[HazelGirl]

I am so frustrated. I have had some problems these past few months, and they have reminded me exactly how low my self-esteem is and how much I hate myself. So things have been incredibly difficult for a few months.

But then, within just a few days, all of it resolved at once, leaving me confused by how I saw everything. I know I blew everything out of proportion and nearly committed suicide over it all. And yet, it all resolved so quickly. I don't understand how I can pull myself down so far, and destroy myself over situations that are difficult. I just don't get it.

Why do I do that to myself?

My T and I talked last week about how I ended up spending several weeks trying to "prove" to her that I was as terrible as I believed I was, and how all of that made it worse. I was able to manufacture evidence everywhere, and almost none of it made any real logical sense once it was clearly examined. But it didn't matter to my mind how "real" it was or not. I used it all to continue to rip myself apart from the inside.

All of this therapy stuff is so complex. I can logically say that it has to do with having been abused and neglected, but that doesn't seem to make any difference. It still feels like reality to me. Except that I have taken over the role of abuser in my own mind.

How do I get out of this?

[ThisWayOut]

I dunno. But I can relate...

[HazelGirl]

I think what I really want to say is that it makes me very sad to see that I believed all that stuff, and so upset that I felt like it was real and accurate when it wasn't.

[HazelGirl]

And not sad in a bad way. But sad in a way I should feel. Because it is sad that I became so convinced that other people hated me, and I should be sad that it's so easy for me to believe that.

[sweepy62]

It's strange, I have low self esteem as well, but I remember , that when people did like me, I felt I didn't deserve it so I did bad things so they would hate me. When they hated me I felt ok, because I deserved it. Is that twisted ? That was part of my childhood logic.

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[~Christina]

Me too ... One thing my T had me do when I was feeling good and I was amazed and shocked that I hated myself so much last week but now I felt Good. Write yourself a letter... Explain to yourself that you are indeed a wonderful person that is self confident and all the qualities that your seeing in this wonderful light...

When/ if you start to slide back into that pit , pull that letter right out and read it over and over until your feeling a bit better. It helps . My letter is 5 pages long.

Take care

[HazelGirl]

Originally Posted by sweepy62

It's strange, I have low self esteem as well, but I remember , that when people did like me, I felt I didn't deserve it so I did bad things so they would hate me. When they hated me I felt ok, because I deserved it. Is that twisted ? That was part of my childhood logic.

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I do the same thing sometimes. Or I just run away from people and distance myself so that people don't have to put up with me anymore.

Originally Posted by ~Christina

Me too ... One thing my T had me do when I was feeling good and I was amazed and shocked that I hated myself so much last week but now I felt Good. Write yourself a letter... Explain to yourself that you are indeed a wonderful person that is self confident and all the qualities that your seeing in this wonderful light...

When/ if you start to slide back into that pit , pull that letter right out and read it over and over until your feeling a bit better. It helps . My letter is 5 pages long.

Take care

I should do that. It sounds like a really good idea.

[Achy Turtle Armor]

This is so like me too. I feel like two different people sometimes. There's the sane me and there's the insane me.

[Asiablue]

I think it's very hard to get out of that cycle of low self-esteem and intrusive thoughts about how bad or worthless you are. I used to be really bad with this. It has got better in the past few years and things that helped was CBT, really examining the thought " I am worthless" or " I am unloveable" it really helped put things in perspective for me. Have you ever done CBT? There's lots of books and free worksheets online.

The next thing I had to do was interrupt that familiar old script I had/sometimes still have. And whenever I caught myself saying something horrible to myself I'd literally in my head say " STOP" and give myself into trouble for it, and ask myself, would I say that to anyone else? No, I wouldn't, so stop saying it to yourself.

When I think something mean about myself I try to say now " I feel worthless, ugly,"etc rather than " I am wothless/ugly" because in saying you feel it isn't the same as saying you ARE it. Because a feeling state is temporary and takes away that sense of actually owning the lie that you're worthless or whatever it is you say about yourself.

It's something I work at every single day. I don't always believe my positive self-talk but some of it is dripping through. And I definitely hate myself a lot less. I don't want to destroy myself the way I used to.

Those are just some practical tips Hazelgirl, I don't know if that's what you're looking for. But really the change needs to come from you. And it's really hard work. But I know you can do it. I hope you can take the first step because you deserve to be happy.

