flowboy

Your skin is just a reflection of your overall health. Skin products are the last place you should look if you want healthy skin. I'm not of the belief that we need to put all this shit on our face every day. I don't have a skin care routine. I wash my face with water. My skin is fine, unless I take too much of something, like coffee or unhealthy food. My skin broke out a lot when I was in Spain, where there's a lot of chlorine in the tap water. My diet is mostly fresh-made salads with vegetables and fruit. Some nuts. Some bread here and there but not daily. I don't eat sugar. I don't eat any oils besides lots of olive and coconut oil. I don't eat cow milk products.

@Richard Purdy I highly recommend When The Body Says No by dr. Gabor Mate. In there, he explains the link between cancer and suppression of someone's needs, emotions and boundaries that originates as a conditioned pattern in childhood. It's not that cancer is directly caused by emotional repression, but it is a huge risk factor. The three risk factors he identifies are: genetic predisposition Physical damage like toxins, certain viruses, smoking, unhealthy food, radiation or repeated burning Chronic stress caused by emotional repression Each of these factors individually does not give someone cancer. People who sunbathed and burnt a lot were followed in a long term study. The ones who repressed their feelings developed melanoma twice as frequently as the others. Also it's been studied that people who combined psychotherapy with conventional medicine (the materialistic approach) were way more likely to heal. The explanation for this (paraphrased poorly by me) is that cancer is an immune system issue, in that everyone has cancer cells in their body in all places. They are being created, and constantly being cleaned up by a healthy immune system. Suppression of feelings and repression of early trauma causes a constant stress, an invisible stress that is does not feel like stress (no elevated heartbeat or agitation), but it is there. Elevated levels of cortisol are constantly present, and endorphins are being deployed at above normal levels in order to help the person repress their emotions and not feel. Because it works so well, the person is blissfully unaware of this and thinks they feel fine and are experiencing a healthy emotional range. But actually they have way more endorphins and cortisol in their system, both of which suppress immune function. TL/DR: If I got cancer, I would go balls deep (deeper than I am doing now) on psychotherapy and childhood trauma healing. The therapy has to involve feeling emotional pain that was previously unconscious, and establishing healthy individual self and boundaries. Cognitive behavioral therapy won't cut it. My choice would be primal therapy, but there's others that are more easily accessible. Make no mistake, everyone has childhood trauma and some level of emotional repression, although the levels may vary Read When The Body Says No

I'd be reluctant to believe that at face value, scientist or not, because when you think about the scientific method and what it can do, it can only prove that certain things work to make other things happen. It can't prove that something can't happen. Concretely, you can keep a living brain sample and add a mushroom elixir to it, thereby proving that that specific elixir does or does not cause neurons to grow. I don't think people are having their brain samples taken periodically in a long term study. Even if there were such studies being done, it could at best prove that it didn't happen in that particular person, in that area, in their lifestyle and circumstances and environmental inputs, not that it can't happen. On another note, why do your fears revolve around your brain? I remember being worried and obsessed about my hair n-e-v-e-r coming back. Similar fear. I was 21. For me personally, it turned out to be grounded in the feeling of not living life to the fullest, lacking so much experience I should be having, and the scary prospect of dying/degenerating having missed the opportunities to fully live. (In this case: fully living meant having all my hair. I've revised that definition since )

This was my clue that this: Is very appropriate advice. People with this exaggerated sense of responsibility and being needed eventually tend to develop health problems. (paraphrasing from When The Body Says No here) Often times this is a reflection on how the person was raised. Usually conditioned by a parental figure to push away their own needs in service of the parent's needs, whether it be for emotionally supporting the parent or taking physical care of them, or being responsible for the care of a sibling while the parent is absent / not able. Something like that you can probably find in your history. It's very common that this pattern becomes a character trait the person is proud of, whilst unaware of its true nature. For example: multiple people who were at my retreat had an absent parent, or their father/mother did not have enough time left to pay attention to them or play with them. They became loners and got into reading books at their solitary hideout spot. Before they told that story, they were fiercely proud of being so 'independent' and thought everyone should be as independent as them. Unaware of the original pain it was rooted in.

