Have you ever felt like there’s an invisible force that’s sabotaging your relationships? And you can’t quite put a finger on why you find yourself constantly giving and giving, but not getting anything back or feel misunderstood and judged for the wrong things. Maybe you come away from social environments and you’re like,
‘Why did I act like that? That’s not me.’
Eventually, you might give up on relationships and feel they are pointless, and feel you’ll never want to connect deeply with others again.
There is nothing wrong with you. It’s actually your low self-esteem at play, pushing people away without you even realising. ..
So today, let’s look at the three ways our low self-esteem gets the better of us and isolates us, and how to overcome the negative voice.
1) You avoid connection
Now imagine you are at a party holding a drink and scanning the room. You spot a group of people laughing and sharing stories. But instead of joining in, you find yourself glued to the wall, convinced that you will have nothing of value to add. So you avoid the group all night. You leave that party early, or choose to hang around and sit on the sofa scrolling through your phone, wishing the night would end quicker. Now, in these moments, you’re actually telling others that you don’t wanna be approached and that you can appear spiky for a better word. You then find that all social events unfold in the same way, and you feel discarded. Instead of accepting that low self-esteem is preventing you from engaging with others. You tell yourself that people don’t like you. Instead, you might think you are not valuable and that no one would be interested in what you have to say, especially if you grew up in a home where you are ignored, your parents didn’t show an interest in your interests, and you simply just existed without anyone taking notice of you.
Maybe you love painting, but you never share your art because you fear the criticism that low self-esteem becomes a voice in our head telling us that we are not good enough leading us to withdraw and hide from our true selves. But here’s the twist. While we think we are protecting ourselves by avoiding this interaction, really we might be causing more harm. Take Sarah, for instance, who always downplays her achievement – believing this makes her more relatable. Little does she know her friends actually see it as her pulling away, creating a gap in their connection. So she doesn’t really add anything to the conversations for her fear of coming across as arrogant.
Or Mike, who never voices his needs in his relationship thinking he’s being low maintenance, making it easier for his girlfriend. Asking for your needs to be met is mature. There’s no shame in saying, “Hey, I would like some reassurance today. Can you spend some time with me this evening?”
Instead, Mike assumes his girlfriend should know how to support him by guessing from the small hints he gives her. But she fails to pick up on those hints because those hints are very small. So he becomes passive aggressive and it creates resentment. Mike always tests his partner to figure out if she’s good enough for him, sadly, setting the whole relationship up for failure. Overall, his girlfriend doesn’t know what she can do to support him, and eventually this emotional disconnect will tear them apart.
So to overcome this, we first need to recognise that we do matter, our actions, our words, and even our presence has weight. It’s about shifting from a mindset of self-doubt to one of self-awareness. For example, instead of assuming you would burden your friends by sharing your struggles, consider that they might appreciate the chance to support you. Now, I get it. You’ve never experienced a secure relationship before and it doesn’t feel comfortable at first to give and also to receive support. But remember, we are all craving connection. Even the most avoidant person deep down wants to have a fulfilling relationship.
Imagine if you did share your paintings, discovering that not only do people appreciate your art, but they also value your courage and vulnerability. So be present in the moment with others. Learn more about who they are. Notice the color of their eyes and how they are feeling in that exact moment. Notice if they’re trying to seek emotional support and want to be listened to, or they want advice. The more grounded you can be in that present moment, the more your low self-esteem melts away. It’s common mostly for men, not all men, of course, due to social conditioning, to not actually actively listen. They are quick to offer advice of what to do instead of holding space for emotions.
Sometimes simply asking someone to just expand on their thoughts creates emotional connection and intimacy that makes people wanna stick around. Now, self-awareness, yeah, it’s great only when you know where you’re starting from. So to help, I have a supplementary video about the signs of low self-esteem, which I would recommend you watch either right now. – Link here: https://youtu.be/Wq_RkF5xA0I
2) Not seeing the hurt you cause
Here’s a personal example. I rekindled with a family member who I went no contact with – many years ago. Things had always been very emotionally disconnected between us, subconsciously I was aware that they were holding back on an emotional connection, which I understand now was because their parents were avoidants and then their parents were avoidants, et cetera, et cetera. But long story short, I broke up with my partner and I felt like my world had fallen apart. So I called this family member up to ask for some support, but sadly, all I received was a, “Oh, well, there’s uh, plenty more fish in the sea.” And then that conversation was quickly changed to one of their hobbies, and it actually created emotional distance between us. I assumed that they were uncaring and that they didn’t care for me. Years later, I asked them why they never offered that support when I was at my lowest. And they replied with, “Well, I’m just not good at emotional stuff. “
They never realised they created hurt between us. And they could not understand what they did wrong because they genuinely didn’t think they mattered enough to me for their words to be important.
