Even Pretty Girls Cry

As I was drying my hair, my brain started to work. (scary!!) I was thinking about a few comments that I had heard from guys here and there regarding, "Why Pretty Girls Cry". Of course I had to question them in order to get them to reveal their thoughts on the subject. I asked them a simple question- "Do you think that women that are pretty dislike other pretty women?" Hmmm, I received a lot of answers immediately, without any thought, seemingly. The answer that was the most popular was.."NO!!" I know so many women that are beautiful and the last thing that they would think about themselves, is exactly that. They cannot see what we see in them at all. They think every other women in the world has more to offer.

My next question was, "do you think that women constantly compare themselves to other woman?" This question took no time at all for them to answer. "Yes and no, they think that we (men) are comparing them to other women. And that's what gets them all weird". Additionally, "They think that we are lusting after them in our minds or wondering what they would look like naked. They compare themselves with other women, yes, but in more of a way to improve themselves for us. My girlfriend compares herself with women that do not even come close to her on a any scale and still finds reason to knock herself down".

Hmmm, I seem to be saying that a few times, but it's because women are so generalized. If one women is one way with one guy, he thinks all women are like that. When women generalize men, they call us male bashers, or feminists. What do we call guys that generalize us from their past experiences?

So whats up with the fact that pretty girls really do not look at themselves as pretty girls? Is it something from their past?. (seems like the bottom line for everything)

I, myself remember a guy asking me that exact question. "Why do all the pretty girls think they are ugly?". I shrugged. I really had no answer. I never put myself on that level, of being pretty that is, so I never really gave it any thought.

In all the research that I have been doing on this subject, I will tell you this, `beauty is in the eyes of the beholder`, nothing more, nothing less. If we look in the mirror and see no beauty, that is in our minds only. Not in our partners minds or a strangers mind. We are constantly supported by our spouses and we continualy mistrust their comments. Why? When are we going to start to see ourselves as a beautiful being? A UNIQUE being. A one and only being.

Ladies when you cross paths with another that you feel is way above you, for whatever reason, shoes, hair, dress, body, or just her smile, think this; she is also looking at you and seeing something in you that she lacks and would love to have.

Also, it's part of us, built into us, and born with it in our brain to compare.

Some will look for weakness or flaws in others just to make themselves feel good. That is a negative comparison. It is not a bad thing to want to be a better person. We just have to be very careful to not take it to an extreme that blinds others to our thoughts and intentions.

Men tend to automatically call us jealous when we reveal our thoughts, if another women is involved. Another mystery in my mind; Jeesh, we are not always that worried, OK. So get off your ego trip guys. Sometimes we are genuinely curious as to why we see and feel the vibes we get from you. Also as you read earlier, just maybe, we care and we want to improve ourselves. Maybe men should try and do that sometime. Then they will actually see where we are coming from.

Another thing I have noticed is that men are very good at making us believe that we are doing what they say. Why is that? Is it to win an argument and feel totally in control of our thoughts or is it that they themselves feel vulnerable at times and less than perfect to us. Men have told me that they do not look at other men and wish they were like them. Well duh! Would that not make them female? Why does everyone try so hard to give excuses to genders?. Why can't we just accept and appreciate each other for our differences? Why do we have to be so damn equal on everything?

Females are soft, sensual, sensitive, emotional, passionate, intelligent creatures. That's us, and we are tired of apologizing for how we were born. We work overtime trying to understand our male counterparts. We are what makes them tick. They are what make us tick. We want nothing more than to be their everything. What is so wrong with that? Men are strong, protective, sexual, and feeling beings.

Men and women together make a very nice song.

These are just my thoughts as you all know, so take them with a grain of salt. Has society totally confused what real people are all about, to the point that some do not even know they are pretty? That is a sad thought. Some may think that I have nothing good to say. Well I actually have a lot of good to say. I wish that life was a perfect world. It is not even close. My thoughts tend to deal with the real world and it is not all that great for some. One can not go up until they have gone all the way down.

