From the time that I was old enough to be self-aware until I began to Recover my Inherent Self-Esteem (RISE) about twenty years ago, I was woefully dishonest. I felt that I had to be for my own emotional safety. As a kid, I was required to explain the reason behind every unhappy mood and my explanations were often challenged, mocked, and dismantled. Sometimes they were compared unfavorably to people with “real problems.” I learned very early on that I’d better hide my sadness, anger, loneliness, and fear, lest it be dissected at the dinner table. If I was angry, that anger was corrected for me with comments like:
“You shouldn’t feel that way.”
“What did you do to cause it?”
“You have no right to be mad about that.”
“That’s what happens. Get over it.”
and, the most confusing of all,
“You don’t really feel that way.”
Navigating my own emotions was hard enough. Like all youngsters, there were times when I experienced an emotion for the first time, ever: the self-consciousness that comes from being left out of a group, the shame of being passed over by a boy I liked for someone prettier, the notion that something was wrong with me because my breasts weren’t developing as fast as my best friend’s, the weird feeling I got from the dad whose kids I babysat for, and other, complex self-assessments. Having to break these down in a rational way for a parent who didn’t understand age-appropriate boundaries was deeply embarrassing. Especially when it happened in front of my brother and sisters.
In addition to the challenge of putting emotions into rational explanation, I was often told that I shouldn’t be feeling such things; that I wasn’t feeling the way that I was; or that the cause for such a feeling didn’t exist at all. This feedback, also known as “gas-lighting,” is simply crazy-making. I lived in a state of utter emotional bewilderment. As a result, I can’t pinpoint a key moment in my LoSEr childhood when I decided to stop telling the truth; I only learned that I had disconnected from my own emotional authenticity in hindsight, decades later.
Like most LoSErs, I began to lie to myself, first, by not trusting my own assessment of self or others. I couldn’t read interactions (or internal reflection) accurately because I was clueless about the appropriate ways to express emotions. When I felt a negative emotion in my childhood it was dismantled in front of others as invalid, and like all children I internalized the voice of my parents. Their critical assessment of my moods naturally became my own critical assessment. As a teenager I began to say to myself:
“I shouldn’t feel this way.”
“Well, what did I do wrong to cause this feeling?”
“I shouldn’t be mad about this.”
“Shit happens, get over it.”
and, the most confusing of all,
“I’m not mad. Really, I’m fine.”
“I’m fine.” How many times has a LoSEr said this when it was 180° from the truth? Tell this lie long enough and dismissing our “not-fine” feelings becomes second nature. When LoSErs struggle to be emotionally honest as adults, it’s often because they’re completely unaware of how to deal with pain or anger in healthy, productive ways. We don’t lie because we’re being deceptive, we lie because that’s the only way we know.
Another piece of the LoSEr puzzle is trust. When trusting others with emotional uncertainty leads to disappointment or even shame, emotional self-deception lasts well into adulthood. I know now that my Parent was a LoSEr, too, but when that parent also distrusted me, and let me know this by questioning my every emotional expression, I learned to distrust myself. My parent also assumed I was always lying even when I wasn’t, and this scrutiny (“I know what you did!”) had me automatically assuming I was in trouble. I had a hair-trigger reaction that evoked self-scrutiny on a micro level of what I’d done “wrong,” and even when I couldn’t discover anything, I believed I was just too stupid to figure out how I’d been wrong. I failed to trust myself, I learned to lie about my feelings, and so it was only a matter of time before I became untrustworthy and dishonest.
If you’ve never been a LoSEr, the development I’m describing might seem downright abusive. But it’s not uncommon for parents with low self-esteem to raise kids with low self-esteem. No surprises there. If you’re not equipped to trust yourself and the beautiful emotional gauging system you inherited simply by being alive, how in the world can you teach it to someone else? The childhood I described was in many ways idyllic; I had much more than many kids in my generation. Beyond the basics of having both parents in my home as I grew up, I also had the privilege of no family members with addictions, all the food, shelter and clothing I needed, and the benefit of regular health care, all of which put me far ahead of many of my peers. Yet because I had such rock-bottom self-esteem, I also had the nagging sense that I didn’t deserve any of it. And as far as love and attention went, well, I’d better earn that by being a good girl, getting good grades, appreciating all I had, and never, ever complaining.
