equus

The self esteem, the abilities, the qualities you've seen in your life are all still inside you. Where else could they go? Where else did they come from except from YOU?

I know what it feels like to lose a whole heap of confidence and have to trawl it back inch by bloody inch. Perhaps now I have too much but it feels a lot better to me. I feel as though I'd simply got out of practice, I had stopped practicing confidence, I stopped thinking good things about me, I'd stopped seeing the successes in my life. Instead I'd practiced picking out my own failures, looking at the physical, intellectual and emotional flaws I had. I practiced telling myself off, I practiced thinking I would fail, I concentrated on all the things that I couldn't do or achieve. AND I felt like POO!!

I don't know exactly when but a penny did drop - I hadn't changed but what I said to myself had. Slowly I retaught myself and worked on practicing confidence, making myself look at anything no matter how small that I COULD do, and most of all remembered my own successes rather than wiping them out by saying I'd changed for the worse.

Recently I went for counselling which helped me IMMENSLY polish up what I'd begun.

Everything you ever were is still there and is still YOU. It's hard but it is possible to start walking back to that way of thinking.

Your post rang so many bells for me - only I managed to get myself into a mess without any help from alcoholism, no major trauma - just for some reason I lost my 'Umphhh' then made it worse by being horrible to myself.

BTW - I'm crap at bills, I still am, I always have been, thankfully they are on direct debit now!! PHEW!!!!