Once each week, I will provide articles about self-esteem issues and ideas for correcting negative self-beliefs. I will end each article with a question for readers. Hopefully, you will respond to those questions with feedback, a technique that has been helpful for you or an idea to help others.  Readers can then respond to other readers so we have a conversation, not just a monologue.

Many of the ideas I provide will be based on my recent book, “Parables for a Wounded Heart: Overcoming the Wounds to Your Self-Esteem and Transforming Your Perception of You.” Of course, I will be gathering new information as we go along and sharing that as well. I see this as an ongoing process. The direction of the community will depend on you as much as me. I know that I don’t have all the answers and look forward to your feedback.

We’ll cover this in much more detail later, but here is my basic premise about the origins of self-esteem wounds:

Children are not born with a negative or positive self-esteem. However, from the time they realize that they are beings, separate from the world, they begin looking for answers to the question, “Who am I?” They look to the reactions of their parents and other family members first. Then they look at the reactions they receive from teachers, other children and others. When children experience criticism, rejection or abuse, they conclude that there is something wrong with them that somehow warranted those experiences. They come to believe that they are inadequate, unimportant or defective. They believe that it must be their fault. Without intervention, these negative self-beliefs follow the child into adulthood and through the rest of their life.

These learned self-beliefs can be seen in the intelligent person who believes he is stupid or the kind, loveable person who believes that she is unimportant. The beliefs are also seen in the sexually abused child who believes the abuse was her fault. Without question, we know that these beliefs are wrong in others, but often fail to apply that knowledge to ourselves.

Question #1: What do you believe is the impact of low self-esteem or self-esteem wounds in our society? You can leave your comments by clicking here.

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