Tracy,

I am so glad that you joined this group and I hope you find some help here by reading the posts.

Sustained emotional abuse and invalidation over long periods of time can be just as devastating to your self esteem as abuse and invalidation in childhood. It sounds like your first and second husbands had a really negative impact on your life.

Obviously you do not want your current husband and your kids to suffer as a result of your resentment and unresolved anger at your first two husbands. But in order to be kinder to your husband and kids you first need to be kinder to yourself.

You need to sart by accepting yourself and not blaming yourself for what might have happened in the past.

I dont know how to begin accepting myself.I dont take compliments well at all.If someone tells me I am pretty or whatever I just blow it off that they are being nice.I dont see myself as the person other people see me.How do you learn to do that?

Tray,

While I know this will not change your view of yourself I will say this anyway:

1. I have talked to you in several threads and I see as having a beautiful personality

2. You also come across as being self confident and while I well know that we all feel much more liberated on DS, nevertheless it can be used as practice for behaviour in the real world.

3. Finally I have seen the pictures you have posted and you are a beautiful woman.

So ok you will not take to heart what I said but the next part I want to say is that if you read my acceptance topic it does not tell you to accept yourself as people who are kind to you see you but paradoxically simply to accept that it is ok to have low self esteem.

The first problem that people with Low Setf Esteem have to get away from paradoxically is berating themselves for their own low self esteem thinking that they shouldn't feel like that.

Well if you have Low Self Esteem then you do feel like that and in this group you are allowed to no one in this group will tell you to snap out of it or you shouldn't feel like that or anything of the sort we are all either there or in the process of recovery so we know exactly what it is like to have our feelings negated whatever they may be.

Once you can accept that it is ok to have low self esteem you can start to explore the nature of your low self esteem.

Thanks for your reply and your kind words..Its nice to hear someone say something nice even when you cant make yourself believe it..Thats another problem I have.I am too needy..I need to hear that I am loved or needed or wanted..Its one of the many things I hate about myself..its easy to be yourself here because nobody is here to judge me or to see me face to face..I remember a long time ago me and you used to talk often.You were always nice to me and I appreciated that..Thanks.

I don't know that needing to hear that we are loved and wanted is a defect. I think it's something we all should hear often, like a plant getting sunshine. What if you knew someone that would say it to you (sincerely) as often as you wanted to hear it?

Tray I think jim has a point we should all expect our loved ones to tell us that they love us on a regular basis, several times a day that is. Why would you want to be with somebody if they didn't help you feel better about yourself.

I think your problem is your inner critic, please be gentle on yourself you are worth it.

Do the exersises on understanding the nature of your low self esteem and your inner critic so that you can learn to understand just how unjust your inner critic is.

PS: Your face is real pretty I mean it, so face to face I would still say you look nice.

Self esteem and self respect are similar/same in nature in that we rely almost exclusively on OUTSIDE input to feed them. You say that you come form a healthy childhood past, I would to a fair degree beg to differ with that.

It is quite possible that you was as a child killed with kindness, and when released into the REAL world expected (rightly or wrongly) that it would greet you in the same manner, has it? What is apparent to me is that in your three husbands, you have found in fact your unequal opposites.

Your first husband reconditioned YOU to think otherwise of your previous self, and sadly my dear, YOU ALLOWED him to do, inadvertently though I am sure it was. You are a very smart woman though, because although you have been reconditioned to think otherwise of yourself, you HEALTHILY reject such being said of you, hence the reason why you wisely got out of your two previous marriages.

My advice to YOU is to continue to be TRUTHFUL unto yourself, and if YOU do that, then you CAN and WILL find the inner peace that in fact still lies WITHIN YOU.

People whom suffer from low self esteem are unhappy people, and unhappy people are vulnerable people, do you feel vulnerable? Do YOU think that if somebody specifically at this site pays you the attention you crave that you could fall for them?

There are people at this site deary, who like me, are aware of people like yours vulnerability, you wise them up to this fact by being a member of this group in fact, therefore I ask you this question, do you think you have made a healthily wise choice in joining this particular group? And by the way deary, your reason for joining this group pales into insignificance as opposed to my reason for being here.

Tracy, YOU are also guilty of believing LIES being spoken of YOU, aren't YOU? I say YOU are a BEAUTIFUL human being in ALL ways, FACT or fiction?

Tracy, YOUR own past abuse has YOU WRONGLY thinking ordinarily of YOURSELF also. The abuse that YOU have endured has such a logical at first, but illogical in the long term effect believe it or not. It is the ULTIMATE insult in fact that one human being can pay another.

The good new for YOU though is this, YOU have experienced HAPPINESS already in YOUR life via YOUR LOVING parents, thank God for that. As a result, YOU DO KNOW what YOU are looking for, there are many out there deary who sadly have never, and are highly unlikely to ever experience what YOU have in YOUR life.

Given that YOU know what YOU are looking for, then I am CERTAIN that YOU will find it again, in fact I think YOU are GUARANTEED to deary. Just keep on knocking deary, the RIGHT door will open for YOU soon enough CHAMP.