Do you worry what your friends think of you, find yourself doubting if they like you and then feel anxious or low? Maybe obsessing over unanswered texts or a night out posted on insta that you weren’t invited to? If this sounds a familiar its a common sign of low self esteem and it could be impacting on your friendhips.
What is low self esteem?
Low self esteem means having a low opinion of yourself. I can mean being self critical about your skills and abilities or having a deep feeling of not being loveable or good enough. It can affect people in different ways. For example, it can mean they lack confidence in their skills to go for certain jobs or they may feel confident in those areas but feel they have to be good at things to feel loveable.
However, some common signs include:
- Being Self Critical and hard on yourself.
- Putting Pressure on yourself to do everything correctly (perfectionism)
- Comparing yourself to others and not feeling good enough.
- Wondering what people think of you.
- Assuming people are judging you or have an bad opinion of you.
- Struggling in relationships because you do not feel loveble
- Struggling to say no to others for fear of letting poeple down
- Finding it hard to prioritse your needs
How does low self esteem affect friendships?
Friends are often cited as the ‘family you get to choose’ and popular culture tells us everyone has a BFF or the ultimate gang for nights out, weekends away or afternoons hanging out in coffee shops.
So if you struggle to navigate the world of friendships we can end up thinking we’re the only ones and feel ashamed.
It should be helpful to hear that if you often worry what your friends think of you, you’re not alone. As a therapist that specialises in low self esteem its one of the most common issues clients bring to sessions.
Also, its does not mean there is anything wrong with you. Feeling insecure around friends can be a natural part of being human. And whilst not everybody may do it, many people do and there are good reasons.
To understand why lies in a combination of how our human brains have evolved and (usually) stressful childhood experiences.
Lets start with the nature of our evolved brains. I find that learning this always helps people feel better about why they do things!
We may think we are advanced modern humans but a lot of what we do is determined by what helped us survive 100,000s of years ago.
The ‘fight and flight’ system is involuntary and inbuilt in all humans (and all mammals for that matter). It sits in a particular part of the brain (The ‘old’ brain) and has a role to alert us too and make us act at the sight of potential danger. For example, running or fighting as a sabre tooth tiger approaches. i.e. our hearts beat faster, our muscles tense, our breath quickens.
So far, so obvious maybe. But the thing is, our fight or flight system is also activated for social interactions because from a survival point of view we needed other people to survive. Whether we lived or not would depend on successful coperation with our peers for resources and shelter. Therefore being rejected by our social group would have been dangerous. In modern life we know we can just nip to tesco ourselves for resources we need. But our evolved brain think otherwise and makes us go into a spin at the thought of rejection. Therefore, on some level we all need love and approval from others because it makes us feel safe.
The difficult thing is that, for some people, this part of the brain is “over active” and therefore will be more prone to finding situations very stressful if they think they are being rejected or criticised.
Whatsmore, the very physical responses caused by the old brain interacts with a newer part of our brain which analyses, plans, imagines and worries. It is also makes us have better safe than sorry thoughts because thats more protective. For example, if we thought “Oh that tiger probably won’t come I’ll just wait and see” we would not survive.
The result for a modern human who worries what their friends think of them is probably uncomfortable physical feelings like anxiety but also thoughts that spiral and imagine all sorts of negative scenarios. This can then makes the physical sensations more intense and a vicious cycle occur which keeps low self esteem going.
So why do I worry what my friends think of me?
Often people have who have low self esteem and struggle to feel secure in friendships have experienced stressful childhoods or had a difficult time at school.
That said, I have worked with lots of clients where we have trawled through their past and cannot find clues. In those cases it might be down to a biological disposition or sometimes learnt behavour i.e a parent who had the same tendancy.
But in many cases the old brain is on high alert for a reason and thats normally because of a stressful childhood in one form or another. This can be anything from a critical but loving parent to a emotionally neglectful or abusive one. It could be being bullied at school or having to move schools at a crucial period and struggling to make new friends.
Somewhere along the line though a person has experienced something where they felt unsafe due to being unloved or not accepted by others. On a very simple level the old brain stores this memory as one that threatened survival. Its better safe than sorry tendancy will put it on high alert and interpret anything similar as a sign the original stressful experience may happen again.
But sometimes these past experiences can affect us on a deeper level and make us feel deeply unlovable and lacking in self worth. A deep, almost subconscious feeling of not being loveable will result in a person always feeling anxious about their value to others, including close friends. So they doubt their friendships due to interpreting everyone elses behaviours through this lense of how they feel about themselves.
How can I increase low self esteem and worry less about friends?
The good news is that, since we have this in-built mechanism that make us feel insecure with friendships, we also have mechanisms to balance this. This is known as the ‘Soothing System‘ and a person with low self esteem who is prone to doubting friendships will find theirs is under developed.
The soothing system also has a job in our survival as it helps us rest and digest which is important for our physical functioning. But it also enables us to give and recieve love in order to forge the relationships that would have kept us safe. Therefore in this mode we feel calm, contented, unguarded and crucially loved enough. The more threat we encounter the smaller this will be because we need to act on the feelings of not being loved and safe.
Fortunately evidence shows we can activate the soothing system ourselves and the more we do the bigger it gets, like a muscle.
Here is a list of ways you can start activating the soothing system spend less time worrying about your friendships
- Awarenesss: Next time you find yourself doubting your friendships remind yourself that your old brain has gone into fight and flight mode.
- Use breathing techniques to help you feel calmer about the situation.
- Take a step back from the thoughts and feelings using mindfulness.
- Remind yourself that just because you might think and feel this way, does not mean it is true.
- Offer yourself compassion that you cannot help feeling this way but there might be more helpful ways to look at the situation.
- Notice when you are comparing yourself to others, particular through social media. Pause and ask yourself if this is a real reflection on what everyone else is doing or can you find more balanced perspective.
- Use self help CBT tools to challenge assumptions and check whether there is any evidence that your friends are rejecting you or its just your old brain talking.
- Get therapy. You might find it beneficial to explore these issues in more depth in a counselling setting, particularly if you have experienced traumatic experiences in childhood.
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If doubting friendships is causing distress for you and you would like 1-1 support contact me for therapy sessions.
Rebecca Stambridge is a qualified therapist specialising in self esteem and how it impacts on work and personal life. She is also a qualified mindfulness and self compassion teacher as well as a recovering ‘friends worrier’.
This article has drawn heavily on the findings of Professor Paul Gilbert, the founder of Compassion Focussed Therapy.
