I´m in a hole and don´t know how to get out.

LegacyUser

I´ve been putting of writing on this forum about this for ages, thinking it was a problem only a professional could deal with, which I still think might be the case but I´m not in a position to seek professional help right now because of where I am and my lack of finances.

I´m sorry about the length....just want to get it all out.

It relates to my self-esteem and lack thereof. I´m 30 and I don´t have much and it´s only getting worse as the years pass. I´m finding myself becoming more and more frustrated with myself and my lack of self-belief. Success and achieving anything real has always seemed like something other people do and now it´s seeping into other aspects of my life like finding love. I don´t think I´m good enough for someone to fall in love with and I know I need to change this mentality but I´m completely lost. I feel like I´m on my own trying to deal with this massive issue that probably should´ve been dealt with years ago.

I know it all steams from my upbringing. My dad is a typical Irish dad of his generation (he´s in his early 70´s) who never encouraged me and always questioned everything I did and still does. I never felt like he was ever proud of anything I did...I don´t even think he congratulated me when I got my degree. He´s put me down in the past....only a few times but they replay in my head when I´m feeling particularly low and I still can´t believe he said the things he said. I´m from a big family and am the youngest...I remember I didn´t see much of him when I was a child because he worked or spent so much time reading his paper in his bedroom...it was as if he did all the dad stuff with the rest of my siblings and gave up when I came along but then my mother passed away when I was 10 and it was as if he only just discovered he had another child, or at least that´s how it felt. The rest of my siblings moved out of Ireland to get jobs and I was left with a dad who didn´t seem to notice me and was dealing with his own problems and a brother who has even bigger problems with his self-esteem than me...both himself and my dad didn´t talk.

I suppose I´d no one around to tell me if I was doing well at something...I´d no one to get feedback off because my dad still worked full-time and was depressed after my mother died but I did okay in Primary school and I had friends. I was fine, considering I was taking care of myself.

Then I went on to Secondary School and made some more friends. I was in one of the top classes, so my friends were all super-clever. Then something happened when I was drunk in my 3rd year...I did something very stupid but it wasn´t really my fault...I was taken advantage of by a guy who was older and should have known better and word got around. I got bullied by what felt like half of the people in my school for 3 years. I dreaded going to school, I dreaded walking down the street of my town because there was ALWAYS someone lurking who´d call me a name or try to hit me and I guess this is where a lot of my dislike for myself stemed from. It was a horrible period of my life that I´m still very angry about but try to forget and I did a good job of ´till very recently. It affected my school work and my dad was giving me grief over it. I told no one in my family what happened and I don´t think my friends knew how bad the bullying was...I wouldn´t tell them what went on when I walked down the street alone because I was embarassed that this was happening to me. I lost any kind of self-belief I ever had and I essentially fecked up school only JUST passed the LC. I didn´t think I was intelligent enough to do well and as I said, I thought (and still do think) that success was something other people achieved but certainly not me.

So I think what Ive just told you could be the main reason why I´m still this way. My friends have all gone to do great things and I´m happy for them, not at all jealous or resentful....I´d feel jealous and resentful if I thought success or happiness or falling in love was something I could achieve but to me it´s their "thing", not mine. I´m not talking about some flashy career, just finding something I like doing and feel good enough about myself to persue it. I pre-empt failure because I´m terrified I can´t handle it. I´d be afraid I´d have some sort of breakdown if I failed...like my self-esteem couldn´t get any more knocked then it already is....and I´m also terrified of what my dad would say. Stupid for someone my age but he´s a very intelligent man and I still look up to him.

I´ve got some great friends and they always tell me I could do more...but it doesn´t sink in and I get defensive. I just don´t believe it. I suppose others would describe me as funny, kind, chatty but those who know me reasonably well know how lacking in self-confidence I am. They despair of me but nothing anyone can say by way of encouragement has any affect because I just don´t believe it myself.

I´ve ****ed up so many relationships...I´d subconciously destroy them because I always felt I wasn´t good enough for the person I was with. I don´t want to blame my dad because he is a good man but he´s of a different generation. We don´t get along...we barely talk....if I talk, he doesn´t listen and cuts across me. He talks at me instead of to me and conversations never last more than a few minutes and because he´s my dad and I love him and look up to him, this hurts like hell and I lash out at him just to provoke some reaction in him towards me, to make him notice me....and I think I do the very same in relationships...I tend to treat men I´m with like my dad in some respects (all very freudian, I think)...I take everything very personally, even if they do it unintentionally...it gets to the point that they can do nothing right so I´m staying single ´till I sort this out.

