Think about it: we usually consider our self-esteem in relation to other people.  I’m insecure, I feel less important, or I feel confident in the world and maybe even superior.  It’s comparative.

But the source of self-esteem is your Self.  And how worthy you feel depends on how respectful you are toward your Self.

What’s a Self?  I don’t know.  It’s a unique someone in there who has preferences, feelings, opinions.  It’s what grown-ups talk about with little children, even infants.  Oh, he’s always watching, or she’s a bright little thing, much happier than her brother.  Or we talk about “character,” with people and animals of all ages.  Whoever or whatever that is in there, I’m calling it a Self.  Everybody has one.

But not every person is given permission by their family or culture to pay much attention to it.  You can’t, if people around you don’t even see it, much less show any interest in it.  You have to adapt to them.  It’s basic survival, belonging.

And then . . . you have limited “Self-esteem,” because your Self truly feels not important.

When I was sexually abused by my stepfather, finally confessed (guilt-ridden, ashamed, scared) to my mother, and she preferred his lies to my truth, I learned some lessons, and I learned them deeply:

— I don’t matter.  People can do what they want with me, and nobody cares.

— My body doesn’t really belong to me.

— No one can be trusted, not men, not the person whom I most loved, my mother.  (She stayed married, and the abuse continued until he died a few years later.)

— When you’re in trouble, you’re on your own.

And so I went into my adulthood (so-called), a solitary, brave performer, a watcher of other people and of life.  It wasn’t for me to belong; I was an outsider, marked and dirty forever.

You can see that the trauma itself — his co-option of my body and its sensibilities — was horrible, but it was temporary, and not lethal.  What I took with me were the lessons.

“Why not move on?” you ask.  “The events are over, and they can’t be changed, so why grip them so fiercely?”  Because those lessons are unacceptable.  I have to disprove them.  I learned them in my body, way below the level of thinking.  Of course I “know” that his spirit was deformed — it wasn’t my idea! — but now I’m contaminated.  I have to try to eject this poison, as I would any poison in my body.  It’s actually healthy to keep worrying over it, fighting, trying to eject it, to reclaim myself.  The events can’t be changed, but the lessons in my body can be revised.

In order to succeed, I must shift the focus from “what he did” to “what I believe.”  I must identify with my true spirit and, so to speak, return his lies, his poison, to him.  I must realize that I got the facts right (it did happen, repeatedly) but drew the wrong conclusions (it was entirely about him, not about me).

That’s a great idea, positive, terrific.  The price is high, however.  When I return his deformity to him, I am vulnerable to my own truth.  Will I be able to withstand the reality of my experience, how it all felt to me?  As long as I blame and fixate on him, I’m not up close to my reality.  Continuing to obsess is actually protective.

But continuing to obsess means I don’t have my life, and that’s not okay.

So I approach my emotional reality . . . slowly . . . one truth at a time.  And each one becomes a building block to support me for the next.

I watched a program on PBS documenting the work of female doctors (MD’s) on a few Native American reservations.  They did whatever they could with limited resources, and they coordinated with native healers.  One of the women referred to the presence of someone’s spirit in his health.

So for the last few days I’ve been asking myself, and some of my clients, what the spirit seems to be saying.   This is more than Louise Hayes’ idea that any symptom has a direct content.  This is the kind of metaphor we meet in dreams.

I’ve been suffering from vertigo, and a very thick feeling in my head.  What if that’s my spirit trying to get my attention, because I haven’t been listening?  I’ll give the idea a try.

Umm, my life is cluttered with duties, people, and activities I don’t really care about.  I’m “clogged.”  I need to simplify, shed what isn’t important to me.

I’ve “filled my head” with concerns that never stop — repetitive thoughts, worries about whether I look good enough, whether I’ll get everything done, whether I’ll matter enough in the world.  I’m too easily distracted.  I hide out in food, reading mysteries, watching television shows (good ones, but . . .), etc.  In these activities, I can avoid my own spirit and its demands — which, I have to say, are severe.  (My mother referred to me as “the Jewish nun.”)  I’m tired of human suffering, mine and others’; can’t I just zone out some more?

I’ve noticed that spirits are not very forgiving.  If someone dodges it, the spirit will call out, then scream, then hit hard with pain or illness.  It definitely has a Mind of its own, and it isn’t going away.  Ah, well, I tried to evade, but I’m really tired of “being thick-headed,” so I give.  I’ll work on the book(s), on music, and on my physical health.  And if I don’t get it right, I can count on my spirit to let me know, one way or another.

Brenda fights intensely with her husband Ed.  He does (or doesn’t do) whatever, and doesn’t realize that she’s picking up the pieces.  She gets angry at the unfairness.  She communicates, explains, tries to teach him, tries to get him to change.  She loves him; she’s committed to the relationship; she needs him to understand.