We are all pretty in some ways. People think way to much about the outer physical appearance and I wish that I could meet the first person that started that negative seed. When did things get so out of proportion?

There are too many worries and too many unhappy women out there. If I can at least help one woman see how pretty she is, then my course is set. Ladies we are all a gift, one that is truly cherished by our loved ones. Never let that go neglected. Remember, you choose your thoughts. You are the pretty girl that your man wants, desires, and will spend the rest of his life with. It's who we are that makes us the perfect woman. Not just what we look like, because we are not always going to look the same. Everyone grows older and everyone changes their outward appearance. What does stay the same, is who we are inside. Our REAL person is what it's all about. I will end with this thought:

ONE ALWAYS THINKS OTHERS ARE HAPPIER!

DorothyL
womensselfesteem.com

JEALOUSY!

THE TRUTH ABOUT JEALOUSY!
Click for audio of this article

This article will not take up too much of your time, but will be very helpful in your daily life. What you are going to read is important in regards to the very controlling and confusing issue that so many women are challenged with every day, for some every single minute of their day. In this particular part of the jealousy series, you will learn what jealousy feels like and just how serious and captivating an emotion it can be. The next article will talk more about dealing with jealousy and how one can actually get control of it.

In the next few minutes you will learn what and how a woman feels when she is stuck in this very real and controlling jealous emotion.

It has been proven that many women are not even able to identify this confusion of thoughts that they are suffering from. A very big part of healing and winning these battles of jealousy is in identifying your enemy. In this situation the enemy is the jealous emotion that results from a much deeper issue that may or may not be obvious to its victim. You will hear more about that in a bit.

Through research and in speaking with many women every day through the womensselfesteem.com, jealousy seems to be a very big issue that has them in such a downward spiral that they cannot find a way to get hold of it.

One of the main causes for this negative emotion, "jealousy" stems from a time in a persons life when an emotional wound is created, which severely attacks their safe world or in other words their feelings of inner securities. These insecurities will seriously affect a woman’s self-esteem, which will in turn result in feelings of low self-worth, lack of a self-respect, and mistrust. These emotional wounds can be caused from several types of abuse or trauma such as, physical, psychological or an over-restrictive/dominated childhood. If a child is sexually abused, then that child's security is threatened through the fact that she trusted the abuser and almost always grows up feeling that they were at fault for the abuse. This also rings true in an adult life, especially if the victim truly trusts and sees her abuser as almost," God" like. When a child is psychologically abused, they usually live a life of demeaning name calling or belittling, again this does happen to adults in a trusting relationship. The over-restrictive or dominating upbringing begins at an early childhood and then follows through into adulthood. Each and every one of these abuses that you have just have just heard about are definite cuts that eventually turn into deep emotional wounds.

These wounds will send a person into a prison, a prison of fear and weakness that they will carry throughout their lives if they do not learn to identify them and deal with them and strengthen their inner self. So many women search for answers to solve this scrambled up problem that they can feel inside of themselves, always coming up with a 0. They tend to look outside of themselves and that is the mistake that they are making. So many jealousy issues come from within.

The human brain is set up of two minds, which allows two ways of thinking, one being positive and one being negative. Unfortunately if a person is somehow mistreated or loses a trust as you have heard about earlier through my thoughts, at any time in their lives, it tends to weaken their ability to maintain a balance between the two. This is when they will fall prey to certain triggers that will ignite the fuse that leads to jealousy. You may be wondering what triggers are, they can be anything from a memory of your past, a smell, a persons laughter, a picture, another women, a feeling of being left alone, or even a look from a partner. There are many different types of triggers that will set off negative emotions. In this series of articles you will learn about relationship triggers and how they set off your jealous emotions.

Negative relationship triggers are definite causes, which happen when a relationship fails due to mistrust issues caused by infidelities or pornography addictions by a present or past partner, and are left unresolved, which unfortunately will follow them into every relationship, if she does not stop and take hold of her issues.

