Self-esteem with Nathaniel Branden
26 Jan 2013, 7:25 am
Yes, I read "The Psychology of Self-Esteem" back in the late 90s when I finished post-secondary school. this was before my Aspergers diagnosis. I was desperately searching for the root of my struggles in life. His writings gave me some insight, but not quite enough. And the book was written in 1983.
31 Jan 2013, 4:14 pm
I discovered him the same way... I was so excited to find something that could save me from my troubles in life. I ordered 6 of his books ready to read them and then discovered that I had Asperger's. I lost my motivation to read his books thinking that my mind works differently anyway... he can't do anything for me. Maybe I am wrong. It would be great to find someone who had a positive change reading his books and following his advice..
31 Jan 2013, 5:08 pm
I hate to blast the thread with a wall of text.
Here was is my 2 cents from my book. It makes more sense in context - apologies for formatting
Transcending Self-esteem.
“Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-break on” – unknown.
“Self-esteem isn’t everything, it’s just that there is nothing without it” - Gloria Steinem – American Writer and activist
To esteem something means to have a high regard for it. To have high self-esteem means holding a high opinion of oneself. The root of the term comes from the word aestimate, which literally means ‘to put a value on” or to have regard for. Self-esteem is the purely evaluative element of the self-image. It is the estimation you place on yourself and also a relative assessment based on your perceptions of yourself relative to others. Self-esteem is just the way you think about yourself, do you think you are awesome,awful or somewhere in between.
The advantages of self-esteem are many. When someone has high self- esteem, they have a genuine, deep rooted sense of self; they actually like (and often love) themselves (in some cases too much!) they can and do control of their internal emotional state; and they have a sound sense of purpose, or rather they act and behave with purpose. Negative self-esteem and the beliefs it’s based on are at the root of virtually every emotional or behavioural problem.
Typical symptoms of low self-esteem include:
-Bad Body Language - not being comfortable in your skin, not taking up space, fidgeting, nervous habits etc.
-Poor eye contact
-Weakly projected quiet monotonous vocal tonality
-Always thinking the other person is better and suppressing their own (healthy) needs
-Taking value (by putting people down OR trying to win approval) = belief “you don't have enough value”.
-Being the "nice guy/door mat" and putting up with bad behaviour = belief “you need to do favours because you are not worthy”.
-Jumping through hoops
-Prone to depression and being withdrawn
-Not expressing your full personality
-Consistent and continual underachievement in their lives
...and so on…(read - all the worst “Aspie” traits)
On the other end of the spectrum, behaviours of people with a genuine, real, sincere high self-esteem usually display very different characteristics that speak for their level of self-esteem:
They have a quiet confidence that they are able to meet a lot of the challenges that come their way
They are decisive and not hesitant
They have powerful physically upright relaxed, calm and measured body language
They make good eye contact freely and comfortably
They do not fish for compliments – but they do accept them well: theyknow what they are worth.
They Love life, have a sense of humour and are overall happy people.
They may be quite humble - True warriors are humble.
Feel worthy of love and approval. They approve of themselves and are not desperate for other peoples approval.
They are willing to move out of their comfort zones to face the unknown and grow as a human being.
If you have low or absolute zero self-esteem you may automatically assume that the answer is to get high-self-esteem. This is one of the popular views on self-esteem. The theory goes that it’s good for people to feel good about themselves, irrespective of how well or badly they have actually performed. If they esteem themselves highly, they will automatically do better - but even if they don’t do better, they’ll at least feel happier.
This theory has been applied in recent years as an educational technique, the pathetic "self-esteem curriculum," devoted to convincing students who, objectively considered, perform poorly at some specific task, are encouraged to view themselves as outstandingly good, wonderful and special and information about their poor performance is downplayed. This however often leads to inaccurate un-objective feedback and often low motivation to address objectively bad performance.
High self-esteem often seems to involve an element of self-delusion. It may be comparatively harmless for some people to go through life under the delusion that they’re good at something when in fact they are not. However, if they derive all their self-esteem from this fantasy, they may be set up for a shattering disappointment if ever they decide or are forced to face reality.
It’s not true that people who feel good about themselves always perform better. It’s a cruel deception to convey the impression that success comes easily if you have a “positive” but deluded attitude. Performing well is in fact closely related to high frustration tolerance (include this in your self-image) — the ability to cope serenely with difficulties and setbacks. Outstanding accomplishments usually require immense dedication, continuous, painful investment of arduous effort over a long period of time and of course an element of inborn talent.
