I Heart Me (6 page)

But there is hope – of course there is, otherwise I wouldn't have written this book! Self-love can be learned at any age with a little bit of consistent thought and practice. We'll find out how later. But first, here's some more on parental influences, just to give you a richer understanding of how we develop and to help you change even faster.

At a conference recently, I heard Michael Neill, author of
Feel Happy Now
, say, ‘You were born happy. You weren't born needing therapy.'

It's so true! Happy is how we start out. We have healthy self-worth then, too. Most of us lose it as we grow up and spend the rest of our life trying to find it again, but young children don't question their worth at all. Not at first. They learn to do it through their experiences with adults.

Quite simply, young children take on board whatever adults tell them. If the words and actions of the adults convey to them they are
not
enough, they'll know they're
not
enough. If the words and actions of the adults show them they
are
enough, they'll know that instead.

How does it happen? There are three main ways.

Some parents use shame as a parenting style. It's mostly because they've never learned anything else. They were shamed by their parents, and their parents by theirs before them. Shaming is a style that passes through the generations, just like genes. It's a way of correcting behaviour. But there's a downside to telling a child that they're bad, a liar or a good for nothing. It doesn't come from the reprimand. The problem is in the use of the words ‘You are' followed by something bad. That's shaming, and childhood is where it starts.

The point is that there's a world of difference between
telling a lie
and
being a liar
. Telling a lie is a form of behaviour, and behaviour can be changed. But if a child believes they are a liar, that requires a change of identity. That's a much bigger thing to change and the thought of it can leave children feeling hopeless. So they accept their given identity, and some rebel, lie, cheat and steal as an expression of it. Ultimately, shame corrodes self-worth. But later in the book you'll learn how to become resilient to shame.

Most parents don't mean to shame their children. They've no idea that the language has any negative effect at all.

One of the most empowering communications with a child I ever heard was in a movie called
The Help
, based on a book by Kathryn Stockett. I've not read the book, but in the movie, the black nanny repeatedly says to the white child in her care that she is good, she is kind and she is important. The child is then invited to repeat it back to the nanny. This, to me, is a very empowering message to give a child, one that can only strengthen their sense of worth. It gives the child a positive sense of identity through the words, ‘You are' followed by something good.

My friend Lizzie, however, pointed out that many parents, her own included, would have been horrified by a child affirming her worth in this way, believing that she was being encouraged to be ‘too big for her boots'. I heard that term a lot in the village I grew up in, too, and at the school I attended. Unfortunately, a consequence of not wanting to be ‘too big for your boots' can be a lifetime of playing small and apologetic, which gives birth to a
sense of
not
enough and also interferes with achievement. I can say this from personal experience.

Another version of the term used in my village and school was ‘If she [or he] was chocolate, she would eat herself.' Similarly, the result of this is that to avoid being singled out and rejected by the community, children learn to play small, and thus the seeds of
not enough
are sown.

The second way children learn to doubt their worth is through being criticized. Some are criticized for doing things wrongly or badly. Others are compared to a sibling who does things correctly. Some parents even swear or sneer at their children.

Now and again, a little piece of criticism is OK if it's well intentioned, but for some children it is consistent, and that's how brain networks are shaped. The fact that the parents are trying to educate the child and help them grow doesn't change the point that consistent criticism can give rise to a feeling of
not
enough. A parent says, ‘You're doing it wrong,' and what they mean is ‘It will be/you will be better if you do it this way.' What the child hears is ‘You're not good enough right now.' In time, the child learns at a subconscious level that they are
not
enough.

Many children have critical parents who push them to excel academically. If the child gets a ‘B', the reaction is kind enough, but it is often along the lines of, ‘Maybe if you work even harder you'll get an “A” next time.' What the child hears is, ‘You're not
working hard enough right now.' Sometimes, parents even launch into a lecture about how well they did at school or university.

All this can give rise to decades of trying to prove yourself to a parent. Many high-fliers in life are like this, perfectionists needing to be the best, powerfully driven by a sense of lack that, they believe, will one day be filled by achievement. But they completely lack the understanding that lack of worth can never be filled by achievement. Only knowing you
are
enough will fill the void.

The third way we learn to doubt our worth is through observing the behaviour of those around us, particularly our primary caregiver. My mum had low self-esteem when I was a child and I was there when she acted out her feelings about herself, so I learned to act the same way – not because she told me this was how I should behave, but simply because it was what I learned from her. In fact, she'd learned to doubt her own worth when
she
was a child.

As an eight-year-old, my mum had watched her mum have a stroke that left her paralysed down one side and unable to speak. My granny collapsed on the stairs and clutched hold of the banister. My Aunty Jane, Mum's elder sister, who was 17 at the time, screamed, ‘Go get my daddy!' He worked about a mile away. Mum ran along the road as fast as her legs would carry her and returned with my papa. Granny was taken to hospital.

Granny had always done all the washing and cleaning, and when she was recovering from the stroke, the rest of the family had to
take over. My papa was working long hours and my mum's two elder sisters were at the age where they were out a lot with boys. Mum felt that she had to learn to do everything for herself, and also help look after her two younger brothers. One day, a couple of years later, the schoolteacher took her aside and told her that the ribbons in her hair were dirty, and that even though her mum was disabled she was old enough to take better care of herself. While this was well intentioned, telling a young girl who is close to puberty that she is dirty is about the worst thing in the world. Through no fault of her own, Mum developed a deep belief that she was less worthy than everyone else.