There's nothing you can 'do'... Having a therapist with integrity who can mirror who you are changes how you feel about yourself...
By that I mean, showing all our' ugly'traits and having them seen not judged or denied is where it happens...

[HazelGirl]

Originally Posted by Achy Turtle Armor

This is so like me too. I feel like two different people sometimes. There's the sane me and there's the insane me.

Yeah, exactly. I feel like there's a part of me that is sane, rational, and normal. And then there's a part of me that is absolutely crazy.

Originally Posted by Asiablue

I think it's very hard to get out of that cycle of low self-esteem and intrusive thoughts about how bad or worthless you are. I used to be really bad with this. It has got better in the past few years and things that helped was CBT, really examining the thought " I am worthless" or " I am unloveable" it really helped put things in perspective for me. Have you ever done CBT? There's lots of books and free worksheets online.

The next thing I had to do was interrupt that familiar old script I had/sometimes still have. And whenever I caught myself saying something horrible to myself I'd literally in my head say " STOP" and give myself into trouble for it, and ask myself, would I say that to anyone else? No, I wouldn't, so stop saying it to yourself.

When I think something mean about myself I try to say now " I feel worthless, ugly,"etc rather than " I am wothless/ugly" because in saying you feel it isn't the same as saying you ARE it. Because a feeling state is temporary and takes away that sense of actually owning the lie that you're worthless or whatever it is you say about yourself.

It's something I work at every single day. I don't always believe my positive self-talk but some of it is dripping through. And I definitely hate myself a lot less. I don't want to destroy myself the way I used to.

Those are just some practical tips Hazelgirl, I don't know if that's what you're looking for. But really the change needs to come from you. And it's really hard work. But I know you can do it. I hope you can take the first step because you deserve to be happy.

I spent years on my own studying CBT. I know all about cognitive distortions, challenging lies, etc... and I couldn't do any of it myself. Maybe it would be different if I was in CBT with a therapist, but I think it would just make me angry and frustrated, and I would start to feel like a failure because no matter how much I tried, I couldn't get any of it to work for me. Like I mentioned above, there's a part of me that is totally normal and can see all those thinking errors and can tell me exactly how I "should" be thinking. But the part of me that is thinking badly totally ignores all that. In fact, I think writing this stuff yesterday was the first time I felt like maybe that part of me could start to change, ever in my life. Because my problems go deeper than cognitive distortions, I end up reinforcing those cognitive distortions by trying to tell myself to think differently.

Originally Posted by _Mouse

There's nothing you can 'do'... Having a therapist with integrity who can mirror who you are changes how you feel about yourself...
By that I mean, showing all our' ugly'traits and having them seen not judged or denied is where it happens...

Yeah, that's where we're at in therapy. And it's terribly difficult, but for some weird and odd reason it helps and it works.

[Anne2.0]

Originally Posted by HazelGirl

My T and I talked last week about how I ended up spending several weeks trying to "prove" to her that I was as terrible as I believed I was, and how all of that made it worse. I was able to manufacture evidence everywhere, and almost none of it made any real logical sense once it was clearly examined. But it didn't matter to my mind how "real" it was or not. I used it all to continue to rip myself apart from the inside.

. . .

How do I get out of this?

I do believe that there are things that a person can "do" to work on self esteem, and I think that you've done the first piece of that work here. You have increased your self awareness that this is what you do. You understand it very well, its role in your social relationships, in how you feel about yourself, as it sorts itself out in therapy. With greater self awareness, you can be less reactive next time sometime is a trigger for you, rather than follow the path of that trigger down the same path, you may be able to stop yourself, halt your automatic reaction, and respond to yourself and the situation in a different way.

In my own experience with this, I'm not sure whether just having the ability to sometimes, at least partway interrupt my reflexive reaction and respond intentionally is by itself what enhances my sense of self, or whether stopping the self-hating rhetoric is also healing. I think it's probably all interrelated.

A guy friend of mine and I talked about how low self esteem can interfere with friendships the other day. I told him that at workshop I attended last summer, we weren't allowed to begin our comments with self-deprecation, such as "well, this probably doesn't make much sense" or "this is probably a stupid question" or the like. I remember how hard of a habit this was for me to break and he was aware that he did this in our group all the time. Now that I'm on the other side of this, I said that the impact on the listener is to have to take the burden on of making you feel better, to reassure you that you are not stupid or that your comments have value. It's tedious and tiring. I suggested that if he can't stop doing this for his own benefit, to stop cutting himself down, he might consider stopping it for the rest of us. So the other thing that can be "done" is watching for how self deprecation slips out in social relationships.

