July 25, 2010, Low Self-Esteem                                

Welcome to Joyful Reflections, I am your host, Father Scott Seethaler. I am a Capuchin Franciscan priest from St. Augustine Friary in the Lawrenceville section of Pittsburgh. I am a Catholic preacher who travels throughout the country spreading the Good News that God is with us and He will never abandon us.

With people constantly exposed to television programs that show people who are rich and the famous, it is easy to suffer from low self-esteem. In a book written by Dr. David Burns entitled: The Good Feeling Handbook, he describes 10 cognitive traps that a person with low self-esteem can fall into. Here is a brief description of the ten.  

1. All or nothing thinking. People with low self-esteem see things in black or white categories. If a situation is anything less than perfect they see it as a total failure.
2. Overgeneralization. People with low self-esteem see a single event as a never-ending pattern of defeat by using the words “always” or “never” when they speak. For example they will say: “This always happens to me.” “I always hit this light.” “Things never turn out as they should.”
3. Mental filtering. People with low self-esteem will pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively. One word of criticism erases all the praise you’ve received: “What set you up and brings you down,” as they say. If looks are important to you, “You look marvelous!” sets the person up. “What’s wrong? You look pale and sickly!” brings the person down. If a person is a preacher, the comment: “What a wonderful sermon you gave!” sets the person up. “What kind of sermon was that? It’s your kind that’s destroying the church!” brings the person down.
4. Discounting the positive. People in this situation reject positive experiences by insisting that they “don’t count.” If they do a good job, they tell themselves that anyone could have done as well.
5. Jumping to conclusions. This group interprets things negatively when there are no facts to support their conclusions. Two common variations are mind-reading (they arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to them) and fortune telling (they assume and predict that things will turn out badly).
6. Magnification. These people exaggerate the importance of their problems and shortcomings, or they minimize their desirable qualities. This is also called the “binocular trick.” You see this in the one-liner: “He’s so big it takes two men and a boy to look at him.”
7. Emotional reasoning. These people assume that their negative emotions reflect the way things really are: “I feel guilty. I must be a rotten person.”
8. “Should” statements. Here people tell themselves that things should be the way they hoped or expected them to be. many people try to motivate themselves with shoulds and shoudn’ts, as if they had to be punished before they could be expected to do anything. For some, that’s a religious attitude.
9. Labeling. This is an extreme form of all-or-nothing thinking. Instead of saying, “I made a mistake,” they attach a negative label to themselves declaring, “I’m a loser.”
10. Personalization and blame. These people hold themselves personally responsible for events that aren’t entirely under their control. “If I hadn’t sneezed that night, the Titanic would not have sunk.” If I hadn’t gone out that night, Dad wouldn’t have died.”

People with low self-esteem need help seeing themselves and the world through realistic eyes. They can be helped by counselors or social workers. If they go to Church, reflecting on their relationship with God can be a big help. Consider the following Scripture quotes:

1. “God so loved the world that He sent His only Son, not to condemn the world but to save it.” 
2. “As the Father loves me, so I love you. Remain in my love.”
3. “Come to me all you who are weary and find life burdensome and I will give you rest.”
4. “I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down His life for His feet.”

Seeing ourselves through God’s eyes can help us realize how precious we are.
Our prayer partners this week are people who find it difficult to love themselves.