Emotional honesty is hard. So if you’re struggling with this now, let me say that I recognize your struggle and the courage it takes to persevere. If you’ve had years of recrimination for telling the truth about how you feel, I know that you are profoundly gun shy about starting now.
I have a client who has been living with deep resentment towards both her job and her sweetheart. Alison had never considered that she was a LoSEr until she came to me for a psychic reading, wanting to know about the future of her relationship and if her boss was eventually going to quit. After talking for a few minutes it was clear that Alison was profoundly uncomfortable around people she considered “authority figures,” and our session took a turn instead towards coaching. Alison expanded with details:
She felt her boss took advantage of her at work. He was always asking her to pick up the slack for others, and she found it impossible to say no. (Many LoSErs shy away from confrontation and end up feeling resentful because they don’t know how to gracefully turn down extra responsibility). On top of that, she’d had a lukewarm annual review, which embarrassed her to no end. Now her prayer was that her boss would quit so that she could feel good about going in to work every day. (LoSErs often feel disempowered to change uncomfortable situations and wait passively for life to change for them).
The man Alison lived with had a big personality and his moods frequently set the tone for their time together. A very high-energy, active person, over the years he’d signed them up for all sorts of classes, social events, and holidays that Alison wasn’t all that interested in. Alison told me she was hoping he’d slow down so they could do some of the things she’d like to do, or simply stay home for the occasional weekend. She’d never replied to him with anything more than feebly mumbled disagreement, and instead had been simmering with resentment for years.
When I asked Alison to describe how she felt about her job and her boyfriend, I could practically see her dissociate right in front of me. Here’s how our early conversations played out:
“Tell me what sort of atmosphere comprises your workplace. Is it very clique-y? Open and friendly?”
“I don’t know, it’s okay.”
“How do you generally feel throughout the day when you’re there.”
“Fine.”
“What’s the dominant emotion you feel when you’re at work?”
“I don’t know. I just sort of tune out.”
It took several long minutes and asking the question a dozen different ways to get Alison to find just the right adjectives to describe how she felt. My biggest clue was her admission of “tuning out.” If you feel numb, tuned out, or headache-y when a negative emotion starts to surface, you’re probably dissociating, too — a common default for the LoSEr. Remember, for the LoSEr it’s safer not to feel uncomfortable feelings, so going numb around them is a common coping tool.
Alison and I met for several sessions, our goal being to locate that authentic emotional self deep inside, and to practice giving that self a confident voice. Alison had to learn to trust that her discomfort was valid, and to say both to her boss and her boyfriend, “I’m not comfortable with that.”
I didn’t ask her to, but Alison surreptitiously recorded a conversation with her boyfriend that she played for me at one of our sessions. It went something like this:
Scott: “I told Pat and Ellen we’d meet them for dinner tonight, is that okay with you?”
Alison (hesitating): “Sure.”
Scott: “They said we could pick the place. Where do you feel like going? We haven’t been to that Thai place in a while and I know you like that. Want to go there?”
Alison (still hesitating): “Yeah, okay.”
…silence for about thirty seconds…
Alison: “Hey, Scott?”
Scott: “Yeah?”
Alison: “What would you say if I didn’t want to really go out tonight? I mean, we could if you really want to, but I’m-kind-of-tired-and-I-had-a-long-week-and-I-want-to-go-to-yoga-in-the- morning-and-maybe-there’s-a-movie-on-we-could-watch-instead-or-even-if-we-just-go-out-for- drinks-and-then-come-back-home-and-watch -TV-because-I’m-really-tired-and…”
…and on and on with her rapid-fire justifications in one long, run-on sentence. She spoke so quickly she didn't take a breath until she’d repeated herself a couple of times.