[SnakeCharmer]

Hazelgirl wrote:

Like I mentioned above, there's a part of me that is totally normal and can see all those thinking errors and can tell me exactly how I "should" be thinking. But the part of me that is thinking badly totally ignores all that. In fact, I think writing this stuff yesterday was the first time I felt like maybe that part of me could start to change, ever in my life. Because my problems go deeper than cognitive distortions, I end up reinforcing those cognitive distortions by trying to tell myself to think differently.

HazelGirl, you might consider some sessions with a CBT therapist, even six weeks can help, to show you how to practice these techniques more effectively.

For example, when we tell ourselves how we "should" or "ought" to act or think or feel, we end up acting, thinking or feeling in a more self-defeating way. It's called "shoulding on ourselves." It can lead to more misery because it tends to put us into either/or thinking.

If we say: I should think this way, that thought can automatically lead to: I'm either a complete success or complete failure depending on how well I accomplish it. That's not an improvement.

Challenging one cognitive distortion with another doesn't help us. Telling ourselves we "should" think differently is called negative challenging or irrational disputing. It doesn't help us feel better ... at all.

We seldom get it perfectly, we stumble and have to practice practice practice. If we've told ourselves we "should" or "ought" or "must" act in a certain way, we won't get it perfectly. Our unconscious either/or dichotomy of self will leave us feeling worse off, like failures who deserve to be unloved or punished.

With a few changes, it's possible to use CBT techniques effectively, remembering all the while there's lots of room for messing up and not getting it right the first time or second or third. Our job is to keep practicing until it feels more natural and we get better -- but never perfect -- at it.

Asiablue also mentioned thought-stopping techniques. With practice these work. It helps if we practice on things that aren't important, like if we say things to ourselves like, "I should wear that blue sweater." Not important in the grand scheme. If we tell ourselves: "STOP -- it would be preferable if I wore that blue sweater because it's warm and goes with the rest of my outfit, but it's not essential. If it turns out to be a bad choice, it's not all that important" we have just practiced both thought-stopping and shoulding on ourselves.

It's important to practice on things that aren't important because it's really hard to suddenly pull this trick out of our hat and use it effectively when our emotions are already running wild. I've been practicing for years and if I let my thinking go to far in a hurtful direction, it takes a lot more than thought-stopping to pull me back to feeling okay.

I used it last night to stop a cascade of negativity, the kind that will take a minimum of three days and often longer to pull out of if I let it get going.

I was reading a book and something triggered some childhood thoughts -- you know, the whole abandonment, nobody loves you, you'll always end up alone, people just like you for what you can do for them blahblahblah ... I have a whole tape of that stuff, it also happens to get especially loud when I'm hormonal and if I let it run, well ... it's bad.

At first I didn't even notice what I was doing. It was going on in my head while I was reading, like two separate trains of thought. Then I started to feel the physical symptoms that go along with it. I don't know about others, but I get this empty feeling, this -- it's bad -- it's in my chest and belly and it's bad. It's as if I'm suddenly hollow inside with something pushing on my heart and throat and as if I have dirty dishwater instead of good healthy red blood running through my veins. The whole thing feels weak and empty and choking at the same time. It comes on lightly at first and if I let it keep going it can knock me down. It's ... it's bad.

As soon as I felt those sensations fluttering inside me I started listening to the tape that was running in my head --you'll always be abandoned, nobody really cares, they just use you, you should just leave yourself, don't give them a chance to hurt you first -- and I said: STOP -- that's the old tape from childhood. It's not true. I won't always get what I want in relationships, but the tape is full of lies. STOP. Don't listen. It's the old garbage. It never helped you before and it won't help you now. STOP.

And it stopped. The thoughts stopped and the physical sensations stopped. It worked because I have practiced it on things that didn't matter -- blue sweaters and the like.

I feel fine this morning and I felt fine last night. If I let it go, the entire endocrine system goes haywire and it takes time to recover from the release of all the stress hormones. Last night, I stopped it before the cascade got underway. If I hadn't used the thought-stopping techniques, I would be feeling like an unloved, unlovable and unloving mess today.

