Women Need to Learn to Love and Respect Themselves

By Linda Martinez

Women with no self-respect and no self-love, see themselves as unworthy of anything good in their lives. They accept mistreatment, abuse, and rejection as a normality. They are accustomed to being treated as worthless, therefore many believe they don’t deserve more. They become lazy and don’t strive for greater things. Their relationships become detrimental. They wind up hurting others and themselves. They do not love themselves and do not know how.

SYMPTOMS IN THESE WOMEN

These women often lack self-respect which turns into depression. They tend toward self-destructive behaviors such as lack of personal hygiene, lack of boundaries, and they allow others to be rude and disrespectful to them. They don’t acknowledge their good qualities, they see mostly the bad ones and have difficulty correcting them. They personally do not care for, nor love, themselves. Most have not received love and acceptance, and in turn feel they don’t deserve to be treated that way. By hating and loathing themselves, they lack the confidence to succeed in a better outcome for their lives. They stifle any progress they hope to make. They compare themselves to others, and are not happy with who they are.

TYPES OF CHOICES THEY MAKE

In a relationship they will believe they are not good enough. They will test or set-up a relationship that may have potential, or settle for relationships that make them feel like they are used to being treated; badly, abused, and/or rejected. They will fantasize that a “knight-in-shining-armor” will come to rescue them and make everything better for them. So they will set the bar high and expect the partner to fulfill their needs, and when the partner fails they will disqualify their efforts and sabotage the relationship. They will be guarded and not trust anyone. They will hesitate and be afraid of loving someone, so they will abandon the relationship before they are abandoned by the partner.

THE IMPACT THESE WOMEN HAVE ON THEIR HUSBANDS, CHILDREN AND OTHER RELATIVES.

These women will be insecure they are used to being abandoned and cheated on. They will gravitate toward a relationship in which they will feel insecure. They will not trust their husbands, and will resent the position the husband has in the household. Even though they may accept the treatment of the husband, however bad it may be, they will resent it and feel they deserve it. Their children will cause her to feel the same way, if they see their father treating her badly. She will want to love and care for her children, but will find herself treating them as she has been treated all her life. She will become distant and shut down sexually towards her husband. Others relatives become accustomed to her being a certain way, so they too will treat her rudely, and with no respect. And, if a family member would like to help her and treat her well, she will not accept it as such, but believe that she does not deserve the positive treatment or reinforcement. She will not be close to her relatives, due to lack of trust and not allowing herself to receive love nor respect from them.

IN THEIR BUSINESS LIFE

They have difficulty accepting themselves. They are not comfortable in their own skin. They feel they don’t measure up with the rest of their co-workers. Self-respect and self-love is foreign to them. They lack confidence, lack maintaining a positive body language and good posture. If they receive a compliment they will not accept it. They won’t maintain a positive attitude about themselves. They are overly negative about themselves, and only imagine the worst scenarios for their lives. They are not happy; they can’t smile. They want what others have, they envy others wishing they had the nice things too, but feel they do not deserve such good things.

Most of us understand what it means to love another person. The feelings of intense desire, admiration and emotional investment in another person are familiar. We go out of our way to nurture our love towards others but loving and respecting ourselves is not so easy. Self-love is a combination of self-acceptance and self-possession, self-awareness, kindness and respect for ourselves. Self-love is positive self-regard in action.

THEY NEED TO LEARN TO LOVE AND RESPECT

Women with no self-love and no self-respect for themselves need to get to know themselves. The more they understand about themselves the more they can see and appreciate how unique they really are. By discovering their principles, personalities and talents which may take a while, but will give them great insights about who they actually are, they can begin to see their good qualities. By listening to their inner voice, they will start to recognize the negative thoughts they have of themselves. These negative thoughts often come from the outside; from people whose opinion they value, and from whom they seek love and acceptance.

To change the low opinion of themselves, they would need to come to realize that they have many good things to offer others as well as themselves. Making a list of things, people, activities that are important to them will help identify what they really should have and need in their lives. They would begin to see that they can take a control over their lives, and allow themselves to enjoy it. Journaling is one way which can help pinpoint an actual event that took place in their lives; where the loss of self-love and self-respect began. They may start to understand how their reaction to that/those event(s) have caused them havoc most of their lives. With these revelations, they can face up to emotions and begin to forgive those which caused the events, as well as to forgive themselves for their own choices and decisions. Even if they may have been children (at the time of the trauma), with no control over the situations, they can still move forward with the process of forgiveness and healing.

The healing process would begin by helping themselves understand that their reactions (to the trauma) were, and are, defense mechanisms to protect themselves from being hurt and abused again. As they step back and look at the circumstances in detail, realize that they had no power to stop the event, they can now as adults can take control and choose, and behave, differently. This control would begin with accepting responsibility for their own action/reactions. Forgiving those that caused them so much pain and suffering. Training their memory muscles that they have forgiven those that hurt them, and using those memory muscles for present or future situations that may arise by choosing to react in a positive way, instead of the negative manner they have all their lives.

As well, they need to understand that some relationships, even those that are forgiven, may need to be severed, due to the fact that the “forgiven” person is not willing to respond in a positive manner to the relationship. Manipulation and deceit is still present in the attempt to control the healing process, but, by choosing freedom through the healing process one can improve he lifestyle and live with joy and happiness. These are not overnight fixes, they take work and attention to detail, determination and intent desire to improve ones life.

REFERENCES:

• elitedaily.com/life/motivation/yourselfworth-is-everything
• Psychologytoday.com/blog/me-we
• wikihow.com/Respect-yourself
• wikihow.com/Love-yourself
• wikiHow/ ways to respect yourself.
• wikiHow/ways to love yourself
• Process of healing by Rev. Juan M. Pérez
• Holy Bible Scriptures:Romans 12:2, Philippians 4:13, Joshua 24:15, Psalms 24:12, Ecclesiastes 10:2, Romans 6:16

Linda Martinez is a counselor-in-training. She will have completed the required training and preparation process in two months, to become a fully certified Faith-Based Christian Counselor. Ms. Martinez writes, not only using well researched conclusions, but also as a successul survivor of similar events in her own life. Linda is an example of when a woman chooses to take control of her life she can make what she desires of it. PracticalCounseling.Com is happy to include material from Ms. Martinez on this site.