Published on 12, July, 2020
This might be a sensitive subject for many.
Please do not take the following question as a personal judgement, I am honestly trying to understand so that I can try to improve my empathy and compassion, and possibly find ways to help people along the way. I also get it if it isn't something you're happy to talk about.
It seems there are many people out there, and on this forum, suffering from low self esteem and self loathing.
Where does this come from?
Does it come from:
I am genuinely interested, as it's something I don't think I have ever experienced.
I'm sure I have had anxiety at times, but I'm not really able to to apply names to feelings, so I don't really know. My partner has said that I can be emotionally insensitive because I try to rationalise everything. But I have also been told that my blunt, rational, and sometimes cynical approach has been helpful at cutting through the noise.
Although I've been bullied, embarrassed, ostracised at times, although life has been difficult, and I can be self critical and insecure, I don't think I've ever felt loathing or worthlessness.
Maybe it's because I'm very insular in my thinking, that I haven't paid too much attention to the real world, and therefore shrugged off much of the sh*t that's thrown at me.
Again, I'm genuinely interested as I would like to understand people better so that I can help people better. But this part of the emotional spectrum is truly a foreign land to me.
I find it sad that so many people are suffering in this way, and like to understand why it is.
Thanks.
Nicely put.
I do agree with that idea actually. That's certainly how I've been wandering through life.
Maybe I've just been acting in a slightly different movie, haha.
I think I might just have to accept that I probably won't ever really be able to understand people on an emotional level. I can understand certain experiences on an intellectual/rationalised level, but I'm not really sure if I actually 'care'. It's just observation and analysis.
If I'm honest, I rarely ever think about people. Sometimes I think my responses are just me going through the motions. I don't like to lie, so even trying to empathise or comfort someone feels like I'm being a fraud. It's not that I don't want to be able to do it, it's just that there's nothing there.
That was the motivation for my original post. I want to understand, and I want to help. But without an emotional component I find these thing very, very, difficult.
For every thought (story) we have running, it has its associated mental movie or images (of past and future) to accompany it. That's the image we have of ourselves. That's our self-image. That's how the mind works, and it's where the saying Life is but a dream comes from. If you like, we are all spectators at our own private cinema screening or slideshow in which we are the protagonist.
Another thing I'm not quite grasping:
Even if people have negative stories or experiences, how would that translate into negative self-image?
I don't understand how or why anybody would create or accept a negative image of themselves.
Maybe I have a massive ego or something. But I have been told that I put myself down quite a bit, and underestimate my value or my abilities. I don't view it that way. As far as I'm concerned I'm just trying to be objective.
Or maybe I just use self-deprecation as a form of defence mechanism. Even then, I'm only trying to be objective about my abilities and behaviours, and I still don't equate it to self image.
No matter how hard I've tried, I still don't really understand empathy, sympathy, and compassion, although they do exist in me, somewhere.
Thanks Tassimo,
I think I understand.
I struggle to understand emotions, so it's hard for me to grasp what other people might be going through.
I think what might make it more confusing for me is that I'm not sure I viewed my existence, and my experiences, to be related to each other. It's as if I exist with my thoughts and observations, and all the losses, trauma, and so on, are just background noise, part of life, that are running in a parallel stream. Only occasionally do they meet.
I suppose I have to understand myself better, before I can even attempt to understand anyone else.
Thanks again
Hi Exist. Everything is a product of thought, at least that's how I see it. Our personalities are the multiple stories (thoughts) we have running in our heads all the time, distilled into one over-arching narrative: the story of 'Me'.
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