Nice choice of words

Super direct. However, I'm going to make a point that no one seems to have made yet: if you see a girl and she looks nice and that alone makes you interested in dating her, your standards are not healthy. Is that all she has to do? Be pretty and respond okay to an interaction of a couple sentences? That's having low standards / being too needy. If she looks nice and the first interaction goes well, you should be interested in seeing her again to see how she does the second time. Also known as, going for coffee or whatever and seeing how it goes. You should not reach the point of being "fully convinced" that she's so great before you've *actually* gotten to know her. If you internalize this, you will change the way women respond to you

No. That would be procrastinating on your life purpose. How much sex do you really need? You can literally go for a walk during lunch break at work and talk to a few people, get a couple phone numbers. Costs you no extra time. Do that 5 work days a week, your weekend and next week's evenings will be full of dates.

This. If you "confess", you might put a lot of pressure on the next meeting. Or you might make him feel like he now has to say certain things or respond in a certain way. I see no benefit to a confession of feelings in your situation and there's different ways it could complicate things, much better to just kiss him and go from there.

Wow we have similarities in our story there. I learnt early on that my parents couldn't help me with protecting myself from bullying and also with socializing, because they themselves were clueless, had gotten bullied, were not social. And I had no siblings or friends so I felt like I'm just not gonna survive. Had a deep session yesterday where some of that stuff was processed.

What you are saying basically, is: you want back in the Matrix Which is totally understandable. The content you refer to, is not suited for developing minds who can't see the nuance yet. If you're for example prone to viewing things as either "bad" or "good", well you're going to make all sorts of unhelpful extrapolations, such as "ego is bad", and the idea that folks being full of self-deception means that you can't trust them. I can see how that could easily happen at that age. Instead of looking back, let's review where you are right now. Do you have Maslow's basic needs met? (do you have a good circle of friends, do you make enough money, is your love life satisfying, etc) If not, let's just work on that. What does your heart desire most, which is most urgent? You can pursue money, sex or status any way you want to without feeling like you need it to be happy. The belief that you need these things to be happy, has been broken. That saved you 40 years of misery (in some people's cases) But now you still have some basic needs that are unmet. People you can trust around you. What's stopping you from getting yourself those important basic things?

@Jannes When I help people with shadow integration, there's different components to completing the process: Understanding and mapping it out. Using models to understand better what needs you had as a child that were not met, what defense mechanisms you developed. And what a child in that situation must have felt, and how overwhelming that was. The influence of the parents' belief and shadow on your development. Understanding the inner child and minimizing reactivity. Through inner child work and what is typically meant by shadow work, you can get glimpses of what you must have felt as a child in different ages and situations. You develop a connection and compassion for your younger self this way. In your case, you may be able to catch yourself better when you want to be nice, and choose a different behavior. Deep feeling and completing the grief process. Here's where we get into the shadow for real. The pain is still stored somewhere. It needs to come out. A bit of shadow work and shedding a couple tears unfortunately doesn't do it. Shadow is created because the trauma of unmet needs (in my case, the need for protection, guidance, safety and to be seen, held and supported in my need to belong in a group and defend my boundaries) Unmet needs are then SO painful, that the child can not consciously walk around with it, or it would die. So then it goes into the unconscious. The part that feels the need, must be repressed. Creating your niceness response (a denial of your own true need in the moment) You can bring those parts back to consciousness, bit by bit. There's a lot of crying involved though.

@Jannes The 'killing them with kindness' is a defense mechanism. As you described, during some time in your childhood, this was the way to survive. Now as an adult, it's really hard to get rid of, even though it doesn't serve you anymore. Going into conventional CBT therapy to unlearn this behavior and learn new behavior would be an uphill battle and ultimately not satisfy. You're on the right track with shadow integration. This is a subtle form of neglect. If you dig into your shadow, you may find a lot of old anger towards your father. Wow... this one hit me personally because my parents raised me so similarly! Aggression was in their shadow, so I had to be the nice kid. I wasn't allowed to join martial arts and learn to defend myself against bullying. They didn't see the need I had to be taught self defense, and they didn't want to see how badly I was treated. Because of their shadow against aggression, they pushed me to be a nice kid, forbade me from being tough. And I became a nice dreamy kid, defenseless, in his own world of ideas and dreams, mostly alone and socially awkward.