If you met me, you´d think I was chatty and reasonably confident. I don´t let most people get so close to know what I´m really like and I try to meet new friends over a drink so I can get a bit drunk and hide my lack of confidence.

If someone says something to me slightly offensive, even in a joking manner, I take it to heart and either get very upset or very angry AND very upset.

There´s a lot more to this story....growing up in my house as a kid was like growing up in a mental asylum sometimes....lost of throwing of furniture, hitting, shouting, bullying (between siblings and between siblings and parents). We dealt with things by getting angry.

Okay....I´m going to stop now. This all seems like too much for me to handle. I know I probably need professional help and I think I should have got it years ago but at the moment, I really can´t....does anyone have any advice on how to get some self-esteem and self-worth on my own....to just find it in myself instead of looking for it externally?

Thanks for reading...this could be the first Í´ve ever verbalised this, in written words or spoke words. If it comes across very self-pitying, then I´m sorry. Normally I live life with the "suck it up and move on" attitude but it´s got to the point where I have to deal with some of this before I´m ever truely happy. Too much sucking it up has taken it´s tole.

Emme

You're doing your best with your life under the circumstances. Your dad is unlikely to change but you can and you need to figure out why you need his approval so much. You're being very unfair on yourself and this might be holding you back.

I know you say you can't afford professional help, but could you talk to your GP and see if he or she could recommend affordable counselling?

Good luck.

RossFixxxed

Hi, I'm pasting some of this from another thread, but it relates....
If you use the computer a bit I'd recommend writing down things that trigger these feelings. Put a scale on them say Zero is neutral, -10 is really really really bad, and +10 is estatic. You can use a spreadsheet or something. Then come back to them after the feelings have died down and how you rate them now. You'd be surprised how some of these feelings can be very overblown in the heat of the moment and how you will re rate them as you go. Writing it down is a great way to remember them and to keep a decent record. It also helps you logically assess your feelings in stressful situations.

You can also use this log to record what methods of coping/calming you use and how they work given the time to do so. It's VERY important, in my opinion, to take the time out to look at this and to recognise that this is something you can improve. It's also very important to keep an open mind. Take meditation, maybe that conjurs up an image of some tofu weilding hippy, or some new age rip off artist or maybe the exact opposite, a monk sitting on a mountain smiling, but chuck those away and actually give it a lash, it's a great aid. So are MANY MANY other things out there, even the ones you totally disagree with - those strenghten your own convictions. But dismissing them, or immediately putting them down is always a sign that you are resisting something that may have benefits.

OP your feelings are very natural but they seem a little too strong for the stimulus. There's nothing wrong with you but you would benefit from taking time to look after and improve yourself.

Can I recommend this book, as many GPs do (note not medical advice here, nor am I a doctor) Overcoming Low Self-Esteem Using Cognative Behavioural Therapy by Dr Melanie Fennell. This series use CBT and self analysis to look at the cycles that you can set up in your own head. It's not to say that you have no sense of self worth or you need psychological help or any of that drama, but it's good to help set up some more balanced and healthy ways of thinking and looking at your own self worth. Worst case scenario it's a bit boring, best case it starts you on a happier road

---

OP that's a good start to this in my own opinion. I would say you have made one VERY good step writing this up, and you realise you need help on this. That is FANTASTIC progress. I would recommend a GP if at all you can, for the sake of 50 quid they can make a huge difference. I can recommend someone fantastic for this in Dublin if you are based there.

You are not being self pitying at all, it is a HORRIBLE feeling but it is one THAT CAN BE FIXED. You'd be amazed and the mechanism behind this sometimes and its insiduous nature for undermining you. YOU WILL get this sorted and be very glad you did.

Just take it SLOWLY and remember there will always be crappy, crappy days. They are the ones to employ your tactics and the pride when you do turn them around is immense. And if they are just 'those days' do something selfish and fun (movie with ice cream or whatever it may be for you!).

Good luck OP and keep it up mate. It is all fixable just give it time and don't try and do it all at once. I'm a demon for that, changing it all in one day diet, exercise, smoking, meditation, etc etc and it's too much for anyone! Just be patient and friends with yourself along the way!

Ross

Peggypeg

I don't have anything useful to add just wanted to give you a BIG HUG.

RossFixxxed

This is not a bad thing but it might seem it: it's all up to you. You don't have to live up to anyone's standards like your father's, or more importantly what you THINK is your father's expectation, or you THINK of someone in a relationship. It is just up to you and given time and taking steps you will be able to find a happy and logical balance in your own life and you will break the need to rely on other people's perceptions.

