Self Esteem 1

Hi, everyone. So today I'm going to talk a bit more broadly about self-esteem and ADHD. I touched on this subject in my previous recording around core beliefs, because core beliefs are based on our interpretations of the world around us and our experiences. They shape the way in which we think and feel. And I talked briefly about how it's very, very common for people with ADHD to have experienced more critical comments, or acted in certain ways which have led to more self-critical thoughts. And so there is a greater likelihood that people with ADHD struggle with their self-esteem than neurotypicals.

Now, I talked about these core beliefs being like emotional volcanoes, once the core belief is set in stone, it starts to create a bias in our minds. So the brain effectively starts to search for information to validate and confirm the core belief. And as it continues to do that, the greater that belief becomes, the bigger it becomes, and the greater the emotional response becomes. So for example, let's say someone was bullied because of their behaviour in school, and they didn't know they had ADHD, which is a really common sort of scenario.

They were teased and criticized by teachers and criticized by parents, as a consequence of their behaviour. It's very, very common, they might get a core belief: “people will judge me” as an example. Now, that means in situations where we perceive judgment, rejection or criticism, you're much more likely to have a stronger emotional response to that situation, because it's activating the core belief.

Now, we don't like having strong negative emotional responses, do we? So inevitably, we're going to learn defences, we're going to learn ways in which we protect ourselves from that. And that's kind of a subject I'm really interested in, what is it that we do in order to protect ourselves? And that's why I want to talk to you about what we refer to in cognitive behavioural therapy as Rules for Living. Now, Rules for Living are not set in stone, but they are habits that we develop, in order to protect ourselves from these strong emotional responses.

So for example, if I was bullied, and I develop a core belief, people will judge me, I might seek to defend myself against judgment in a number of ways. So I might have a rule. "I should keep people at arm's length so that I can reduce the likelihood of them judging me". That's a fairly common one, or conversely, I might go the other way and have a rule where I should seek to please others and avoid conflict so that people don't judge me. If you have conflict with somebody, if you disagree with someone, you are going to get judged aren’t you whether you're right or not. And for some of us, that's a very unpleasant feeling. So we might seek to appease in various ways.

Those are defence strategies. Another very, very common rule for living might be to protect against the core belief, I'm not good enough. So let's say I was criticized a lot as a child, and struggled at school, which I did, this went into developing a core belief: “I'm not good enough”, which I did, incidentally, quite happy to share that with you. I'm going to learn to protect myself against that strong feeling I get when I don't do well enough or I get a poor mark at school or a situation where I might get criticized. So I might develop a rule around doing things to a very high standard, it's where we might see some sort of perfectionistic behaviours. Or these expectations might start to feel too great. I feel like I'm placing too much pressure on myself. So I might start to see other defences such as procrastination.

So you might see a rule like "I must do things perfectly or I must do things to a very high standard", and if I feel I can't, I should avoid it or put it off altogether. Now those are just a couple of examples, there are tons of negative core beliefs one could have. Though they're not to be confused by negative thoughts, by the way, the belief is usually the bottom line. So it's rather interesting because we put these childhood defences in place. And what tends to happen, and I'm speaking sort of generally here is that as we sort of enter into adulthood, these defences start to not work as well.

And often we start to see, in fact, that they work the other way, they start to impact in a negative way against our core belief system. So, for example, if you go around pleasing everybody, avoiding conflict and not standing up for yourself and not developing assertive sort of defences and assertive communication styles, does that protect against the fear of judgment? Or does that reinforce it somehow, for you? I'm willing to bet on many occasions, it will actually reinforce your fear of judgment.

How often do you meet those high standards you expect of yourself? I'm willing to bet not that often because for many of us, who have this fear of not being good enough or fear of being a failure, those expectations we place on ourselves become impossibly high. And that is because there's a sort of underlying function there, which is to validate the negative core belief. So, you know, maybe we aren't ever going to meet those standards, because the brain essentially has made its mind up that we're not good enough for it, a failure somehow. So we're very unlikely to meet the rule "I must do things perfectly" or "I must do things to a very high standard". So that stops protecting the core belief of "not good enough" or "failure", doesn't it? And it starts to reinforce it.