We lack compassion for ourselves....

This. All of this. Only I was lazy if I didn't get a childhood job and buy what I wanted. What kind of job do you get when you're 7 and live in the boondocks? There wasn't even anyone for me to sell lemonade to! My little kid brain puzzled this one for a while.

Same here ... if ya figure this one out let me know.

As you said ... maybe it's a form of self harm. Self destruction. Self hatred. First one to figure it out tells the other one, deal?

Maybe we feel that we should be punished just for existing?

Being here, on this planet, takes up space. We breathe air that (logically) another should have. We use resources that someone else is more deserving of.

I think, for me, that the only way I can prove myself worthy of being here is by (maybe and hopefully) having a positive impact, in any capacity, on another human being. Or, on the very bad days, just keep to myself so that I don't disturb the outside world.

How many of you suffer greatly if you think you said the "wrong" thing, or did the "wrong" thing. How many of you prefer to disappear into the background out of a fear of making a mistake?

Your writing, your thoughts consistently have a positive impact on me.

I used to feel this way very much. That was due to my mother, who often throughout childhood would scream at me and/or shame me if I did or said a "wrong" thing. I learned to keep very quiet at home, especially if she had been drinking to excess (which was daily).

Therapy has helped me improve a great deal in this regard. I need to keep working on it though.

i almost always wish i was invisible, or simply not here. I like to do anonymous kind acts for both ppl i know and random strangers, but never myself.

I worry about mistakes all the time, i think I have to be perfect in everything I do. And i'm so unsure of myself nowadays, so no confident that I'm capable of doing the right thing right now that I am withdrawing from everything, which is hurting personal relationships, my business, everything. I worry if I'm subconsciously destroying those things in my life so i HAVE to start over. Maybe i think i can Big Bang my way out of this.

My case and perhaps you feel it too, is the feeling that you don't deserve happiness or anything good.

Great point and too true.

Maybe we give ourselves compassion vicariously through so many who are suffering the same fate.

Definitely true for me. I'm far more gentle towards others than I am towards myself. Way too hard on myself. I feel often that even my best isn't good enough. Never really learned how to give myself much credit. Yet I continuously try to encourage others to believe in themselves and their dreams - to not be too hard on themselves. I guess I don't want them to feel the way I have felt pretty much all my life. I want them to know they are good enough even if I may never think I am.

THIS. Every word of it. By the second paragraph, I couldn't see for sobbing.

It is cathartic just reading/knowing I am not alone in these feelings. I so appreciate all your responses.

Yep, you nailed it lotus. I want to know "why" I am like this (I always ask "why", about everything, hence my user name). But i wonder if I wouldn't be better off trying to just accept that I am and just go forward from here. Instead of rooting around in my past with my T to bring up possible causes/origins. But the wanting to know "why" is so ingrained into me, I may be my own worst enemy in that sense.

I would say that depression and low self-esteem (funny....I never really thought about that word too much until now...'esteem of ourselves')....I would say that they are unquestionably connected.

Maybe not everyone with depression has low self-esteem, but I'm willing to bet that a great deal of those people who can't think well of themselves will suffer from depression at some point in their lives (if they don't already.)

All I have discovered about improving self-esteem is for me to look at what I do well. I think we all have something that we do well that hasn't been eaten away by the acidity of parental criticism....

I can doubt that I am a good person. But I don't doubt that my intentions are good, always.
I will never do anything as well as my parents would do nor will I do things good enough for them, but there are things that they CANNOT do, and have never done, that I can do.

For my own self-esteem, I focus on these things that I know and I try to do them more often. Sure, it's like digging out of a prison cell with a teaspoon.

But this teaspoon is what's available, so I'll make use of it.

Wow, this is cool. It actually gave me a tiny ray of hope. Thanks for that.

Right now, I'm not able to pick up the teaspoon. Either I haven't hit rock bottom yet, or the basement that is below rock bottom, or I haven't spent enough time in therapy, or I'm going to have to give in and take medication (nooooooooo!!!!).

Everybody ‘round
Sees the light of hope
I couldn’t see it
With a telescope

It's okay. At least you know that the teaspoon exists...

I think we just created "Teaspoon Theory"...

.

So much.

In my case it simply feels rational - even when it's blatantly hypocritical. I'll condemn myself to death for something I wouldn't bat an eye at if it were anyone else. It feels right to make impossible demands and punish myself, but almost evil and insane to do it to others.

Plus, if I held myself to the same standards as others, I'd be completely miserable: I'd never do anything, have anything, be anything. I'd barely exist. I want things out of life (I think), but who am I to make those demands on others?

Oh my god, this so much. I have horrible amounts of existential guilt, but also too much narcissism to actually do much about it.

I very often fantasize about "justifying my existence" by being great in some way, being the best, except I'm too lazy and too untalented to actually achieve it. Oh, and the thought of publicly screwing up or starting from the absolute bottom disgusts me so much it's easier to just not try.