I am new to the Community. I am struggling immensely with my mental health and with the way I was raised. I was raised in an abusive household, I was a victim of sexual assault at Church as a child for a few years, and all around my self esteem and self love were stripped from me as a child.
As an adult I suffer with Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, and PTSD. I am considerably high functioning with the issues that I have, but, I still retain the inability to love myself and my self esteem is still incredibly low. This causes insecurities that blend with my psychosis and make relationships incredibly difficult.
Recently my fiancee left me during my psychosis and her reasoning is that until I learn to love myself I can never truly love anyone. I desperately want to fix this about myself. I want my family back and to not be alone. I just don’t understand the process of self love. I cannot fathom anything good about me.
Please, if anyone can help me reach out. I have been progressively more and more suicidal since she left and I just want to fix myself so I can fix my family.
Welcome to the forum. Are you taking your meds? That’s the most important thing.
Maybe it requires you to be a bit more selfish and a bit more assertive. You can buy books on assertiveness. Or talk to your therapist if you have one.
I am indeed taking my medication and I was in therapy until I couldn’t afford it anymore. I make too much at my job to qualify for state help but not enough to afford consistent therapy.
I have tried faking self love, hoping to make it. I practice yoga, I meditate, I use positive affirmations, I have read self help books. I simply cannot seen to connect the wires of self love.
I was happy in my relationship and she always tells me I’m a very good, hard working, providing man and I treat everyone really good. But she can’t stand seeing how badly I hate myself.
I don’t even intentionally hate myself and I truly attempt to self love. I just don’t know what that looks like or even is.
I find myself getting more and more detached since my person left me. She was my link to reality and I am trying very hard to do that for myself.
@Schizoid1 she isn’t blaming me so much as trying to do the hard thing to make me have to figure it out. She tells me often maybe we can make it work one day. She tries to offer hope. She tries to tell me good things about myself. She wants to help people but being with me has shown her how difficult it can be.
I am just void of what people call self love and I don’t know how to fix it. I try and mimic the answers given but nothing feels authentic. I just feel void of that love for myself that I have for her and my child.
I know how to love them. I just cannot translate it to self. I feel it has a lot to do with the combination of mental illnesses I have. I have complete empathy and emotional response outward for those who are important to me. Internally it’s complete apathy.
It kind of sounds like you’re just going through a rough break up.
Of course, the illness doesn’t help.
But it’s normal for your self esteem and ability for self love to take a dip when you both have a psychiatric episode and when you break up with someone.
You had both.
Have you ever been in a place in your life where you did love yourself?
@GoldenRex that’s the thing, no I haven’t. I’ve been like this as long as I remember. I’ve been in and out of therapy for it since I was roughly 12.
Yes, it is a rough break up. I am almost 32, however. I am not 16.
I have had several rough break ups in my life. I am searching for answers to the root of the issue though. Which always seems to be this lack of self love.
I had this problem in a big way. I could say the affirmations, but I couldn’t believe them. One thing that helped me in the beginning was skipping self-love and instead aiming for self-neutrality. So instead of saying “I am a good person” I would say “I am a human being, and if other human beings have value, it follows that I have the same value.” “I am capable of doing X, and I know this because I just did it yesterday.” “My body is functional enough to allow me to do the things I need to every day.”
My therapist would do exercises where, instead of talking about myself, we would make up a friend who was the exact same as me. She would encourage me to write supportive letters to that friend. It was much easier to imagine having compassion for someone else in my position than it was to have compassion for myself.
I still haven’t gotten quite to self-love, but I have sort of settled in an area of self-acceptance. I may not like who I am, but I acknowledge I am still a person who is worth love and compassion, simply because all human beings are worth love and compassion.
Seeing things clearly when you are depressed from a break up would be hard for anyone. I had a break up with someone I loved and I was in the middle of bad depression to begin with, which made it even harder to deal with and the depression was probably the main cause of it.
I was about your age at the time and for me was the final straw on dating, I always failed so quit dating. Now I think back on it, was the wrong thing to do and should have put a bigger effort into correcting my problems
as I said earlier, give yourself some time to get over the break up, then try to resolve and get to the root of your issues
I am working on self love too.
I try hard to control my addiction and when I do that I feel better the next day. It’s a positive feedback loop. Self care. And morning mindfulness. Daily Positive affirmations that make personal sense to you. Like how @Ninjastar explained hers for example. Hobbies.
@Ninjastar I have managed many times to come close to that neutrality. So I understand what you’re saying. It’s about the best I feel I can achieve. I appreciate you sharing your experiences with me.
@Mountainman I appreciate your advice and care. I definately am trying to love forward and stop being a burden to her. She still comes around to make sure I’m taking my medication, eating, sleeping. She feels responsible for me and it pains me greatly. I am so grateful for her help at staying high functioning. But what cost is caring for me to her? I feel like I am a plague.
@anon83141956 thank you for sharing. The biggest addiction I struggle with is cigarettes. They seem to sedate my mood slightly and it really helps a lot.
I used to make music and perform in concert until COVID. COVID has really made my life into a nightmare as far as stripping me of the things I was passionate about and using as healthy hobbies.
It kind of sounds like this breakup might be quite a bit her fault, too. She keeps you in a place of feeling like you should be grateful to her for her kindness in caring for you, rather than expecting it because that is how people show love. I have seen that attitude before, and it does nobody any favors. She should be treating you like an equal partner in a relationship, not a child to be cared for. From what it sounds like, you manage to care for yourself just fine, and don’t need someone trying to make you codependent. Perhaps as you work on learning to love yourself, she can work on setting healthy personal boundaries so she doesn’t feel like she is solely responsible for her partner’s eemotions.
@Ninjastar I can honestly say I don’t know…I have a hard time fostering any blame or grief in her direction. Because until we had broken up I had never experienced that type of love or care. Nobody has ever watched out for me or pushed me so hard to get therapy, on medication, made sure I remembered to eat, etc. The codependency is part of what pushed her away, however. Which I understand. She has stated she has growing to do herself and that she hopes she can be better for me if we ever get back together.
At this point I just want to become a better man so that I am worthy of her love if she comes home. If I can learn to love myself than other people may love me enough to not abandon me.
This is what I am talking about. Being loved should not make you feel indebted.
She needs to remember that in a relationship, she is a partner, not a mom. By doing all of those things, she helped create a power imbalance in your relationship where she was the responsible caretaker, and you were the helpless needy one. She is just as much to blame for your dynamic as you are. She can work on setting healthy boundaries and trusting you to take care of yourself. You can work on seeing that you are worthy of being loved in a healthy way. You can both establish certain boundaries.
I used to get caught in this relationship dynamic a whole bunch. With my current partner, he refused, right off the bat. I remember when we were first dating, and I had an atrocious day. I just wanted him to come over and snuggle me. But he said he couldn’t, because he had work in the morning and my house was a 40 minute drive to his work. So he talked with me until 8 pm, then hung up to get sleep.
I was so hurt and confused at first, because he didn’t immediately drop everything to comfort me. But my friend said “That is a good thing. That means he understands how to set healthy boundaries. That means he will respect your boundaries when you have some.” And he did. I was very wary of the relationship at first, because I had never been in a relationship with healthy boundaries built on trust and respect. It can feel VERY strange and counter-intuitive to the way you are used to showing love. But having your own friends, your own lives, your own separate stuff, is super healthy and important.
. That alone should tell you that you’re special. Just ponder that.