The feelings associated with low self-esteem are often depressive feelings, and at times could even develop into a proper clinical depression. Often, people will seek relief from medication and that could be a good idea.
Generally speaking, SSRI’s will be prescribed by your doctor which are first line medications (antidepressants) in order to help you get relief from the depressive symptoms. Many people feel that this has been very helpful, and a lot of people will say that it has absolutely saved their lives. Some of my patients would not be able to focus without them. Having said that, it is not always such a smooth ride.
In about 30% of the population, the antidepressants don’t work. In another significant percentage, there are side effects that don’t subside, and people tend to give up on the medication. There are also people that simply don’t want to be medicated and prefer to go through the psychological therapies in order to deal with the issues at the core.
There is a saying amongst therapists that ‘pills don’t teach skills.’ I’d say there is truth to both. Some people suffer so much that the first aim has to be to improve their mood for without it, it isn’t really possible to do any effective therapy. Then there are those that just rely on meds and often fall back when they get off the meds as the core issues were not dealt with. It should come as no surprise that research shows that the combination of both, medication and psychotherapy, are the strongest predictors of a good outcome for folks suffering from clinical depression.
If you follow my writings, I will help you get out of this rut and empty feelings by targeting your childhood wounds and help you through them. But if you feel that you need an immediate boost to your mood in order to be able to tackle and face these demons of your past, I recommend a natural treatment for your depressive feelings. The treatment is easy to follow through, but does take some time. The benefit of it is that you will start to feel much better as time goes on. Not only will you feel better, but you won’t suffer any of the side effects that are quite common with antidepressants such as;
- weight gain and increased appetite
- erectile dysfunction
- tiredness
- insomnia
- dry mouth
- blurred vision
- constipation
- nausea
These side effects from antidepressants are very unpleasant. Sometimes, they are just at the beginning (about two weeks) and habituation occurs in which your body will adjust and the side effects will subside. Nevertheless, if they don’t, or you prefer to try dealing with your symptoms in a natural way, I highly recommend this natural healing for your depression or depressive feelings.
Even if you don’t suffer from a full-blown depression but you do have these ‘blue days’ of feeling low, you will also have benefit from this program. I highly recommend it in combination with following my blog and do the therapeutic interventions that I will be recommending step by step.
How your childhood wounds cause you to feel depressed
Low self-esteem and depression are close cousins. Low self-esteem, caused by childhood maltreatment or unmet needs, will make you withdraw from the world to some extent and not express your full potential. There is an inner pain associated with not achieving what you can. You know you can do more and better and these barriers feel so real that the effort required just feels like too much. Here and there you get a break and you feel free from these inner barriers and conflicts but other days you just feel like your energy is drained.
The essence of the conflict
The essence of this inner turmoil is a conflict. There is a side of you (or a part of you) that knows you can achieve more, do more, and that you are worthy. But there is another part of you, telling you the exact opposite. The latter is the part that has recorded your childhood negative messages and keeps repeating these messages whether you agree with them or not. This inner conflict is very tiring.
It is as if you are fighting yourself. From now on we will call this healthy part of you, the part that is seeking help and deep inside believes in you, your adult part.
So it is your adult part that is conflicted with your wounded parts which is the core of your pain. Part of you ‘hears’ what the adult part has to say and occasionally you function out of your most adult part. But other days, or in specific circumstances which mimic childhood situations, your wounded part comes to the fore and kind of ‘claims you’, by giving you all these negative beliefs about yourself and makes you act in ways that you end up regretting and not really understanding. That’s what happens when you say to yourself ‘why does he/she gets to me like that?’.
These triggers have a vicious cycle about them. You get triggered and then you get upset with yourself for having been triggered. Once you get self-critical with yourself, guess what it does to your self-esteem? Of course, it further plummets down and on and on it goes. It is only once the childhood wounds are healed, that the inner recordings are switched off, needs are met and the triggers don’t manage to turn old recordings on anymore.
Assignment
In yesterday’s blog, I recommended that you keep track of your behaviors that do or avoid as a result of low self-esteem. By now, you may have collected a variety of those behaviors. Keep tracking them. In addition, start to become aware of your negative beliefs (which are old recordings played by your wounded parts). Notice your inner conflicts between your adult part and wounded parts as well as the triggers in which they occur.
