Self Esteem

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Hi Cass,

I like your post.

Well, either way, you don't feel good about yourself whether in your being or through your doing, and I can relate to this. There's some self-help/psychology literature out there around this matter of self-esteem and the 'human being' rather than the 'human doing'. From memory some it's pretty soppy but there's a few useful ideas there, perhaps.



Im not sure I would expect to feel good directly from 'improved' actions such as these. The particular example you give concerns a pretty 'sub-normal' level of performance such that letting the landlord in is, I think, perhaps not something that most people would gain any noticable good feeling from. Living alone for a year, similarly is not generally regarded as a particular achievment. I understand that it might be a big deal for you to have done these things (whether or not they have resulted in feeling good), and I too struggle with some things that others seem to take for granted, but I don't think some of the things we find hard and sometimes manage to achieve are even on the societal scale of success. I would therefore expect preoccupation with such a mundane level of achievment to compound rather than relieve feeling of low self-esteem. Sorry if I sound harsh but I'm as much speaking to myself as to you.

I'm going to revisit your post and reply to the other matters you discuss. I think you raise some issues I can certainly relate to and would like to investigate further.

Hi, Saturn. Why thank you, I like your topic.



That's true, I don't, but I wish I could feel good about just 'being'. Knowing me, I've probably already read it. The idea is useful but I can't apply an idea to my Self. I have to be able to integrate it and as literature cannot rewire my brain, I stay stuck in the same place.



Well, that's interesting, I also do not expect to feel good from those actions. Others have told me to take pride in small "improved actions" as you say. It doesn't work, and we both understand why. Yes, they were a big deal to me, in level of difficulty. It being a mundane level of achievement may be part of the reason why those things do not affect my self esteem in good ways, but also I don't have the inner language to make those accomplishments of any value to me personally (which should be most important). You're not sounding harsh since I know that you aren't actually putting me down, it's an analytical discussion.



I look forward to your other thoughts about this.

Hi Cass,

Sorry it's taken me so long to revisit this ...

... 'different for each of us', I agree, yet there are likely to be significant similarities, and I recognise much of what you are saying, even the point that it is different for each of us.

Yes: 'taught that pride was selfish and bad'. Do you feel that you took this on board from your parents, primarily? I can see a bit of that in my case, but I think I definitely took this on from religious cult indoctrination, and in certain cultures, for example, my own one here in Scotland, this tendency perhaps features substantially yet subtley within the mainstream also. I think this 'guilt' can be generational within families as well as more widely culturally embedded, given that society is an extension of the family. Then, there are religious perspectives explicitly on what is sinful and therefore what is to feel ashamed of and feel bad about.

I'm going to break off here again as I am thinking about this quite carefuly and want to do my best to reply to your post and maintain a good quality investigation. I wonder if you've anything further to add at the moment.

I somehow lost this bit of my last post and then managed to recover it:

I'm reflecting on this right now and I think that perhaps a tendency to value ones actions, consciously or subconsciously, with reference to this deeply embedded complex of what is virtuous and what is not, is relevent to our anxiety about, and lack of stability with feelings of self esteem.

In the past I've rationalised what this says to me by saying something like: if I think well of myself then I must also think poorly of myself because well/poorly are a mutually dependent pair where each needs the other by which to define itself, and therefore to assert the existence of one is to assert the existence of the other. I still hold to this, in theory, to some extent but, without revisiting it, it's perhaps, in some part at least, an attempt to escape feelings of low self-esteem by the denial of the possibility of feeling purely good/esteemed. I guess, more recently I'm taking a less philosophical and less intellectual approach and, rather, just feeling a little bit of self-esteem arise. But for this to happen, if it has happened, first of all the way was cleared by starting to become disillusioned of some subtle beliefs in which I thought, falsely, both too lowly and too highly of myself. This is a very recent event, though, and maybe a little more time is needed before I can be more sure that anything has actually happened.

If its pointless then my despair is irrelevant, which "cheers me up" not because it puts me in a positive state but because it brings me from a negative state, closer to a neutral state.

Thank you for clarifying that, Edgewaters. I think I understand what you are saying and I can see how that might work for you.

Is then, by this reasoning or in actual effect on how this makes us feel, that neutral state or that 'cheering up' not also irrelevant? The trouble with this perspective for me is that in it I become irrelevant in myself, and yet still I don't want to think or feel of myself as irrelevant. So, the problem is not solved philosophically or practically because relevance is more fundamental and the desire for it remains.

It has also been suggested in this thread that life is not pointless: that purpose, intention and movement are going on all the time in everything and at many levels.

