Sometimes I sell myself short, and I’m hard on myself.  The lessons I am learning on a day to day basis are this: Not to sell myself short, to speak — out loud — positive words about myself (even when alone), to recognize when others are speaking falsely and to not own those false words — also, to not speak or think false words about myself.  The challenge to all of this is that when those false words come from someone who I love a lot, whose approval I badly desire, who I want to be proud of me and to see me for who I really am — it has the potential to be damaging. It has damaged.
But, I am learning that my self confidence comes from within, and cannot be dependent on others, even someone I love deeply.  We all look at the world and others through the lens of our own past and experience. I am not the person I was 5 years ago. I’m not the person I was 1 year ago. For that I am thankful.  But what this means is that when I am viewed through a lens that is so clouded that they cannot see me for who I am, I cannot, should  not, let them affect my self confidence.  Indeed, my self confidence should not come from any other person, and for many years I have sought the approval of those most important to me — and allowed these people to dictate my level of self confidence.  I touched on this topic briefly in my epic 445-hits-in-one-hour blog post from a few months ago “Processing Adoption Questions”.  In that post I wrote:

I don’t know where I would fall in that opposition, perhaps growing up my parents would say that I fell into the testing out side of things. But now I am quite sure that I am more responding with ‘acquiescence, compliance and withdrawal’. This is definitely how I now respond to those ripping wounds when I realize that I am rejected by those I care about, the difficulty I have in trusting after that trust has been broken.

And I do believe it’s true – and I’ve learned that it’s not likely due to being adopted that is causing this. But those feelings, they are like ripping wounds when someone who I’ve been trying to please, to make proud of me, on one level to make them love me for who I really am, speaks such damaging, false, words to me.  My natural response has been to hide, to build up walls, to doubt myself. I become nervous about making myself vulnerable and I doubt myself in certain situations (particularly when it comes to relationships).
I am fighting this battle right now after the Challenging Day of a few weeks ago. A good friend of mine called me on it tonight (we were chatting about guys, of course), and she’s right, I was selling myself short, doubting myself. And I’m faced with a choice: I could just hide, not say anything, take the easy way out (and, I’d probably have fun, because the choices I’m faced with in this situation: both are good options).  But if I open myself up, be vulnerable, take the risk I could end up with an amazing option. But if I take the easy road out, I am re-building that wall of ‘safety’ that I’ve been working so hard to take down. I don’t want to do that.  So, I owe it to myself to take the risk: to make the choice to be vulnerable because in the end I think I need to do that, for myself, to be a whole, self confident woman who knows what she wants and how to get it.
And really, in this particular situation where I have a choice to make, and need to risk being vulnerable, it’s a fairly ‘safe’ situation. It’s not the damaging, stressful, “Challenging Day” situation, it’s a good situation, perhaps one of the safest I could find to take the chance to be vulnerable — I’m sure I’m missed.  But I wasn’t ready tonight. I knew I needed to do more thinking first: maybe tomorrow I’ll be ready. But I’m glad for good friends, who recognize when I’m selling myself short and will say ‘enough’. So thanks. 🙂