Self esteem

[Clark Kents notebook]

Can anybody please help me? I have recently met an absolutely stunning young lady, and for the first time ever, we appear to have just 'clicked' straight away. We are both in our late twenties, and I thank the Gods for allowing me to meet this beautiful, intelligent, generous young lady. Whilst the large majority of our relationship is fantastic, the one thing that I cannot manage to do is to convince her of how beautiful, and intelligent she is, anmd how proud she should be of herself. At the age of 28, she is a Senior House Officer in a hospital; a lady who was born to be a doctor, as she is simply brilliant at her job. She will call me two or three times a day, to make sure I have done all the studying I should be doing, and to see that I am ok. She is funny, strikingly beautiful, and I cannot imagine my life without her. I don't know if there is a history of bad feeling in her family, or if he parents were supportive of her whilst growing up. But all I do know is that this gorgeous lady, who has so much to be proud of, and to live for, never seems to give herself a break. Can anybody please advise me on what I could do? And please, at the same time, if your remarks are unpleasant, sarcastic, or you are tempted to try to be funny, please, don't bother.

[EvaGina]

And please' date=' at the same time, if your remarks are unpleasant, sarcastic, or you are tempted to try to be funny, please, don't bother.[/quote']

 

We dont do that here.

Welcome to ENA

 

anyways, how do you mean she never gives herself a break?

is she always just down on herself?

 

that kind of thing tends to dissapate once you have been togehter for a while... she might be scared she wont be enough for you.

[shikashika]

is she really negative on herself... or does she just talk that way and not really mean it.. Many people do.

 

I don't know if convincing her how beautiful or intelligent she is is really doing her any favours. What does she say? Maybe she just wants to her it from you.. maybe her last relationship partners never told her anything positive..

 

Maybe she is just really insecure and needs to have people tell her how great she is... or maybe she is just self-centred and wants the world to pay more attention to her.

 

do you have any specific examples?

[Alabama]

A good way to raise self-esteem is to try to get her to believe in herself. There are books that can help with self-esteem or courses she could take to raise it (if she has time). I suggest try to re-affirm her that she can do stuff well and be supportive in decisions she makes and things she does. Just a start, but hope it helps.

[Clark Kents notebook]

Thank you for the many suggestions. No, she is certainly not self-centred; whenever I tell her how beautiful and how brilliant a doctor she is, her stand reply is either "No, I'm horrible" or "No, I'm not, I'm just me". I have subtly suggested various methods of self-help, but she dismisses them, on the grounds that they are all the same. To a certain degree, I can agree with her, but I just don't know what to do. She spends far too much time looking after other people-me included-that I don't feel that she takes enough time out for herself. I don't think she received a great deal of support from her parents, whilst growing up, which I can certainly relate to, as I didn't either. We're both fircely independent, which obviously stems from our ability to survive when on our own, but I think her dedication to her career was a way of 'proving herself' which again, I can totally relate to. I've been with other girls who were depressed, but lacked the motivation to do anything about it. But I have so much respect for this lady, and am so proud of her, that I just wish that she could recognise that she should be proud too

[Alabama]

Maybe she will one day. It can time to heal from wounds of self-esteem, but nothing is impossible. Give her time.

[shikashika]

OK then...

 

Well.. I think the most successful people never broadcast their accomplishments... the ones that do.. are generally the ones that don't deserve it.

 

The person who says"I'm so great..I used to be a model.. I'm so successful.. I make 6 figures, I bought a house at 21'... generally isn't.. they need to tell people because they're not quite sure themselves..

 

However people who truly do great things.. usually think they do not

[herenow]

For now, I would suggest that you just keep giving her genuine feedback about all the positive qualities that you see in her and build the relationship by letting her know how you feel, and I wouldn't expect any sudden changes (though they may happen).

 

With time, if you are a good and caring listener, you will surely get to know more about her family and her past relationships and whatever factors might have contributed to her being so hard on herself. It is not uncommon, by the way, for intelligent people (and she sounds very intelligent from what you say) to feel responsible for taking the world onto their shoulders and to be very hard on themselves for not fully/constantly living up to their own perfectionistic standards for themselves. She sounds like a wonderful person who wants to do her best for others.

 

If there turn out to be issues stemming from childhood, etc. that start to affect your relationship, they can often be addressed through counseling, if there is love and both parties are willing to work at it.

 

Do you think culture might have anything to do with her views of herself? Some cultures are just more self-deprecating (or modest/humble, you could say) than others. Just curious.