Originally Posted by
Stung 
In conclusion, I'm not sure if I'm actually humbling myself when it's becoming clear that I have pretty low self esteem. How the hell do you build self esteem? Because I have definitely been relying on material things to make myself feel good, and that's not healthy.
I think Florence makes a great point about your mom's influence in this area of your life.
Otherwise, I guess *for me* material things are external & don't represent who I am inside so I just have never felt the attachment to them that others do. I like nice things, don't get me wrong, but I really only care about money/things insofar as having enough to NOT have stress about it. I don't need hundreds of millions, but I don't want the stress of debt, kwim?
I think I would start by trying to identify how my internal wiring becomes linked to external things - what makes you feel this way? I always have to examine those things in real time - meaning, when I'm thinking "I feel like such a loser" that is the time for that self-reflection..... sometimes I trace back over my steps or thoughts in those last moments leading up to the "Loser" reference & can see where my mental train went off the tracks. I have the best clarity on the situation when I am in the moment rather than trying to reflect on it later.
I think healthy self-esteem is a reflection of a balance of humility & confidence/ego.... when either/or gets too heavily weighted for too long it creates a chain reaction in our behaviors as well as our mindset.
As far as this part:
So a few weeks ago I claimed to have understood what I'm supposed to be doing
You still understand, it's just not a straight path that you can walk, pass a checkpoint and consider it done. A LOT of this kind of recovery is kind of circular - you sometimes come back to the same points because you had a different type of awareness about a situation. That's not the same as beating yourself against the same lesson over & over & never getting past it. You are doing great!