Questions to Explore Childhood Origins of Poor Self-Esteem

These will help facilitate a learning process within yourself to grow.

Nathaniel Branden’s Program

“Over two decades ago, in Breaking Free, I published a list of questions I used in psychotherapy to facilitate explorations into the childhood origins of poor self-esteem. I include here a revised and slightly expanded version of that list as a kind of summing up of some, although not all, of the issues we have been addressing. They can be useful stimulants to self-examination for individuals and evocative guides for parents.”

1. When you were a child, did your parents’ manner of behaving and of dealing with you give you the impression that you were living in a world that was rational, predictable, and intelligible?

Or a world that was contradictory, bewildering, unknowable?

In your home, did you have the sense the evident facts were acknowledged and respected or avoided and denied? 

2. Were you taught the importance of learning to think and of cultivating your intelligence?

Did your parents provide you with intellectual stimulation and convey the idea that the use of your mind can be an exciting adventure?

Did anything in your home life suggest such a perspective, if only implicitly?

Was consciousness valued? 

Were you encouraged toward obedience or toward self-responsibility? 

3. Were you encouraged to think independently to develop your critical faculty?

Or were you encouraged to be obedient rather than mentally active and questioning?

(Supplementary questions: Did your parents project that it was more important to conform to what other people believed than to discover what is true? When your parents wanted you to do something, did they appeal to your understanding and give you reasons, when possible and appropriate, for their request? Or did they communicate, in effect, “Do it because I say so?”)

Were you encouraged toward obedience or toward self-responsibility? 

4. Did you feel free to express your views openly, without fear of punishment?

Were self-expression and self-assertiveness safe? 

5. Did your parents communicate their disapproval of your thoughts, desires, or behavior by means of humor, teasing, or sarcasm?

Were you taught to associate self-expression with humiliation? 

6. Did your parents treat you with respect?

(Supplementary questions: Were your thoughts, needs, and feelings given consideration? Was your dignity as a human being acknowledged? When you expressed ideas or opinions, were they taken seriously? Were your likes and dis- likes, whether or not they were acceded to, treated with respect? Were your desires responded to thoughtfully and, again, with respect?)

Were you implicitly encouraged to respect yourself, to take your thoughts seriously, to take the exercise of your mind seriously? 

7. Did you feel that you were psychologically visible to your parents, seen and understood?

Did you feel real to them?

(Supplementary questions: Did your parents seem to make a genuine effort to understand you? Did your parents seem authentically interested in you as a person? Could you talk to your parents about issues of importance and receive concerned, meaningful understanding from them?)

Was there congruence between your sense of who you were and the sense of who you were conveyed by your parents? 

8. Did you feel loved and valued by your parents, in the sense that you experienced yourself as a source of pleasure to them?

Or did you feel unwanted, perhaps a burden?

Did you feel hated?

Or did you feel that you were simply an object of indifference?

Were you implicitly encouraged to experience yourself as lovable? 

9. Did your parents deal with you fairly and justly?

(Supplementary questions: Did your parents resort to threats to control your behavior— either threats of immediate punitive action on their part, threats in terms of long-range consequences for your life, or threats of supernatural punishments, such as going to hell? Were you appreciated when you did well, or merely criticized when you did badly? Were your parents willing to admit it when they were wrong? Or was it against their policy to con- cede that they were wrong?)

Did you feel yourself to be living in a rational, just, and “sane” environment? 

10. Was it your parents’ practice to punish you or discipline you by striking or beating you?

Was fear or terror intentionally evoked in you as a means of manipulation and control? 

11. Did your parents project that they believed in your basic competence and goodness?

Or that they saw you as disappointing, ineffectual, worthless, or bad?

Did you feel that your parents were on your side, supporting the best within you? 

12. Did your parents convey the sense that they believed in your intellectual and creative potential?

Or did they project that they saw you as mediocre or stupid or inadequate?

Did you feel that your mind and abilities were appreciated? 

13. In your parents’ expectations concerning your behavior and performance, did they take cognizance of your knowledge, needs, interests, and circumstances?

Or were you confronted with expectations and demands that were overwhelming and beyond your ability to satisfy?

Were you encouraged to treat your wants and needs as important? 

14. Did your parents’ behavior and manner of dealing with you tend to produce guilt in you?

Were you implicitly (or explicitly) encouraged to see yourself as bad?

15. Did your parents’ behavior and manner of dealing with you tend to produce fear in you?

Were you encouraged to think, not in terms of gaining values or satisfaction, but in terms of avoiding pain or disapproval? 

16. Did your parents respect your intellectual and physical privacy? 

Were your dignity and rights respected? 

17. Did your parents project that it was desirable for you to think well of yourself—in effect, to have self-esteem?

Or were you cautioned against valuing yourself, encouraged to be “humble”?

Was self-esteem a value in your home? 

18. Did your parents convey that what a person made of his or her life and what you, specifically, made of your life, was important?

(Supplementary questions: Did your parents project that great things are possible for human beings, and specifically that great things were possible for you? Did your parents give you the impression that life could be exciting, challenging, or a rewarding adventure?)

Were you offered an uplifting vision of what was possible in life? 

19. Did your parents instill in you a fear of the world, a fear of other people?

Were you given the sense that the world is a malevolent place? 

20. Were you urged to be open in the expression of your emotions and desires?

Or were your parents’ behavior and manner of treating you such as to make you fear emotional self-assertiveness and openness or to regard it as inappropriate?

Were emotional honesty, self-expression, and self-acceptance supported? 

21. Were your mistakes accepted as a normal part of the learning process?

Or as something you were taught to associate with contempt, ridicule, punishment?

Were you encouraged in a fear-free approach to new challenges and new learning? 

22. Did your parents encourage you in the direction of having a healthy, affirmative attitude toward sex and toward your own body?

A negative attitude?

Or did they treat the entire subject as nonexistent?

Did you feel supported in a happy and positive attitude toward your physical being and evolving sexuality? 

23. Did your parents’ manner of dealing with you tend to develop and strengthen your sense of your masculinity or femininity?

Or to frustrate and diminish it?

If you were male, did your parents convey that that was desirable?

If you were female, did they convey that that was desirable? 

24. Did your parents encourage you to feel that your life belonged to you?

Or were you encouraged to believe that you were merely a family asset and that your achievements were significant only insofar as they brought glory to your parents?

(Supplementary question: Were you treated as a family resource or as an end in yourself?)

Were you encouraged to understand that you are not here on earth to live up to someone else’s expectations?

Hopefully, these questions can help facilitate a deeper understanding of your story and the influences your childhood has on your adult life.