A multitude of therapists and gurus are quick to identify low self-esteem as the root cause of, failure to learn in school, child abuse, addiction, broken relationships and a host of other ills. Many theorists have supposed that violent criminals suffer from low self-esteem and can be rehabilitated by having their self-esteem raised. Yet the available evidence does not support the theory that attempts to raise people’s self-esteem necessarily produce substantial benefits, and some evidence suggests high self-esteem may have pathological consequences such as sociopathy and narcissism.
Evidence collected by three psychologists (Roy Baumeister, Joseph Boden, and Laura Smart) found that most violent people think very highly of themselves; their unrealistically high self-evaluations predispose them to be violent. According to American Educator, psychologist and researcher Roy Baumeister has "probably published more studies on self-esteem in the past 20 years that anybody else in the U.S. (or elsewhere)." As Baumeister has observed, many violent crimes result when an individual defends a swollen self-image against a perceived attack. "They’ll lash out to try to head off anything that might lower their self-esteem.”
Researchers at Case Western Reserve University and the University of Virginia conducted a comparison of evidence from a variety of studies concerning individuals involved with aggressive behaviour of all kinds: assault, homicide, rape, domestic violence, juvenile delinquency, political terror, prejudice, oppression, and genocide. In some studies, self-esteem was specifically measured; in others it was inferred. The authors concluded that "aggressive, violent, and hostile people consistently express favourable views of themselves." It’s therefore pointless to treat rapists, murderers, and muggers by convincing them that they are superior beings, for this is precisely what such self-satisfied psychopaths typically believe already.
Many people who engage in bullying place a great deal of undeserved value on themselves that has no real basis in reality. Their ego deludes their every interpretation favourably and they are constantly trying to maintain their sense of self-esteem by exploiting holes in the boundaries of others. Typically it is said when a person seems to have very high self-esteem is basically insecure and compensating low self-esteem. This reply has a certain plausibility because we’re all familiar with the stereotype of the loud, brash, assertive person who is inwardly frightened, cringing, and self-doubting.
Novelists and movie-makers love such characters,they are interesting, deep and conflicted. This is a subtle ego based truth for most human beings but mostly, in real life, if persons are outwardly loud, brash, and assertive, they are likely to be inwardly loud, brash, and assertive. Certainly more so than those who are outwardly timid or self-effacing (self-talk). Behaviour follows belief and so it has a basis.
The craving ego maintains its self-esteem with all manner of bias, fallacy and narcissism. This is a fake situational sense of high self-esteem and self-delusion. But for other more brutally objective, self-critical perfectionists, this bias is plainly unacceptable.
Generally this results in self-loathing masochists who are at the cataclysmically low end of the self-esteem spectrum. They commonly place far too low an estimation of their own value and seek solace in all manner of destructive and compensatory patterns. This is a symptom of limiting beliefs resulting in underestimating themselves and feeling that they are not worthy (the limiting belief – I’m worthless).
A lack of self-esteem is at the heart of the vast majority of serious emotional problems, addiction, poor relationships and all manner or personal and social ills in the world today. Many People with serious emotional problems often do have low self-esteem: they hold a low opinion of themselves and dwell on their shortcomings. Whilst I believe that to be true, I also believe that high self-esteem is not the aim and actually quite dangerous, for example a person with unearned high-self-esteem may have difficulty admitting their behaviour has been at fault and refuse to make appropriate changes to their behaviour. A utilitarian level of self-esteem is what is required. An appropriate level of self-esteem will reduce social vulnerability and you will gain real joy from life that without this it is just not possible. Possessing adequate levels of self-esteem is the key to living a happy life.
So logically, it’s an appealing idea to improve the rating low self-esteem individuals’ rating place on themselves. This seems to require getting them to hold a higher opinion of themselves—thereby building their self-esteem. Most approaches to building self-esteem have a common thread: a person judges his performance to be good, then he forms a higher opinion of himself, not just on his performance but on himself as a whole. Then he basks in the glow of contemplating what a terrific person he is and his ego gains a point. However, the next time you don’t perform so well, you will then be liable to feel, not just regret and sadness that you didn’t do what would have been best, but demoralization and discouragement, because you now have evidence that you are not such a good or perfect person.
The actual goal of feeling good about your self is a trap.People do all sorts of nasty things just to make themselves and their ego feel a little bit better. The self deluders The typical thought process behind attempting to raise self-esteem is:
“I WANT TO FEEL GOOD”(Nothing wrong with this!).
To feel good, I have to feel good about myself (but this is a blunder).
(Belief) Feeling good about myself means thinking (rating) that I am a worthy person.
I can prove to myself that I’m a worthy person by doing well at x (making money, passing my exams, keeping fit, attracting members of the opposite sex, being good in bed, keeping my family happy etc.).
