on low ‘relational hope’…
when we struggle to lean or rely on others…
We often use the terms ‘low-self esteem’ to describe a pattern of not hoping for much by way of care from others. I want to open up this space for our reflection, as I feel it is more richly understood through another lens.
The specific strand that interests me concerns what we expect from others by way of responsiveness and care. When I feel into this, what stands out is what I call a lack of ‘relational hope’: Many of us are not convinced that it is wise or fruitful to bring our needs to others.
We do not come to this alone: Experience has led us here. And so we mostly lack the capacity to lean and to rely. (We either never learned how to do so safely, or at some point got so burned when we made ourselves vulnerable that our impulse to openly seek care has gone underground).
Those of us who suffer from ‘low self-esteem’ of this kind, often project a blend of strength, confidence and self-respect. These qualities are true in many ways. Yet we have a tendency to form relationships in a way that does not seem to fully respect the self, or to include our own needs. Time and again, inadvertently, we set up bad deals for ourselves. And we tend to make some kind of resigned peace with this, living reluctantly from a resilience that rarely includes ‘leaning’ substantially on others, feeling ‘held’ or ‘loved’ by them – at least not in a way we can relax into.
When I look at this closely, I sense a few intermingling elements: a belief system, a behaviour pattern, a compensatory self-image, significant emotional territory that never fills out…
· the underlying belief system…. unwanted need
We do not lack faith in the richness or value of relating per se, our problem is more specific and insidious: We don’t believe that others want to respond to us. We do not sense our needs have a place in the natural order of things. We feel we know that others will turn from us if we show up in our authentic needs, that there is ‘no point’ in expressing our longings.
And because we feel our needs are burdensome, irritating ‘interruptions’, we only lean when things have already gone too far: when we are desperate, when we are angry, when we are out of oxygen and cannot go on. And this pressure is often a disaster, provoking the exact response we dread. Others sense our tension, the intensity of our demand, and their hearts don’t open: they feel pressured, put upon, manipulated, and they contract. Turning away from us often, and amplifying our conviction that we are meant to manage our needs alone.
the behaviour pattern – a rhythm of giving
When we sense our needs to be irritating or unworthy of response, we come to believe (without ever explicitly thinking it) that loving us is a burden rather than a pleasure. We conclude that it works better for everyone when we focus on making ourselves useful. And so we do: We prematurely learn to contribute – and come to identify with this little self who gives, growing proud of our capacity, never learning to relax into being responded to for our own sake.
This has far reaching emotional costs, but in our early life these are not yet apparent. We become adept at swallowing small moments of hurt and disappointment. We learn not to dwell in them. Instead we attempt to be resilient and self-reliant – and we are – but another track is running too – a track of despondent loneliness. Something deep inside feels not chosen to be cherished, and this seems to be our fate – who we are supposed to be, who ‘the world’ wants us to be.
Nonetheless, we long to be close to others, and for our relationships to feel collaborative and warm. So, because it is painful to be in unresponsive relationship, we instinctually form connections around our own responsiveness and giving.
‘…we live with a subdued grief that we
ourselves were not designed to be cherished…’
Developing our own capacity for attunement seems by far our most reliable route to feeling secure. This becomes instinctual: We learn to regulate ourselves by attuning to others; we do not even allow the gaps to open in which our needs might appear in the foreground. To do so comes to feel like free fall. We do not expect to be caught, so we cannot leap. Instead, we contract our needs before we are even aware of them; we convey to others (even when we have no conscious wish to do so) the sense that we are independent and do not need them.
And so we cultivate relationships that lean toward imbalance, even as our self-containment exhausts us; and we live with a subdued grief that we ourselves were not designed to be cherished. We do not rest into holding love; our bodies and souls miss out on the comfort of surrender, on moments where our needs might be worthy in tiny local ways, of altering the world for. And there is loss – loss of the parts of us that might surface with warmer tending (parts such as our happiness, ease or safety; and all the life that might materialize if we felt those things more fully) do not emerge…
3) a view of self - compensatory pride
Something else happens to us as we learn to ‘give’; we grow an identity around it, and this becomes a destiny. For the ego, feeling competent is hugely gratifying. We are rewarded for our capacity and take great pride in it; yet the more of it we do, the more its patterns take hold, and the more they dominate, the more destructive they become.
This is one of the reasons I feel the language of low-self-esteem doesn’t fit. We are more likely to feel inflated than weak, to take a lonely pride in our strength and independence. When we park our longing and our hope, we nourish a sad, compensatory grandiosity in place of the warm surrender of being small. This becomes habitual ‘ego-activity’ we develop a taste for. Nourished by inner vanity, a quiet sense that we are uniquely capable or strong, we grow used to invulnerability. We come to depend on being seen and valued in our strength and capacity rather than related to in our need. Balanced humans need both these things….