. Speak up. Say what you think, want, and feel. If you don't, you are going to be underrepresented in the relationship, and over time you may grow to resent the other person.

14. Don't sign up for any long-term relationship with a person who devalues you, demeans you, doesn't care what you want, or doesn't feel you are just as important as they are.

Recently, when I was participating in a large women's collective discussion, I noticed the dramatic difference between those we were fearful, and those who, in the words of writer and vulnerability researcher Brene Brown, were "daring greatly". Only you can decide to be you, undiluted by life's events and disappointments, and striving for a bigger life. Only you can play you at full strength. Don't settle for anything less.

Being Your Authentic Self

This week, I got contacted by a writer/reporter for an online magazine for college students. She's working on an article based on her observations (and her college-age friends) about young women feeling pressure to "dumb themselves down" to attract a boyfriend. She asked for my comments on why young women do this, and how it might work out long-term. It really got me thinking.

As a mother to three smart college-age daughters, and a therapist and life coach to smart women of all ages, I find this trend deeply upsetting. As parents and mentors of young women, we need to encourage them to become their authentic selves. What is the point of trying to act differently than you actually are? It may lead you to attract and marry the wrong partner.

Developmentally, it's perfectly normal for both teens and 20-somethings to be exploring their identity. We need to try on different personas in order to figure out who we really are. Both men and women do this. The core, authentic self isn't finished forming until closer to age 30 for most people. This is why if you partner too early, it's anybody's guess whether you'll like who they become by 30 or 35, and the same is true for them. We are still maturing and changing dramatically in our 20s.

It's a difficult task all our lives to try to be our authentic self: honest, direct, healthy, and uniquely you.

There are special challenges that young women face in becoming themselves. In general, young women are harder on themselves than young men are. Young women feel a tremendous amount of pressure to look perfect, make peace with their body image, and not take things personally.

Studies in attribution theory show that throughout their lives, men often take credit for successes and blame situations or other people for failures. Women, in contrast, tend as a group to highlight the contributions of others for any successes, and tend to blame themselves more than men do for any failures.

I wish there was some way we could immunize the upcoming generation of young women with more confidence in themselves. As writer Gail Sheehy points out in her Passages books, most women don't grow fully into their confidence until their 40s or 50s. Wouldn't it be great if we could all empower the young women in our lives to be themselves? I'd like to see younger women focus less on who they think they need to be to attract a boyfriend, and more on the things that really matter: being your authentic self- happy, passionate about your life, and involved in things you care about. Women often try too hard, text too often, etc.

I love the combination of the qualities of confidence and humility. Arrogance and swagger gets boring and wears on you. Nobody likes know-it-alls. Genuineness is refreshing!

What about the dumbing yourself down thing? It's a bad idea. Being a bimbo isn't going to attract men that are keepers, who you can respect. Really good men aren't going to need you to dilute your intelligence or anything else. Be you, with confidence.

Finding Your Voice

It seems like the people who it is hardest to assert yourself with are always the ones closest to you ,and who you love the most. Growing up, many of us learn to please the adults around us who have power over our lives. While being sensitive to the feelings of others is an important quality, learning to speak up when it counts, or when someone close to you is out of line, is also essential.

Self-assertion is especially a challenge for many women, and for young women in particular. Carl Jung told us that in the second half of life, if all maturing goes well, men become softened and more gentle, while women become stronger and have more of a voice than they did earlier. In the growing up years, girls often are afraid to speak up or share their thoughts. The American Association of University Women(AAUW) published their landmark study on girls in the coeducational classroom, and how girls often participate less, and speak up less, in the presence of the opposite sex.

It is my great joy to work with my patients of all ages and both genders to help them develop their own voice. It takes a strong sense of self to learn to appropriately speak up at the right time, and in the right way. It is a great enhancement to your self-esteem to know how to do this, and you can feel successful and at peace with yourself to not be bullied or treated in a way that makes you feel disrespected.

Being positively assertive means standing up for yourself in such a way that you are honest with the other person about what you want, feel, or think. You don't shut down, distance, or stack your internal cupboard with resentment. That would be the passive approach, which enables the bully to keep up their bad behavior, makes you feel distant and like you are in the WRONG relationship, and gives the other person no boundary. Passive people enable bad behavior in others since they are afraid to ever stand up.

Being aggressive is going too far. It is being honest at the other persons' expense. Aggressive people rage at others, call names, and verbally bully others to get their own way. You might win the argument, but others will distance themselves from you emotionally because you are unfair and disrepectful to them. People who have done their own internal work on themselves, examined their lives, and are at peace with themselves, don't want or need to be aggressive or be around others with an aggressive style. It's exhausting, and like the movie 'Ghostbusters', it makes you feel you have been slimed.

So where do you need to positively assert yourself in your life? Is their a person at work or at home that makes you feel trampled? Or, perhaps you are someone who has been acting too controlling and aggressive with others, and you need to take inventory, make amends, and begin again, in a new way, with the people you care most about. This is a new week and a new beginning.

Girls and women, in particular, need to know that you can still be feminine and be positively assertive. It doesn't require you to be bossy, nasty, or mean. You don't have to be pushy or disagreeable. YOU JUST NEED TO BE ABLE TO SPEAK UP APPROPRIATELY WHEN THAT STILL, SMALL VOICE INSIDE OF YOU SAYS SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT.

Here are some of everybody's basic human rights in relationships:

1. The right to act in ways that promote your dignity ond self-respect, as long as you don't violate others' rights.

2. The right to be treated with respect.

3. The right to say no and not feel guilty.

4.The right to experience and express your own feelings.

5.The right to slow down and think.

6. The right to change your mind.

7. The right to ask for what you want.

8.The right to do less that what you are humanly capable of doing.

9.The right to ask for information.

10. The right to feel good about yourself.

11. The right to make mistakes, acknowledge, and learn from them.

12. The right to grow and change.

When you are positively assertive this week, see what happens. If it is a new behavior, like a new muscle you build up at the gym, it may be uncomfortable. Keep it up. It will get easier with practice. If you are assertive, it greatly enhances your chances of getting what you want. At the very least, you will build your confidence, be honest, and engender your respect and the respect of the people you are close to. You will find your voice, and that's a very good thing.