Welcome to Self Esteem Truths. Here we safely address the real-life struggles that effect your self-esteem, including life changes, the daily grind and deep emotional pain. Each episode dives into a truth about why you struggle and what we can do about it with your host, Christine, a certified Confidence Coach. In episode one you can hear Christine's story and learn more about how she can help. This is an easy to listen to podcast that will make you laugh and relate and give you that push you've been looking for to finally start gaining confidence in yourself.
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In this episode we dive into what "self" actually is, what made it what it is and what that means for us now. Get ready to learn something new about yourself and hear some good news about what that means for your future.
ABOUT CHRISTINE
Christine Crise is a Master Certified Confidence Coach, author, speaker, and host of Self Esteem Truths.
She helps heart-centered, high-achieving adults strengthen their confidence, communicate clearly, and set healthy boundaries—so they can create greater success and freedom without abandoning themselves in the process.
Christine is also the bestselling author of Break the Cycle with Your Mother: Best Practices When Your Past Stands in the Way of Your Success.
WORK WITH CHRISTINE
Interested in the Boundary Bootcamp, the Confidence Course, private coaching, or inviting Christine to speak?
Welcome. I am your host, Christine, and this is the Self-Esteem Truth Podcast. A podcast about discovering the truth. It's about who we are, why we struggle, and how we can overcome. This podcast is designed to help you transform your life as we dive weekly into new questions about self-esteem truths. Hi, this is Christine, host of Self-Esteem Truths Podcast, and this is episode one. Today I'm going to share with you a little bit about my story and why I'm here podcasting with all of you. Like many of you, I don't have the happy childhood story. My childhood was full of stress and heartache and abuse. A lot of that stemmed from the fact that my parents had had pretty rough childhoods themselves and unfortunately had not been able to break that cycle. When your childhood is missing, some of the key factors in healthy self-development, safety, belonging, love, that taught me a lot of unhealthy and untrue things about myself. And then I got into a marriage that confirmed those unhealthy beliefs about myself. And when I got out of that marriage, I was in a pretty dark place. Very depressed. No clue who I was or who I was supposed to be. Overwhelmed, lost. My self-esteem, my self-worth was at an all-time low. And I knew I had to do something, but I didn't know what that something was going to be. You see, I had planned on only getting married once and staying married. That was my goal. It was very simple. I didn't want to make millions. I didn't want to be famous. I just wanted to be a wife and a mother. And I was doing the mothering thing okay. But my marriage was in shambles. We were a broken home before we separated. And I was sticking it out for my kids until one day we were walking through a parking lot, and my boys were being pretty mean to my daughter. And I was a bit horrified because I was hearing their father's voice coming out of their mouths. I was hearing their father's words towards me coming out of their mouths towards their sister. And then my little girl turned to them and said, Hey, you don't get to talk to me like that. Only my daddy gets to talk to me like that. And I realized in that moment that staying in this marriage, quote unquote, for them, was a complete and utter lie. I was teaching them to be men like their father, and I was teaching my daughter that she should grow up and marry someone like her dad. And I knew right then, not just for me, but for them, we had to leave. And so we did. And it was rough. I mean, scraping the bottom of the barrel. Where's the next bite coming from? Can't even afford work clothes, can't afford daycare, can't afford to heat my home. We were on the bottom. And I started working on myself because I didn't want to marry somebody like that again. I didn't want to be controlled by my upbringing anymore. I didn't want to be defined by my childhood and my parents anymore. And I was going to break the cycle. My children were not going to grow up and be bad parents because their mom was a bad mom, because her mom was a bad mom, because her mom was a bad mom. No, that was not going to happen. So I went to therapy twice a week. I started reading all kinds of books. I went back to church and I started journaling. And I would love to say that it was an amazing experience, but it wasn't. I felt very raw. I would describe it as if I had been skinned alive and still forced to walk around in public. It was painful. It was so painful. Being around anybody was painful. Being around people who knew me was painful because we don't like things to change. And so as I started to change, they probably unintentionally fought to try to put me back in the box I had been in. I lost friends, all but one friend I lost either because they thought divorce was contagious, or they didn't like the transition I was making. I was no longer a doormat, not somebody that they could use or feel better about themselves because they were hanging out with me. So it was a lonely process. It was a painful process. It was a lonely process. And it was so confusing. I have a couple of journal entries where I just wrote down, who am I? What do I want? What do I like? What am I hoping for out of life? Why am I here? When I stripped away all of the lies and negativity, I really wasn't left with much else. At least it didn't feel like I was left with much else. So I eventually pulled myself back together, created a new me, and started living a better life, making better friends, being more successful in other areas of my life, working on being the best mother possible for my children, not just because I hoped I was, but because I had the tools now to do that. And it was incredible. At that point, finally, it was incredible. But that really got me thinking: no wonder most people don't do this. I mean, it was a decade of loneliness and confusion and depression and pain. No wonder people don't do this. But then what happens? We don't break the cycle. And I thought there's gotta be a better way. And that's how I discovered coaching. With coaching, I get to be there for other people who are struggling or going through a transition. And I get to be that support for them as they go through this. I get to be that cheerleader for them as they go through this process. I get to be their accountability partner so they stay on track while they go through this process. And I get to help them find the quickest and smoothest and most comfortable path through this transition so that it doesn't take them a decade. And I love that about what I do. I love that because of my journey, I get to help other people not have to go through something like that. No one has to go through it alone. No one has to go through it confused. No one has to fall on their face with nobody there to pick them up and hug them and tell them that it will be okay. And so that's why I'm a coach. I named my practice New Branch because I'm a firm believer that we came into this world blessed more than we can imagine with a God-given purpose. And because we are all imperfect and have freedom of choice, our parents and other individuals often go about distorting that precious, precious person we're born into the world as. And by the time we become adults, there is a very disjointed, muddy version of us walking around. Well, how does that relate to new branch? It's because I think that we don't need to uproot the tree. You're the tree. You don't need to be uprooted, you don't need to be taken down. We don't need to take a chainsaw and knock you off at the knees. The core of you is exactly what it's supposed to be. But what we can do is we can prune back some of those branches that maybe shouldn't have grown, shouldn't have been fed, and we can make sure that oxygen and sunlight and nutrients are getting to those parts of ourselves that have been waiting to bud. If you know anything about trees, you know that every place that there is a leaf, there's a potential for a new branch. And it might not sprout for years, but the potential is always there. And I believe the same is true for humans. You have all this dormant potential inside of you that's just waiting to be fed. We don't need to add anything into who you are. We don't need to mold you into something else. We don't need to do any of that. It's all already inside of you. And so we just have to let the new branches grow. I hope that makes sense. I hope that put a smile on your face and made you feel a little bit better about yourself. Thinking of yourself as a perfect tree that just needs some pruning and new growth. Certainly makes me smile to think of myself that way. So there you have it. A little bit about my backstory, which will inevitably get into deeper as we move through this podcast over the weeks and months and years to come. And a little bit about my belief about the human makeup and our potential. Thank you for tuning in for this first episode. I hope you move on and listen to episode two and three. I think you'll find it enlightening, and there's a lot of good material ahead. For now, I'll just say that I believe in you. I'm here for you, and I will talk to you next week. Bye.
