on these thoughts, but in view of the importance of emotional healing to the maintenance of high self-esteem I will now summarize the strategy.
Why Is Emotional Healing So Difficult?
Let’s first remind ourselves why people with low self-esteem experience such great difficulty with emotional healing.
First, they are likely to suffer generally from an above-average amount of disappointment and loss. As we have already noted, their negative attitudes and self-destructive behaviour ensure that they repeatedly fail to achieve success and happiness even when all the other odds are stacked in their favour.
Secondly, it is likely that they will find themselves on the receiving end of an above-average amount of physical and emotional abuse simply because they are such ‘easy targets’ for aggressors and manipulators. And, being notoriously inept at distinguishing the sheep from the wolves, we know that they often (however unwittingly) present themselves as victims over and over again.
Not only do people with low self-esteem tend to meet a greater number of hurts, they usually also feel more intense pain when they are wounded. One reason is that their subconscious is often harbouring an above-average store of unhealed wounds. These old emotional hurts are readily reactivated whenever the ‘salt’ of a new hurt happens to be applied to one of their many festering Achilles’ heels. For example, a critical appraisal at work will undoubtedly hurt much more if it happens to tap into the misery of unfulfilled potential, and a letter of rejection will disappoint more deeply if it meets a heart which is beginning to crack under the strain of a lifetime of ‘brushoffs’.
But the agony rarely ends even there. On finding themselves experiencing pain which is so obviously disproportionate to their current hurt, people with low self-esteem will then frequently turn the knife in on themselves. Instead of giving some healing expression to their tortured feelings, they often hastily swallow them and begin to batter themselves with self-reproach (for example ‘I hate myself for being such a “cry-baby” ’ or, ‘It’s my own fault for being so stupidly touchy’).
Perhaps it’s obvious how such a cycle of self-destructive behaviour can then itself have a disastrous knock-on effect to self-esteem. But if you need any more convincing, read this depressingly familiar (only slightly exaggerated!) example.
John (who has a childhood history of being taunted by a bullying teacher for his ‘over-enthusiastic’ approach) is attending an important company meeting at which the Directors plan to allocate a new project. Because of his particular professional expertise and knowledge, John has every chance of being given this exciting opportunity. During the course of the meeting, a senior colleague makes a jovial, whispered tease about the size of John’s presentation folder. On hearing the remark John
– feels a surge of rage
– becomes aware that his depth of feeling seems strangely inappropriate
– inwardly blames his own over-sensitivity
– bites his tongue and smiles
– inwardly flagellates his own self-esteem with punitive and de-powering self-talk (for example ‘What an over-sensitive wimp, why do you always rise to the bait?’)
– as a result, his anxiety mounts and he loses his concentration
– he misses the one ‘golden opportunity’ to put forward his well-researched presentation
– a junior colleague gets allocated this important new work
– on leaving the meeting, the senior colleague makes a jibe about his unopened bulging folder
– John leaves the meeting feeling a total failure as well as a wimp
– he is so ashamed and perplexed by his own behaviour that he buries his deep disappointment and burning resentment, and brushes off the comforting (and potentially healing) commiserations of his friends with a façade of jokey nonchalance.
Not only did this sequence of events hurt the career development and self-esteem of a talented and hard-working individual, but it was counter-productive for the interests of his company.
How We Can Heal Old Emotional Wounds
Essentially our strategy is a series of constructive action plans designed to guide us through the emotional healing process which should, ideally, have taken place soon after each wound was incurred.
…we could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.
Helen Keller
Let’s start with reminding ourselves of the five essential and two bonus stages. I have devised a mnemonic sentence to help fix the names and their order in your mind (see here). (The sentence could be pinned up somewhere as an encouraging reminder of your positive goal.)
Ideally, each stage should be worked through step-by-step, but in your real world it is likely that there will often need to be some overlap. However an important point to remind yourself of from time to time is that the healing process will not work efficiently if you try to go too quickly or if you skip a stage or two. I have found that a favourite trick of people with low self-esteem is to try to rush headlong to No 7 – ie FORGIVENESS. This is a habit which they have probably had since early childhood. Maybe at that time the ‘goodies’ required for other stages were not available, or perhaps they needed the safety and approval that FORGIVENESS can undoubtedly bring in the short term. If you find yourself tempted to skip or rush, remind yourself that this habit cannot begin to compete with the long-term boost to your self-esteem which genuine Emotional Healing can bring.
Before reading through the following guide to the strategy, take a little time to reflect on some of the minor and major emotional hurts you have received in the course of your life. If you can select one or two of your own unhealed emotional wounds to use as examples, the following guidelines will make much more sense for you. But remember, when choosing, that these wounds come in all shapes and sizes and that what will feel like a wound to one person at a certain time in life will be ‘water off a duck’s back’ to another at any time. (If your memory needs a little jogging you could reread the list of examples of knocks to self-esteem in our childhood – here – and our adulthood – here.)
It is often a good idea to choose one relatively minor hurt and another which is likely to require more sophisticated action. To illustrate the strategy I have chosen two very different examples from my own childhood – but don’t forget that yours could be taken also from much more recent adult experiences.
| Every | Exploration |
| Emotional |
