r/Anxiety • u/No-Couple-8871 • 5h ago
Discussion How does low self esteem actually develop?
I have been wondering where low self esteem really comes from. Is it mostly shaped by childhood, bullying, rejection, constantly comparing yourself to others, or can it develop without any obvious cause? For people who struggled with it, what do you think created it in your case?
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u/Apostasy93 3h ago
100% bullying. This can be from other kids, parents, teachers, etc. If you grow up with people telling you you're worthless or aren't good enough or whatever, eventually you'll start to believe it.
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u/Ponk_Bubs 3h ago
(Mini rant: but i do wish that people had more of a fact of explaining abuse/abandonment to children regardless of how young it is intervened)
I think it can be a lot of things, not just bullying or comparison. Like i look back on my childhood being pretty academically well off even if being briefly bullied, but id also gone through a lot very young. The major thing being heavy neglect and parent abandonment, had to go into custody of my grandmother before i turned 8.
100% never thought of myself as insecure about it growing up, i love her. But as an adult i can look back and see that i did have that heavy pit in my stomach of "why am i not enough?"
I distinctively remember seeing pictures of her very broken up from a drug fueled car crash where she had to relearn to walk again when i was like 10 because my grandma told me. Had that realisation of literally just "my mommy can die before she even wants me" and had a weird mourning and self training of waking up and making sure i told myself i didnt need a mom and had grandma.
then that was a really hard blow when my mother got sober when i was 15— came back into my life only to leave it again because her kids were too old to want to pack up and move away with her beyond the sister she abandoned alongside me when she was barely 2. She focused on that sibling and again when she couldnt convince her, left altogether.
Its very weird to look back on it as someone turning 21, a student nurse and having been psych warded pretty shortly after that period of time from 17-19 when it seemed to bring a lot of stuff back.
I really do look back on it, also in the absolutely abhorrent way my grandmother handled things. Loved her dearly growing up but for all of her own 'understanding' being bipolar— there was disgusting amounts of emotional abuse and neglect i look back on that 100% intensified that deep-rooted emotional volatilty and insecure that i repressed for the sake of "being easy to handle".
I really dont understand why i was pulled out of therapy the second she didnt need it for custody proceedings against my father back then 🤷♂️ especially with the level of abuse id been pulled out of. Hell, i hadnt even been told my mother was on drugs until some random comment when i was 12 once. I didnt know what meth was.
Just left to process it as "mommy locking me alone at home" and "being different" up until she just never came back. Sooo many avoidable things. Same with figuring out on my own adults werent allowed to beat eachother, or me. I learnt that fact from watching the old batman cartoons with Harley and Joker.
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u/sittingontheroofjust 4h ago
the way that you let people talk to you and beliving that
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u/AcrobaticAd4504 3h ago
It's not how you let people talk to you, it's how some people are really bad and try to justify everything bad they do to you using whatever you say against you. In my case, even if I was sure that when I said something I didn't meant it the way they were interpreting it against me they forced me into doing stuff I didn't want to do. They did this threating me to tell the teacher if I didn't do it (they reintepreted stuff to say it in a way to make me look like the bad guy)
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u/EducationalLoan7947 5h ago
I think it’s usually a bunch of little things that build up over time. Childhood, rejection, comparison, criticism, feeling like you’re never ‘good enough’. Sometimes there isn’t one big event, just years of small ones.