Women

What do you like about yourself? Are you proud of yourself? If these questions make you feel uncomfortable, or you can’t answer them, chances are that you have a problem with self esteem. Why is that? Why do so many of us basically dislike ourselves? Why are we embarrassed to “esteem” ourselves?

So what exactly is self esteem? Self esteem comes from the inside out. It means that a woman is not dependent upon anyone else to make her feel good about herself, because she already knows she’s fine just the way she is. She is confident and aware of her strengths and abilities. She wants to share them with others.

This does not mean she is conceited. She is also aware of areas needing work and growth. But that’s ok, because she knows she’s not perfect, and she doesn’t have to be. No one is. She understands that we all have our strengths and weaknesses.

Self-esteem is a core identity issue, essential to personal validation and our ability to experience joy. Once achieved, it comes from the inside out. But it is assaulted or stunted from the outside in. A woman with low self-esteem does not feel good about herself because she has absorbed negative messages about women from the culture and/or relationships.
The reign of youth, beauty and thinness in our society dooms every woman to eventual failure. Women’s magazines, starting with the teenage market, program them to focus all their efforts on their appearance. Many girls learn, by age 12, to drop former enjoyable activities in favor of the beauty treadmill leading to nowhere. They become fanatical about diets. They munch like rabbits, on leaves without salad dressing, jog in ice storms, and swear they love it! Ads abound for cosmetic surgery, enticing us to “repair” our aging bodies, as if the natural process of aging were an accident or a disease. Yet with all this effort, they still never feel like they are good enough.
How can they? Magazine models are airbrushed to perfection, and anorexic. “Beautiful” movie stars are whipped into perfect shape by personal trainers, and use surgery to create an unnatural cultural ideal. But youth cannot last. It is not meant to. If women buy into this image of beauty, then the best an older woman can strive for is looking “good for her age” or worse yet, “well preserved”. Mummies are well preserved. Mummies are also dead.

Abusive experiences join with cultural messages to assault female self esteem. Abuse is pervasive and cuts across all socioeconomic lines. It invariably sends the message that the victim is worthless. Many, many women have told me that verbal abuse has hurt them far more than any physical act. As one woman put it, “his words scarred my soul”. Women whose abuse started as children have the most fragile sense of identity and self worth.

Poor self esteem often results in depression and anxiety. Physical health suffers as well. Many times, women with this problem don’t go for regular checkups, exercise, or take personal days because they really don’t think they’re worth the time.

Relationships are impacted as well. Their needs are not met by their partner because they feel like they don’t deserve to have them met, or are uncomfortable asking. Their relationships with children can suffer if they are unable to discipline effectively, set limits, or demand the respect they deserve. Worse yet, low self-esteem passes from mother to daughter.The mother is modeling what a woman is. She is also modeling, for her sons, what a wife is.

In the workplace, women with low self-esteem tend to be self-deprecating, to minimize their accomplishments, or let others take credit for their work. They never move up. Finally, with friends, they are unable to say no. They end up doing favors they don’t want to do, or have any time for. They end up going where they don’t want to go, with people they don’t want to go with! A woman with low self-esteem has no control over her life. But that can change. These women can get help and emotional healing.

It is critical to remember that no one deserves to be abused. If something bad has happened to you, it does not mean there is something wrong with you. The responsibility for the abuse lies with the person who chooses to hurt you. If you are presently being abused, you must put yours and your children’s safety first. If you think you are in danger, you can call your state domestic violence hotline number. NJ STATEWIDE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE HOTLINE 1-800-572-7233.

You can choose your own identity. You can discard the popular cultural image and replace it with something real. As I read someplace once, “We are bound by our fate only as long as we accept the values that determine it.”

Nobody is perfect, but everyone is worthwhile. Believe in yourself.

©2016 Maggie Vlazny

Parenting

Parenting adolescents can often feel overwhelming and downright impossible. Behavioral changes, mood swings, and our child’s development of “an attitude” are a challenge to most parents in this universal transition. Who are these strangers who used to be our kids?

It helps to remember that adolescents are in transition from the role of child to the role of adult. It is an evolving process, with many tasks to be mastered along the way as they prepare to leave the nest. They work through the task of emotional and psychological separation even as they begin to experiment sexually. It can feel awful to the parent but they’re supposed to do this!

Teens must also learn to establish satisfactory relationships with peers. Learning cooperation, feeling comfortable in groups, and forming friendships lay the groundwork for future romantic and work relationships. As they move into the later teen years, adolescents begin looking outward, beyond family, friends, and self. They begin to develop a philosophy of life, a world view, moral standards, and a guiding belief. They begin looking toward the future. Educational and career goals take center stage at this time.

Throughout these stages, teens must learn flexible coping strategies and how to behave appropriately in different situations. Much as we might like to, we cannot prevent them from making our mistakes. Just as we had to learn from experience, so must they. But we can teach them how to make decisions, how to cope, how to behave. We do this by modeling (showing them, through example how we do it). They will close their ears when we try to preach, but their eyes are always open, watching how we manage relationships and life. They miss nothing.