What if she shifted from thinking about him to thinking about herself: “What are my needs and my feelings?  Why does this upset me?  What does it imply about me?”  At some level, Brenda feels she’s “serving the master” and it pisses her off.

So what are her choices?  She can report in to him: “I’m feeling thus-and-so.”  He doesn’t have to care, or to do anything about it, but she’s sure as hell going to notice if her feelings don’t matter to him.

Then she can strategize.  Can this relationship work for her?  Does he notice or care, or does he think it’s normal and her tirades are neurotic?  If she thinks it might work for her, then how?  She can enjoy this and that with him but keep the rest off limits?  Change her expectations?  And, realistically (knowing herself), can she make those changes and do with less?

If she can’t shift from thinking about him to thinking about herself, she’s probably caught in a “magic task.”  (My book “The Fairy Tale Fix” will explain.)  In which case, she should go do her homework and get realistic.  Regardless of what she needs him to be, Ed is just another human being; he isn’t magical; he isn’t a new version of her parent; he won’t/can’t assure her value.  Sorry . . . .

And the question becomes, If what she sees is what she gets, does she want to stay?  Ultimately, it really isn’t about him.  It’s about HER — in relation to him.  Anything else (trying to change or improve him; telling herself it doesn’t matter) is a dodge.

In looking at relationships, we think about comparisons: do we match in education, socio-economic background and expectations, ethnicity or culture, interests, etc.?  But there are so many other ways in which we could look at compatibility.  One of them is quality of attachment.

My worst match, in that regard, was with my mother.  I came from my heart, all-in, open, and devoted.  I think of it now as giving gold.  I take no special credit for the depths of my feelings; I think children, like dogs and other little animals, are wide open, as I was.

My mother, alas, couldn’t respond in kind.  From her, I got back what I call “nice-nice” manipulation.  She was responsible, wanted to be a good mother, did her best, and was lousy at relating from the heart.

So I spent the first decades of my life enraged that I couldn’t reach her.  Now I can take less personally what I understand even then: this was never going to come out even; she didn’t have it in her.  I always knew it wasn’t personal (she couldn’t), but I still felt the hurt.  If she’d been just anyone, I’d have moved on, but she was my Mother (one of the panoply of gods).  So I stayed in the game, even after she was dead.  My own self-worth depended on it.

I’ve finally learned to evaluate her from my perspective, rather than the other way around.  I’m the center of my world, and I look through my lens.  That only took 70 years.

So before you commit to a relationship (assuming you’re grown up, and know you have a choice), check out the other person’s ability to attach.  Check out your own, too, because what’s going to matter in the long run is whether and how they match.

So I’m still in love with my mother, and I still suffer because I gave everything.  I was open-hearted, devoted, attentive, responsive, forever.  She, alas, was quite limited.  Even today, I feel we were looking at such disparate parts of the elephant that I’ll never be able to grasp how she related.

I did see that she cared most of all about “having a man.”  And she cared a lot about appearances, relative levels of power, whether or not she was respected, and her ability to charm (or, perhaps, manipulate).

Whereas I cared about her.

I was at a huge disadvantage.  Deep inside, I still feel wounded, a failure, lost, abandoned, and infinitely sad.  So where does that leave me today, in matters of the heart?  Is that my model forever?  Me lonely devoted and begging?  I’ve tried everything I know to “move on,” and this is still the default, the substrate.

Today I’m thinking I will never get over it and shouldn’t try.  I will sleep and awaken with this sadness and defeat always.

But perhaps if I leave that pillar in place I can add another, so at least it won’t be the only constant in my identity.  I’m thinking yes, that is still what “relationship” feels like to me.  On the other hand, I tell clients a failed relationship can teach them about themselves: what they liked, what they didn’t, what role they played in how they chose, whether they ignored red flags, what level of tolerance they thought they had for the other person’s flaws, what level of tolerance they really had (or didn’t), and what dream sustained them even when things started to sour.  That way they can learn about their part, and do things differently the next round.

Maybe I can apply this kind of review to the ever-hurting wound of relationship with my mother.  That was my original relationship (which I didn’t choose); I can learn from it and evolve.  Maybe?

As I write this, I realize it doesn’t matter whether I’m in a relationship of the heart or not.  Just the fact that I didn’t choose that relationship might relieve some of my sense of responsibility for being in it, for fixing it, for reaching the unreachable Mother.

I think I’ll do both.  I’ll duck out of responsibility for that primary relationship, and I’ll look at the way I saw myself in that relationship, with an eye toward revising all those terrible misunderstandings.  How I “was” in that damaging relationship isn’t necessarily who I “am.”