I say that from 1st hand experience, as I ramble down the road shouting the bit's I've picked up along the way in the hope that it'll help a bit!

It's more important to do SOMETHING really, pick up a book, dirt cheap on amazon, go to the GP, go talk to someone. Keep on here. Read my above post, seriously you'd be amazed the power of something so simple (and seeing a graph sometimes can hammer the point home)

AMK

My heart goes out to you.

RossFixxxed gives good advice, in my opinion. But I would also recommend you talk to your GP. You'd be amazed at the counselling services that are available at a very reasonable rate - it's a matter of being steered in the right direction.

You had no emotional support in your formative years and were left floundering. You are not being self-pitying - just living with the fall-out.

Best Wishes

mjg

+1 on seeing your GP. At the very least it's a positive step towards getting a handle on your thoughts/emotions as was posting here.

Best of luck with everything.

Babooshka

Hi

I completely empathise with you. I am only a teeny bit older than you and I grew up in a similar environment. I am still dealing "with the fallout" as one of the above posters so rightly said. I've been around a bit here to try get some help myself, was considering counsellors, therapy, but all self investigated. Today I gave in and made an appointment with my GP. I am working and can afford to pay for counselling but I just decided I could be wasting money on people on the internet who just set up a website after they get a certificate for Mickey Mouse counselling and take all your money... I'm sure there are plenty of good ones on too, but it's just without expert advice you're playing roulette, you know? So anyway, I decided to start from the very beginning, go to the doctor, and spill my guts out and get professional advice, which I will be doing early next week.

Reading your post, I feel so very many similar feelings that you do. I am outwardly "fun" and confident to most people but inside I am falling apart. It's not always like that but something happened to trigger a setback lately. When I read your post I just wanted to reply and ask you not to despair too much. I completely understand the hurt you have inside, it's a terrible thing to grow up in a family with siblings and parents yet feel you have no one to communicate with. I am struggling with my own anger issues and just want to be free of it and at peace inside myself now, which is why I am going for the help. Yes it's hard and yes it's all a big pain in the behind, and sometimes extremely painful and overwhelming, but it will be worth it to exorcise a lot of the demons out.

I know that you'll come to a point where you're ready to deal with it, I see you feel very overwhelmed right now, but you'll get through it honestly. Please don't think for a minute I'm trying to patronise you, I just know you will get there. I really just wanted to let you know that you're not alone. My feelings of loneliness have almost wiped me out at times, but I am ready to work through the crap and hopefully get to a better place, in time.I just wish the same for you, your story really touched me to empathy, and I understand, it doesn't sound self indulgent to me. There's nothing self indulgent about acknowledging to yourself that you didn't get what you needed to feel safe and loved growing up, and now you're an adult you need to start figuring out how to love yourself unconditionally without the tonne of crap you're dragging around with you from your past. I know I am incredibly unforgiving of myself and my many self perceived "weaknesses"... no one else would dare talk to me the way I talk to me! I'm sorry if that all sounds cliched or corny...but it reallly is from the heart.

Ohh I'm so sorry I could go on all day. I just wanted to reach out to you and let you know that there's hope after this and you can get a happy life together for yourself. I am in bits at the moment, but hope has crept in and I know that this is the hard bit before the work I do on myself in the coming months will pay off and I'll be shedding some of the sh*te.

Really wish you the very best of luck and I hope you think again about going and talking to a doctor. I hope this gave you some comfort, don't give up seeking help, let your feelings out.... B xx

LegacyUser

Hi there... I have had all the feelings you talk about, still have them. I take it from your post you are female, 30. I am male, 40. It's hard to believe that the kind of formative years you had can still have repercussions when you are 40, never mind 30.

You had kind of a broken home life, with the loss of Mum so early, and the constant arguments and fights. I had the opposite, a relatively calm upbringing, with both parents and just one sibling. My father was a gentleman, yet took a very hands off approach to me, and I got little guidance from him, other than a rather unhelpful philosophy to 'trust no-one.'

My mother, on the other hand, her torment in life was a fear of everyone and everything, such a thundering lack of self confidence, borne from her own dysfunctional background. We are all products of our upbringing, and the consequences can reach down through generations. My mother's answer to life was to stay at home with mum, with a warm rug around me, big fire lighting, and mollycoddled to the hilt. Where all the big, bad, nasty things in the world couldn't get you.

