Self-Esteem and Depression
Depression can be exacerbated or made worse by low self-esteem and the negative relationship that you have with yourself. In the way that we treat ourselves, including in our self-talk and how we take care for ourselves, this can determine how much worse depression gets and stays.
The Negative Self-Critic and Depression
Negative self-talk is one aspect of low-self esteem that can make depression worse. The way in which we talk to ourselves determines our self-esteem, mood and overall well being. One aspect of negative self-talk is the hidden negative self-critic.
We often take our negative self critic for granted, because it’s unconscious and we have a hard time seeing for the destructive inner voice that it is. It tells us many times that we’re not good enough, or are failing or not living up to our own standards, or others’ standards for us. The self critic is not growth promoting and is effective at undermining how you feel about yourself. This creates or enhances depression because we often times don’t recognize it’s there, but it’s running in the background and keeping us from living our best life.
If we continue to allow our self critic to speak to us in that way, a lot of times we end up feeling defeated, pulled down, or generally hopeless. This becomes depression, which is characterized by a general sense of hopelessness, sadness, and loss of motivation.
Having higher self-esteem means learning how to talk with yourself in a different and more positive way. It means taking a look at the relationship you have with yourself, and reworking it so that it starts to be friendlier and more nurturing towards yourself, rather than negative, invalidating, and depression-enhancing.
If you have low self-esteem, you might also then be motivated to make decisions out of that low self-esteem, which often creates a vicious cycle for depression. We think and feel one way, we act in the world on those thoughts and feelings, and then we often times create a scenario that reinforces our depression, or our thoughts and feelings about ourselves. We may choose jobs, partners, or other life choices out of that depression which serves to reinforce the depression itself, and then make it look as if those things are making us depressed.
It’s true that some of the things in your life, our people, may be making you depressed. This can certainly attack your well-being or self-esteem, and enhance your depression. We fall into the distorted thinking that the things that people in our lives are saying about us are the truth, that we’re not good enough or inferior in some way. This can add to the vicious cycle of depression. Depressed people then become despondent, unmotivated and stuck, which creates more avoidance and decisions that fuel more depression.
Gaining a stronger or higher self-esteem, you may be able to start to do you more effectively with the people in your life who are causing depression, or change the landscape and make different types of choices, which then build on themselves to promote higher self-esteem.
changing depression from the ground up
Learning how to talk more compassionately and in a nurturing way, you can also start to alleviate yourself of your depression from the root level. Instead of just coping with depression with things like exercise, reading and other interventions that can lower the superficial aspects of depression, working on things like your negative self-critic and raising your self-esteem and worth will do a lot for fundamental changes with your depression. Changing the way you talk to yourself can have significant effects on eliminating your depression.
When we grow up, in our family of origins, many depression patterns are learned or inherited from our parents or caregivers. They are maladaptive strategies to difficult or dysfunctional family patters or environmental problems. We often learn depression strategies as a response to those environments, and as we age, those patterns just appear to be who we are, even if that’s not necessarily true. They’re learned or adapted responses, so they can be unlearned. The way we form images or identities about ourselves also originate in these dysfunctional or pathological situations, so through therapy, we can discover who we are without those adaptations or versions of ourselves that we believe we are.
There is so much more to say on these topics, but I believe in getting into the dynamics of depression to take it apart from it’s inner workings to help you break free from it. If you’re interested in learning more about the effects of depression, or if depression therapy might be right for you, please feel free to contact me directly or visit our depression treatment page here.
