Self-Esteem
Self-esteem refers to our internal relationship with ourselves, the
way we think about who we are, the way we evaluate our abilities,
strengths and weaknesses. It is an ongoing evaluation process,
constantly deciding whether you can or cannot do something,
whether you regret your past decisions or not, and
whether you like or dislike who you are.
The
Benefits of Intact Self-Esteem
A healthy self-esteem is
realistic and compassionate. People with intact self-esteem make
life choices that are realistically challenging and stimulating. They
can often work through internal turmoil and difficulties
successfully, relying on a reflective inner dialogue. They are
also aware of their own weaknesses and limitations, but this
knowledge is treated as an asset that does not interfere with their
overall emotional well being. Rather, there is an inner flexibility that
seems to characterise people with intact self esteem that carries
them through life with ease and quiet acceptance.
The
Drawbacks of Impaired Self-Esteem
An impaired
self-esteem can be emotionally extremely painful. People with
impaired self-esteem may engage in self-rejection and self-criticism that
unnecessarily limits their life choices. They may not feel like they
deserve certain jobs or positions, they may not feel they are good
enough to socialise with others or to date certain
"unattainable" men/women. Consequently, people may isolate
themselves from others, turn bitter and resentful, or resort to
excessive drinking or drug use.
Others with impaired self-esteem
may try to reduce their emotional pain by pursuing validation by
others. They may set unrealistically high or perfectionist goals for
themselves and become so focused on achievement that other
aspects of their life suffers, such as friendships, family relationships,
and recreational activities.
Steps to Improve
Your Self-Esteem
Developing self-esteem is a process
that involves increasing your awareness of your internal
dialogue and changing your relationship with it. This takes time
and effort and there are no shortcuts.
The strategies below
are based on the work of McKay and Fanning (2000) and are
best approached with the help and guidance of a
trained counsellor. If you are interested to read further, we provide
the reference below and we believe it is an excellent
resource.
1) Identify your inner
critic
Your inner critic is the language you use to criticise and undermine
yourself. It is an over general way to evaluate your
core self, using
global language such as
"you are useless", "you are a failure", or "this is just not good enough". This
type of self criticism is incorrect and
unrealistic. It leaves no room for making mistakes and
accepts no shortcomings.
The first step towards
building a healthy self-esteem is identifying your unrealistic self
criticism. If your self criticism
is harsh and uncompromising, there is a good chance that it is also
unrealistic and undermines your self-worth.
2) Make contact with your
critic
One of the most problematic
aspects of improving self-esteem is people's inability to disengage from
their unrealistic
inner critic. The
negative evaluation you tell yourself through your inner critic
is treated as a fact. After all, you are the
one who have these thoughts, so
why should they not reflect the absolute
truth?
The
challenge is to disengage from your inner critic and to recognise
that it is only part of
you, rather than the whole
you. This initial contact
with your critic is often the most difficult part of your
progress. You may need to imagine
what your critic
looks like or sounds like, or in
other words, you will
need to give it a
separate personality.
It
may sounds strange, but there is nothing wrong with building a
separate "identity" around your critic. In fact, the
more you can treat your inner critic as a
separate identity, the more you can learn to live with it without
believing
what it tells you. There is a
tremendous difference between thinking that "I am useless" and
thinking that
"my thoughts just
tried to convince me to believe that I am
useless". Talking to a
counsellor at this stage is a very
important part of your overall
process.
3) Start living with your
critic
Once you identified
and contacted your critic, the next step is to learn to live with it. This is not the same as giving
up
or admitting defeat. Quite the opposite. Accepting, but
at the same time disengaging from your critic will allow you to
work on the person you always wanted to be.
Chances are that you have
been overly critical of yourself for years or decades, or perhaps all
your life, ever since
your childhood.
This means that you have a clever and extremely well prepared inner part
of you that would readily
fight back if
you challenged it. If this is the case, your negative
dialogue is unlikely to change quickly, and hoping that
it will disappear
overnight would be unrealistic.
Learning the skills to
disengage from your negative inner dialogue can be a very
liberating experience. Having
negative
thoughts for the first time without an emotional reaction is quite
memorable for most people. Some clients
describe the feeling as "standing next
to a viciously barking dog, locked safely
behind iron bars".
4) Defusing your
critic
Defusing or
challenging your unrealistic self critique is the last step
towards building a healthy self-esteem. Assuming
you
learned how to hear, but not
listen to your internal
criticism, the frequency and intensity of self-rejecting
episodes will decline dramatically. The
irrational and self-defeating nature of your thinking will become more
salient and you will have a chance to
finally "talk back".
Challenging your negative thoughts is a maintenance stage not a
completion. Healthy self-esteem is never a job
accomplished, it is always a work in progress.
