What is Self-esteem?

written by: Kosjenka Muk

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What exactly is self-esteem?

In a society that is on the low level of emotional maturity and in which most of the people rarely have the chance to experience what it is like to truly feel good with themselves, it is useful to further examine what self-esteem is.

What I want to talk about is far more complex and wider than self-esteem defined just as the way somebody acts or the way somebody perceives himself.

I want to talk about the feeling of deep inner fulfilment, pure enjoyment of existence, experience that is beyond love for oneself, experience of oneself as a fountain of love. I want to talk about the experience of being the source of love itself. At this point the expression “love for oneself” becomes an unnecessary rationalisation. Self-esteem might not adequately describe this inner state, but it can be used to describe the outer manifestations in everyday life that are the results of this state.

Even when we talk about outer manifestations, our society is not familiar with self-esteem and so it gets interpreted in many different ways.

Through many centuries, our ancestors have been brought up in obedience to rulers and church working together. To achieve that, it was necessary to force people to give up their natural longings for freedom and good life, to make them think less of themselves, to suppress their inherent, authentic feelings and aspirations. Throughout centuries, since the earliest age, people were brought up in fear, guilt and shame. Not only for the slightest mistakes in outer manifestation, but for the emotions alone ("anger is a deadly sin"). Feelings of love for self, experiencing self as love, as a precious human being – would automatically mean throwing fear and guilt away and therefore could not be allowed.

To make them believe that their deepest feelings were bad, they had to be convinced that they as people were bad; sinnful and unworthy in nature. When children brought up in that kind of environ grow up and have children of their own, their offspring's immature behavior can provoke deep feelings or insecurity, guilt and shame. Often it was easier to blame the children for being “bad“ or “selfish“ than to admit their own feelings of fear, guilt and shame, which have been suppressed for decades. This is how guilt and fear are passed on to next generations.

This is how the society of false politeness and doubtful morality was created, society in which “being good“ meant to neglect yourself and your needs, “being polite“ meant not to disagree or stick out, not even to say something good about yourself, and “consideration for others“ often meant to act in your own damage.

One of the basic physical laws says that energy is impossible to be destroyed, it's only possible to change its form. It is similar with emotions. Natural, authentic human emotions and yearnings could not be destroyed not even after countless attempts through many centuries and millennia.

Suppressed emotions linger within us and strive to rise to surface and give us their message. If we don't allow ourselves to face them in a constructive way, unconsciously we start to look for other ways of relief – often destructive ones. Gossip, hypocrisy, depression, envy and malice were “pressure-relief valve” of many generations. But sooner or later the power of self-control loosens up under the pressure of accumulated emotions and we switch to the other extreme.

This is actually happening in our civilization right now. Accumulated destruction rises through countless images of violence and immature behaviour on television. Young generations, which on one side were brought up on tradition and on the other side on such immature models that send out the messages that destruction is OK, turn to the other extremity – from open selfishness and arrogance to aggression. This is then often called self-esteem, which is partly the reason for confusion about the term.

Many people have never experienced true self-esteem and can only imagine how is it manifested. Therefore it's so easy for them to believe into false portraits of self-esteem, into the often fake, virtual feeling of power that destruction might give. Once you have your own inner experience, no longer do you need outer models for orientation.

If you ever felt arrogance, contempt or aggression – and from time to time this happens to everyone - you have probably noticed that this is not a very pleasant feeling. Instead of love for oneself, those attitudes are based on fear, defence and attempts to prevent perceived danger, including trying to suppress unpleasant inner feelings. On the other hand, when we feel true love for ourselves and self-appreciation, we are spontaneously more willing and able to see positive qualities of other people. Therefore true acceptance of oneself is naturally related to the acceptance of others. On some level, we are aware that the human essence is the same for all of us, and whatever we find within us, we spontaneously search for within others too.

