By Angela Dunning
Photo by Engin Akyurty
If your sense of self and self-esteem were constantly eroded from an early age, then this leaves a deep hole in the core of your being, and no matter how much you try to fill this hole from the outside through achievement, qualifications, people or objects sadly it can feel like trying to fill a bottomless well.
This hole is so deep and constantly ravenous that no matter how much you try to put in there, it literally feels like a drop in the ocean. This hole is also what creates most addictive types of behaviours.
Self-worth and self-esteem come from knowing deep in your whole being that you are worthy of love, attention, and the right to life itself. However, if this damage came about through your initial care-giving relationship, usually this is with your mother but it can also be affected by your father and other adults in the house/family network, then it follows that true, lasting repair of this gaping wound can only come about through loving and trust worthy relationships. Through learning to find ourselves at last through the loving responses of others.
We simply can’t fill this empty well alone or through compulsive behaviours such as always keeping busy or gaining more certifications or accolades. Nor can we fill it up by pulling others around us down in the process. Sadly this often affects those closest to us, maybe a partner or worse, a child, but it can also manifest in whatever profession we are in where we may have a cruel, punitive boss, or we may try to damage another’s reputation in order to make ourselves feel better. None of these tactics work to fill us up; in fact, they just recreate relationship conflict and trauma all over again (this is referred to in psychology as “repetition compulsion”) and leave us feeling just as empty afterward when things have calmed down again.
Finding true, safe relationships with others, and sometimes it’s necessary to find a professional to work with for a time, is the only viable route to healing such early damage to one’s sense of self. In addition, it seems that creative pursuits, so long as they are approached consciously and not obsessively, can also, over time, add to an inner sense of worth and esteem. But it is primarily through entering into loving and safe relationships that the real healing can start to happen, and we start to fill up our sense of self from within.
If you ever wonder why having undergone a new training, taken a career change, produced some piece of great work, or any other accomplishment still leaves you lacking confidence in yourself and a nagging sense of emptiness within, then look to how empty your well really is. Because it may indicate that what you’re trying to fill yourself up with are the wrong things altogether. Instead of taking another course, maybe you need to work with a therapist. Or, instead of taking on more and more work, maybe you need to create time and space to dive into your creative yearnings. Or maybe simply, you just need to devote more time to genuine self-care actions to love your body and soul and soothe your aching heart in the process. Or maybe, and most likely, you need to find a spiritual path that fits for your soul’s yearnings, something you can connect to for support, safety, and guidance on your journey.
Although at times this well can literally feel bottomless and that the constant raw ache is never going to go away, changing HOW you go about filling yourself up can make all the difference. Finding new routes to inner fulfillment which aren’t dependent on something outside of ourselves but instead learning to discover what truly fills us up inside and nourishes us to our deepest core is the best place to start this journey.