I went out into the world on my first day in school without ever having seen another child before! I spent thirteen years in hell going to school every day. I can honestly say I was never bullied, but I lived in fear of the sly words murmered as I passed by, the fear of having to think of something to say if I was spoken to, the fear of all the 'confident' people who spoke loudly, who ran and played and carried on, who socialised and interacted, who had a great sense of their own purpose and abilities, while I hid in the corner wishing I could be invisible. Every day for thirteen years, school was a prison sentence, as I sat watching the clock waiting to get out of it. I flunked every exam, as I cowered my way through, looking forward to nice, safe home.

I am now a 40 year old guy, with a very clever and sharp brain, and absolutely no qualification under the sun! For twenty more years after I left school, I floundered between low paid jobs, half hearted attempts at college, and dole. I never learned to socialise. I was different, and nobody would want me. It took me until last year, and the cataclysm of this recession, to suddenly realise what the root of my problems were, and to begin to attend counselling. I only wish I had done it ten or fifteen years ago!

To take one positive thing from your situation, you now realise why you have landed in the place you are now. Once you understand that, you can begin the long trek towards dealing with it. I firmly believe that people need some kind of crisis in their life to really understand and appreciate life. People who swan through life with everything falling into their lap, inevitably have a poor perspective on life. You are going to come out of this such a stronger and more rounded person.

I have done a period of counselling, and just recently felt strong enough to put it on hold. I should say that the first counsellor I met was a horrendous experience, and I vowed never to do it again. I simply meat the wrong type of person. But I persevered, and the second place I went to, was the place I was looking for. So don't be put off if it doesn't work the first time, you just need to meet the right person for you.

There are so many, many people I read on here who feel the same way about life. The one thing they never had was somebody to tell them they could be whoever they wanted to be, that the power was within themselves. But it's never too late to find the real you.

I often wonder if there is merit in people like us getting together in small, sociable groups of four or six, just to socialise with people who understand each other, and give each other a kind of support mechanism. A kind of small stepping stone into the world of socialising outside the comfort zone of home and the pc. It can be so helpful to know there are others living the same difficulties, and to learn from each other, and support each other.

Babooshka

@ Ivebeentheretoo: why don't you become a member of boards if you're not already so you can then send PM's? I completely understand what you have said and would be willing to chat via PM any time, no strings and no funny business other than I know what you are talking about. I have no ulterior motive, am in a relationship (just in case you'd be worried) and am not seeking anything other than what you've suggested which is, support. I completely understand what you're talking about and am just embarking on my own counselling journey. I too was overprotected by a dominant Mother who thought she knew what was best for me.

Hadituptohere, I just hope you log back on and realise how un alone you are in being lost and it helps you. Not that any one of us is exactly the same, but there's a thread very similar in all of our lives.

PS just in case...sorry if you feel anyone me included is barging in all over your thread I'm just grabbing and offering support where I can and this post has come up at an unbelieveably poignant time for me too.

AMK

Have to echo the other posters.

I grew up with a mother who didn't like me. That's probably putting it mildly because she seemed to hate me a lot of the time. I can safely say that if you treated a child these days the way she treated me, the child would be taken off you. To make it worse, she 'loved' my three siblings although of course it has emerged in our later years - we're all in our forties now - that being 'loved' may have been worse than being hated.
She too came from a highly disfunctional background. Of course, everybody's story is different but there are marked similarities in the outcome.

Like the other posters, I feel huge empathy for you because I know what it is like to go through life looking on the outside like everything is pretty OK and yet to feel total despair and worthlessness inside.

The good news is you can get past this. I firmly believe counselling is the answer and underwent nearly three years of it myself. It turned me around and although my life isn't perfect - far from it - I am happy in myself and really well-balanced. I also get huge joy out of every day and if I sound like Pollyanna, well I don't care.

You will get through this and those of us who have been there and those who are there at the moment are thinking of you.

Please, please don't feel alone - you're not.

Ickle Magoo

Hadituptohere wrote: »

There´s a lot more to this story....growing up in my house as a kid was like growing up in a mental asylum sometimes....lost of throwing of furniture, hitting, shouting, bullying (between siblings and between siblings and parents). We dealt with things by getting angry.

OP,

That sentence says it all to me - you don't need any of the other explanations and justifications. You can certainly try to get past it yourself and read lots of psychology books and case studies but until someone is looking subjectively at your case and making you think about the minutiae that you would rather never see/think of again, you are more likely to be able to teach yourself to live with, than actually get over your trauma. Maybe you would consider learning about the former at the moment with a view to getting help with the latter as soon as finances allow - if the learning about isn't helping so much? Sometimes I feel that being able to attribute blame/feeling within myself is almost as cathartic as doing it to them.