I still struggle with this at times, but I have to come to a conclusion for me personally. Which may or may not help you out. I really enjoy being single. It's fun to do what I want, sleep with who I want, et cetera. But there's a bit of an agitating quality to it as well, because it's never satisfying. It's not really about validation for me anymore, but there is a sense of not having experienced enough. This feeling was there when I was 15 and others around me were getting girlfriends and having sex, and I felt hopelessly behind. The feeling grew every time I "missed an opportunity" due to being awkward / socially inept / in my head. So now there's a part of my psyche which still feels like it's missing out, but its thirst can never be quenched. I've been with a LOT of women (not a crazy amount, but more than the Leo recommended dose) Every time I have sex, I feel good about it for one day, then the feeling comes back. Stronger. I still feel like I'm missing out on so much, and my mind justifies it by imagining crazier things that I haven't done yet. First, it was this regular thing. Having done that, now I still feel like I'm missing out on this crazy thing that only happens in porn. And it just builds like that. I don't think there's an end to it. So knowing that it never satisfies the feeling, rather even makes it stronger, that's important information. The pursuit itself, fun as it is, doesn't lead anywhere. Unless... You know when to hop on and when to hop off. Even though dating and sex are ultimately not satisfying, they are fun. I will only hop off that train when something better comes along. A woman who is so overwhelmingly amazing that I immediately forget about other women and my fantasies, they all pale in comparison to being with her. Where the match is so perfect that I feel like just being around her feels like home, and at the same time it's growing me in ways I can't even comprehend. I've met someone like that. I did not regret hopping off the crazy sex train for THAT. Other women whom I've dated for a couple months, I just had fun with and seemed compatible with. I still wasn't able to commit. For me, the match has to be really good and compelling, the connection really deep, that it just becomes OBVIOUS that this is the right thing. If not, I find it best to not waste each other's time for more than a few weeks.

@Ingit First we need to separate out the girl from you. This is clearly not about the girl. If a specific girl gave rise to suspicion, that would be about her. However, you indicate that neediness and possessiveness has always been a problem. Therefore, the problem AND the solution are to be found in you, and this has nothing to do with the girl (or who she calls). Ideally, you get to a place where you don't even wonder who she's calling. The idea that she might be cheating or leaving you doesn't even occur as a thought in your mind. If that's where you want to be, we need to explore this fear. Behind neediness and possessiveness is a fear. What is that fear? That she'd cheat? Or leave? Or both? Write that down. Then go one level deeper: And then what? Why is that so bad that you must control it with such desperate measures? Does it mean something for who you see yourself as? Would it mean you would have to feel like a loser, or worthless, or [insert bad self image] if she did? How would it make you feel if that happened? Write all of that down. Then go one more level deeper What is that feeling you would feel, if she did, and when did you feel it before? And before? Have you always felt like this? What's the earliest you can remember feeling this? Where did it start? Contemplating this will affirm in your reality that it's really not about the girl. Which should make it easier to stop your needy and possessive behaviours with her. Because you see it's not about her, you've felt like this a lot. If you want to go even deeper and reduce the terrible feeling you are suffering from when feeling possessive or jealous, try some inner child healing work or shadow work. Doing this once or multiple times will make you less reactive and help you curb your possessiveness. Warning though: it's not easy. It requires focus and emotional discomfort. You must be serious about it.

