Difficulty Experiencing Appropriate Levels Of Self-Esteem

From Facing Codependence by Pia Mellody, Andrea Miller & J. Keith Miller

Healty self-esteem is the internal experience of one's own preciousness and value as a person. It comes from inside a person and moves outward into relationships. Healthy people know that they are valuable and precious even when they make a mistake, are confronted by an angry person, are cheated or lied to, or are rejected by a lover, friend, parent, child, or boss. Healthy individuals may feel other emotions, such as guilt, fear, anger, and pain in these circumstances, but the sense of self-esteem remains intact.

Codependents experience difficulty with self-esteem at one or both extremes. At one extreme self-esteem is low or nonexistent: you think that you are worth less than others. At the opposite extreme is arrogance and grandiosity: you think you are set apart and superior to other people.

• Low self-esteem comes from dysfunctional caregivers giving their children verbal or nonverbal messages that they are "less-than" people. These messages from the caregivers become part of the children's own opinion of themselves. Upon reaching adulthood, it is almost impossible for those raised with "less-than" messages to be able to generate the feeling from within that they have value.
• Arrogant and grandiose behavior arises out of one of two distinct situations. In the first, a family system teaches its children to find fault with others. The children thus learn to regard others as inferior to themselves. On the other hand, some dysfunctional family systems actually teach their children that they are superior to other people, giving them a false sense of power. Such children are treated by the family as if they can do no wrong.

If codependents have any kind of esteem, it is not self-esteem but other-esteem. This is based on external things such as how they look, how much money they make, why they know, what kind of car they drive, what kind of job they have, how well their children perform, how powerful and important or attractive their spouse is, the degrees they have earned, and how well they perform at activities in which others value excellence. Other-esteem is based on either one's "human doing" or in the opinions and behavior of other people. The problem is that the source of other-esteem is outside the self and thus vulnerable to changes beyond one's control. One can lose their exterior source of esteem at any time, so other-esteem is fragile and undependable