Oops! I’ve done badly (often using a very harsh or perfectionist rating) at x. So now I’m worthless. “I FEEL BAD” often worse than before.
We can look at it this way,“I must do x. If I manage to at least do x, I can congratulate myself on being a good person. If I do less than x, then it follows that I will judge myself to be a bad person”.
Notice that all self-esteem theory has the same pattern, though this is not usually clearly spelled out. First, you set a goal. Second, you act in pursuit of that goal. Third, you observe your action and its consequences. Fourth, you evaluate your action. Fifth, you globalize that evaluation: you move from evaluating your action to evaluating yourself as a total person. And sixth, you (supposedly) feel and act better thereafter if you decide you’re a great person, or you (supposedly) feel and act worse if you conclude you’re a pathetic loser.
This thinking illustrates the essence of most self-esteem material: self-rating. When you do well you rate yourself as a "good" person, you have high self-esteem; you can do anything. When you do poorly, you’re a worthless failure (Or if not worthless, you’re certainly worth less) and can do nothing. This thought process means you are drawing comfort and sustenance from your judgement that you are a fine person, and you are requiring yourself to perform well to support that judgement. Thisexternal pillar of self-image leads to anxiety. Your valuation of yourself is at stake on a continuous basis. Your total sense of self is on the line all the time.
The mistake is not being concerned with performances. Rather, that people rate themselves highly—as a total person—because of x. As a result, when x changes, you automatically gave himself a lower rating and began to feel miserable.
If you subscribe to this self-esteem notion, when you do well you’ll tend to take an overblown, grandiose view of yourself. And when you do poorly you’re likely to feel depressed and hopeless.
Many people who pursue this approach live their life are often anxiously and compulsively striving to prove themselves (instead of enjoying themselves by striving to attain their goals) and validate their own ego. Others take a more self-sabotaging view and just avoid challenging and competitive situations for fear of a bad rating somewhere in the process.
There is nothing wrong with pursuing your goals, dreams and aspirations (far from it) and its totally rational to be concerned about your effectiveness in pursuing your goals, and therefore in dealing with problems that arise. It is not rational for this to be the basis of your overall rating as a person. When you fail you are not worthless or worse than other people, when you succeed you are not great or better than other people. Both of these are irrational and are judgements you need not make about yourself. This is just ego. There is no need to be continually judging or rating yourself moment by moment. Almost everybody is in the plastic habit of judging far too much, far too quickly.
Once we get into the habit of thinking that we are all good because we have performed well or all bad because we have performed poorly, we generally find that this is not symmetrical. There is something innate in human beings--perhaps it has survival value--to pay attention to what is creating discomfort and to pay no attention to what is going OK. Self-raters therefore tend to drift downward in their self-rating, drawing gloomy conclusions when they fall short, and not fully balancing these with optimistic conclusions when they do well. This tendency is all the more powerful because of a fact I have omitted to mention so far, for the sake of simplicity. People who rate themselves always find in practice that "feeling good" or "feeling bad" about themselves is not stable. So, when we say that someone has high or low self-esteem, we’re referring to an average: how good they feel about themselves always fluctuates. Our moods fluctuate naturally, and hanging our sense of well-being on the peg of our self-rating tends to magnify the mood swings.
Many people who tend towards black and white thinking naturally assume that the only alternative to giving yourself a low rating is to give yourself a high rating. This way of thinking considers only two alternatives: either you rate yourself as a bad person (a failure, a loser, a nothing) or your rate yourself as a good person (a success, a paragon, a fine human being). That ignores the third way: don’t rate yourself at all.
It’s the essence of most self-esteem books that you should rate yourself highly. Almost unnoticed is the assumption that you can avoid rating yourself, and if you set out to "build your self-esteem," you become preoccupied with your rating of yourself. If you had low self-esteem to begin with then negativity leads your rating to quickly turn to berating.
This brings out another of the attendant difficulties with the pursuit of high self-esteem. If I am to decide whether I am doing well or badly as a total person, I have to somehow reduce to a common measure all the varied aspects of my performance in different fields, to come up with a single score or rating of myself.
Individuals are unique and many-faceted. "Weighting" all the different aspects of one’s behaviour is unavoidably subjective, fallacious and biased. Suppose that your daughter is an excellent swimmer but a poor runner. Or well above average in maths but well below average in languages. Or is often unusually considerate of her little brother but sometimes mercilessly teases him to the point of tears. There is no objective method for making these different behaviours commensurable – they are just different and have no like basis to measure them with.