All I'm saying is this stuff works if it's done using the proper technique and if we practice on things that don't matter much instead of waiting for an emotional spiral to use them.

CBT and REBT are really good self-help therapies, but sometimes we need expert guidance in order to get it right and to learn how to stop shoulding on ourselves.

I wish you the best, HazelGirl. I am always impressed by the kindness and wisdom you show other posters. You are so often spot on in what you say to others who are confused or hurting or asking questions. My strongest wish for you is that you someday learn to show the same kindness and wisdom toward yourself. You deserve it.

[ThisWayOut]

Originally Posted by HazelGirl

Yeah, exactly. I feel like there's a part of me that is sane, rational, and normal. And then there's a part of me that is absolutely crazy.


I spent years on my own studying CBT. I know all about cognitive distortions, challenging lies, etc... and I couldn't do any of it myself. Maybe it would be different if I was in CBT with a therapist, but I think it would just make me angry and frustrated, and I would start to feel like a failure because no matter how much I tried, I couldn't get any of it to work for me. Like I mentioned above, there's a part of me that is totally normal and can see all those thinking errors and can tell me exactly how I "should" be thinking. But the part of me that is thinking badly totally ignores all that. In fact, I think writing this stuff yesterday was the first time I felt like maybe that part of me could start to change, ever in my life. Because my problems go deeper than cognitive distortions, I end up reinforcing those cognitive distortions by trying to tell myself to think differently.


Yeah, that's where we're at in therapy. And it's terribly difficult, but for some weird and odd reason it helps and it works.

wow, I could have written that, especially about relating to having 2 sides: one rational and one totally not... Thank you both for putting that into words for me .

[HazelGirl]

You guys,
I see a wonderful T. I have been seeing her for the past two and a half years. I won't be switching to a CBT therapist. I saw one briefly through my insurance who stopped seeing me and determined (after three appointments a month apart) that therapy was making me worse and that I had core beliefs that told me I was worthless. That didn't work too well for me and I'm not interested in trying again with another one. My T has a slightly different approach than CBT, and I think it's miles more helpful for me to see her than a CBT therapist would be.

[HazelGirl]

Originally Posted by ThisWayOut

wow, I could have written that, especially about relating to having 2 sides: one rational and one totally not... Thank you both for putting that into words for me .

It's ridiculous. And for me, the rational side hates the irrational side, and the irrational side is totally terrified of the rational side. It's a weird dichotomy that leaves me anxious and on edge so much.

[ThisWayOut]

Originally Posted by HazelGirl

It's ridiculous. And for me, the rational side hates the irrational side, and the irrational side is totally terrified of the rational side. It's a weird dichotomy that leaves me anxious and on edge so much.

Yes! Me too!! Only I think my rational side doesn't "hate" the irrational side as much as it's just incredibly embarassed and ashamed about it. I have all these judgements in my head about how I should behave and think vs. what the irrational side experiences. I know the judgements are harsh, and I am realizing where they come from, but I still can't shake them. And the behavioral therapies simply make the judgements worse because I feel like I'm failing when the tasks and learning don't work to change the emotional experience. It all just deepens the divide between the sides and I do end up hating myself when I get far enough along on the spiral. The irrational side then takes on all the judgements as well, and that's when I crash and burn...
What kind of approach does your T take? I had one T that stopped trying to work behavioral stuff into the mix, but I had to leave her when I moved. All the recent T's have been very insistent on the behavioral models and it almost always makes everything worse because it feeds into the judgement and self-hate.
(sorry, I didn't mean to hijack your thread...)

[HazelGirl]

Originally Posted by ThisWayOut

Yes! Me too!! Only I think my rational side doesn't "hate" the irrational side as much as it's just incredibly embarassed and ashamed about it. I have all these judgements in my head about how I should behave and think vs. what the irrational side experiences. I know the judgements are harsh, and I am realizing where they come from, but I still can't shake them. And the behavioral therapies simply make the judgements worse because I feel like I'm failing when the tasks and learning don't work to change the emotional experience. It all just deepens the divide between the sides and I do end up hating myself when I get far enough along on the spiral. The irrational side then takes on all the judgements as well, and that's when I crash and burn...
What kind of approach does your T take? I had one T that stopped trying to work behavioral stuff into the mix, but I had to leave her when I moved. All the recent T's have been very insistent on the behavioral models and it almost always makes everything worse because it feeds into the judgement and self-hate.
(sorry, I didn't mean to hijack your thread...)

