I believe that self-image is probably the most important concept in anyone’s life. The fact is that we do not live our lives according to who we are but according to who we think we are. We live according to our perceptions of the self, perception of others, and our perception of the world. We act and react as if all of our perceptions were truths.
Self-image is nothing more than a collection of ideas we have about ourselves. These ideas come from many places, beginning with our childhood and continuing throughout our lives. Some of the early ideas we have about ourselves go into our psyches very deeply and we may spend a lifetime trying to change those ideas.
I think it is important to understand that our self-image is a collection of ideas. This serves to potentially empower us to make changes in our lives because ideas can change. Many people think that they are stuck with their self-image because they believe it is objective rather than subjective, factual rather than imaginary. In other words, we live according to who we imagine ourselves to be.
If a negative self-image comes from powerfully traumatic experiences from childhood, like physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, it takes a lot of courage and self-examination to overcome such an image. Some adopted adults find themselves dealing with an image of being abandoned and wonder what is wrong with them that they were rejected by their mother.
While I believe any self-image can be overcome and changed for the better by an individual, it is still sometimes helpful, for serious self-image problems, to find a good therapist to help you get another perspective on who you really are.
For less traumatic negative self-image problems, there are many things that can be done. I find it to be very helpful to put your thoughts and ideas about yourself down in black and white, write them down or type them up. We have to begin with a clear sense of who we think we are now. What are the negative ideas you have about yourself?
One of the things I ask of clients with negative ideas about themselves is, “Who told you that?” It is sometimes helpful to recognize where a particular negative attitude came from. It is amazing to me how a simple statement made to a child by a powerful adult, parent or teacher, can set an idea in the child’s mind which will then serve to define that person’s image, possibly for their entire life.
If you can understand the origin of your negative self-image, you have a tool to begin to change it. You can recognize that this image may have been false from the beginning. It is something you accepted, something you believed to be true, but not something that was necessarily true. Even if it was true when you were a child, it need not continue to control your life as an adult.
Once you have pinpointed some of the negative ideas you have about yourself, even if you haven’t figured out their origin, you can begin to change those ideas with some simple techniques.
A simple and effective technique for making changes in self-perception is the affirmation. In a sense, your current self-image is the result of a hypnotic suggestion, or repeated suggestions, made to you as a child. An affirmation is a way to replace that negative hypnotic suggestion with a positive one. If you were told you were stupid as a child, you begin to affirm that you are smart. If you were told that you are lazy, affirm that you are hard-working.
Individuals are able to maintain a negative self-image even when there is evidence in their lives to the contrary. We are capable of selectively noticing the experiences that support our negative self-image and not noticing those experiences that do not support it. Once we start our affirmations, we also need to pay attention to experiences which match the new affirmations and build on those.
For example, a woman I know has a negative self-image because of being adopted. Throughout her life she has gotten compliments about her intelligence and her worth. But because of her negative self-image, she sloughs off such positive feedback. She will tell herself that they don’t really know her and if they did, they would not compliment her.
We need to pay attention to ways in which we unconsciously support our negative self-image even in the light of experiences and feedback that do not support that image.
Finally, we need to honestly look at the ways in which a negative self-image may be protecting or serving us. We can use our negative self-image to justify our failures and never feel we have to try to succeed because we are basically flawed. For every person who is afraid of failure, there is at least one other who is afraid of success. See if your negative self-image protects you from success or gives you an excuse for failure. Courage is the answer to every problem and courage is the answer to changing a negative self-image.
