Lenten Journey: Aspects of Spirituality – Self-Esteem

So, I concluded my last entry by talking about the “shoulds” and the “shame” that keeps us from caring for ourselves and enjoying the re-creational activities that feed our spirit. That connects directly to another aspect of our spirituality – our self-esteem.

Self-esteem is basically how you view your self-worth. Oh, but self-esteem is a tricky little devil. There are so many aspects to how we come to our sense of self-worth.

First of all, there is the self-esteem that we derive from our families of origin, primarily our parents.

Growing up, there was a poster in my house with a poem written by a child psychologist named Dorothy Nolte who wrote:

If a child lives with criticism, he learns to condemn.

If a child lives with hostility, she learns to fight.

If a child lives with ridicule, he learns to be shy.

If a child lives with shame, she learns to feel guilty.

If a child lives with tolerance, she learns to be patient.

If a child lives with encouragement, he learns confidence.

If a child lives with praise, she learns to appreciate.

If a child lives with fairness, he learns justice.

If a child lives with security, she learns to have faith.

If a child lives with approval, he learns to like himself.

If a child lives with acceptance and friendship, they learn to find love in the world.

There are a lot of elements that come from our immediate family that build our self-esteem. Criticism, hostility, ridicule, and shame give rise to self-condemnation, aggression, insecurity, and shame. Encouragement, tolerance, praise, security, and approval all lead to a greater sense of security and self-worth.

However, if self-esteem started and ended at home, it would be simple. There is also the self-esteem that we develop from society and how society views our identity. Growing up, I saw positive images of myself everywhere I looked in our culture. There was even a tv series called Family Ties that felt like it was written by people who were following me around in high school. But, if you are not white and male, that script isn’t always so evident. Things are getting better but we’re not completely out of the woods of stereotypes as the pervasive image that other people see when they see themselves portrayed in the broader culture. It wasn’t so long ago that President Reagan used the stereotype of what he called “welfare queens” to earn votes. Suddenly, it didn’t matter if you were African American and wealthy or African American and poor. Everyone was suspect if they drove a decent car whether that was due to financial success or frugality.

There are also the societal reflections people get if they are part of a specially marginalized part of society. Women, people of color, folks on the LGBTQ continuum are used to seeing laws and practices that let them know how society views them. Whether women are being paid a percentage of what their male counterparts are paid, people of color are subject to archaic stereotypes, or transgender kids are being excluded from competing in sports with their self-understood gender (as if any child is going to change genders to get an advantage in a sport), society sends messages to different groups of people that tell them that they are not fully accepted in society.

Then, there is the self-esteem that is a product of our shame and secrets. When I was working as a chaplain in the treatment center, this was a significant component of self-esteem for many. Years of hiding their addiction was piled up with secrecy and deception and distortions that made reality blurry. As sobriety took hold, the damage to the self-esteem was like a tidal wave. The initial effects of addiction began to recede in the same way that the waves go out to sea. Suddenly, the sea returns with a vengeance as the waves gather with even greater strength than before. In the same way, the lies and the secrets seem to recede as recovery first takes hold and a person feels the relief of not having to keep the stories straight anymore. But then, the memory of all that deception comes crashing back on a person early in recovery.

Of course, you don’t have to be struggling with addiction to be harboring secrets, deceptions, and shame. Some of these secrets are truly our own. Actions that we took that we regret because they harmed another or because they simply ran contrary to our values as we hoped to live them out. And there are also secrets that we are holding for others either because we feel complicit in their secret or because we feel that to tell their secret would come at too great a cost to ourselves or others. So, we guard that secret at our own peril.

Finally, there is also self-esteem that we develop as a recipient of unconditional love. This is love that is offered without strings or expectations of a particular behavior or transactional reward.

“If a child lives with approval, they learn to like themselves.”

Similar to Carl Rogers Unconditional Positive Regard, unconditional love separates the soul of the person worthy of love from the actions that might otherwise be met with judgment and criticism. Taking the example of the person struggling with addiction, the person is loved without reservation even as the behaviors that are a product of addiction are judged. Lies, distortions, harmful actions can all be judged and boundaries can be set against those behaviors while simultaneously loving the person.

Many people have heard the verse from 1 Corinthians 13 where Paul says “Faith, Hope and Love abide but the greatest of these is Love.” You have probably heard it spoken at a wedding and so portions of it have almost lost their meaning because they have been recited so often. But think of it for a minute. Faith, Hope, and Love continue. Faith and Hope are powerful experiences. So, when Paul says “The greatest of these is Love,” he is making a very strong statement about just HOW powerful Love is.

So, while I have said a LOT about where our self-esteem comes from and how it is impacted by our experiences of the world around us, I haven’t explained WHY self-esteem is a part of your spirituality. Like so many things I have been talking about, it is both simple and complex.

Our self-esteem is deeply connected to our ability to love and trust others. When we don’t love and trust ourselves, we find it to be much more difficult to love and trust others. Without trust, it is hard to Give our Heart to something. When we don’t feel that we are worthy of love, it is difficult to give ourselves the gift of Re-creation. When we don’t love or trust ourselves, Rituals that bring us to greater consciousness are threatening. When we don’t love or trust ourselves, we tend to project our own criticisms of ourselves onto others which impacts our ability to have healthy relationships. And that is something I will discuss more about in my next reflection.

To love and trust yourself, you must love yourself unconditionally. One of the ways that we can develop this practice is to release ourselves from the condemnation that we feel from others, from society, but most of all from ourselves. If there is something that you have not released yourself from, what do you need to do to forgive yourself and focus on loving yourself as one who is INHERENTLY worthy of love?

First, you begin by separating your soul from your action. (Reread what I wrote on the difference between Shame and Guilt.) You are a person who made a mistake. You are NOT the mistake itself.

Second, as you release yourself from being attached to that action, consider the possibility of making amends with the person or persons who were harmed as the result of this action. Recall the AA step that says you must make amends unless to do so would cause further harm? We are not always able to achieve the catharsis of being forgiven by others so we must do what we can to make amends and forgive ourselves.

Finally, you reassert that you are inherently worthy of love. Love is more powerful than all of society’s condemnations or the criticisms from the voices that echo in your memory or any of your own judgments about yourself. You made a mistake because life is hard and bad choices are a part of life. But you are not those choices. You are a soul INHERENTLY worthy of Love.

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You are welcome to take this journey in solitude in your own personal journal or share your reflections. If anything that you do makes you think you might want to continue a journey using Spiritual Direction, now or in the future, you can make an appointment with me through my website: 

www.RedRocksSDC.com