Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
UnderstandingLowSelfEsteem
How is low self-esteem manifested?
At the heart of your self-esteem are your core beliefs about the kind of person you are. If you have low
self-esteem these beliefs will be mainly negative, and negative beliefs are expressed in many ways. In
your thoughts about yourself you're likely to be self-critical, self-blaming and self-doubting, and focus on
your weaknesses rather than your positive qualities. The beliefs will affect your behaviour: you may avoid
challenges and opportunities, be continually apologetic, or find it difficult to be assertive. They can have
an impact on your emotions, generating sadness, guilt, shame, frustration or anger. This might be reflected
in your physical state, making you feel fatigued or tense.
At work, you may consistently underperform - or, conversely, be rigorous in your perfectionism,
driven by fear of failure.
In your personal relationships you may suffer from terrible self-consciousness, oversensitivity to
criticism or disapproval, or excessive eagerness to please. Some people with low self-esteem, on the
other hand, try to be always in control or always put others first, thinking that if they don't then no
one will want to know them.
In your leisure time you might avoid any activity where there is a risk of being judged, or perhaps
simply feel that you don't deserve to relax and enjoy yourself.
You might not take proper care of yourself, for example refusing to rest when you feel ill, or
drinking excessively or using drugs.
The effect that low self-esteem has on people depends on the role that it plays in their lives. Sometimes it
is an aspect of current problems, such as depression [link] People who are clinically depressed almost
always see themselves in a negative light. If your low opinion of yourself started with the onset of
depression, then the first priority should be to treat the depression in its own right. This could restore your
confidence in yourself without the need to directly address your self-esteem. Alternatively, low self-
esteem may be a result of something else that's causing you distress - such as relationship difficulties,
anxiety problems or chronic illness. In this case, tackling the root problem may be the best way of solving
your low self-esteem. However, it may be that low self-esteem is making you vulnerable to other
problems. These could include depression, suicidal thoughts, eating disorders or social anxiety, among
others. If this is the case, then unless your low self-esteem is tackled you'll remain vulnerable to similar
problems in future.
UnderstandingLowSelfEsteem
What causes low self-esteem?
The beliefs you have about yourself often appear to be statements of fact, although actually they're really
only opinions. They are based on the experiences you've had in life, and the messages that these
experiences have given you about the kind of person you are. If your experiences have been negative, your
beliefs about yourself are likely to be negative too.
Crucial experiences that help to form our beliefs about ourselves often (although not always) occur early in
life. What you saw, heard and experienced in childhood - in your family, in the wider community and at
school - will have influenced the way you see yourself. Examples of early experiences that could lead to
your thinking badly of yourself include:
belonging to a family or social group that other people are prejudiced towards
Sometimes negative beliefs about yourself are caused by experiences later in life, such as workplace
bullying or intimidation, abusive relationships, persistent stress or hardship, or traumatic events.
Because the Bottom Line is usually formed in childhood, it is usually biased and inaccurate, because it is
based on a child's-eye view. It is likely to be formed on the basis of misunderstandings about experiences,
because you had no adult knowledge with which to understand properly what was going on. Although these
beliefs may be unhelpful or outdated now, they come from a time when they made perfect sense, given
what you were experiencing then.
Biased thinking
Once the Bottom Line is in place, it becomes increasingly difficult to question it. This is because it is
maintained and strengthened by biased thinking, which means you give weight to anything that is
consistent with your beliefs, and discount anything that is not.
Two thinking biases contribute to low self-esteem: biased perception and biased interpretation. Biased
perception means that you are swift to spot anything that fits with your negative ideas about yourself, and
you screen out anything that contradicts them. So you focus on what you do wrong, and ignore what you
do right. Biased interpretation means that you distort the meanings you attach to what you experience -
even if the experience is positive (so if someone compliments you on your appearance, you might think
they meant that you must have been looking unattractive before, or that they didn't mean what they said
and were just trying to be nice).
These biases operate together to keep the Bottom Line in place. You anticipate that things will turn out
badly, and this makes you sensitive to any sign that they are turning out the way you expected. Also, no
matter how things turn out, you are likely to interpret them negatively. This means that your memories of
your ongoing experiences will also be negatively biased.