Jealousy is not just a word that can be ignored or excused. It is a word to be feared because it is fear that creates this negative feeling. Have you ever noticed how jealousy changes your relationship from happy to devastate in just seconds? It will feel like something that you would not wish on your worst enemy.

The negative emotions that are hidden behind this word jealousy will tear your trust apart letter by letter, and rearrange it until it spells deception, betrayal, even hate. Theses words will turn you into a paranoid living creature, hiding from reality. Reality is truly jealousy’s enemy. It avoids its enemy as quickly as it replaces the positive thoughts that you once had in its place. It is strong enough to take control of your mind and direct it into thinking that someone you dearly trust and love has turned into another being, a being that is cheating on you, lusting for another, watching pornography behind your back, lying to you when you ask a direct question, twisting everything you say so that you come out looking like you are delirious and they will laugh at you when you cry out for help. It will tear your guts apart until you feel like you are going to vomit and it will make your head swirl with uncertainty. Jealousy can speed up your breathing quicker than a exercise machine, which in turn will send your heart racing into turmoil. It is a total body trauma. It can make your body break out into a sweat so fast that it will make rain look slow. If you have ever had even one minute of these threatening feelings, you know exactly what I am trying to explain here.

This negative emotion will make your mind fear abandonment, ones biggest fear in a relationship are to be replaced or abandoned. This fear alone is a very strong trigger of jealousy. This fear will imprison you and force you to suffocate or guard what’s yours, until that person can no longer be a victim to your jealousy. It will drive you to feel a deep need to control another’s thoughts and actions. To allow jealousy in your mind to the point of this kind of control, is to fall victim to an,” attachment prison” or an addiction. In this attachment prison you are the weaker element of the partnership or relationship, your need to feel attached will ruin your sense of security and your self-esteem. A very good example of an attachment prison is when you fear with all of your senses to let your partner out of your site, not even to go to the corner store or to work for fear he may see someone that you would deem as a total threat.

Jealousy is like a drug. Once it gets into your veins, you are no longer coherent or independent in your thinking. You have now just become a dependent thinker, dependent on jealousy and its power. To have such a need is also equivalent to an addict needing a drug. Your addiction is your jealousy, your high is the adrenalin that your body creates through its fears, only this is not positive adrenalin; it is a pure negative adrenalin rush. The only antidote to combat this addiction is through positive steps that will strengthen your ability to take back your control and find a freedom from that attachment prison.

Jealousy will not rest until through you, it has created a frustrating and unbearable environment that puts you in the position in your relationship as your own worst enemy. In effect you become the attacker that you have been trying to run from. You are now jealousy! You are the cause of this turmoil that is being thrown to your outside world; an outside world that cannot possibly feel your pain; nor can they help you escape it. But they will look down on you in their confusion. You are all alone in this prison. You are the only one that can feel this pain, the only one that feels this need to control and hide from the world. You will find yourself being driven by negative thoughts every turn you make.

Have you ever been on a negative thought rollercoaster? If you ever have, you will understand what I mean when I say negative thoughts; negative thoughts that will not let you think rationally. If anything, they will work very hard at confusing your positive thinking. You will spend countless hours talking to yourself trying to get out of insecure feelings and you will end up right back feeling the same negative control that jealousy has over you.

Jealousy will rob you of sleep hour after hour. When your mind cannot sleep, it becomes weak and that is exactly what strengthens the negative thoughts that will feed jealousy and keep it controlling you. These thoughts will turn over in your head until they are locked into a place of negative non realities. This is when you begin to believe in things which seem surreal. An example of this non reality is, let’s say, you’re walking past your partner as he is watching television. A commercial is on. There is a young scantily dressed woman on the commercial. Your immediate reaction is fear. You fear that at that very minute he is lusting her or worse, wishing you were her. As I said non- real negative thoughts = jealousy.