As teens grow and change, parents need to be fluid. The parents must be able to change their rules, parenting methods, and ways of relating, in order to encourage teen autonomy. And they must do this without totally relinquishing parental guidance and control. If parents lose their control, the result is an adolescent who is out of control. The trick is to strike the proper balance between setting limits and allowing increasing independence at each stage of the child’s developmental process.

The years of adolescence can be hard on all involved, but with love and careful guidance, the transition can be a time of growth for the whole family.

College kids and other young adults often have a really tough time during this period of transition. And so do their parents. Anxiety runs high for everyone now that its time to lay down a path toward the future. Parents want to be sure that the destination is visible, safe, and secure. Kids…not so much. This too can create conflict within the family.

It might help to know that the majority of people do not arrive into young adulthood with all their life decisions already in place. Now is the time when they have finally left the nest and are just beginning to spread their wings. That heady feeling of flight understandably distances them from the ground and the flight pattern is unpredictable. Parents, take heart. This is part of the normal life cycle, mastering the developmental task of separating from the family. A simultaneous developmental task is creating a new, age appropriate connection with the family. It will all happen in due time.

Common issues for parents of young adults are:

  • Kids’ financial dependence upon them while hearing declarations of independence.The young adult who opts out of college.
  • Parental inability to let go, as evidenced by constant phone calls, visits, and worrying. This has the effect of clipping the bird’s wings…
  • Conflicts when he or she makes brief visits home from college–so many people to see in so little time! What about us???
  • Re-adjustment to living together again during summer vacations.
  • Difficulty negotiating a new, age appropriate connection with the young adult.
  • Lack of control over the young adult can feel terrifying to some parents.

Common issues for young adults are:

All of the above…with the added challenges of forming new friendships, learning to have mature, intimate relationships, doing well in school or work, and establishing goals for the future. If your child is not in school, you may feel like a failure. You are not, and neither is he or she. You do not ever want to convey that message because it will cause unimaginable damage to your child’s soul. It will also become a self fulfilling prophecy. Which brings me to my favorite question, anyway: How do you define success? Does success mean acquiring wealth? I personally don’t think so, but I’m in the minority. I define success as being my own authentic self (not what people or society expect me to be) doing work that I love, and living with someone that I love. It’s that simple. And that difficult. But I can tell you that the people I know who agree with my definition of success, and make it happen, tend to be the happiest people I know.

©2016 Maggie Vlazny

Love Me for Who I Am

Love Me for Who I Am

Many people have never questioned their biases toward gays and lesbians. The culture and the families they grew up in excluded and hated people who were different from their own sexual orientation. They were disgusted by sexuality outside the norm, as if what gay people do in bed defined them. (Do heterosexuals define themselves by what they do in bed?)

IMAGO Therapy

Is your relationship in trouble? Have events changed in your life, like a new baby, or a death in the family,  a move to a new location, or a new job? These are all very stressful and can change your dynamics and feelings for each other. Are you wondering how the person you fell in love with became a stranger behind a mask? Or perhaps you are a couple preparing for marriage. You want your marriage to be one of the 50% who make it. It could be that you’re single and tired of dead end relationships that don’t meet your needs. Sometimes a neutral party like a therapist can help you to problem solve the immediate situation, but sometimes it goes deeper than that.

Imago Therapy helps people to understand the unconscious factors (the Imago) in their selection of each other. It reveals the emotional dynamics that are being replayed from childhood. And it teaches couples how to relate to each other, and themselves, in a more nurturing, loving way.

We are taught that when we fall in love, the feeling is supposed to last forever. We meet the person of our dreams and a magical transformation takes place within us. We feel alive, whole, connected to the world and the people in it. Then, before we know it, that magical feeling disappears. Disillusioned, our dreams shattered, we begin to feel angry and betrayed.

We try to coerce our partners into giving us what we need. We criticize, we withdraw, we shame, we intimidate, we cry. Or sometimes just the opposite. We enter into a dead zone, where it seems like there are no emotions at all.

We feel entitled to wait for our partner to come alive first. Some of us go on locked in this painful power struggle for years until we either break up or seek help, desperate to regain the magic we once had.

How Does Imago Therapy Help?

When we remain unaware of the hidden agenda of romantic love, we continue to repeat our mistakes. We need to understand that conflict is actually growth trying to happen. By resolving our problems through Imago Intentional Dialogue and other Imago techniques, the emotional bond initially created by romantic love can evolve into the powerful bond that is true love.Imago Relationship Therapy provides all the tools necessary for transforming relationships, and it offers important, immediate relief.

Once we learn to feel emotionally safe with each other, we can grow and become truly authentic with ourselves and with each other. That’s when we fall in love again with who our partner really is…And we are loved for who we are. Until…life being life…we grow and change again. Some conflict is inevitable, of course, in order for people to grow and change. With the tools Imago Therapy provides, you will learn to welcome growth and change, and respectful conflict, because you get to fall in love all over again with your “new” partner.

This is the upward spiral of love that is joyful and life affirming.

For further reading:

  • Books:

    • Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix

    • Keeping the Love You Find by Harville Hendrix

    • Getting the Sex You Want by Tammy Nelson

    • How to Ruin a Perfectly good relationship by Patricia Love Ed. D and Sunny Shulkin, Ph.D.