This is why I take the view that, for me, the conclusion of pointlessness is an escape from the problem of self-esteem rather than anything like its solution which is what I want.

I'd like to hear back from you on that.

Similar to what I said in a previous post: I recognise this duality problem and the seeming impossibility of escape from it. And I don't think there can be acceptance of the duality for that too would imply the necessity of rejecting the duality.

But if this was true of self-esteem then perhaps we should be as okay as anyone because for our depth of low self-esteem we would be necessitating the height of high self-esteem. And that, I think, is a clue to the problem. I think that in me the high esteem and the low esteem are false. The high is based on grandiose internal beliefs and positive self-talk, and the low on self-deprecating beliefs and negative self-talk, that are taken as truth, as a reality, but are not.

That is 'funny' because if this analysis is correct then things like superficial repetition of positive affirmations are not going to help because they are not grounded in any truth or reality. I'm not sure about therapies like CBT, but one of the reasons I have not tried CBT is because I did get the impression that it too was another superficial way to try and tackle deeper issues of the mind. Actually, I'm just thinking that CBT might be about watching out for false self-talk, positive and negative, and if it is then it might hold some value for me and perhaps I'm ready to consider it again. The reason why I am sensitive to the suggestion that one should try and manipulate ones thoughts in such a manner is, I believe, largely because of my traumatic experience in a religious cult which instructed this in a very narrow and severe way in accordance with the particular metaphysical and moral worldview that it held to be true.

Your post inspires so much writing for me!

Sanity demands a few delusions.

I think sanity demands illusions. How else could one be sane?

Hi, Saturn.

No problem, it was only two days.

I'm really not sure where the idea came from primarily, I would say my parents, but through my mom it would have been related to religious indoctrination. I think I absorbed a lot of the language that I read in scriptures. When I was a child I believed that the deity might strike me dead for cleaning on the holy days. I always had an urge to clean on the one day I was forbidden. That created a tension within me, something in me wasn't right or I wouldn't be having such an urge. Later when I got OCD, I thought I would be punished for saying the wrong things in my head. I understand about beliefs in what is sinful affecting the level of shame. While I was indoctrinated I did not feel pressured by society, society did not affect my self-esteem until I changed belief systems and no longer had a solid foundation for right and wrong. As long as I belonged to one religion, I was "righteous", not prideful in this knowledge, I just felt like I knew what was right and did not have any doubts about it. Furthermore, when I experienced depression for the first time and ever since then, I believed depression was a curse for having felt any form of pride.



This point is quite valid, at least in relation to the way that I have experienced a loss in self-esteem. I judge myself harshly, my standards for behavior are out of proportion to reality.



That's very interesting, I have never managed to assert such a premise in anything but the negative. Have you ever said to yourself "If I think poorly of myself, therefore I must also think well of myself?"
I'm permitted internally to feel bad about myself, I'm proficient at it. There's no demand to counter negative self talk, only an inner compulsion to force myself to not feel good. Originally I used pairs of opposites to make "bad" a natural and necessary component in life, a function of being alive and being human. It may have increased my self-esteem for a short period of time, but it has failed lately to bring any relief.

Hmm... When I think about that it makes a lot of sense but I'm having trouble processing it. I'll have to think about it more. I relate to your thoughts about all of your esteem being false. Maybe that's why I can't feel anything real about esteem...



I've found that to be the case, personally anyway. Positive affirmations just lead me further into low self-esteem, first because I'm supposed to be able to think those good thoughts and can't, and second because the more I realize their falsity the more my own self status falls.



I tried CBT, but I would say it is also of little practical use. It did teach me techniques that helped for a while, but the essense of it was to counter negative self-talk, there were many ways listed in which we sabotage ourselves through our thinking. I could think my way right past them after a time. I remember once I read that if one practised retraining the mind for two weeks, it would become habit and the new ways of thinking would take precedence over habits of negative thinking. I kept notes, I had one side of the paper for defeating negative statements about myself and the other for writing down the negative thoughts about my counters. Well, suffice to say, my negative self talk succeeded at that task far better than my countering. After two weeks I gave up and haven't tried again. You could potentially use CBT in the way you describe, but you might have to create your own regimen of behavior.



I totally understand this. My childhood belief system had its affect on me, but into my early twenties after I had left that partly behind, I was, and sometimes still am, traumatized by a cult belief which erodes my sense of self and leaves me standing bereft in emptiness. It has a lot to do with the thoughts and I have to stay very far away from anyone or anything that want me to think my thoughts have power over my reality.

Yes, those too!