Behaviour that appears to be self-confident and egotistic, but with no consideration and respect for others, is not self-esteem but only cover for subliminal negative self-images. You have probably experienced that those attributes you know you possess, you don't feel you have to prove or glaringly point out. The need to show off, to prove yourself, implicates that you don't fully trust your qualities and who you are.

Each and everyone of us holds some negative beliefs about ourselves, and as a consequence we feel the need to prove the opposite to ourselves and others. This can be a very strong, compulsive need that is hard to moderate and sometimes even to be aware of. A lot of everything that we do or yearn for is motivated by that need. How would it look like if, instead of needing to prove ourselves, we really felt good about ourselves? How much energy and time in all areas of our lives would become available for much more useful things?

True self-esteem and respect for others

In external behaviour, self-esteem is manifested as respect of our feelings, needs and demands as well as respect of other people, which means amongst other things to see them as powerful and capable to do the same. There is no fear of condemnation (which is actually fear of self-condemnation!). The need to neglect ourselves in order to take care of others disappears because we know that they are capable to take care of themselves and, not less relevantly, that it is their right to do so.

Anger and resistance that we might feel in situations when others try to express their discomfort with our behaviour or just warn us that we have violated their personal limits, is nothing else but a defence mechanism which covers up deep unconscious belief that we don't deserve to stand up for ourselves. Those beliefs are usually created at a very young age. Still, instinctively a child will feel that such a belief is unnatural and will resist to it. At a young age, however, he doesn't know how to deal with this inner conflict and confusion. Thus the feeling of inadequacy is often covered up with a compulsive need to defend our self-image by underestimating or even humiliating other people and their feelings and needs.

A healthy and happy child, one that has not yet learned to feel ashamed of herself, will spontaneously express wishes and feelings without even thinking to conceal them – well, at least until she is taught otherwise. A healthy child is primarily focused on herself, and naturally, although not consciously and rationally, expects others to do the same. If parents neglect themselves to please her, this is just as unhealthy and confusing as if they

To be focused on self – doesn't it sound selfish? By default it is labelled as selfishness. Often it's easer to call it selfishness in others, than to take care of ourselves, to confront, to say “no” or to stand up for ourselves. Respect for other people is an essential part of true self-esteem. I see it as respecting other people's personal limits when we avoid to hurt them intentionally or endanger their freedom – but also being aware of their own power and responsibility to stand up and defend their boundaries. In other words, to warn us if unintentionally we are doing something that makes them feel uncomfortable.

When I am talking about focusing on yourself, I am saying that only you can know what you want and need, and that we cannot expect from anyone else to know that for us. Similarly, we cannot know, and it is irrational to expect that we know and predict what other people want or feel. Since everyone of us has a different personality and experiences, we will often be wrong even when we are totally convinced that we know what another person is feeling or thinking.

With this I'm NOT advising ignoring others and avoiding doing anything nice for them, as some people with black&white perception might say. It's nice to make people around us feel better! Sometimes we might want to give up something that is not so important to us, or do something that makes the other feel good, even if it takes some effort. It all comes down to balance. What is esential is to avoid neglecting your important values and needs while trying to please others. Everything else can be negotiated and a healthy person won't expect to have it all her way.

You will never meet a healthy and happy child, who feels good about himself , who is anxiously trying to predict and guess the wishes of people around him (“Have I said something wrong?”, “Have I done something wrong?”, “Might people get the impression that I am selfish?”), but you will meet a lot of unhappy, anxious people (and children) who do exactly that. For a healthy child it's normal to say “no” if he doesn't want something, and that other people also say “no” and set their boundaries – and then to negotiate them.

Nevertheless, it is very often the case that people in the child's surroundings are not able to set boundaries and sincerely express themselves, so they turn to either blaming others or to manipulation. This is how children learn to feel guilty if they are spontaneous and sincere, but also to justify and use manipulation themselves. People who have learned that they will be punished if they are sincere and ask for what they want will expect from others to “read their minds” and predict their needs, which is an awful burden for everyone and one of the main causes for disputes in our society.

