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The Impact of Low Self Esteem
It is almost impossible to eliminate these behaviours unless you fall in love with yourself, forgive
yourself for your past and enhance your self–esteem.
Controlling behaviours and related issues are a direct result of low self–esteem. In order to keep
your sanity, you may have tried to over control people, events, and circumstances. On the other
hand, you may have found greater acceptance for yourself by being helpless and dependent
on others. In either case, these control behaviours were unhealthy and negatively affected your
self esteem. The road to recovery emphasizes taking self control over your thoughts, feelings,
and actions so that you assume personal responsibility for yourself and enhance your
self–esteem.

Anger is a healthy emotion which gets distorted as a result of low self–esteem. You may have
beliefs which block your expression of anger leading you to be depressed. Or your anger is so
hostile and explosive that it hurts others. You may have denied anger so much that just the
thought of getting angry scares you. Because unresolved anger contributes to a faulty belief
system, inadequate emotional life and unhealthy behaviours, it contributes to the lowering of
your self esteem.

Poor communications arise as a result of having received poor communication experience in
the past. Your inability to express feelings openly was due to low self esteem. The ability to listen
to others and reflect back their feelings was also a missing skill. These poor communications
resulted in poor problem solving with a sense of failure and lowered self esteem. In order to gain
new skills at communication, you will need to learn to focus on feelings rather than the content
of what is being said by another person.
Being resistant to change is affected by low self esteem because you lack the self confidence
to believe in your own abilities and worth. As a result you have either worked harder to prove
yourself or you have given up to a sense of failure. Because of your low self esteem, you may
have sabotaged your own efforts to be successful in life. You may have problems dealing with
stress and burnout and don't know how to relax and have fun. You may have severe insecurity
and lack of trust in self which inhibit your ability to take a risk. You may find yourself going in
circles with no way out of lowered self esteem. Any negative self talk may have you captive in a
lack of belief in and dislike of your self. Affirmations and changing your self talk to a positive style
not only leads to enhanced self esteem but also to the ability to accept personal responsibility
for a healthy self.
Relationship problems at home, school, work, socially, and in the community result from low self
esteem. Unproductive and unhealthy relationships contribute to the lowering of self esteem. Low
self esteem is often the root cause of failure of most relationships. It takes two people to make a
relationship work and it takes two people to ruin it. BOTH parties in a relationship need to have
healthy self esteem in order for the relationship to be healthy. If they do not, then the
relationship has barriers to its growth and productivity. People with low self esteem often seek
out others with low self esteem to establish personal, work, or social relationships.

These relationships start out on a fragile foundation which often results in disastrous
consequences. As you work at loving yourself unconditionally and building confidence in your
ability to sustain healthy relationships, then you will attract healthy parties in your personal, work,
and social life. Problems will persist if one partner advances on growth and productivity
dramatically faster than the other. The growing partner can feel resentful for having to care take
the other, and for being held back. The stagnant partner may adopt victim type behaviour over
time and feel resentful that their partner is advancing in life more rapidly than they are.