Your heart beats, the blood flows, capillaries repair themselves. Your lungs breathe. Your digestion performs the entire complex of digestive demands from start to finish. The cut on your skin heals itself. Your nerves communicate.  Your senses hear, taste, touch, smell, and see.  Your sexual apparatus does its thing in response to hormones which you don’t generate. Your muscles do the walking, the lifting, the stirring.

Where did we ever get the idea that we are in control? We do almost nothing except observe, and decide some of our actions. I wouldn’t know how to tell muscles to lift something, and I certainly couldn’t choreograph the action. I think it; it happens. Wow.

And those are just the basics. Refined activities are even more impressive. When I play the violin or viola, I tell my body to create some effects, and it does (after I practice enough to help it figure out what’s required). I imagine the sound of the next note; I imagine the shift; my brain hears the tone and feels the distance, and there it is. Who’s in there doing this??

I like emphasizing how little I control, because I grew up feeling more responsible than I ever could have been. My mother’s mental health was my job (I believed). Pleasing people, getting them to “see” me and “love” me, were on me.

I’m very tired, so it’s a relief to realize I never had to do any of those things (or the myriad others I imagined were mine to accomplish). I breathed and slept and moved; my heart kept beating and nourished my brain; the nerves communicated throughout my body. Everything else is dessert. Fun, but not necessary to survival.

Yes, I worked, to use my abilities and to earn money. Gotta eat, stay out of the rain, wear clothing, and keep me and the rest of things clean enough, and it all costs money, or effort, or both. But I didn’t have to endow work with all that extra meaning about my worth. I have as much or as little worth as the next person — I’m alive, and trying to stay that way for as long as I can (comfortably).

If I have some talents, I’m pleased, but I didn’t create them. No credit due me. “You don’t decide the cards you’re dealt; you do decide how to play them.” I hope I’ve played mine well, and I’m hereby giving up trying to control anything else.

I keep seeing relationships in which women have worked hard to support their marriage and family. They uproot and move, they listen to their partners, they put up with behaviors they really don’t respect, they deal with their own loneliness. It’s part of a committed relationship — you have to give, compromise, do your part.

What I’m noticing, though, is that these women don’t know themselves or their own limits. They think they can make room for something and, over time, they actually can’t.

The “short-term” therapies are intended to help people think or behave in more productive ways. That’s good. But I think they’re inadvertently demeaning, because they are ahistorical. They offer an appealing pitch: your history doesn’t matter; you can learn to do your life better, starting today. Why not give it a try? Wouldn’t you like to make better choices or be less miserable?

I’m reading a book by Scott Anderson titled “Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East.” At the end of World War I, when the Ottoman Empire had fallen apart and new countries were created, the victors played for power, oil, territory. They ignored the history of the local peoples. We’re living with the consequences.

I think we treat ourselves with similar disrespect when we ignore or downplay our own histories. “Oh, you nearly died? Well! Good thing you didn’t! Stop moping and cheer up.”

This approach, while sensible (you didn’t die), ignores the need for someone to hear your story. You can’t be real to yourself, or really know the crisis is over, until someone cares about your story.

Maybe what happened to you is inconvenient. Maybe nobody has time or energy to listen. Maybe your story makes other people uncomfortable. Still, if your story doesn’t matter then you don’t matter.

As usual, there are pros and cons. It’s good to learn to do things in ways that turn out better, and the pragmatic therapies will help teach you. But your experience in life, and the “unproductive” thinking or behaviors you learned, have been your life. That’s your history. It matters — you matter — so be nice.

As a frightened child, I did whatever I could to be safer.  I came up with, and still feel compelled to:

Eat!

Don’t Move!  Hold Still!

Be Invisible!  Don’t Exist!  Erase Your Self!

Try Harder!

Silence!

Today, these efforts, originally designed to improve my chances of survival, are killing me.  They create extra pounds, muscle tension, self-compression, anxiety, and the consequences: a too-high BMI, inadequate exercise, and high blood pressure.  They’ll kill me.

“I” know this.  My body-memory (the earlier me who lived through my childhood) doesn’t.  I guess I have to draw her out, listen to her terrors and desperation, and then . . . maybe . . . she’ll listen to me reassuring her that she’s safe, doesn’t have to do all that anymore.  Maybe . . . she’ll be willing to see that today I exist and am managing my/our life.

I know this internal split is typical of trauma: the part of self that’s in shock stays frozen in time; the on-guard “hyper-vigilance” never relaxes.  It could happen again! . . . Now!  Preparedness feels protective.

But survival today depends on understanding that the war is over.  What’s valuable in wartime (focus, ignoring feelings, being geared up to fight) is a disaster in peacetime.  At least it is for me.  So that’s the challenge.

My inclination is to spend more time listening to the scared part of me.  If it feels heard (by me), maybe it will know it’s no longer alone.  That’s already better.  And, eventually, maybe it will consider my suggestion that it doesn’t need to be ready-to-defend at all times, because the war is — in fact — over.