This negative emotion is extremely careful to not allow your self-esteem to strengthen. It will turn your thoughts into a comparison mode instantly when it feels threatened. When it can put your mind into doubt of it’s worth, it has total control. It will continue to control and force thoughts of being undeserving, not worthy, unintelligent, boring, self-less, non-appealing, even just plain ugly. It is a true negative powerful and destructive emotion that will not only control your thoughts but will also alter your desire to love. It will make you hide in safe, loveless corners and never allow another person into your heart. To allow a person into your heart would mean that you would be putting yourself at risk of falling victim to jealousy and all the horror that it creates and feeds on. So, you at this stage begin to set up protective walls, separating you from ever being hurt, but also putting a wedge in between you and your partner. Your choice, if you choose to stay in negative thinking, is to live a life alone.

When you have allowed it to weaken your thoughts to the point of delusional thinking, your mind will only see what will feed this negative emotion. All of your rational characteristics will be taken over by irrational thoughts and reactions. Everything that you thought you could control is now uncontrollable. Nothing is what it seems, while this jealousy emotion has you imprisoned behind its bars of negative and low self-worth thoughts.

I truly believe that being controlled by jealousy is similar to being in captivity. Your mind will get so conformed to that space that you’re allowing, that you will learn to depend on it. You will feel safe only in that space. All of your knowledge of what’s outside of that captive space has been hidden away into a very dark deep place in your mind. It is all you feel that you can control, not even realizing how little control you do have; again equivalent to an addiction.

What captivity and jealousy have in common is that once you allow your mind to be controlled or captivated by the overpowering emotion: jealousy, your mind will react as it would in a captive situation. Both jealousy and captivity hold your mind and reshape it to conform to its negative demands. A person in captivity eventually starts to depend on the person that’s holding them captive. You start to depend on the feelings that you’re getting from being captive by your jealous emotion. Jealousy becomes you, and you become jealousy. Together the duo team that you have allowed to control your thoughts will now destroy anything that is real. You will now live together in an unreal negative world of deception.

You will live and breathe the feelings of fear, worry and deception. You will not rest one single minute. Your mind will constantly be filled with disorder and accusations and,” what ifs”. At this point your ability to trust and feel secure with your partner will no longer be available to your mind, to your negative mind that is; the negative mind that you have allowed to take place of your once positive mind. Your innate desire to protect you and your reason for being are now at risk in your mind. You need to control everything and everything about your partner, right down to his every move. You need to take ownership in order to feel safe. With this control, then and only then can you feel safe from jealousy? Again the,” attachment prison” takes over. This prison created by jealousy to keep you in its power and control. You’re first breathing thoughts are livelihood and your future are based on attachment and acceptance. To lose that would be like dying a very slow death. Under the control of jealousy and its attachment prison you will fight to survive at any cost. You will be on guard even in your sleep, to notice even the simplest sign of abandonment or loss. Hence, the sleepless nights, haunted by the enemy: jealousy, captivated by the attachment prison again.

This is what you already know of jealousy. It is not fun. It is not a happy place. It is however very destructive and it will destroy your life if you continue to allow it to control your thoughts. As I mentioned earlier in this article, your mind has two sides, one being negative and one being positive. You have the ability to choose.

I have brought this part of the jealousy series to you because of how important it is to identify with the truth of jealousy. It is as real as you are sitting there listening to this. There is a way out and a way to free your mind of this prison of negative thoughts. Through my next article on “The Truth of Jealousy”, you will learn steps and strategies that will help to strengthen your mind so that you may win the battle of negative thinking.

~D~

The UGLY Return of Jealousy and Low Self-esteem

Jealousy and ones feelings of low self-esteem seems to have become a widespread issue for so many women these days. It is not that women are just beginning to suffer from these horrible confining emotions, it is more that women are finally seeking ways to overcome them.

But overcoming them is just the first step, then we must learn to stay the course and be ready for their ugly return, because they will return. It is like any negative trauma that our minds experience. The memory of the trauma never goes away, it is that we learn to put it in a safe place. If we allow this memory to gain strength and return, it will.

