Afraid to have a since of self

This whole since of self thing, self esteem is so foreign to me. I don't understand it at all. I have ZERO self esteem. Every time some one says something nice to me I want to cry. Whats that all about. One of my T's once told me I did a good job and I cryed. My current T told me "You stood up for your self and didn't back down" "You went the entire hour here in T w/ out breaking down" Then I did cry. What in the world is wrong w/ me. I have been told so much I'm dumb, stupid, I guess I really have started to believe it. I remember in school one time I was in third grade or so and I couldn't spell a word and I asked for help, the teacher could not understand what I was trying to spell. She said use the word in a sentence. So I said my dad calls me egg nerd. She had a look of shock on her face. Ignorant was the word I was looking for. My dad used to pick and call me "Ricky Retatdo" (Ricky Recardo from I love Lucy) But I had bad grades in school and he'd do then to. I have never been no body. Then I had a guy tell me I was good for something, Sex as I became his object to rape repeatedly. But that was the only time I was told I was good for anything so I stayed and continued in that relationship for 9 long months. I am in a different but abusive relationship and everyone says you just have no self esteem. So where do you get one of these self esteem things. How do you build one when everyone tares it down faster then you can build it up.

Just curious. Why would one cry at a positive remark. How do you build a better self esteem. I am at a complete loss here.

Wow. What a sad story. I hope you're as angry at your dad as I am. And the first huy you mentioned. And the second one too.
It's a tough situation and I hope someone wiser than I am is thinking about how to answer this. I think that our parents start us on the path to self worth and self esteem.
Apparently yours didn't. That leaves you. How do you re-parent yourself?
First thing I would suggest is to get out of this abusive relationship. There doesn't seem much point in trying to reprogram yourself and build your self esteem if there is someone there who is constantly undoing your work. It's going to be hard enough under good circumstances.
That's where I'd start at least.

Hi Big Mama,

Sorry you have had to put up with this countless times throughout your life. I can only relate to some parts of your post. Like you I have been told throughout my life I have no self-esteem and I have always disagree to an extent with that, in that I don’t believe I ever had one. Nor in all my life of trying to find or bring about, sort of grow in a sense an self-esteem has anything worked. I am still no better off now than I ever was trying to better or find my so called self-esteem. TBH I think trying to grow or gain an self-esteem by searching for it is never going to work, as I view it as something that naturally occurs when the time is right. Therefore it will occur at different times for different people, I do think everyone is capable some when in their life’s of gaining some sense or sort of self-esteem but this is not something that can just be learned here and now as other people how have one expect you. I guess I’ve also always believed those who have a so called self-esteems that is something that is natural about them and not something they just willing brought about themselves like they just always had it to begin with. I guess some people, like myself, I view as never had it to begin with,( however maybe will have in future when at right place for it to occur) although I don’t count this as a bad thing. I believe that my lack of self-esteem has made me sharper in analysing things and that is one attribute I hold of myself as well as analysing my behaviour and thoughts. Not just relying on naturally being a person how has that sense of self about themselves, sometimes those who had it are generally the people that sometimes can’t view themselves any other way and have a hard time taking a good hard look at their self when needed. However this is not to say I am correct in my opinion or this goes’ for every person out there because it will be different thing for each person and this is just a person take on things.

As for the crying at good a thing or when people should expect you to be happy about something OH YES ALL THE TIME I WILL CRY AND BREAK DOWN. I thought I was the only one that did that, and this is not in a good sense. People don’t understand the build-up pressure of guilt I feel for not deserving such a comment or receiving such a good thing like reward when I was working. I felt guilty because I felt I didn’t earn that. As I actually was still doing bad at the time not coping and just being a mess and not a nice person, or easy to work around at that time. It made me feel like they were sweet talking me, not just that they then made me feel like I had to put on an even bigger mask and carry more burden as they rewarded me, so then I should have been trying ten times more not to be the mess I was. They also used it as a way to say but you done well you got the reward, see you could do this or that, so now shut up and just pull together. Then other staff members comment on how I was unappreciated and it look bad like I just didn’t care, like I took the reward and just swanned about after that, when all the time they trigger me and made me feel guiltier then ever before which was something I really didn’t need at that time nor could it ever make me react in the way they wanted me to or expected of me. It hurt that they really mess with my head and now anything good doesn’t feel good and again I react badly to that good thing. I always have to question someone intentions behind something because I view it that I never deserve a good thing or as I haven’t been doing anything recently to acquire such a good thing it can’t be right so I break down as I have a bad feeling about it.

Maybe for yourself you may feel like you haven’t acquired that good comment if you feel you still have a lot to work on with your T and as you may be feeling bad at those times, maybe you feel you don’t deserve that good thing, not to say these reasons are the reasons why you are reacting this way, but for me this is how it is when I react like that. However it could just be that it has been a long time in your life since you were able to accept the good thing maybe all the things you are working through have clouded you emotions and for once when that good thing happened as you haven’t felt that way in such a long time you just didn’t know just how to react. Which would have been overwhelming for you and maybe it was because you where overwhelmed by the situation you cried not because of the circumstances of the situation itself but more just because you didn’t know how to react and that brought you to tears.

I hope you don’t mind my reply and this may be of some help to you. Sorry if this is of no help to you personally. Wishing you all the best MIP

Thank you both for your opinion.

George my T says the same thing more or less. Get red of the man first and the rest will come. The T and I are working on the reality of things relationship wize and how intimidation and lack of self esteem cause me to see things differently. Smart man you are. (To much Star Wars, from the wize old Yoda)

Mindinpieces I agree, I don't know what I think. Some times I think some of us have it and some of us don't. I am glad to here I'm not the only one who cry's when some one says something good about you. Weird huh.

Thanks again you two.

egg-nerd, that's a good one. he wasn't pronouncing it very clearly. we make fun of my mom now for always calling us "hearr-iots". I tell her that she is hurting my self-esteem, but she just makes a fist and tells me she'll give me some "steam". You wouldn't think an 80-yr-old lady would still have such a big scary fist. It seems like those old memories will always be a part of us.

egg nerd and Ricky Retardo, who really was the dumb one. I can laugh now. Might as well. You and laugh or cry and cryin wont do you no good. So laugh doggon it. Thanks for a good laugh. hearr-iot's good one.

I hope you have some real life support while you try to work this out. You have support here too. Maybe your T has some ideas on reprogramming or reparenting yourself. I found some stuff using google about reparenting. I wish I'd used that myself
Good luck.