wju are some people so insecure they ruin their life by letting people walk all over them?


Question:
nature or nurture?

Answers:
Insecurity seems influenced by low self-confidence, while letting people walk all over them seems influenced by low self-esteem.

I don't like trying to sort behavior into nature or nurture, and instead prefer to attack it from more than just those two perspectives. It seems to me that low self-confidence and low self-esteem are largely culturally influenced rather than genetic presets. Someone *may* be genetically preset for low self-esteem or for low self-confidence; but I largely doubt that. I think events in their lives move their self-esteem and self-confidence downward.

For example, let's say you have a pretty "plastic" self-esteem. If someone says to you "You should feel ashamed of yourself," with your plastic self-esteem, you move your self-esteem a bit lower and you *do* feel ashamed of yourself. This is lowered self-esteem. Now iterate this stimulus-response thousandfold, and the result is someone with very, very low self-esteem. With so much stimulus that you should feel ashamed of yourself, you feel you SHOULD feel ashamed of yourself, and you SHOULD NOT feel good about yourself.

You now arrive at the phenomenon of "letting people walk all over you."

You can arrive at low self-confidence (insecurity) by similar means. Say you have fairly "plastic" self-confidence. As you are repeatedly subjected to statements like "You can't do anything right," your self-confidence lowers and lowers until you have very low self-confidence. You eventually start to think you CAN'T do anything right, and all that you CAN ever do is wrong. This leaves the person scared to do anything, because more than likely it will be wrong, and by its being wrong the person will be subjected to more pain.

Basically, the people are stuck in habits, and they very likely do not understand this because all they've ever known in life is such abusive messages. Once these people learn they have other choices in the matter when they are subjected to these kinds of messages, they can start to increase their self-esteem and self-confidence. For some these changes may be so immediate that they incite therapists to look for "bipolar disorder" or "schizophrenia," and while those labels may be helpful, they can for the person suffering from low self-esteem and low self-confidence make for *lower* self-esteem and *lower* self-confidence, finding themselves yet again "bad" and "wrong."

So there you have my answer. It's more of a "nurture" answer, but "nurture" implies family upbringing. I cite more generally culture, meaning family has an influence, as do media, friends, social systems, superiors, inferiors, etc.


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