Appreciation

LegacyUser

I believe that my friends, family and boyfriend do appreciate me, but with low self esteem its hard to be sure, how does one go about getting reassurance or praise without constantly asking for it?

Taltos

OP - you are only going to be happy in yourself when you learn that you don't need either reassurance or praise.

Instead maybe see about working on your selfconfidence. There is loads you can do yourself or if you have tried and it is just not working for you there are professionals there to help too.

Not only is it bad for you to constantly be looking for reassurance/praise - it can be damn tiring for those around you too... Go on - take some action here and work for a happier life.

Idle Passerby

Dont ask for reassurance and praise, its demeaning to you and probably exhausting for your friends and family. Why dont you work on improving your self esteem rather than feeding it by looking for constant reassurance.

Ickle Magoo

Hey OP,

It's never healthy to have to rely on others giving praise and reassurance to bolster your own self esteem - or you fall into the cycle you are in now of feeling bad if you don't get it and trying to artificially create the conditions in order to get your ego stroked.

The best thing you can do is work on your own self-esteem, with a professional if needs be, until you don't need praised or reassured to know you're a person of worth.

All the very best. :cool:

gud4u

Tell yourself you're absolutely effing great, the bees knees, the best of the best, fantastic, lovely, brilliant or waht ever positive words you can define yourself with and that is all the praise you'll ever need.

I used to run myself down to others so they'd say nice things to me, which was wrong of course. Now I have sorted myself, when I see others doing it, i just don't answer them.

There are some great cds/downloads you can put on your ipod and listen to as you sleep to enforce positive mental attitudes for you. Louise Haye is a author on self esteem too.

Never rely on anyone but yourself for praise.

Good luck

blatantrereg

gud4u wrote: »

Tell yourself you're absolutely effing great, the bees knees, the best of the best, fantastic, lovely, brilliant or waht ever positive words you can define yourself with and that is all the praise you'll ever need.

I used to run myself down to others so they'd say nice things to me, which was wrong of course. Now I have sorted myself, when I see others doing it, i just don't answer them.

There are some great cds/downloads you can put on your ipod and listen to as you sleep to enforce positive mental attitudes for you. Louise Haye is a author on self esteem too.

Never rely on anyone but yourself for praise.

Good luck

I'd try to get away from the idea of needing to be great/fantastic/lovely tbh. It's meaningless and only creates pressure on yourself. Also artificially inflated egos can make people a bit precious or distort their view of reality.

Back to the OP, it's difficult to know how to take your post without context. If you feel a need for reassurance or appreciation then being straightforward about that is best. Anything else is just games really.

Are you talking about things like people acknowledging your birthday and not dismissing your opinion or significant achievements? Not bothering to put any effort into maintaining your relationship/friendship That's the sort of thing I would class as a normal desire for appreciation. Or do you feel a need for compliments and reassurance on an ongoing kinda way - need it to feel ok in general kinda thing?

Really what it comes down to is whether you feel a need for them to validate you to feel ok about yourself, or whether you just feel sad that they dont seem to bothered with you.

LegacyUser

I think OP, you might benefit from Mindfulness exercises. A friend of mine who suffered from anxiety (not suggesting you have this problem) and low self esteem and had a tendency to ruminate and look for a lot of reassurance. She read The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness by Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal & Jon Kabat-Zinn and found it a great help. Obviously this is aimed at somebody suffering from depression but maybe some of the exercises in the book might be of help to you if you feel you are being overly reliant on reassurance.

LegacyUser

It would be that they don't seem bothered with me.. and appreciation for the fact i give help and advice and don't even get so much as a thank you sometimes or acknowledgement. I know it could all be in my head because of the issues but I don't know, sometimes it's very obvious it's not going to come (the thanks that is)

I am a friend

As others have said, you dont want to go looking for reassurance to make yourself feel better. to be frank, thats the lazy way out... you are relying on others for an ego boost rather than work on yourself....

As well as that, unless you work on yourself it will become addictive and you will need more and more assurances from those around you. no one should be put under that pressure...

blatantrereg

hihihihi wrote: »

It would be that they don't seem bothered with me.. and appreciation for the fact i give help and advice and don't even get so much as a thank you sometimes or acknowledgement. I know it could all be in my head because of the issues but I don't know, sometimes it's very obvious it's not going to come (the thanks that is)

I get you. Do you think you might be taking on other people's responsibilities maybe? You might be best off deciding what is your own responsibility and drawing a line beyond that in general, if you feel you are in asymmetric kinds of relationships.