Jealousy and low self-esteem will attack ones mind to the point of damaging it in the same way a death of a loved one or a severe shock will. I kid you not there, if you have ever in your life felt any of these negative emotions, you will agree with that.

Jealousy and low self-esteem are very strong negative feelings and they will control your every breathe. Negative feelings that will scar your world and your memory.

They will confine you into a room with all the blinds pulled down and the doors locked.

They will not stop until your fears have you totally convinced that you have to lock your partner away so that none can threaten his thoughts.

They will play mind games with you which I refer to as,"Mind trickery" a few times in this article.

Mind Trickery is when your positive and negative thoughts battle to control your actions and reactions to certain situations.

Here is an example of mind trickery:

You will have days where you will feel that you have finally beat those weaknesses and negative feelings.

You will feel so proud of yourself.

You will feel like you can do this and that you have done it.

You will walk into the world with your self-esteem glowing and your medal of first place in the race against jealousy shining.

You will actually be happy for a change.

You will be so tricked into thinking that you have finally battled and beat the negative side of your mind that you will drop your defenses and literally walk naked.

Then it will happen, mind trickery at its best.

The negative feelings will attack.

They will attack when you least expect it.

This is what mind trickery is about.

Jealousy and low self-esteem have won in the battle of mind trickery.

You underestimated your own thoughts again.

So now what?

Do you allow them to once again traumatize your life and paralyze your happiness?

or do you fight harder than you have ever fought before to keep them where they are secured?

Then even when you may have succeeded in that, you will be faced with your own feelings of disappointment in allowing your mind to fall victim to the destruction of negative feelings. Again you will need strength to over come those self destructing feelings of negativism.

Here is a scenario to show you how the return of those negative feelings work. It is again up to you to not allow them to win their attempts to return.

---

You have just walked into a restaurant with your partner feeling on top of the game, its been so long since your negative feelings have taken you down that you have totally left your guard open for attack.

You spot the threat, you immediately feel a shot go directly through your stomach.

You feel yourself losing the ability to maintain a steady breathe.

Your strength is weakening so fast that you feel the return of the old panic.

You immediately want to retaliate as you have done so many times in the past with snide remarks and confrontation, but you recognize that those reactions only made you weaker in the past so you fight them.

You take control of what little strength you have left and you scream out for any positive thought that you can find.

You feel it subside just a bit.

You don`t allow the negative feelings to override your positive thoughts.

You will not be able to completely escape the negative feelings.

You will definitely feel your self-esteem fall.

Those inner thoughts of how you are," not as pretty or good", as that of the threat you have just walked into, are back.

You are there, you have fallen, your body begins to shrink, you want to disappear from your partners eyes before he can pick up on those feelings, feelings that he will surely not be happy to see return.

Your mind is now in a full battle of negative against positive thoughts.

Your head feels like it is going to erupt.

Your body starts to tremble as you struggle to maintain even the smallest positive thought.

You will feel the need for some outside help from your partner, just one word, or one touch to support your importance to him.

You realize that this is yet another negative feeling trying to gain on your positive side.

For him to have to do that, will only make you weaken again the next time.

You must do this yourself.

All alone, you must fight this battle in your mind.

You must continue to fight for your positive thoughts to get stronger.

You begin to make silly conversation if you have to.

You even make a funny face in your mind to make yourself laugh.

You redirect your thoughts until you finally have found an opening for your positive thoughts to get in and take over.

You feel your body begin to calm, your breathing begins to steady and you feel total control over your negative thoughts.

You have won this battle of return.

You have taken control over the mind trickery and returned those negative feelings back to a safe place.

Now you have to deal with your own disappointment of thinking that you would never be back in that weak position again.

A position of feeling your self-esteem trampled on and the feelings of needing to hide from the world in order to protect yourself.