Alison was quite proud of herself for expressing a view contrary to her boyfriend’s, and it’s normal for someone just reconnecting with emotional honesty to feel the need to rationalize. Remember my tale, above? It’s not uncommon for youngsters just starting to LoSE to learn that they better have darn good reasons for feeling uncomfortable and be able to justify every last one of them; so of course as adults they naturally do the same thing.
Alison was right, this was a moment to be proud of. The end result of her conversation was a bit of shock from her boyfriend, (“Oh, I didn’t know you felt that way. Sure, we can stay in tonight.”) and a liberating sensation that anticipating her communication had been much worse than actually communicating. That week I asked Alison to continue that terrific practice wherever she felt comfortable, but this time doing her best to stop the stream of justification that followed. I asked her to say how she was feeling, and then… wait.
Now of course in any important relationship one might be asked for an explanation. For example, one could never be expected to say to one’s boss, simply, “I don’t feel like it.” The importance of this exercise was mainly to recognize how the LoSEr self habitually minimizes its needs. Self-awareness is the beginning of any recovery.
Here’s the course of self-study Alison undertook with great success. If you find yourself dissociating around negative emotions or feel you don’t have the confidence to articulate those negative emotions, try the steps below. Go easy on yourself; building trust takes time. You may have to unlearn years of punishment for self-expression, and that can only come with repeatedly and regularly having the opposite experience.
- Carry a notepad or keep one handy. When you feel a negative emotion of any sort at all, just name it. Write it down. If possible, say it out loud: “I feel resentful.” Though it sounds contradictory, have a little fun with your vocabulary. Our language is rich with words that can describe the nuances of any mood. Look at some of the descriptors below and say a few out loud. Try to find the one perfect word to define your emotion (go to an online thesaurus, even!), then own it:
annoyed, enraged, indignant, affronted, piqued, riled, bitter, melancholy, pessimistic, wistful, cheerless, disconsolate, doleful, heavy-hearted, lonesome, desolate - Notice if you feel that emotion seated somewhere in your body. You might feel your stomach dropping, a throbbing in your head, or notice that your shoulders are up around your ears. Now just admit to yourself that you feel it there. If you don’t have a physical sensation with this feeling, just move to the next step.
- Say aloud to yourself, “It’s okay to feel ________ (emotion) and to feel it _______ (in my body). This emotion and this feeling tell me that I’m alive, right now.”
- Don’t try to dismiss it, just be aware of it. Self-awareness of negative emotions is the first step in building trust.
- After acknowledging your emotion, turn your attention to something else. Dwelling overmuch on that negative feeling can deepen it’s impact and cause you to spiral in to anxious feelings about it. You’ll find over time that once that emotional inner self trusts in its expression, you won’t feel the need to turn your attention away; it will naturally move on, satisfied that it has been expressed.
- After doing this with yourself a few times, try it either with people you trust or with someone you don’t know well. When I was learning to do this myself, I did not practice on the parent that didn’t handle my emotions well!
- You’ll probably find yourself justifying your statements. That’s perfectly normal. As you begin to get comfortable with the awareness and expression of a not-fine feeling, practice pausing before justifying. For example, if you were feeling bowled over in an argument with your sweetheart, you might try something like this: “I’m feeling a little intimidated by these raised voices and I find myself shrinking away inside.” Then just wait in silence for a moment. You’ll feel a surge of strength and clarity, which will allow you to articulate even more succinctly and, ultimately, arrive at a resolution where your needs are at the very least heard, if not met.
- Please be compassionate with yourself in this! It can be exceedingly frightening to say how you feel if you were regularly shamed for it as a kid. Take as much time as you need. Remember that most people, as Alison found out, feel great anxiety in the build-up or anticipation of stating a negative emotion. They almost always find afterwards that it was no big deal.
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