Does My Self Esteem affect who I am as a person?

Everyone has a public mask and then what they do behind closed doors. Everyone tries to put on a great public face. Just scroll through FB pics. Ever see unattractive, antisocial, shy posts? No, everyone is posting only their public image, but you can read between the lines. Girls that change their profile pic twice a week, duck face photos, etc. these girls have low self-esteem and are seeking constant validation.

Anyway, to answer your question, self esteem is who you are. It affects your behaviors, it impacts how you act in public. A person with low self esteem can be the emo hiding in the corner or the class clown. People compensate. It doesn't mean they are not accepted or liked. A person with low self esteem can be the life of the party, but behind closed doors is miserable. Robin Williams.

Choosing positive endings to the sentence "I am" is something only you can do.

When you change your definition of yourself, you change your experience of life.

JuliusFawcett wrote:When you change your definition of yourself, you change your experience of life.

If you're ready to raise your self esteem, pick something small that you like -- and find ways to do more of it on a daily basis.

Thanks guys, I think I understand this a little better now. I'll try to work on my self esteem little by little from now on.

Kay's In Wonderland wrote:little by little

Little by little works!

self esteem is only ever one positive thought at a time

Long response, but definitely worth a read:

Well, a lack of high self-esteem does not mean that you are therefore a different person, or even put forth a different representation of your personality than who you really are, at least when first meeting someone. Rather, lacking high self-esteem means that you can not grow as a person until you work on raising your self-esteem, and it also means that you can not stay strong in portraying your personality when things get more intimate, and it also means that you tend to be flighty, and will be unable to hold a relationship because you will change drastically when things get more intimate, leading your partner to struggle to keep up, which may lead you to think that they are a different person under the surface, when really they might just be scrambling to keep up with you, which can show things that they are working on, but not anything about who they are as a person, for everyone has work-ethic when they need to, and you will only turn yourself off to them when you see them working hard like a child to build their self. What you should be looking for in a relationship is how their vibration- the feel you get when close and happy with them- fits with yours, how comfortable it is, and how much you enjoy each others company when you are emotionally naked with them; you should not be looking to how hard they are working or what they are working on, because that will only show who they WERE, not who they ARE or who they WILL BE.
You may be, on the surface, no different than you would be with high self-esteem, but with low self-esteem you are unable to live to your full potential when you are alone or with someone who can make you feel at home with them, for you really have no home in yourself. Having a home in yourself is necessary to staying comfortable in the long run, by yourself and/or with others. Having low self-esteem leaves a shield up from you, aimed in the direction of others, keeping them away. It is impossible to fully love someone who doesn't love themselves, because if you don't love yourself, you can not fully love others. That is a fact of life.

Almost every girl I have ever dated has turned out to have low self-esteem, and I am someone who prides myself in being very empathetic and very capable of reading a persons personality and getting to know them for who they are very, very quickly, but those complexes that come with low self-esteem always come out sooner or later, depending on how low they think of themselves, and it always gets in the way of the relationship getting any further than being together physically and getting to know the personality that I already learned of them while they try to figure mine out, not realizing the whole while that I understand them and what they are saying, even though I will state it over and over that I do, and I will try to show it (this gets very frustrating), because they are not listening- they are picking at me, trying to figure me out, out of an emptiness in themselves from not being comfortable being with themselves. They actually have a humongous shield over themselves, which fights to protect them from hurt, but in essence really just keeps their personality dancing around, showing itself from time to time, but trying to stay in hiding, feeling that the shield is protecting them even though there is nothing to protect them from in me or anyone worth their time, and it does not protect them from someones negative complexes, because those can come out at any time. Your personality is not what you need to protect... you need to protect your emotions.
One would understand in a very short while how I am (what my personality is like) if they were to really just open their eyes to me (who is very, very open about everything and allows myself to be picked to the bone), but they can not bring themselves to really understand what is going on with me because they have a complex of believing that everyone is in hiding as they are (even though you might not feel like you are hiding, your subconscious keeps you in that state) and that they have to find the personality that people like me wear on our sleeves. You fighting to hide your true personality keeps you fighting to find the personalities of others, rather than protecting your emotions as well as theirs, which is very important in any relationship.

I have experienced my own phases of having extremely low self-esteem, to a debilitating point, but I was able to work my way out of those phases little by little by reminding myself that I am just another person with great potential, as we all are, and eventually I returned to how I was as a carefree child before I started analyzing myself in relation to others, and putting myself down for not having the good traits they all had. The crazy thing is that those good traits are limited to a certain amount in each person, creating their individual personalities, but they don't all have all of the same good traits. We are all different! I had to embrace what I am good at and laugh at myself when I learn of something I'm bad at, and realize that we have differences so we can fit together like puzzle pieces. But realize that you don't have flaws, just differences. You are good at things, and bad at things, but those are just things (skills, etc.). What you are really good at is being yourself, and so it is really easy to start the progression from low self-esteem to high self-esteem! It just takes a lot of monotonous persistence (positive self-talk, reminding yourself that you are a good person, etc.) to get out of the pits, but I promise it is worth it rather than living life to half of your potential. It feels so much better to not care about what everyone else is thinking of us, and rather to radiate our souls everywhere we go, attracting people that really fit us well.

So yes, having low self-esteem does effect relationships, and I strongly suggest that you work on your own before trying to find the perfect guy for you, because you won't know when you find him unless you can be by yourself even by his side, and when the times come (as they will) for you two to experience each other, you will be able to immediately open up to his emotional advances and really be with him.

And please do not blame yourself for your low self-esteem. IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT. It is something you can most certainly change, but I will reiterate: IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT. Sooooo many people these days have low self-esteem, and that transfers to the younger generations and spreads rapidly as negativity is super contagious so it can be fought off. It is up to people like you to be strong and stop that negativity in its tracks, letting it get no further, and rather, fighting to spread a positive comfort into the world. It is a natural reaction for a person (any living being, for life is very, very fragile) to retreat into themselves when they see so much emotional corruption in the world. That emotional corruption comes from shyness and fear of the big world around us, and transforms into a retreat into ourselves, where we find that we are so similar to those around us that many of us are confused into thinking that we inherently and innately have the same problems as them, but, in reality, we only have the potential for those problems. On the other hand, we have the potential to be strong individuals with high self-esteem, and to fight off that self-loathing that comes from latching onto the problems of others, originally come from confusion and fear.

I hope this made sense to you, but let me know if you need any clarifying, because I will be glad to lend it! Here to help! Take care you lovely person you

Other people's perspective should not be of top priority. Mostly important, how do YOU FEEL, and does this affect you as a person.

Well its says that you have low confidence in you and you should hearn how to develop it .I can tell you that you can change that by repeting positive afirmation to your brain combined with emotion and then you will change as a person you will have confidence in you etc