All in the mind? / Let's get physical?

Are what's contributing to your low self-esteem / confidence PHYSICAL, or is it MENTAL?

I suppose I would have to say mental. When you feel low problems seem very real. You feel as though things would be better if you looked different, had a better car, had the right job (or a job), lived in the right place, had a lover, knew more about certain things.

Whoops! I've made myself miserable!

Anyway, attaining these things often only helps for a short while, and then there's something else you need to be happy.

If happiness is an inside job...then it would be mental for me.

If a person can live in a third world country with high poverty,
stravations, lack of modern craptions or mtv/ipods,BMW and knows
happiness....It's all in my fucken head i just know it.

I just need to learn how to filter out that honeysuckle...
TV , ADDs, are design to make you feel inadequect or in need.

There's a commercial that comes on all the time...about
wieght lost. I actaully notice at the end of the commercial
what a super model said.....as a football was thrown at her.
" get this....and you'll score" lmao

There's billions of women that will never look like her in
that commercial......but they'll feel like honeysuckle everytime
they see that commercial....

Lonesome Crow said:

If happiness is an inside job...then it would be mental for me.

If a person can live in a third world country with high poverty,
stravations, lack of modern craptions or mtv/ipods,BMW and knows
happiness....It's all in my fucken head i just know it.

I just need to learn how to filter out that honeysuckle...
TV , ADDs, are design to make you feel inadequect or in need.

There's a commercial that comes on all the time...about
wieght lost. I actaully notice at the end of the commercial
what a super model said.....as a football was thrown at her.
" get this....and you'll score" lmao

There's billions of women that will never look like her in
that commercial......but they'll feel like honeysuckle everytime
they see that commercial....

Click to expand...

Yep! There are people starving and being persecuted for their race or religion and they keep going from day to day. I'm miserable because the love of my life is with someone else and I can't stand my girlfriend. Spoilt or what? Of course it's in my mind. I should be doing something positive instead of languishing because I can't have everything I want.

mental

Nyktimos said:

I'm miserable because the love of my life is with someone else and I can't stand my girlfriend.

Click to expand...

I hope your girlfriend doesn't read this forum...

I believe one can fuel the other. In my case, the physical fueled the mental.

I remember the exact moment my self-esteem started to sink.

I was in the sixth grade. I was riding my bike home from a Boy Scout meeting (I'm an Eagle Scout, and proud of it!), and I happened to encounter the little brother of a kid I knew from school. He was several years younger than me and half my size, but this didn't dissuade him from saying "Hi, fatty!" as I went past him. Being the calm, overtly hesitant person I was (and am), I ignored him, and he cackled at me as I pressed on. When I got home I looked in the mirror and said to myself 'He's right! I am a fatty!" Before that day I had been as carefree as a kid could be, but from then on I became more and more self-conscious about my weight, which, coupled with my hesitant nature, has led me over the years to the self-esteem issues I have today.

Since then I have managed to get into better shape (though still not ideal), but I'm finding that the 'fat loser' mentality I spent so many years cultivating has etched itself across my psyche, and buffing it out is going to be the biggest challenge of my life. I'm giving it a try, though. I just haven't found a coarse enough brush, yet.

The-One said:

Nyktimos said:

I'm miserable because the love of my life is with someone else and I can't stand my girlfriend.

Click to expand...

I hope your girlfriend doesn't read this forum...

Click to expand...

That would solve some problems real quick, wouldn't it? But it's never likely to happen.

Nyktimos said:

That would solve some problems real quick, wouldn't it? But it's never likely to happen.

Click to expand...

So out of interest and off topic, why don't you just break up with her?

The-One said:

So out of interest and off topic, why don't you just break up with her?

Click to expand...

I don't know how interesting it's going to be, but it's a bit like this. Her first husband beat her up frequently and was a serial cheater. Her second, from what I can gather, also cheated. She's had a breakdown already, including a suicide attempt. More to the point, she's got serious problems dealing with the world, and she sees it as everybody else's fault. She just sinks deeper into bitterness and OCD's and drives people away. I suspect she was spoilt as a child but she doesn't see it that way. To her the world is honeysuckle and she's the toilet.

Odd thing is, when I met her I was the same. Somehow I changed my attitude and realised that we never get everything we want. The world is a pretty amazing place, and getting more so all the time. Not for me, but that is my responsibility not the rest of the world's.

So as her paranoia and OCD's get worse, and she still doesn't see that she has a problem, I feel more and more responsible for her. We had four or five good years after all, and she's already been knocked back so many times and dealt with it negatively. She frequently makes it clear that she is still besotted with me, and I just can't see her coping on her own. She has no-one else to help her right now, because she's withdrawn from life so much to protect herself.

Obviously, everyone tells me to dump her, but try doing it to someone like that without feeling you're telling them to go and kill themselves. Oddly enough, if she did start to look at the world in a more positive way and I didn't have to deal with her negativity all the time, we might have somthing worth salvaging. After all, if I didn't care about her I would have left her to her own misery.

Nyktimos said:

Somehow I changed my attitude and realised that we never get everything we want.

Click to expand...

You know, if I was going to be pedantic, then if all you've ever wanted is everything, then you will never get anything you want.


I'm not sure about her specifically, but if and when I enter a relationship, I will enter with expectations that it will go badly. If she is as depressed as you say she is, she probably expects you to leave her anyway.

The-One said:

Are what's contributing to your low self-esteem / confidence PHYSICAL, or is it MENTAL?

Click to expand...

I would say in my case it is physical problems that makes me hurt mentally.
Things I well never except that can send you mental.

For me,it is more of mental that causes me to have low self esteem.But again,physical actions like miscommunication causes me to have that thinking,"If you cannot,how can you overcome it now?".