Low Self-Esteem
When you hear a lot of verbal abuse as a child, you begin to internalize it. Being repeatedly insulted, called names, and told that you aren’t good enough takes a toll on you. As a child, you slowly begin to believe that you are all those things.
This is especially true if you were always told to lighten up or have more positive thinking whenever a cruel comment upset you. As a child, you lacked the necessary reasoning ability to understand that your family members were in the wrong, not you. So, instead, you believed them, and along the way, your confidence was lost and you began to doubt and dislike yourself.
Here are some ways that low self-esteem due to childhood verbal abuse may be affecting you to this day:
You Blame Yourself A Lot:
Verbal abusers often like to point fingers. They’ll put the blame on anyone and everyone except themselves. Your family members likely never took responsibility for their wrongdoings; instead, they guilted you, causing you to always feel at fault.
Today, this may cause you to always blame yourself about everything – even things that don’t have much to do with you. If anything goes wrong, you automatically feel guilty and think you could have done something to stop it.
You Have Trouble Standing By Decisions:
When you were growing up, there’s a good chance that your family members would always insist that they knew best. Every time you had a good idea or wanted to make your own choices, they would manipulate you. They would make you believe that you were young and ignorant, and they weren’t controlling you; they just “care.”
Of course, they didn’t care, and it was all an act to put you in your so-called place. As a grown-up, this may cause you to lack conviction in your ability to make decisions. You may second guess your choices or become extremely anxious about making them. And if they happen to be the wrong choices, you’ll berate yourself for days – if not longer.
You Do A Lot Of Negative Self-Talk:
Verbal abuse conditions children to think negatively about themselves. This is why your inner voice may mirror your abuser’s. You may have a constant barrage of negative thoughts and criticize yourself over every small issue. You may even insult yourself.
You Feel Like You’re Never Good Enough:
Verbally abusive families often expect unreasonable things out of their children. Even if those kids manage to achieve those unrealistic expectations, there is never any reward or any kindness waiting.
As an adult, this may cause you to always feel like you could have done more. You may overwork yourself, obsess over failure unhealthily, and consider any achievement less than the very best to be not nearly good enough.
You Don’t Consider Your Needs Important:
Verbally abusive homes are often also neglectful. When you expressed your needs as a child, you were likely ignored or told to suck it up. Today, this may manifest in a lack of care for your wellbeing. You may underestimate your needs, or you may feel like they aren’t worthy of your attention and care.
Recovery from childhood verbal abuse:
However through individual therapy using cognitive behavioral therapy strategies and techniques we can modify self-esteem through Cognitive restructuring or reframing negative thoughts of self, Guided discovery, Exposure therapy, Journaling and thought records, Activity scheduling and behavior activation, Behavioral experiments, Relaxation and stress reduction techniques, Role playing and daily positive self-affirmations.
As a child we cannot help our circumstances. However as an adults we can change cognitive distortions of self and improve self-awareness, self-esteem and promote positive productivity through individual therapy.
My name is Lisa Jacobs Clark. I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with CCS and have been practicing for over five years.
I enjoy working with children, teens and adults to improve their cognitive perceptions of themselves, improving self-value, self-worth and overall self-esteem through active strategies discussed in weekly individual therapy.
LISA J. CLARK, LMFT
Lisa loves working with teens and adults. She helps by teaching anxiety reduction skills and problem-solving skills. She is a good listener and she cares much. She hates to see people in pain and she works with them to help them develop a happier and healthier life. She is optimistic and warm and she helps people see other perspectives.
She is a parent and she understands that raising children can be a lot of hard work and sometimes parents get stressed and need help too.
A favorite quote of her is "It's easier to build strong children than repair Broken men." Fredrick Douglass.