Gabor Szendi: Misunderstandings about Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is difficult to ignore - because whether we like it or not - it continuously underlies our general feelings, happiness or misfortune. No wonder it is so easy to sell us anything which claims to 'develop' or 'boost' our self-esteem. But what if it did not exist? Or at least if we pretended it did not exist? Like a pimple on the bridge of our nose: unpleasant it might be, it has grown there and why let it rule our day?

 

 

The disappointing truth is: most people love dealing with life's big questions, but step back when it comes to finding a solution. So everybody is pleased when again and again a new book appears in the long line of publications about fool-proof diets, the 3 (7, 10 etc.) secrets of a happy life or the killer method to increase our self-esteem. Every book is s new hope, but the situation remains unchanged: 60% of Hungarians are overweight or obese, half of all marriages end in divorce and there is no person who has never been overwhelmed by the feeling of worthlessness. If you have a look at amazon.com and check the number of books written on self-esteem, you will sooner run out of patience than the books. I gave up at 1200, but the search engine showed 122 410 hits. One can't but wonder how Einstein was able to find answers to several basic questions of modern physics in a single 115-page book, whereas 120 thousand books are unable to do so with the problem of self-esteem? Probably because the idea of the expanding universe and curved space does not seem as much alarming as the negative self-esteem does. Low self-esteem is almost an illness, which determines our partner choices, career, and happiness.

Self-esteem movement

In California in the eighties philanthropic enthusiasm and the desire to improve society came to the surface with such intensity, that the state legislation launched a large-scale project to do away with low self-esteem. As a result, the research group commissioned to this purpose soon came up with a book called "the social importance of self-esteem", which became the bible of the movement. The recipe seemed to be overly simple. We'll have to raise people's self-esteem and this way we can put an end to crime, drug abuse, alcoholism, unwanted teenage pregnancy, reduce divorces and improve children's school achievement. In short: the source of all social deviation is low self-esteem. Who wouldn't fall for a program like this, since we all have a picture in our heads of what we think people with low self-esteem are like: envious, harm others wherever they can, take drugs to bear the shame, unable to cope with their tasks, etc. A series of reports have been published to try to verify the thesis that from Hitler to terrorists and bullying school children everybody seems to "compensate" for something else.

The paradox of self-esteem

Several courses were set up to boost self-esteem, school children attending special self-esteem classes were made to chant "I am valuable", "I am lovable", etc. In return, they expected that achievement at school will dramatically improve. But it did not improve, on the contrary. The self-esteem movement freaked out a lot of serious researchers, which have led them to publish studies proving that most aggressors, terrorists, abusers, deviant risk takers had actually positive self-esteem. Finally, it was also proved that no matter how varied these programs are, they do not have a significant and long-lasting effect on self-esteem. As an example, we should consider the misery of stars. The myth of happy, successful celebrities has gradually vanished, as day by day, we can see how celebrities we used to think of enviously suddenly commit suicide or die of drug overdose. They live in unworthy relationships or suffer from loneliness and from time to time they break out in despair because they feel totally worthless. Does that mean that not even success can offer a remedy for the painful feelings of inferiority? Abraham Lincoln, who went from farmer to be president suffered from inferiority complex during all his life, had several breakdowns caused by his perceived worthlessness and was tempted repeatedly to commit suicide.

Gandhi was educated in law but in spite of his university degree, his inhibitions were so serious that he finally stepped back from pursuing a career in law. We should not think either, that Stalin's self-esteem matched his power, knowing he had a permanently damaged arm. The celebrities of the present and the lives of the greatest historical figures of the past invariably teach us that low self-esteem can lead to great actions but success and power cannot fill in the painful hollowness of the soul. Maybe it is not too late to say that we should not expect great wonders from ranks, awards or celebrations. Even if for a short period we might be overjoyed with pride, soon we have to realise that we have remained the same. Nothing has happened.