A healthy relationship with anyone involves each person almost taking turns to give, and then the other person to receive – kind of like a game of tennis. If one person is constantly serving and the other person just ignores and the ball hits the floor, well.. the game feels dissatisfying, cold and boring.
Consider the friend who’s always there for everyone else, but shrinks away from accepting help themself. It’s not because they don’t need or deserve it, it’s just they aren’t used to seeing him himself or herself as someone who can lean on others. So by giving first in an emotional way, it actually tells others, wow, this person is emotionally intimate and makes me feel appreciated, which then flips the script – so support doesn’t feel uncomfortable when you start to receive it.
Before the next point. Let me just quickly share a quote that resonated with me lately, and that is beauty.
“I’m beautiful even when I don’t think it. I’m beautiful, even when I don’t see it. I’m beautiful. No matter how many people don’t say it, I’m beautiful and I don’t even care if you know it. I’m beautiful, which is why I don’t have to try so hard all the time to show it.“
You can swap the word beautiful for kind, lovable, good enough, worthy whatever is the opposite of your negative critic. You have the power to welcome healthy change. And by being unapologetic about what you desire, you can trust that what you focus on will grow. And I get it. I’ve been there. Growth is so hard and we don’t actually know what we will grow into. And that’s scary When we start healing, we can’t peek under the wrapping paper of what a new life will look like because I guess that would ruin the surprise, right? But healing will bring good things after that storm has passed.
3) Projecting our hurt
When we’re having a bad day, everything is bad, right?
We might have recently gone through a breakup. We are driving our car and we see an old couple holding hands in the street, we wind our window down and we yell, “this isn’t gonna last!”
We don’t realise sometimes how we project our inner hurt onto others. We may just assume everyone’s out to get us.
I once worked with a client. We were designing a website and there was an error with a plugin, which basically created an error on the display of the website theme, meaning some products for sale were missing. Now, the client, when she noticed, instead of saying, uh oh, there’s an issue, some of the products aren’t being displayed, let’s fix it. She screamed at me. “People always do this, they always try to screw me over. You are just like the rest of them wanting to take advantage.” Which as you can imagine, my reply was a big WTF. But in her eyes, she was projecting onto me because she was hurt. And her low self-esteem was quick to tell her, well, ‘this problem is because people around you are bad, which was her projection.’ So remember back to the party example I gave at the very start of the video. Maybe you are a new friend of the group and you assume that they won’t like you and that you won’t fit in. So straight up, you are ready, you are on the defense to fight for yourself. You may try to interact with them, but you end up projecting your hurt. And then you still perceive these people to be bad, stupid, or rude. Therefore, you interact in a spiky way. You are not warm, you are not approachable, and you act from a place of defending yourself and your beliefs in every conversation. So remember, people assume who we are based on our attitude when they are with us. So if a first impression of you isn’t coming from a place of warmth, they will assign you to your actions. And then the next time you see them at a party. They wouldn’t wanna engage with you in a warm way because you projected your hurt onto them in the past. And so instead of accepting how our actions create emotional distance, we may tell ourselves, ‘Yep, exactly. I knew they would be like this. It’s because I’m horrible.’ Which further reinforces your low self-esteem. So to counteract this, be mindful of how your attitude is going into every social situation. The key is to ensure you are your best self. Sometimes we do have to fake our attitude to make it. And I get it. It sounds so silly, but this is how we break out of unhelpful behaviors. Communication is key. And it’s not about overcompensating by becoming the life of the party or an open book overnight. It’s about small, genuine baby steps towards expressing ourselves and our needs. We go where our energy flows. So if we are acting in a place of being defensive, holding up our walls, well, we actually create defensiveness with other people, and then they show us their walls.
So I challenge you to one, show up with warmth. The next time you interact with someone, smile, be polite and ask them follow up questions. And basically treat them how you would want them to treat you and see how they respond. And two, recognize when you pull away and become avoidant, are you listening to that negative voice? If so, what did it say? And work on proving that voice wrong. Remind yourself of your qualities and do the opposite to what that voice says. And lastly, remember to keep your own hurt to yourself. Work on it. Journal talk therapy. Go to the gym, talk aloud to the dog. I do this all the time. Get it out into the open instead of holding it in where it becomes a projection onto other people. And stay safe. You got this.