Woke up in a sweat, almost holding my breath, twice this morning. Two dreams in a row about being lost, having lost something important, no one being able to really help me, the group leaving because their patience is limited and they have to move on - and I'm lost. First dream - I'm driving in the night and my mom is supposed to drive behind me, in a separate car. We are calling on the phone, but then we get confused on which exit we are taking, and I end up losing her. In the middle of a flyover crossing (or is it a parking garage entry? Some kind of circular stairway for cars), I leave the car and start to look for her in the night. I can't find her. Then, I try to return to the car, to call her - I can't find my car. The only car that I see has a different color. I still try to get into it, but it's really not mine. I've lost my phone, my car and my mom now. Second dream - I'm walking in a huge horde of people through a muddy path in a forest. We are supposed to walk towards some place to stay, it has a school campy vibe. I realise I've lost my phone. They gave me a special SIM card too - in the letter where they confirmed my signing up to this trip. I report it to some kind of leadership person. They open a folder with all the SIM cards they gave out - mine's not in there. 4 or 5 other people hand me phones they found - none of them are mine. I feel lost. The group is starting to move on - it's a HUGE group, and they can't wait for one guy (kid, I feel like a kid) who lost his phone. I lost something important and no one can help me. And now the group is abandoning me. Arthur Janov says that dreams are always about something that happened to you - but if the memory is repressed, then the dream becomes a symbolic mashup of the original memory, to deliberately confuse you and help you not remember the original, because that is too painful. Or was once deemed too painful. So then the feeling of the dream is what really happened, but the story gets changed around, and the brain makes a mashup of things from your present and past to create a new story, so that you get protected from recognizing the original story. Kind of like cutting letters out of different magazines in a ransom letter, so you don't recognize the original handwriting, but you still get the message. I feel like this is true - definitely a lot happened in my past where I felt lost, like I lost something important, or the group lost me, no one waits for me, I lost my mommy - different vague memories come up. Janov says that imprints tend to run at three levels - the visceral, the feeling brain and the symbolic. Which means that a theme of feeling lost should have its roots before, during or right after birth - meaning it is remembered by the visceral - then it is further compounded upon by early childhood and adolescent traumatic memories - and finally also in daily life it's still a theme. And that's true - at least I walk around with a fear of losing things. I rarely actually lose things, because I'm so afraid of it. I lost my pipe on the day before I had those dreams - I went back for it and before I found it, I felt a sort of panic - this can't be true, I must not have lost this. Losing things still triggers me. I know someone who lost her phone on the bus so many times - the bus drivers started to recognize her phone. That's incomprehensible to me. Losing something important triggers a primal feeling in me - being lost, being disconnected, hopelessness, imminent death. So then on the visceral level, something must have happened before or right after birth where I felt like I lost something important. I had a short flash of THAT'S RIGHT I lost my mom, maybe I lost her tit, maybe I was in a crib somewhere and I just lost connection with her and didn't know if she'd come back, so I felt like I was going to die? My mom did tell me about an episode in the hospital where she was unable to come and feed me. I don't remember what it was, but I want to. Reliving is curative. I just spent some time trying to relive, trying to get back into that old feeling, trying to cry about it - with limited success. Sure, there's many instances where I felt lost - at primary school, at school camp - all about me feeling lost and the group not waiting for me, just abandoning me, no one helps me or is patient with me. This happened over and over again when I was little. But there's something there - a sort of gut wrenching feeling on the right side of my tummy that says: "yes - there's a lot of pain there". Yeah - one shadow work session doesn't fix that, son. I suspect that that's why I had such an irritated reaction to M's childhood stuff - being abandoned by the father is very close to feeling lost, PLUS I also have feelings of being abandoned by the father that I walk around with, just repressing them casually every day, and so probably I just didn't want to be reminded of my own feelings of being lost and abandoned. THAT MAKES SENSE - I could have been more loving if I didn't have a similar imprint - because of the similar imprint it became too painful.

By BEING it. Have a purpose in your life that you are passionate about and prioritize over sex Have a cool, interesting life that you are satisfied with, do cool things, travel, hobbies, passions, friends, just live a life that she'd like to be invited into. Have women friends and learn to understand, empathize and connect with the feminine Do you have those things? If not, well then it's going to be hard and counterproductive to come across as-if. It's much easier and more satisfying to actually improve your life. It also doesn't take as much effort as you think. Time pointlessly texting girls is much better spent going out into the world and developing yourself as a man. If you are already doing those things... ONLY IF... then worry about calibration and how you come across. The beauty of actually BEING IT, is that it doesn't matter what you text, you can just suggest a time and place and WHO YOU ARE will do the work for you, when you actually are on the date. It's like sitting back and relaxing, while your self-actualized personality shines and draws her in. Then, of course she'll want sex at some point. BONUS TIP: The feminine wants sex as the cherry on top, after the story / adventure plays out. That's why: She doesn't skip to the end of a movie (neither would you) You need to have a fun date with her, or a fun couple hours spread out over different dates, before it's bedroom time She doesn't go home at 11PM to have sex with you, she wants to have experienced a fun night out first You need to not talk about sex, focus on having fun together. Whether you'll have sex (or whether you even like her enough for that) needs to be a fun mystery in her mind until later You talking about "wanna fuck" off the bat, shows that you don't understand women, therefore they don't want to meet you

She was being honest. Why would she give out her number? Because girls like to make new connections. You should only text her if you really want her as a friend. If she's cool, she'll go out with you and help you pick up other girls. If you're going to be secretly desiring to get with her all the time, though, it's not going to work and you shouldn't waste each other's time.