Self-esteem "gauge"

The same way as everybody is able to be afraid, angry or happy, everybody has a kind of self-esteem. It took our mental mechanisms to be encoded in our genes over millions of years. During the course of evolution humans have always lived and evolved in tribal society. The term 'individual' did not exist in the sense we use it today, since individual beings were so much united with the other members of the tribe, that being expelled from the community led to voodoo death. Self-esteem worked like a built in gauge for individuals to let them know through their experiences how much they were worth in the tribe. This accounted for their reproductive success, which is the most serious factor in evolution. As a result, there was a huge amount at stake with positive self-esteem, and if the public opinion became less favourable towards someone, because he came back from either hunting empty-handed, ran away from a conflict or proved to be infertile, it was a question of life or death to rebalance self-esteem. So self-esteem is an assumption we have related to how we feel the tribe value us.

Well, nowadays who can tell what tribe they belong to? It's impossible because everybody belongs to a series of different groups and the way we are evaluated differs accordingly. We are judged by our age, sex, education, financial situation, personal charm, personality traits, abilities, work achievements, life success, family role, etc. However, which of those are really us?

The calibration

There is an even more fundamental problem that makes us helpless. And this is the calibration of the gauge. In tribal societies, the whole tribe takes part in educating the children from a very early age. However, in the world of nuclear families, every child is at the mercy of two adults also suffering from self-esteem related problems, who systematically 'miscalibrate' their child's built in self-esteem gauge for long years on. If someone has been raised thinking they are worthless and not lovable, nothing will be able to swing their pointer permanently to the positive side. However, those with narcissistic self-esteem won't do better either, because no failure would be big enough for them to be confronted with their real value.

Explicit and implicit self-esteem

What makes things more complicated is that there are two types of self-esteem: explicit, which is accessible to conscious introspection and implicit, which is introspectively inaccessible. Explicit self-esteem can be temporarily boosted by success, but implicit self-esteem, which derives from early childhood acceptance and rejection experiences cannot be accessed. This is like a treacherous disease, consuming us slowly and secretly from inside. The unhappiness of Michael Jackson, Robin Williams, Philip Seymour Hoffman was not due to their lack of success, but to their negative implicit self-esteem. Quite a few people trying to escape their demons by heading for the world of glitter realised numbly at the peak of their career that there was no escape from inner emptiness. Obviously, people with high implicit self-esteem also exist: according to the research they were surrounded by loving attention in their babyhood.

Way out of the self-esteem trap

According to self-esteem trainers, there is no problem at all, everything is a question of technique. We can learn to beat our chest, keep saying encouraging sentences to ourselves, list our successes, whether real or assumed to strengthen ourselves - but nothing helps. Does that mean there is no way out?

David Burns has been dealing with the development of self-esteem for years and published numerous bestselling books on the topic. He summarised his crystallised experiences in the followings: In a condition of deep despair, the first thing we have to learn is conditional self-esteem, the type of self-esteem which can be increased by accomplishments. The next step is the unconditional self-esteem when we start believing that self-esteem is a fundamental right which all human beings receive at birth. The highest stage is when we realise that there is no such thing as self-esteem, so there is nothing to be increased. Self-esteem is a gauge left in us long after it has lost its function and its credibility as a measuring tool, so we cannot adjust our behaviour to it any longer.

Traditional psychotherapy deals with the symptoms, trying to eliminate them. The aim is to free the patients from all the feelings, thoughts and beliefs that might cause their mental pain. It is in sharp contrast with therapies concentrating on reality, claiming that what we think, feel or believe is not the reality but only a distorted view of reality. So we don't have to deal with it. It is not the reality we suffer from, but what we think or imagine about it. Our self-esteem is nothing but a myth about how we think others see us, but the others' judgement on us is also arbitrary and unfounded. The best thing is to put up with all those things that are whirling in our mind and do what we are supposed to do. Everyone could mention at least one opportunity missed by too much worry and most of us would admit that the best decision we made in life so far was to brush our worries aside and face our challenges.

 

References

Source: Gabor Szendi: In the trap of self-esteem. Jaffa, Budapest, 2014.