In The Rising Podcast- A Health and Wellness Podcast

Is Your Self-Esteem Inherited? The Truth About Genetics and Self-Worth

February 02, 2021 Bettina M Brown Season 2 Episode 61
In The Rising Podcast- A Health and Wellness Podcast
Is Your Self-Esteem Inherited? The Truth About Genetics and Self-Worth
Show Notes Transcript




 

Lauren Vinopal writes an wonderful article about the importance of breaking the cycle of poor self-esteem.

The NIH even printed a short article about optimism and self-esteem.







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 Bettina M Brown: Hello, hello, and welcome to In The Rising Podcast. My name is Bettina, and this is the platform I've chosen to talk to you about living a life that's in alignment with your hopes, your dreams, your goals, and your opportunities, as opposed to living a life that's full of the shame, blame game. That does nothing for you or let's face it, anyone around you?

So I'd like to start off by saying that I am not a licensed counselor, psychologist, psychiatrist, or anything of that nature, but I am a healthcare professional who loves to talk about what makes us tick. And having been on this side of healthcare as long as I have, I have been indoctrinated with. The idea that we should not chase the pain but get to the source of the problem.

And being a physical therapist for 15 years, I have started to learn a lot of our physical problems aren't physical at all in nature. Like they're not in origin, basically. And so I have started to look more and more into what makes self worth. So important. What? What is it? What is about our confidence that we really need so we don't have as much back pain or shoulder pain?

How does that really connect together? And so I've read a great deal of books by Deepak Chopra, perhaps you're familiar with him. He's an author of over 50 books and he's actually a physician who talks about integrative medicine and how. We're not really focusing on the mind body connection as often as we can be.

And quite frankly, it is important because there are so many aspects to the human experience that we cannot just quantify and put in a textbook. And one of the things about science that is so wonderful is that we have had the opportunity to. Figure out our genome. We've been having the opportunity to learn what genes we may or may not have.

And what's interesting is that we actually are able to identify a couple of genes that really have a link to whether or not we have a lot self-esteem and self-confidence. But on the flip side of that same conversation, There's been a lot of research that says, yes, you may have this gene, but that does not mean that you're going to express it.

So what does that really mean in English? Right. Well, the thing is a lot of people, for example, are looking at whether or not they have the the gene for breast cancer, and they may have this, but that does not mean they're going to absolutely have breast cancer later on their lives. It just means they have a higher.

Propensity for having it one day, and I'm one of those people. So it's really good to know that I should really focus on my health and wellness and reduce my stress and inflammation because I absolutely am a gene carrier. Doesn't mean that those that don't have that gene will never have it, but it just means there's a more likelihood and the same premise happens for those that have this.

Gene that makes them a little bit more sensitive to kind of emotions and a little more sensitive to their surroundings and what the researchers have found that in the case of our self-worth and confidence, that there's just a much stronger link to our childhood and the experiences we had at that point in time as opposed to whether or not we carry certain genes.

Because there's such a big question on whether or not, you know, genetically if we're just linked or just kind of doomed to have some self-esteem issues. And I am sure that you are probably, I. Aware of, you know, just a family where they're just, they're all just seem to be happy. They seem to communicate well, they seem to want to spend time together.

And then you have other families where there just seems like there's this great cloud over everyone and there's always like a winter storm, like winter is not coming, winter has come and it just lives in that space all the time. So is that a genetic issue or is that more environmental? So some of the researchers and the articles, I'm gonna put them all in the box below, but they really talk about that.

Why we may think this is something that gets passed down from generation to generation is that when there is someone in the family, usually parent that has a lot of self-esteem issues, they are not able to pour into their children or child. And so the child then lacks that need, that what they need to develop that self-confidence.

And then that child becomes apparent and the same thing happens and it's over and over and over again. And that's where the idea, well, like, you know, well, someone's mom was always, you know, sad and everything was bad, and that's how then their daughters were. And, and it just, that's where that cycle actually starts.

And there's a lot of generations that this can go back. So what about if we start here right now, what if you are that parent? What if you are the, stepparent or what about the godparent or aunt, uncle, anything of that nature, cousin, anyone close where you have the ability to be near children? What can you do to actually help them?

And so I wrote down, A couple things here, and the first thing was put on your, your mask first. Just like in the airplane, when there is a problem, the first thing you need to do when the masks drop is put yours on first. So in layman's terms, evaluate your self-esteem and your self-confidence. Do you have any, do you have as much as you would like?

Are you relying on a relationship? You know your status in that relationship or status of having a relationship at all to define who you are. Are you a homeowner or not? Are you renting or are you paying a mortgage? Are you driving that car you want or are you driving the car you want before you get the car you want before the car, before the car you actually really want?