No, it's not necessary. Your body can turn any slow-digesting long chain carb into glucose, and it's much healthier to let the body do that, than to eat sugar. How much time have you given it? I'd expect you to feel better than ever after 3-4 weeks. Stick it out you won't regret it.

@Kid A Awesome!

@Kid A On paper, technically, you are doing enough things right. The value of pickup theory is not in teaching you the perfect things to do, that if you didn't do them, you wouldn't get laid. No. All it does, is to encourage guys to do what they would naturally do, if it weren't for some subconscious force inhibiting them from it. It's about getting back to your natural state, where you escalate without even having the concept of escalating in your mind, of touching someone without any reason except that's what feels right in the moment. The big trap of theory is that you come to a date with this list of things to do and not do, this "plan" in your mind. That's what creates the off-putting vibe. The agenda. The sense of "this guy has a plan that he's not telling me about". The best results happen in moments where you don't have a plan, but you're willing to take a risk and go with the flow, venturing bravely into the unknown. I encounter this principle daily, not just when I go on dates, but also in coaching sessions. And in many other life situations. Example 1: had a great date a week ago where I continuously felt awkward, out of place, unprepared, we didn't even speak the same language for God's sake. I was continuously pushed to that point where I had to say to myself: "I don't know what the hell to do here, but let's go with it". And it turned out to become a really good experience once I let go. Example 2: had a coaching session where someone brought up a blockage where I just couldn't find any model or tool which I had prepared, that would fit this. I had to throw out my knowledge and preconceived plans, and basically just explore based on intuition and improvisation. Turned out to be a very transformative session. Plans, models and theories are at a certain point just escapes from facing the unknown, the uniqueness and unpredictability of the moment. And when you throw them out, and make that decision to go ahead anyway without knowing what to do, that little twist of courage creates a positive, inspiring energy that gets picked up by the people around you and makes the interaction better and more productive. This is why Owen from RSD made that point about "yesterday's insights become today's sticking points" (I'm paraphrasing - this point has been made by spiritual teachers as well) You can learn without hanging on to tactics and theories - in fact this accelerates learning and also helps you to trust yourself in the moment. This acting based on what feels right in the moment creates a better vibe. I'd encourage you to practice just coming back to the moment, and basing everything you say and do, whether it's in conversation or escalation, just on what comes to you spontaneously, rather than accumulated knowledge. I'm belabouring this point a bit too much now perhaps, but when someone is acting based on their preconceived plan in their head - it feels creepy. Or if not creepy, it feels "not right" - like that salesman that talks to you in the street about donating to some charity, and you know he's using a script. Or that store worker who is asking you "Can I help you with something" right when you come in, and you just know he says that to everyone, just to sell you something. It comes down to being present to the moment instead of in your head. When I'm in my head, I can tell the funniest stories and people still want to get the hell away from me. Because they can sense that "something's up". I'm not willing to be here, in the moment. I'm thinking of strategies to escalate in my head. Going with the flow creates that positive vibe that you could be missing. Being in the moment. Being willing to be couragous whilst not knowing what to do at all.

@Eternal Unity I'd start by replacing coffee with tea. It causes way less anxiety. Then once you're comfortable there, you can look at maybe taking 1 pill a day instead of 2. Ideally, the best way to feel great, make the most progress and sleep well is to take nothing on a daily basis, but there can be good reasons for why that's not immediately a good idea.

Make a decision that you'd rather feel this, than (binge eat / whatever pattern you're trying to break) and the negativity that follows that. Knowing that if you choose to feel it fully, it will get resolved, but if you escape it, you'll never be free. Also being aware that whatever you're feeling, is there for a reason: it needs to be felt. Your subconscious needs you to pay attention to this and fully feel it. If you do not, it will just keep coming back stronger. I mean, "often", or "on a daily basis" is good to shoot for. Always is aiming very high, and I personally believe it would get perfectly boring. As long as we're alive, we'll occasionally invent things to feel negative about and want to change. It keeps life interesting. Though I can relate to wanting to always feel serene after a rough period, it's a perfectly natural desire. I don't know if you include shadow work and emotional healing work in your definition of consciousness work, but they're important. I see two categories: Work to make the ego healthy. Includes shadow work, inner child work, trauma release, different forms of therapy. Work to transcend the ego. Meditation, yoga, enlightenment work, psychedelics. I believe both categories are needed to experience the aforementioned state on a daily basis, feeling serenity and inner peace, bliss, and joy. Transcending an unhealthy ego creates very unbalanced humans. Think of the neo-advaita type that always wants to point out that "there is no I" and that's an answer to all your problems, and is kind of an unempathetic asshole about it. Just doing shadow work and healing can also be a trap, because there's always more to heal, you're never completely done. And so people who are too much on that side are always busy healing, their heads up their own ass so to speak, and never get ready to actually live their lives. But both are important.