Negative beliefs about the self are a bit like prejudices - beliefs that don't take account of all the facts but
rely on biased evidence for their support.
UnderstandingLowSelfEsteem
What keeps low self-esteem going?
In the short term, Rules for Living help you to get by and keep low self-esteem at bay. However, in the long
term they actually keep low self-esteem going because they make demands that are impossible to meet -
for example, perfection, complete self-control, or never going into any situation where you might fail. This
means your well-being is inevitably fragile. If you find yourself in a situation where the rules are broken, or
are in danger of being broken, then the Bottom Line that they've protected you against rears its ugly head.
Many of these situations might be very minor, day-to-day events. If your Bottom Line is 'I am not good
enough', and your Rule for Living is 'If someone criticizes me it means I have failed', then any situation
where you encounter criticism, however minor, will activate your Bottom Line. And when the Bottom Line
is activated, it triggers a vicious cycle that maintains your low self-esteem. This cycle is explained below.
Anxious predictions
A situation that activates your Bottom Line generates anxious predictions - fears about what might happen,
or all the things that could go wrong. For example, if you have to stand up and give a talk in public, and
your Bottom Line is 'I'm worthless, no one is interested in me', then your predictions are likely to be that
nobody will listen because they can see that you couldn't possibly have anything interesting to say.
They can lead to avoidance. If you decide to avoid the situation altogether, this will provide some
relief in the short term. But the problem is that you then have no opportunity to discover whether
your predictions were correct. Things might actually have gone much better than you thought.
They can lead to unnecessary precautions. You might go to great lengths to ensure that there was
as little risk as possible in the situation (for example by rehearsing it over and over again). The
problem here is that, again, you will never find out whether your fears were true, and will feel that if
things went OK this was because of your excessive precautions.
They can disrupt performance. It's normal for the symptoms of anxiety to have some effect on our
performance. But if you have low self-esteem, rather than viewing these effects as a normal response
to pressure, you're likely to see them as a reflection on you as a person - as evidence of your basic
weakness or incompetence.
They can lead to success being discounted. Even if the event did actually go OK, if you have low
self-esteem the 'prejudice' against yourself may lead you to discount your achievement, dismissing it
as a lucky escape, or interpreting people's responses as humouring you rather than as genuinely
positive.
UnderstandingLowSelfEsteem
Management and treatment of low self-esteem
In order to overcome low self-esteem it's necessary to break the cycle that keeps it going. Cognitive
Behaviour Therapy (CBT) is an ideal approach for tackling low self-esteem, because it provides a clear
framework for understanding how the problem developed and what keeps it going. CBT focuses on
thoughts, beliefs and opinions, but also provides a practical approach for changing those beliefs by
changing behaviour. It encourages you to try out new ways of behaving, and to observe the effect that this
has on the way you feel about yourself. In this way you can learn to:
change the Rules for Living that cause you to enter the vicious cycle
Develop awareness
When were aware, we can recognise how we are responding and reacting to our own fears, creating a
moment between our emotions and our actions. We can then choose to respond in a healthier way.
Write in a journal
Many of our thoughts and feelings are locked in our subconscious mind and writing can help to bring them
into our awareness. Writing about the way we feel and think can help to separate negative ideas about
ourselves from the truth of who we really are.
Be non-judgemental
When we approach our lives non-judgementally, we simply accept ourselves, our experiences, our failures
and successes and other people just as they are, neither good or bad, without pride or shame.
Let go
Non-attachment, or letting go, is the goal of mindfulness. When you let go of what you think you should do
or who you should be, you can trust yourself and choose whats right for you.
7. Beauty is overrated.
In my research on self-esteem, I found that most people hate their appearance and feel bad about
themselves as a result. We live in a culture that worships youth and beauty, but in reality most people
arent beautiful by the medias standards. Everyone is physically flawed in some way. Imagine a life
where it simply didnt matter how you look. Then try to live that way.
8. Comparing is toxic.
How much time do you spend comparing yourself to other people and how they look, what they own, or
what theyve achieved? Comparing yourself to others is destructive to your self-esteem. Keep your eye on
your own prize and stay focused on your goals and dreams. Live your one unique life the best way you can
without worrying what others are doing.