Where are you on that scale? And so those are all questions to figure out and work on yourself with because then no matter what we describe to the children that we have, no matter what we preach to the children that we have, our greatest preaching is by our doing because they watch us. And what we will often do, we'll talk about how our mother or father did something and, and we watch them do this.

We don't often talk about, well, when they said this to me, I felt this way, or when they said this, no. It tends to have a scenario, doesn't it? And it has all this around it. Well, the same is in place for our own children. Or the children we can impact. So in that moment, we have to acknowledge where we are in our own journey so far as any of that.

So putting on our own mask and evaluating our own self-confidence is the first thing we can do to help those around us. The second thing is to really look at the big picture. And by that I mean the authors described that kind of nowadays we have a lot of what we call helicopter parents. Those that will always be around watching what their children will do.

But we've gone from helicopter to lawnmower parents, I didn't even know this was the thing, but apparently, And I may be guilty of this myself occasionally, is really wanting to make sure that our children never, ever, ever have moments when they don't get to make mistakes. So that means we will stop something before it happens.

We won't let them make a decision until they've run it past us. We don't want them to get hurt. We don't want them to get hurt. We don't want them to get hurt. But in that same moment of not wanting them to get hurt, we are stopping and hindering their own ability to make decisions that affect their self-confidence.

It's a building block and we're taking away that foundation. So in those moments, we have to evaluate, is this a big picture? Where if they do this, they'll burn the house down. That's something to stop. Or if they do this, they'll be sad, they'll be hurt, their emotions will be hurt, but there'll be some growing.

They'll get to learn that they can rely on themselves, they'll get to learn to, to feed themselves from their own plate of self-confidence and self-esteem, and that is not always easy to do. And it's certainly not easy to watch that process go down, but realizing that we have that opportunity to let someone develop their self-esteem, it's not something we can give them.

It isn't. It's not something we can save them from and it's not something we can just provide. It is something that is developed. That was a good lesson for me. And the third thing was don't worry about developing a little, you know, what did they call it? A mega maniac, um, narcissist. Praise the heck out of your children.

Praise them. Praise them. Praise them. Praise them for the things they did well. Praise them for trying. And a lot of researchers have looked at that. We're also really concerned about, you know, raising a lot of little narcissistic kids right now because, you know, especially in the time of our internet age, that's a huge thing.

But a true narcissist has no self-esteem. A true narcissist is as empty as a pale that has a hole on the bottom. And no matter how much you fill it, it keeps going down. Because there's nothing there to contain. It doesn't matter how much praise it just goes down. It's a constant need for more that is a narcissist looking for that praise.

A person with confidence does not need someone to praise them, but when they are praised, it is still with humility that they can accept it. Being able to accept a compliment, being able to accept praise, being able to accept acknowledgement means you have self-esteem. It means you have confidence and being able to accept constructive criticism.

Being able to accept non-constructive criticism because you know, let's face it, they're both opinions. But being able to accept that and know that you are not less of a human being because of a situation that someone has an opinion or because of your own mistakes that you recognize your own humanity with.

All of this thing call life. That is really where we recognize and know that that is true confidence. So, What can we really do then in relation to children? We can really accept where our children are on their own journey. And whatever we did when we were 10, or whatever we did when we were 15 and 20 is completely irrelevant because that is not the life they're living right now.

Praise them and love on them. Right now and recognize that if you're not able to provide that, that maybe your own self-esteem and self-worth is not quite up to par. And I remember going through a lot of books and it talked about this monitor. Her child so much. And I thought to myself, I love my son too.

I love him so very much. And then I realized I cannot love him more than I love myself and to not love myself and my experience and the good qualities I know I have. And the ones I'm like, eh, that takes away from him and there's nothing I wanna take away from my own son. So I think. Recognizing that there's a genetic component is nice and it's interesting.

And as a nerd, self-proclaimed nerd, probably many people would proclaim me the same thing. But just to know about it and read about how oxytocin is, you know, important and how some people have a greater need for it, and how there's now a warrior gene, someone who's not affected by stress as much. And you know, it's very interesting for reading.

But at the end of the day, there's still emotional and psychological needs that we have, whether we have a certain gene or not. And as an adult, we cannot go back in time and change our past. But a lot of us can go back in time and recognize one person who gave us more attention, who saw us in a different way, who provided encouragement.

Those are the stories we hear about even from celebrities. You know, even Oprah Winfrey talks about one person who made a difference because that one person just pouring in can make a life-changing experience for someone else. And I think that's when we recognize our own power for other people and our own power in our own life.

So as always, I thank you so, so much for listening to today's podcast. I'm super grateful and I would love for you and encourage you to leave a review because it absolutely helps with the algorithms. There's always an algorithm, right? So until next Tuesday, let's keep building one another Up!