Self-Esteem - What is it?

Article by Deborah Ward, Psychotherapist
December 2006

Self-esteem is the value you place on yourself. It is a collection of all the feedback you have received in life, especially your early life. More importantly, it is the feedback that you actually believed to be true about yourself and accepted as an accurate assessment of you. The quality of self-esteem is determined by how closely an individual's image of their self matches the reality of who they are. The gravity of self-esteem issues can be linked to the degree to which the individual has taken other people's attitudes and actions personally.

If you try to do something and find that you are successful at it, you build a thought about yourself as competent at that thing. If people praise or appreciate what you did, your thoughts about yourself are further confirmed. As you continue to do well, your self-esteem in this arena becomes strong and secure. Now, if somebody criticises what you have done, you are able to listen and consider whether their words can help you improve and do even better. You can also discriminate the value of those words and realise they may be wrong or misguided. You are not crushed or threatened by feedback.

Divided within the Self

On the other hand, if you do something and feel it was good, but were told it wasn't from the very beginning, you learn to doubt yourself and begin to build a belief system that you must be no good because what you felt was a success 'actually' isn't. You become divided within yourself and the conflict is between experiencing something as successful and thinking it wasn't.

This is also true at an emotional, relational level. For instance, it is natural and honest for a young child to seek the affection of their mother's embrace. It feels good to feel loved and wanted. But let's suppose that the mother was depressed or going through a major crisis and was unable to provide warm, joyful cuddles. The child may take the lack of cuddling as a reflection of who they are and whether they are deserving of cuddles and love. They may begin to believe they are uncuddle-able. They attach a meaning that really has little to do with who they are. Mother wasn't cuddling baby or, indeed, anybody else because she simply was not able to; it wasn't because there was something wrong with baby.

Parents as Demi-Gods

Young children believe they are the centre of the universe. They also see parents as demi-gods who possess all power, all knowledge and all capacity. Children believe that their parents revolve around them and whatever the parents do is a direct reaction to the child. The superstar parental status also carries with it a Truth Tag. From the child's perspective, this Truth Tag is a myth that everything the parent does is an appropriate and accurate response to the child's behaviour. But, of course, that is all a fallacy.

Because parents are bestowed with this distorted and charged power, your experience as a child is so important in formulating your self-esteem. But that experience may have very little to do with who you were. The conclusions you drew may have had little to do with reality and your sense of self may, consequently, be at odds with who you really are. This is why on my website, my 'tag line' is 'Listening for You'. I am listening to discover the you that lies beneath these surviving myths you may have about yourself. I am sifting through the web of myth to discover the reality.

Causes of Self-esteem Issues

You are likely to have self-esteem issues if you:

• received little or no praise;
• received regular negative feedback;
• were taught that good children were not selfish and didn't ask for what they wanted/needed;
• felt you had to earn love or approval;
• were not celebrated for just being you;
• had to regularly outperform your peers;
• were not offered adequate resources to achieve high expectations;
• were given signals that whatever you did wasn't somehow good enough;
• felt you had to follow paths that did not match your skills or interests;.
• were not allowed to just 'have a go' for the sheer fun of it.

Healthy Self-Image

Healthy Self-Esteem means that your opinion of your strengths and weaknesses is reasonably accurate. You know what you are good at and are able to receive constructive criticism to become even better at it. You are able to hear criticisms, reflect upon them and make your own mind up as to their value. For a person with healthy self-esteem, feedback is either helpful or unhelpful; the latter is simply discarded as inaccurate and does not wound.

Inflated Sense of Self

Too high self-esteem can, in some ways, be more difficult and self-negating than if it were too low. People often misunderstand the person with inflated self-esteem and pass them off as 'full of themselves'. In fact, the opposite is true. Deep down they feel empty and useless. The bravado is created as a larger-than-life guise to hide what they fear about themselves; they suspect they are nothing at all. And that is scary, so they desperately cling to the invented 'super' version and even come to believe it. They believe in the image so they trick themselves into not having to look deeper. This is why people with inflated self-esteem rarely have truly intimate relationships. They are simply too terrified they might get found out as fraudulent, which of course they are, if only to themselves.

Low Self-esteem

Low Self-esteem comes in many forms and usually indicates a form of self-negation or self-sabotage. Poor self-image often means underachievement or unfulfilling relationships. There is usually a lack of feeling worthy or capable. The conflict or discomfort lies in the discrepancy between what is in their heart and motivation and the thinking process that denies hope of fulfilling those dreams. If the ability or capacity was not there in the first place, the conflict would not arise. A person who is not naturally talented at algebra does not mind being exempted from algebra. Despair sets in when a person who is gifted in algebra does not have the self-belief to press forward in the studies.

Imagine the person whose heart longs for a relationship, but their belief system tells them that nobody will ever love them or they are somehow fated to be denied love, etc. There is the conflict. A person who has a closed heart and does not desire another will not suffer in this way. Low self-esteem is an excellent indicator that the capacity does, in fact, exist.

If you believe your self-esteem is low, dare to be honest. What is it that you are sabotaging? You may be stuck in an unfulfilling relationship. If this bothers you, that tells me your heart has the capacity to share greater love. If you feel badly about yourself because your job is so tedious, that tells me your abilities outstrip your current employment. Some of the most potentially gifted people I know suffer low self-esteem. And there's the difference: whether to remain potentially gifted or to embrace your gifts and fly.

© 2006. The above content is legally registered copyright of Deborah Ward. If anyone would like to republish the above article, please email me your request, where it will reside and your assurance of a link back to this website, and I'll send you a short bio you can use with it for your site.