@Mada_ How to never binge eat again... binge eating, just like anything pleasureable-but-destructive, is an escape into pleasure FROM something else. So to quit, you need a better way of dealing with that something else. Let me paint you a picture. From a calm and 'full' state, where everything is okay, you feel loved, safe and serene, and not worried about a thing, extremely pleasurable activities with a self destructive edge, such as binge eating junk food, or even bingeing Netflix or video games, don't seem that attractive. From that state, all you want to eat is what is healthy, and no more than you need. High-dopamine activities would just disturb your peace. You may consider getting into an excited state for something that truly excites you, a passion of yours, knowing it's not self destructive. You may feel the desire to move your body, work out, or be productive. But anything with destructive side effects just doesn't seem worth it. Because you're perfectly fine where you are. You don't need anything. You may be thinking "Yeah, sounds great Erik, but who can ever achieve that living in society? I'm not a Tibetan Monk." The point I'm making is not that you should be in this state always. Just that you can always get back to it. You can probably remember moments like this, perhaps after exercise, after sex, after breathing exercises, or out in nature with the sun on your face. Now when you are doing the self destructive habit, solve for X. X = the difference between the serene state I just described, and how you actually feel. That's what needs to be dealt with. The simplest way to start doing that, is to just focus on how it feels in your body. Inspect all of the sensations that are there, and let them be there. If you feel very tense or a tinge of sadness, fully accept and be okay with feeling tense and sad. If you're okay with feeling it, then no need for binge eating or anything else. After 5 minutes of focusing on that feeling itself, it will probably start to reveal itself to you what needs to be healed. Is it pain from the past? Then you can heal it through shadow work. Are you feeling worthless, not listened to, ignored, guilty for existing? Could very well be from the past, you can do inner child work and after a couple sessions you will start having a different response to the same situation. Are you feeling stressed and worried about the future? Devise a plan, write down the steps of what you are going to do about it, and put them on your calendar. You'll probably feel different after that. Are you feeling frustrated because you didn't communicate something that you should have? Someone crossed your boundaries, you said yes to something you shouldn't have, or held back a criticism that you should have expressed? Communicate it to that person. Are you simply too excited about something, and you're bottling the excitement up, it has nowhere to go? (this is what made me binge eat sometimes) Then do a wild happy dance and move until the energy dissipates. And so, the reason for escaping can be identified with just a few minutes of full undivided attention, and then the issue can be taken care of. Removing the need for the escapism.

If you struggle with low self-esteem and insecurity, I'd invite you to ask yourself the question: When did I last have it? You can't permanently solve a problem in the present when the origin is not in the present. Common advice like talking nicely to yourself, "stopping" negative self-talk, practicing loving yourself, and giving yourself other ego boosts like buying a new dress or a new haircut, it is like mopping with the faucet still open, as the Dutch proverb goes. Children are born with healthy self esteem. It is the default state. Then shit happens. Sometimes that shit is being denied love and attention from mum or dad when you needed it. Not being listened to. Being forced to listen to them, make them feel good, or even take care of them instead, whilst you needed to be a child. Anything that didn't give you all the space to be yourself and get all the loving attention and listening to that you needed, creates the instilled message: "I am not good enough to be loved in the way that I apparently need". This core "not-enoughness" later manifests into different insecurities, like insecurities about your looks, or your capabilities at work, or whether you feel good enough to get a love partner to not leave you. Whatever it is. The root is all the same. It doesn't have to come from the parents, sometimes we are getting plenty of loving attention from the parents and allowed to be ourselves, but then we go to school and our peers reject us completely, or force us to be something else than we are if we don't want to be ostracized. Bullying is another common factor in low self esteem. That was the one that was the biggest contributor for my low self-esteem personally. It wasn't until I found and addressed the root cause, that my life profoundly began to change. I've seen this in others as well. Self-esteem is not something you have to "get". It is your birthright. Sometimes you lose it along the way, and if you are willing to go back and fully feel and thereby heal that experience, you are worthy and enough once again.