In practice, people who pursue self-esteem usually don’t get very far in trying to formulate a weighted evaluation of all their performances. Instead, they tend to fall back on some heuristic (mental shortcut) which grossly oversimplifies the picture. For example, a child may become convinced that he is no good because he has done poorly at spelling. He may then give up trying, using as an excuse the "fact" that he is a no-good failure.This thinking often overlooks the potential to change, that people are always evolving on a continuous process. People often change--not all at once and overnight, but in particular ways continually. Your potential is an aspect of you that can be realised if your beliefs allow it. If you begin to actualize your potential and improve in some of areas, then that is a sufficient criteria for the ego to feel good about itself.
This self-rating rollercoaster to me is the actual root of common problems with self-esteem. I believe you should have standards, boundaries and strong core values but I don’t believe you benefit from continually judging yourself. This Judging your behaviour and yourself according to some (often brutally perfectionist) standard usually results in profoundly low self-esteem.
By not rating yourself and being non-judgemental towards yourself but towards the issue, you can evaluate what you do without drawing conclusions about yourself as a total person. For instance, if you are frequently spending time looking for things, like your car keys, you may think, "Being disorganised has consequences I don’t like. I feel stressed each time I have to look for them. Is there some way I can be more organised and save time?" You don’t have to think, "Because I lost my keys I’m a loser." You don’t need to draw any inappropriate conclusions about your total self. You are free to you are free to perform these mental acts of evaluation or not to perform them. That to me seems a much more stable and solid road to take.
Unfortunately we are born and raised to rate ourselves. Everyone around us is doing it constantly and very badly. Understandably, we have difficulty thinking in any other way. But there’s an alternative. You can analyse how well you do without rating your total self. You can accept yourself no matter what—whether you do well, poorly, or don’t do anything at all. You are never forced to judge yourself as great or as unworthy—to put yourself up or down.
Self-rating is unnecessary, and it causes serious emotional and practical problems:
-If you insist on rating yourself, your thinking becomes self-centred instead of problem-centred. If you don’t rate yourself but acknowledge there is a problem, it becomes easier to analyse that problem, and an agreeable solution may be found. Considering yourself as “useless” at something attaches to your self-image and ensures it. This is simply not helpful. It doesn’t prompt any constructive action.
-If you rate yourself as good or bad, you tend to suppose that this is your unchanging essence, that if you did badly yesterday, you’re likely to do badly today or tomorrow. You tend to become frozen in your own self-rating. Everyone has a great many good and bad traits; we’re all imperfect yet capable of improvement. But self-rating causes us to fasten on a few traits and then make an over-simple judgement about ourselves.
-A low self-rating makes you feel miserable, and a high self-rating sets you up for a poor self-rating whenever things go wrong. High and low self-ratings are not symmetrical—there’s an inherent tendency for self-raters to move toward a low self-rating. Most human intentions don’t work out quite as planned, and there’s a natural tendency to focus on disappointments and shortcomings.
-Self-rating leads you to compare yourself pointlessly to other people. This happens socially all the time. Everyone is in a perpetual state of ego based judgement about themselves and about others. Their mirror neurons offer a suggestion and their ego gives them some relative rating. Feelings of superiority and inferiority then get in the way of pursuing your aims.
In practice truly transcending any judgements and rating of the self is not 100% possible, there is a certain element of self-valuation that occurs subconsciously. Inherent in many day to day decisions you make about your life includes an evaluative element and speaks volumes –to your subconscious and to others - about your natural level of self-esteem. This is the point where self-image and self-esteem meet. How much self-esteem is included in your self-image?
Continual self-analysis is a plastic habit. At times it has to be directed with some compassion. Other peoples continual ego based judgements are to outside of your boundary but can be influenced, often emotionally. Use your judgement to work out their judgement and remember the huge role emotions play in convincing.
People like good feelings and high self-esteem, not bad feelings and self-loathing. The difference manifests itself as spare energy to bring to the social table, or someone who will just take energy from it. This is continually being assessed socially. Everyone is in a perpetual state of ego based judgement about themselves and about others.
Through mirror neurons their estimation of themselves and tends to radiate out and creates either positive or negative loops. A person with low self-esteem will struggle to gain respect from others because that person’s experience of themselves is reflected in the mirror neurons of those around them and interpreted emotionally. For this reason you need to demonstrate behaviours that reflect a constant sense of self-worth but not narcissism. Your awareness of what you actually do will hold your confidence level to account. Low awareness can lead to high self-confidence and bad behaviours but high awareness will keep confidence levels down when you don’t do what you know you should.
