Chapter 11: Treating the Long-term Impact of ACEs Part II: Low Self-Esteem

 Why is a healthy self-esteem so important? For one, it is fundamental to changing the stressful personality traits in Chapter 10 that are linked to ACEs. Second, if stress from those traits is relieved, improvement in PPD usually follows.

“I would ask them to tape this to their bathroom mirror as a daily affirmation. The resulting growth in self-esteem can then produce a domino effect of improvements in other personality traits linked to ACEs.”

I can’t provide comprehensive treatment in a single chapter because every individual PPD patient with low self-esteem acquired this in their own way. But I want to return to an exercise from Chapter 9 and expand on it.  Here is the exercise:

Imagine you are a butterfly on the wall of your childhood home. You are watching a child you care about coping with what is going on. Do you feel sad or angry about anything you are observing? If so, make a list of those issues.

To grow a healthy and accurate self-esteem I want you to consider the following as you think about that innocent child coping with all your ACEs.

1.     The child was forced to cope with these problems through no fault of their own.

2.     The situation was analogous to being born on the far side of Mt Everest or deep in a dangerous jungle.

3.     Heroic perseverance was needed to endure this environment while trying to solve the problems as best they could.

4.     No matter how remarkably they coped, repeated failure to solve problems created by adults can only result in the child assuming they are less worthy than others.

5.     The truth is my ACE-surviving PPD patients have overcome highly difficult emotional or physical challenges which is the dictionary definition of a hero.

When my patients were able to accept their own heroism, they were on their way to flipping their self-image from negative to positive. This is no more than they deserve. As a reminder I asked many of my patients to write the following on an index card:

    Name    is a Hero!

 

 I would ask them to tape this to their bathroom mirror as a daily affirmation. The resulting growth in self-esteem can then produce a domino effect of improvements in other personality traits linked to ACEs.