This episode of ‘Blackie,Yam-leg and lefty’ shares stories of young adults and teenagers who narrated their experiences among their peers while growing up. The challenges revolve around inferiority complex, parental neglect, physical challenges such as knocked knees and bow legs.
This episode gives insight to the high level of self-esteem challenges teenagers encounter among their peers in secondary schools. Some of the ways these teenagers and young adults were able to regain their self-esteem was through positive self-talk against the spiteful words people tell them about their physique.
One major consequence of negative and unhealthy comments on other people’s physique is defensive behavior. In other words, these unhealthy comments make the victim aggressive and defensive in order to protect his/her self-esteem and mental health.
One of the stories shared in this episode of BYL is about a teenage girl who narrated her ordeal among her peers and other people that totally damaged her self-esteem. One of the things that triggered a sense of low self-esteem in this young teenage girl was unkind comments about her walking posture from other people who continuously called her yam-leg and the likes.
Another story shared in this episode was the challenging teenage experience of a young man who passionately narrated the effects of parental neglect on his academics and how he literally struggled through secondary school from the age of 10.
These experiences shared by these teenagers and young adults points to the root-cause of low self-esteem which is gradually leading to a consistent increase on damaged self-esteem among teenagers. Furthermore, people who have low self-esteem are not easily identified as they mostly isolate themselves from social activities.
One of the methods to reduce the level of low self-esteem among teenagers is to create awareness among teenagers, parents and guardians that low-self esteem is real and could lead to depression.