You can do this, it is natural to feel disappointment, even good to a certain degree. In feeling disappointment in yourself, it acknowledges that your awareness is stronger and your ability to battle," The UGLY Return of Jealousy and Low Self-esteem", is also stronger.

Negative thoughts are what will bring you down, and you will feel that you will never be able to get up again.

Fear not, your mind will defend itself to protect you and will help you find the positive thoughts that you need to maintain a happy balance of thinking. Just do not fall into the habit of the negative rut. The longer you allow the negative feelings to stay with you, the longer you will be in that rut.

Happiness is something you should fight for, it is the feeling that you want, it will also help strengthen your positive thoughts. So be happy!!!!

~D~

TRUST....why is it so damn hard?

Trusting issues and jealousy basically go hand in hand.
When you do not trust in your own self as to how unique and important you are....you immediately feel less than and with that, insecurities rise up and jealousy is born. A true symptom of a lack of trust in yourself!
The only way to trust easily is to let yourself do so. It is easy once you understand why you are finding it so damn hard.

We are creatures of habit....habits are repetitive thoughts or actions that we fall into immediately because they are the last stored file in our thought patterns which that end up being in the forefront of our brain. What this means is that the last thought or reaction stored will be the first one used when your emotions begin to rise in either a negative or positive response.

Habits are something that I talk about all of the time.
'Habit' is a very small word which carries so much reality and control over our positive and negative reactions and thoughts. The word 'habit' is also difficult to accept as what causes people to stay stuck in jealousy or insecure emotional traps.
It takes at least 14 days to break a habit, according to the latest researchers. Now when I say that, I mean 14 days of consistent behavior, repeated over and over on the same subject matter.
That is why breaking an emotional habit is difficult. We do not run into fears and threats in a consistent manner.
We basically have to discipline ourselves into a self-talk therapy every day whether we are actually challenged with one of our fears or not. In doing this we must be prepared for 14 days of feeling very much on an emotional roller-coaster. This is exactly why so many people go to therapists for support in breaking negative emotional habits. It is not a simple task.
Silly analogy here but it seems to fit...think of a habit as pulling an end of a plastic electrical tie through its lock and then trying to pull it back. A very tough thing to accomplish, unless you work at it and stay committed to see it through to the end. It is not impossible but it is very challenging for most people.

We are still searching for the answers to questions such as....
Why is it so damn hard to trust?
Why is it so hard to feel good about yourself and your relationship any time and anywhere?

It is more so that, somewhere along the line you have fallen into a belief that you are not worthy of that relationship and you are in fear that at any second someone else will take over and replace you. Hence a low self-esteem or self-worth!

Trust is not about what another person may or may not do to you or that they observe another.

It is about:
- how safe you feel, being who you are.
- why you put yourself down.
- why you instantly compare yourself to another.
- why you feel the need immediately find a flaw in another that you feel threatened by.
- why your insides tighten and twist so that you find it hard to breathe at times.
- why you cannot accept a compliment at face value.
-why you look in the mirror and hate who you see.

Trust is all about YOU!

In order to battle and overcome one's insecurities in life,:
-you must feel secure in who they are and accept who you are.
-you must stop wanting to change what you cannot.
-you must learn to appreciate every little thing about who you are.
-you must focus on loving who you are.
-you must want to be happy about who you are.
-you must realize that every second that you dwell on unhappy thoughts...is life being wasted.
-you must learn that trust inside of you>

To be able to trust another and feel secure in a relationship...you must accept you, right now, this second.
Accepting who you are and allowing that thought to determine your life will in turn give you peace of mind.
You cannot control what another person is going to do, so why waste another second trying to through your own thoughts.
Accept that you are you and your partner is your partner.

Here are two very good thoughts to keep as your daily inspirations..

"To be Wronged is Nothing unless You continue to Remember It!"
"We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are!"

Remember...trust comes from within your own thoughts and self-acceptance.
Strengthen those and your life will be what it is meant to be and that is free of chaos and doubt!!

DorothyL@womensselfesteem.com