I'm always good with a thread jack

And the same thing happens to me. And I guess you're right that it's more embarrassment than hate. You described what happens perfectly. And it's also why behavioral methods fail with me. It just cements in all my beliefs about failing and never getting anything right, etc...

My T is attachment-based (which is different from attachment therapy). She focuses on our relationship as the vehicle for change. She also ties in some psychodynamic theories, such as ideas around transference. She's really big on "corrective emotional experiences" rather than cognitive methods to work on changing the underlying beliefs which my thoughts originate from. For example...

People did not RSVP to my birthday party. That activated all my abandonment and self-loathing beliefs, leading me to believe that others hated me. In this particular situation, my two halves were actually in agreement about that (although that's not normally the case). My T at first tried to cognitively talk me into more sensible ground, but because even my logical side was overtaken, that just made it worse because I began to look for "evidence" to prove I was right. So she instead stopped trying to fight me and just allowed me to feel so upset. She said she understood why I would feel that way and that it must really be incredibly painful, and that she was sorry for trying to convince me I was wrong.

And what was amazing was that as soon as she stopped trying to fight me, I had an ally. And suddenly my beliefs weren't so true anymore (not EVERYONE hates me), and that sort of helped pull me out of it.

[JustShakey]

I think a good CBT T helps a client by believing in and nurturing the client's ability to use the techniques, not by expecting them to use them. It's a subtle different, but an important one - it's the difference between doing therapy and giving advice.

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[HazelGirl]

Originally Posted by JustShakey

I think a good CBT T helps a client by believing in and nurturing the client's ability to use the techniques, not by expecting them to use them. It's a subtle different, but an important one - it's the difference between doing therapy and giving advice.

Maybe. But I still don't think I would be able to do CBT effectively.

[JustShakey]

Originally Posted by HazelGirl

Maybe. But I still don't think I would be able to do CBT effectively.

I don't think it's much use without a proper relationship to back it up either. Not for deep stuff anyway. As a component of the work though, and as a coping mechanism to be able to live while addressing all the hard stuff, it has its place. I mean, it's not easy, but neither is therapy itself...

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[HazelGirl]

Originally Posted by JustShakey

I don't think it's much use without a proper relationship to back it up either. Not for deep stuff anyway. As a component of the work though, and as a coping mechanism to be able to live while addressing all the hard stuff, it has its place. I mean, it's not easy, but neither is therapy itself...

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I don't want to give the wrong impression. My T does tie in some CBT ideas, and some DBT ideas, too. And yes, they're helpful. But they would never be helpful by themselves as a way to help me or heal me.

[JustShakey]

Originally Posted by HazelGirl

I don't want to give the wrong impression. My T does tie in some CBT ideas, and some DBT ideas, too. And yes, they're helpful. But they would never be helpful by themselves as a way to help me or heal me.

Mine does the same thing - I think he's more CBT-oriented than your T. I do find some CBTish stuff useful now, (even necessary because of all the stuff I have going on right now) but it's because of the stabilizing influence of the therapeutic relationship.

[StressedMess]

I have a little voice in my head, he is a bold-faced liar. I know he's a liar and I know he's bullying me and I can rationalize with him all day long, but he still won't shut up and he still brings me down.

My T helped me figure out that I am scared to accomplish things, and I'm scared to do a good job or take credit for the good things I do, because if I take the credit for the good stuff that means I have to take the blame for the bad stuff. No way! I've spent 40 years blaming everyone except StressedMess for my problems, it's way too scary to think about taking blame.

So T (being the smart woman she is) has me write down my accomplishments so that I have a concrete record of things I am getting right. When the big fat liar pants voice in my head starts spouting off, my rational brain tells him to take a hike, here are pages and pages covered with proof that he is a liar.

It's not an overnight fix, rather a cumulative fix. The more I argue with the little beast, the easier it is to shut him up. As with all bullies, once you stand up to them they move on to easier targets.

Just my two cents.

[HazelGirl]

I hope I can eventually get there StressedMess