You must have an objectively reasonable standard for the quality of your behaviours and hold yourself to it. You will have that standard subconsciously and whatever actions you take or don’t take your subconscious will hold you to it and your level of self-confidence will be the result. Self-confidence relates to our actions it means to trust in ourselves ability to do what our internal standard requires. In my experience it is almost impossible to have real self-confidence if we do not have adequate self-esteem.
To ensure that you have an adequate level of self-esteem you need to be mindful of how you are programming your subconscious with your own behaviours. If you break your own rules you mind will know about it. The following is a seemingly daft idea to create a contract with yourself about the minimum regard you place for yourself. This is your entitlement contract with yourself and you are free to create your own that is more suited to your needs. The standards can be about what you want but make them reasonable and add a little bit to create stretch until you get to a goal. This is not about demands or grandiosity it’s just basic standards within your own boundary so you are not continually affirming a low opinion of yourself to yourself through behaviour.
Internal quality standards (your boundary with you).
I will make the healthy and informed choice at all times.
My needs do not inherently count less than another person even within the context of a romantic relationship. They are both important.
I will remove negative thoughts and beliefs that fuel low self-esteem.
I will not engage in any conduct which outwardly or inwardly represents a negative assessment of my own self-worth.
I will be well groomed and well dressed at all times.
I will hold high, but reasonable standards for myself.
I will not indulge in fear based bad habits because I love nurture myself too much (without shame and guilt).
Anything agreed not to do or not do in this contract and then violate that agreement, then unless you are unaware of it the mind will hold you accountable and your natural level of Self-Esteem and Self-Confidence will be noticeably reduced as a result or any breaches.
I confirm that I fully understand the meaning of this contract and that will abide by my own standards.
SIGNED_____________________________ DATE______________
It may not look like much and you may not even feel that different at first, but trust me it works to raise self-esteem if your current level is profoundly low. You may not notice much difference until you are in a social situation again. Then you will notice yourself being a lot more confident than usual and this then fuels self-belief more and more. You may notice you are holding eye contact a lot more and talking louder and clearer with no conscious effort at all.
It’s worth noting that hostility and all negative emotions towards others have deep roots in self-esteem. The biggest shift that you can make often comes from appreciating other people more. Practice treating other people as valuable and with respect, kindness and generosity. Remember you can’t escape the fact that the term “People” includes you (despite whatever you may wish) show respect for other people merely because they are a unique and individual creation of god. Whatever it was that created life you must respect and realise that it is a power greater than you therefore on that basis alone deserves respect.
I do not advocate pursuing high self-esteem. Iacknowledge that low self-esteem may be a problem, without recommending high self-esteem. There is an essential division between people, some react judgementally and from ego, others react with compassion. The majority react with judgement to make themselves feel better about themselves. In my view, this is damaging and there is no need to do it to yourself or others. You can still feel happy and content by feeling great about accomplishments, without dragging the total of thefundamental sense of self into it.
Your successes aren’t you—your failures aren’t you either. You are considering yourself a better or worse person for some external reason and that over globalisation is itself not helpful. Delight in achievement is altogether appropriate and so is regard for opinion. But don’t mistakenly rate the total self as good because of x or bad because of y.
It would be better never to rate yourself, merely rate your specific behaviour. As long as you insist on rating yourself, you are manufacturing and nurturing an emotion by judging the whole self moment to moment in terms behaviours. This creates an external locus of control and identity (being externally controlled and defined) and you’re turning yourself into an emotional yo-yo, at the mercy of your latest performance. Ironically this will cause anxiety that reduces your performance and if you do this on a fundamental level not a hurts you because it sets you up to feel hurt or depressed. Every new adjustment becomes a crisis of self-esteem.
If we do not rate our total selves as good or bad, what attitude is it best for us to take towards ourselves? Instead of esteeming ourselves, we can unconditionally accept ourselves as we are. No matter how well we perform, no matter how brilliant our accomplishments, we are always imperfect, fallible human beings. Conversely, no matter how badly we screw up, we always do some things right (as demonstrated by the fact that we have survived this far).
Unconditional self-acceptance doesn’t mean that we don’t want to change an aspect of ourselves. It means that we unconditionally accept the reality of who we are and what we are like. This does not involve any overall evaluation of our worth or quality as human beings. It means that nothing that we do will make us believe that we are either terrific or terrible, heroic or horrible, hero or zero.
Having unconditionally accepted ourselves, we can then concentrate on what we do and how we can improve it--not because this will make us feel wonderful about ourselves and give us high self-esteem -but because we will then more effectively accomplish the goals we have set ourselves, and feel wonderfully humble and secure about that.
