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After difficult or traumatic events in life it is easy to get stuck in threat mode. When everything around is on fire, there is no time to talk with yourself. We switch on total inner power: we turn ourselves from a living person into a mechanism for putting out disasters and hand out harsh directives – pull yourself together, don’t whine, function.

In this mode, dialogue with ourselves shuts off completely. But why do we stay in it for years, even when the fire was put out long ago?

Low self-esteem and the habit of seeing ourselves as not enough have a hidden benefit.

As long as I sincerely believe there is something wrong with me, that I am weak, immature or broken, I keep the clear status of an object. And an object can and must be managed. An object doesn’t need sympathy, it needs training. It doesn’t need to find meaning, it needs to follow orders.

An object is predictable. It doesn’t have to be trusted, it is enough to control it.

It seems to us that believing in ourselves means gaining strength. But for our inner controller, recognizing a subject in ourselves is a risk. Because it means losing total power over ourselves.

To recognize our own agency is to accept that I am not a machine for carrying out tasks, but a living person. That I have a will of my own, limits of endurance, fatigue and pain. That I can no longer simply order myself to go and do, without regard for my inner state.

As soon as we stop seeing ourselves as an object for repair, the regime of harsh orders collapses. You cannot treat a subject like an object. With a subject, you have to negotiate.

And inner dialogue always contains uncertainty. It requires vulnerability, risk, and giving up the illusion that we can fully control every step and every emotion.

Low self-esteem keeps us in the safe cage of hypercontrol. We are afraid to believe in our strength, because strength will require us to stop treating ourselves as an object to be rescued.

Real trust in ourselves begins not with another push of willpower, but with a readiness to loosen our grip, to hand back the powers of the inner overseer, and to risk entering a gentle dialogue with ourselves.