Frustriert

A big part of my alcoholism and being the way that I am comes from the fact that I am not happy with myself as a person.

I constantly seek validation from the outside world. A lot of my drive in life is because I want to be seen by others as...well...simply good. I don't validate myself so I try and generate validation from the outside world.

How have you, in your recovery, began to teach yourself how to validate yourself? How have you started to build up a sense of self worth and self love (cheesy term, I know) that you use to calm the storm inside of you?

jamdls

Hi Frustriert, I found that simply by stopping drinking and physically taking good care of myself that my self worth and self love just grew naturally. I did a lot of self study, AA literature, the Bible, etc to bolster my commitment to sobriety and with each passing day/week/month my self-confidence just naturally grew. I've been sober nearly 4 yrs and feel that I am still growing in this confidence and 'self love', heck I spent the better part of 30 years being a drunk and pretty much hating myself it's going to take perhaps the rest of my life to undo the damage I did to myself.

rws177

I guess that I started validating myself by taking better care of my body. In sobriety I have been working out pretty often and eat healthy (most of the time). As a result of those two things alone I have felt my self-confidence grow tremendously. Hell three years ago I smoked pretty often, binge drank at least two days a week and just felt like crap all of the time. Now I eat right, train/compete in jiujitsu and something called Crossfit. I don’t look muscular, ripped or even consider myself to be that great looking at all. However I feel good and not in a vanity way if that makes any sense? In some strange way I really do feel that I am capable of accomplishing anything in this life and that confidence is like some pheromone that others around me have picked up on.

Mark75

The 12 steps of AA.

Before you consider that a pat answer by someone who kneejerks his way through the big book (and if you don't think that, my apologies, although someone may...)... I am highly trained, married for 27 years, 4 kids, good career... some people think I even have some common sense. I also like to think I am reasonably intuitive... about others... about myself, turns out, not so much...

It wasn't until I really worked that 4th step and onward that I started to build up that sense of self worth, self validation, whatever... and God knows I tried other ways... turns out all that self love is over rated anyway...

It works if you work it... a smarmy little phrase that, for me, was true...

Boleo

My experience has been that peace of mind, joy and sense of purpose are all byproducts of being spiritually fit. Outside forces do not necessarily dictate inside feelings:

"Each is his own master"
- Siddhartha Gautama

Frustriert

Darklight, great post. Thank you. I'll watch the video when I get home from work.

In some ways I fall into the trap, in others I don't. Like I said, I've done a lot of things in life in order to make myself seem better or to make myself feel better. Looking to learn how to not depend on that. I'll have to look into some of your readings.

I've done my 4th & 5th steps. I'll be honest I don't know if those made me feel better or just made me feel like more **** about myself. *shrug*

I try and tell myself I'm deserving of self respect in the morning but it is like throwing a ping pong ball at a hurricane. It just...doesn't have any impact. Maybe daily affirmations huh? *cringe*

Mark75

When I first entered recovery, I had huge shame issues... and it did take a while flor me to feel like I deserved any self respect... so I do know where you are coming from...

Zencat

I can not do it all or be everything for everybody. I had to admit to myself that I have plenty of flaws, none are life threatening or dangerous but I'm flawed all the same. So I accept that, make peace with the reality that there is plenty of room for improvement in myself and my lifestyle.

Realizing I have room to grow and make room within me to do so. I can now appreciate the small positive changes that I make as I go forward in life. I can now notice the effects of those small changes and be encouraged to continue my healing out of addiction. Feeling competent that I have it within me to change the direction of my life...just feels really good and I feel good about myself as a result. That is higher self-worth to me.

Adisa1101

frustriert,
i can completely relate to what you are saying. i have spent more time worrying about what other people think about me and always trying to be "enough" to almost everyone. it was all an act though. the more i tried to validate my self worth through others, the more i lost sight of who i really was. i am still working on different behavior patterns today. i want to be able to look at myself and be "enough", without proving it to the rest of the world.

Kjell

Hi Frustreirt-

Thanks for this post.

I've often felt and still feel the same way, which is why my ego was so important to me prior to getting into sobriety.

I needed my ego to be stroked and often .

(jokes aside, but it was true)

I'm finding the more I live for a power greater than myself (yes, some AA here), the less I need and am a slave to my ego.

Sometimes, this is hard and requires a lot of work and other times its easy peasy lemon squeezy.

I think the fact that you're conscience of this and looking into is something wonderful indeed.

Side by side we go, right?

Kjell~

lushly

Great question Frustriet and thanks for the u tube video darklight. Food for thought about how we view ourselves. Hummmmm?

tsmba

Good topic! It reminds me of the subtle ways addictive thinking sabotages me from within. Everyone likes external validation, but that is beyond our power. As long as we are dependent on people, places, and things for our own happiness, we'll never be well. Learning to accept ourselves as we are, and to be happy with what we have, is a tough row to hoe...but crucial to recovery!

Frustriert

Continual good advice, and don't be afraid of telling me about the AA stuff! I go to a weekly home group and have a sponsor. I'm not a book thumper (either bible or aa big book) but there is definite wisdom to be had!

NYCDoglvr

Terrific question. In early sobriety my sponsor said "compare yourself to myself" instead setting myself up for failure by comparing myself to others. Someone else told me that in order to get self-esteem, I had to do esteemable things.

What is also important is to give yourself credit for your successes. Days, weeks, months, years sober ... we are so self-punitive we don't take credit where we should.

It also helps to keep in mind that we a processing things through the filter of low self-esteem. In other words, question our opinions and ideas, don't just take them as truth.

NYCDoglvr

Oh, forgot something important. I suffered a great deal of shame the first few years ... it stopped when I did a fourth step on shame.

Mark75

Well, a central theme of AA is to move away from an egocentric position and since I am not a very succesful big book thumper myself, I just hope that you can take that statement at face value.

In my own experience... as I was having some early success at get out of self and beginning to take inventory... seeing myself as I truly am, well, to the best of my ability anyway... I became less judgemental, of myself, of others... and as I got out of self, or at least as much as a person can, whatever I thought of myself began to lose importance... clinging to old ideas and judgements hinders that process..

so if I said... It doesn't matter what I think of myself, internal validation is irrelevant if I am trying to live in the third and eleventh step... aligning my will with my higher power's... would that make sense?

Frustriert

I'll be honest - it doesn't yet. Intellectually I understand what you are saying but converting that knowing to actual "doing" is where I stumble.

Mark75

Honesty is what we all need.

My own experience was that my intellect was useless to me in some of the steps, actually worse than useless, it slowed my progress. Trying to understand it as I went was impossible... I remember the day I had been working on the 4th step, I went to take my bike ride, to clear my head... and out of nowhere, I got it... it was remarkable really, everything began to come into focus... and it was no longer important to me whether I forgave myself or not...

Hard to put into words...

tsmba

I've never found anything as true as the statement that "we must act ourselves into a new way of thinking, not think ourselves into a new way of acting."

BackToSquareOne

How do you get validation from the outside world except by joining the herd? Don't all religions and groups of any kind require you to buy into the "group think", the dogma of the organization. Independent thinkers are rebels, anarchists who refuse to join the flock are seen as outcasts, they don't "fit in", is that always a bad thing though?