She has also had little self-confidence as an adult, which is not surprising. And building my own self-confidence has been one of my biggest challenges in life.

Some parents have very few parenting skills. In the area where I grew up, most of our neighbours were kind and friendly people. But it wasn't uncommon to hear young children being called all sorts of language that I wouldn't dare replicate in this book. So often I would hear a parent angrily saying, ‘Dare you look at me!' or ‘I'll make you laugh on the other side of your face.' These words always seemed to be communicated in rage. It would be little wonder if those children grew up to have low self-esteem.

I grew up in a typical working-class environment. My parents never pushed me towards higher education because no one in our family had ever gone to college or university. It always
seemed above us. It was my chemistry teacher, Mr Tracey, who first planted the seed in my mind when I was 16 years old, shortly after I'd received exam results that included an ‘A' for chemistry.

When he first mentioned it, my immediate reaction was shock. I couldn't possibly go to university. I wasn't intelligent enough and my family didn't have enough money. These things I knew.

I also knew, as naïve as it might sound, that there were only two universities in the UK – Oxford and Cambridge. I knew that from watching the annual boat race on TV. You needed to be rich to get into places like that, and posh. Only people like Michael Thom and Paul Tortolano, two very intelligent middle-class boys in my class, could possibly go to university. And maybe Big Vince Kolosowski as well. Even though he was from a similar background to me, he was way cleverer than everyone else.

University wasn't the norm in our village. But I had a very positive influence in my mum. Several times when I was growing up, she would say, ‘Stick in at school so you can do well and get a better life than the one your daddy and I have had.' I heard it so many times. I still hear it today in my head like a mantra.

So I went to university to study chemistry. The lack of parental pressure on me meant that university was all about learning things that fascinated me. I loved chemistry. I loved learning the structure of molecules and how to build them. I also loved doing calculations in some of my classes where chemistry, physics and mathematics overlapped. I really loved learning.

I knew one or two girls and boys in some of my classes who were very driven. They were always in the top few per cent
academically. They were also the most stressed. The two seemed to go hand in hand. They were rarely satisfied with their performances in exams. Looking back, I'd say they also suffered from depression, although they hid it well.

Many of the students from working-class backgrounds similar to my own were more laid-back and had a much easier time at university.

This observation is reflected in a study led by psychologists who compared academically strong middle-class girls with working-class girls all the way from the ages of four to 19.
¹
By the time they were 19, the middle-class girls were much more stressed and anxious than the working-class ones. The cause seemed to be that they didn't feel that their achievements were good enough.

Most of the time, girls who fall into this category have pushy parents or parents whose coaching style is critical. The trouble with criticism as a parenting or coaching style is that it teaches you that you're
not
enough now. You'll only be enough when you achieve such and such a thing.

Critical parents don't mean to communicate this, of course. Mostly they're just trying to get their children to realize their potential. But if the children do become high-achieving adults and the parents believe they were right to push them, research indicates that the high achievers are statistically more likely to have low self-esteem than average achievers. Having pushy parents is a breeding ground for depression.

In a study of American girls from affluent backgrounds, more than 20 per cent suffered from serious depression.
²
That figure is only 7 per cent in the general population,
³
so you can immediately see the effects of being pushed, or coached with criticism.

Some children who are pushed to succeed learn to attach their self-worth to the achievement of goals because achieving was their only way of being validated by a parent who usually pushed or criticized them. As adults, if they succeed, they feel good. If they fail, unless they have learned self-compassion, their self-worth takes a beating.

By the time they become adults, many of these people have learned to set completely unrealistic targets. Deep down, they eventually expect to fail, and that will return them to the level of self-worth that they're used to feeling, retaining the brain chemistry that their brain knows best. Yet at the same time, they strive to succeed in the belief that success will bring them self-worth.

This isn't meant to be a class comparison, just a way of pointing out that many middle-class and upper-class parents push their children to succeed because they've learned the value of success in their own life and they want their children to succeed and be comfortable. This often works in the success stakes, but can have negative consequences in the mental health and self-esteem stakes, especially if the parental coaching strategy has predominantly used criticism. Children need guidance and boundaries, but they also need to learn that they are
good enough
just as they are, and they need to be able to make their own choices and learn the likely consequences of those choices.

In essence, we learn how we should be treated by how our parents treat us. As children, we are far more observant than our parents think. We learn how we should be spoken to by the way they speak to us. We learn how we should behave by watching how they behave and we learn how we should interact with people by watching how they interact with people. We even notice whether we are treated more or less fairly than anyone else – a sibling, for instance. Seeing a sibling getting preferential treatment can bring on a self-love deficit early on. We deduce that they are better than we are. By inference, ‘I am
not
enough.'

Of course, children are not always quite so sensitive. Most children are highly resilient and are unlikely to be affected by the odd throwaway comment or situation where another child appears to be favoured over them. It's mostly behaviour or treatment that is consistent over a period of time that affects how a child feels about themself and their place in the world.

Before we go any further, I want to make it clear that this isn't about blaming our parents for any challenges we have with our self-esteem. The vast majority of parents want the best for their children and do what they believe is best for their children.