Best of luck.

penny_arcade

Hello from U.S.A.,

I have reading message boards for intellectual curiosity.

This thread is the first one that I have read that I can emphasize with the posters. Growing up, my parents did not know how to give emotional support and guidance to me and my siblings. With a difficult childhood, I wished I had a mentor. I developed a depressed feeling with low esteem and loneliness.

To Hadituptohere,
Best of luck in trying pull to yourself up from down in a hole and get help as soon as possible. Biggest regret in my life was not seeking professional help when I was young.

To Ivebeentheretoo,
Gosh. Reading your post, I can truly understand what you went through your whole life. My life mirrors yours.

Thank goodness for the invention of internet. I never did have a full social life, so I never met anyone who experienced life as I did.

Babooshka

penny_arcade wrote: »

Hello from U.S.A.,

With a difficult childhood, I wished I had a mentor. I developed a depressed feeling with low esteem and loneliness.


....Biggest regret in my life was not seeking professional help when I was young.

Welcome to Boards. Hadituptohere never came back on to let us know how they are doing. They were an unregistered member so I don't know how they are either, but hope they're ok too. Enjoy your stay at Boards...and in regards your quote above, it's never too late to get help, it's up to you if you want it bad enough, you're changing form till the day you die, so if you have access to help I'd get it no matter what age. Hope you're well anyway.

LegacyUser

Ok, you love him, but your father was, and is, an utterly useless parent.

I had a father like that. A highly intelligent "good" man...and, at some point, I believed him too...

For a variety of reasons the first contact I had with him in decades adds up to an highly objective, post-mortem retrospective.

Even my mother (no angel herself) says that for the first few years of her marriage she somehow got the idea that he knew the answers to everything...until the truth began to dawn...

In real terms, most of the time, particularly if it was practical, or emotional, he was living in a place 5 miles beyond clueless and making up his profoundly expressed answers to everything as he went along.

He couldn't handle bills...he actually used to hide them unopened. He had to be strongly discouraged from DIY (and even erecting tents while camping) because he was prone to physical tantrums unworthy of a 3 year old, that were not only embarassing, but also, somewhat, dangerous and destructive. (Throwing furniture is NOT an intelligent means of self expression, but I can assure you, that didn't stop my father).

...and yet we all had to live his fiction of being the most intelligent, wisest, most liberal, most philosophical and most understanding person on earth...

Even the neighbours (it turns out, decades later) thought he was stark raving bonkers...and NOT in a very grown up way.

My mother recently described him as "at least he was a very *good* man", when I asked her "in what way?" she realised "good" was the wrong word, and tried a few, like "moral", but I have seen him perjure himself to get his own way, or worse, get his own back. So *moral* doesn't really work either.

Truth is, he was a pompous, self-righteous, pr*ck who never grew up, and yet, somehow, he had us all conned into going along with his delusions of righteous ominiscience.

Yes he was very intelligent, and also a breathtakingly talented pianist...but he never used his intelligence or his talent...not for a minute.

Perhaps he was afraid of being judged, and found wanting, too...I suspect so...he had two, highly competitive, older brothers, and some significant physical health problems that had held him back.

I came to realise, since he died, that I was the only one who truly forgave him. I looked at the semi-demented, everlasting three year old brat that he really was, as well as his true talents, and the various trauma that wrecked his head that way, and forgave him for who he really was, warts and all.

Everyone else either forgave a total fiction of a righteous, upstanding man who never existed and who never did any of the abusive and destructive things he regularly did...or they never forgave him at all.

Love your father, by all means, he probably needs your love very badly...but TAKE HIM OFF that pedestal in your head he set, and you kept, him upon.

"Good men" do not systematically devastate their children's self esteem, nor let them down the way he did all of you...very fecked up men do that, and very fecked up men do not even know how to form a valid opinion of your value and worth as a person. So they are not worth listening too...particularly with your, unconscious, inner, ear.

Nevyn

Well done on being strong and brave enough to look at your life and patterns of behaviour and want make good postive changes to make your life better.

A lot of people never get to that place, so you think that you have some issues you want to work on and work through, but you are going to need help doing that even if it's just a sounding board.

Go to your gp and get a referal to someone to help you do this.
Good luck on the next stage of your life may the work you do on yourself over the next two years be an investment in who you want to be and the life you want to have for decades to come.

I know this books was a good start for me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_OK,_You%27re_OK