Acquired Brain Injury — In Pursuit of Self-Esteem Part 1
Posted by secondchancetolive on November 5, 2009
Hello and welcome back to Second Chance to Live. I am happy to see that you decided to stop by to visit with me. In the past several days I have been thinking about the topic of self-esteem. Last night I attended a meeting and the topic of self-esteem was tabled for discussion. As I listened, reflected and thought about my own experience I realized that several key components had played a significant role in my pursuit of self-esteem. Performance and relationships.
My drive to be accepted by people to define my worth and value as a person dominated my behavior for many years. In the process, I discarded parts of myself in an attempt to be OK with other people and myself. In actuality, I was driven by the notion that I needed to make you OK with me, so that I knew you and I were OK , before I could hope to be ok with myself. This behavior manifested itself in all my relationships and in the process undermined my ability to be at peace with myself.
In the process I traded my opinion for the opinion of the people. The consequence of such behavior left me in a spiritual and emotional disarray. In the process I traded serenity for the hope of creating peace between other people and myself so that I could have peace with myself.
Through my process I began to realize that I had become dependent upon the moods of other people. In my dependence I strove through performance to “fix” other people in an attempt to garnish self-esteem. As a traumatic brain injury survivor with an invisible disability I became a convenient scapegoat for other people’s irritability and discontent. Consequently, in my attempt to compensate for my invisible deficits and limitation as well as my low or non existent-self-esteem I strove all the more in an attempt to achieve my self-esteem.
Through my process I discovered that by attempting to garnish my self-esteem from other people I set myself up to have low self-esteem and self-worth. I discovered that I had willingly given my self-esteem and self-worth into the hands of people over which I could not control and over which I could not “fix”.
Please read Part 2 and Part 3 for context. Thank you.
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