JOURNAL: I AM NOT ENOUGH....

When you have low self-esteem, when you follow the path of your choices and actions and your thinking and beliefs behind it and get right down to the starting point, it likely says ‘I don’t believe I’m good enough’.

In feeling this way, you just can’t believe that you’re a person of value, that you’re worthy of a better relationship, that you deserve to have your boundaries respected or to be able to vocalise your concerns or opinions.

When you don’t have good self-esteem it’s because in having conditional love for yourself, you try to get people (and sometimes objects and substances) to create feelings in you that you don’t feel yourself. You make external sources the solution to your internal problems, after all, if you don’t like and love you, why would you believe that you could entrust yourself with the responsibility of you?

If the only thing you’ve ever known is to not feel good enough, it’s hard to imagine even an entire day where you can genuinely like and love you. You’d be subconsciously waiting for the other shoe to drop.

You’re seeing other people’s actions (or lack there of) and your experiences as being directly linked to your worth.

Low self-esteem is like a special language and in your mental translation book, when you look up what certain things mean, you keep getting back the same meaning:


Not interested in me = Something wrong with me = I’m not good enough

Won’t leave their partner = Something wrong with me = I’m not good enough

Won’t change into the person I want = Something wrong with me = I’m not good enough

Wants to do things differently to me = Something wrong with me = I’m not good enough

Won’t develop empathy = Something wrong with me = I’m not good enough

Does something that annoys me (and possibly others) = Something wrong with me = I’m not good enough

Relationship didn’t work out = Something wrong with me = I’m not good enough

Can only get it up to porn = Something wrong with me = I’m not good enough

Has different values = Something wrong with me = I’m not good enough

You get the idea.

And maybe that’s the crux of the matter: When you have low self-esteem, you see your experiences and the world around you as an extension of how you feel about you.People do what they do, not because they’re independent individual entities, but because of something in you that brings about their actions and thinking, and life happens, shit happens even, not because there are a gazillion other reasons or factors that could have brought it about, but because of something in you.

I’m fundamentally the same person and while I have good self-esteem, I still have to actively work on managing the little boy within me