Start in the previous article. There are two main traumas that affect self-esteem: rejection and abandonment. The trauma of rejection is the very first trauma of every person. Everyone goes through it. This is a trauma received during childbirth, when a child is literally pushed out of the world familiar to him. Emotions at this moment are fear, pain, anger, rage. The natural mechanism in this case is for each child to have an adult nearby who will help cope with these emotions and share feelings. If everything is fine, then the trauma itself is experienced and calmed down, through awareness of feelings. And if the parents avoided these emotions of the child, or even worse, raised them by manipulating the fear of rejection (if you don’t..., I’ll leave you here/give you to your uncle, etc.), or there was no parent at all (literally rejected), then the person is in this injury is fixed. The fear of being alone means not surviving. A person did not learn to live this emotion, since there was no one nearby who could teach him how to cope with feelings. It is unbearable to be in this emotion. The psyche shows a mechanism to escape from unbearable pain. The “fugitive” mask appears - I don’t care, I didn’t really want it, depreciation. Fear is then not even realized, there are a lot of beliefs that help to avoid it. How this manifests itself in adulthood: - fear and incredible pain at the thought that someone close to us will reject us. - even if such experience in life says that it’s okay - we continue to worry. - some believe that we definitely need to worry, that if we don’t worry, we will be rejected. - any rituals to preserve the relationship (like a child who believes that his mother will return, since he is holding his fists ).- constant humiliation and underestimation of oneself, the ability to reject oneself. Frequently comparing yourself to others who are stronger in some way. This is how Belief in our second-class status develops - we don’t notice our achievements. We don’t believe that someone might love us, that someone might want to be friends with us. That is, we have learned not to expose ourselves to the risk of being rejected, but we reject ourselves. This is where the myth grows that everything depends on us. But that's not true, is it? We may be rejected, or we may not. Relationships are always about at least 50% responsibility of both. You can try 100%, but still be rejected. Or you can not try at all, be yourself, with all your advantages and disadvantages, be able to negotiate and not be rejected. Or maybe we ourselves rejected someone who tried very hard. Or maybe, on the contrary, we are afraid of causing another the pain of rejection and live without love and understanding with the feeling that life is passing by. But in fact, going through this fear means learning to hear yourself, your needs, satisfy them yourself, without expecting from another. And not to satisfy the needs of others, just so as not to be rejected. Even if the trauma of rejection is processed, it is still actualized when a significant person or a significant situation appears. Examine ourselves: How do we feel when we enter into relationships with others? What is the main feeling? Are you afraid of being rejected? How do you experience this feeling? Are we saying that it’s not worth trying? Or do we put on a mask of not giving a fuck and don’t allow ourselves to be ourselves? Or do we do everything to avoid being rejected? Are you afraid of losing yourself in someone else? Taking off the mask of not giving a fuck means loving yourself. It causes us to be out of touch with our feelings. The reaction to rejection - fear - is a normal reaction that corresponds to our natural, survival instincts. Fear mobilizes us to action: run, hit, surrender (hit, run, freeze). Only after living through fear can we make adequate decisions. If fear paralyzes us, then we obey, try to please, so as not to feel fear again. Fear is useful, as it turns into attention and concentrates us. Trauma of Abandonment Every person has gone through some kind of trauma, but everyone has different degrees of experiencing it. Many of these experiences are unconscious; we hide them from ourselves. But when something happens in our life that is unconscious.