- Tom Avery
- Danvers, MA
- United States
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How can people who haven't been given the ability to believe in themselves by their parents as a child learn how to do it on their own?
At the 15:30 mark in the video, Caroline says, "more significantly, they gave me the ability to believe".
My question is that what if they, her parents, didn't give this to her? Where would she have gotten this "gift" to believe in herself?
rosalind Neilen
Dan Willis
Libbey Koppinger
Children possess a sense of Self Worth, even if it's poorly "tended" by parents.
Adults can [should] promote or provide opportunity to children for good self esteem.
A healthy sense of self requires nurturing to grow most often, and includes a desire to look outside ourselves - healthy esteem is not selfish as the child matures, though at first, in infancy esteem IS self centered. [its complicated] ;)
I believe the emotional needs we all have are in fact a direct response to the existence of our self esteem. It is there - otherwise we would have no need of others at all - and rather than have the ability to respond to nurturing with growth and maturity - our sense of self would remain static and unchanging.
Often people describe the nurturing they receive from another person as a gift. That's true.
My Dad was raised by his own Father and several "Mothers" - he was a child of divorce in the 1930s - very rare. One of my grandfather's wives, hurt my Dad. And during his very formative years, was abusive and a real horror. Yet, my Dad grew into adulthood and became a wonderful husband and father. He often describes his ability to "think" things through as the place where he got his sense of right & wrong, and even healthy self esteem. So for him, a healthy sense of self came from processing/cognitive ability. I don't know if there's one singular answer - I'd think it's a nature + nurture situation that affects us all - but whose effects are unique to the individual. Esteem itself though - it's already within us - at birth.