To focus on yourself means to take full responsibility for yourself and to recognise the responsibility and the right of others to do the same. When everyone feels capable and free to say and express what he/she feels and wants, this sets us free of an immense amount of guilt and endless, often unexpressed expectations and accusations.

It does not mean that others are less important to us. A person who truly feels good about herself does not have the need or wish to hurt or underrate anyone. Actually the opposite is true, the more we are able to understand and appreciate ourselves, the easer it becomes to understand others. It is normal that we have a general healthy picture about what it means to intentionally violate the freedom and personal space of other people, and not to do that, since we know how it feels. But – in an ideal situation - everybody's wishes, feelings and disapproval are expressed, and since there is no need to do it with blame, there is also no need to feel fear or guilt. In this way it becomes much easier for us to listen and appreciate other people's points of view.

This ideal situation of course happens very rarely and very often we must take into consideration other people's personal history and behavioral patterns, their fears, guilt and suppressed emotions – just as our own. We will often find ourselves in situations when the other person is not capable to take into consideration our feelings and limitations. That makes the work on self-esteem, as well as life itself, diverse, interesting and full of opportunities to learn and to question ourselves from different points of view and in different circumstances.

Need for love

The need to feel loved and appreciated is one of the strongest drives of human behaviour. Yearning for love and attention is in the core of almost everything that we communicate or avoid to communicate, in most things that we try to achieve and manifest; it's the key to most of our emotional reactions, especially the unpleasant ones.

How often do you feel anger or sadness whenever there is something you want so much from others but somehow fail to get? Other people's reactions are deeply important to us, from „What will the neighbours say?" to extreme exhibitionism. Many people subject their whole lives to it: from people that are never able to express their true wishes due to the fear of being rejected, to people who spend all of their lives chasing money to buy status symbols so that others might think how powerful they are and admire them.

When we are children, the other people are the only source through which we can evaluate ourselves and our behaviour. Inexperienced about the world we are born into, only through people's reactions can we see the reflection of our behaviour. But, without experience, we could not be aware that other people didn't always react to us, but to a lot of other things that were going on in their minds (including subconscious minds).

Power is what we reach for when, unconsciously, we feel that, whatever we do, we still don't receive love in return. This must be a very painful and terrifying conclusion that is created at a very young age, and later turns into a need to control our environment. Another reason for focusing on power is the compensation mechanism: if I can't get what I truly want – to feel worthy through the experience of love – I will reach out for something less worthy, but what feels good, feels like approval. So we start to seek dominance.

The search for external love can never replace the love for ourselves that is deeply rooted within. Even when we do achieve success in outer world, deep down we feel that it has no true value, since we got the approval of others through sustaining an illusion, instead of expressing ourselves as who we really are. But if we never had a chance to learn how it feels to be loved and appreciated, the unconscious doesn't know any better and stubbornly keeps on following the old path – the path on which so many people spend their whole lives, repeating strategies that do not work. Even if they achieve externall success, they will soon forget it and keep compulsively reaching for more – even more fame, more power, more money…

True love for ourselves will fulfil us in a way that no external love could ever do. Even if someone else truly loves us, but we lack love for ourselves, we will never be able to truly accept, appreciate and feel that this outer love is justified.

Our capacity to love ourselves is beyond our imagination. Even if we try, imagining that kind of feeling compared to real experience is like imagining a trip compared to a real experience of travelling.

Yet it takes time to come to that point. You will have to let your emotions come to the surface, resolve numerous layers of negative complexes and start to practice a new state of consciousness. From my own experience I know that it is possible. Maybe you will spend some time procrastinating and making mistakes – just like I did – but if you never begin with the process and keep striving in spite of all the mistakes, you can not expect anything to change.

The feeling of being loved within is an experience that will heal all small and even bigger hurts and resentment. You will no longer need approval and external confirmations of your worth, so you will feel much more freedom to be yourself. You will feel full of this wonderful feeling of love, and if others do not feel that way, you know that it is not your business. You will be more capable to empathise with others and recognise their pain, and still see them as strong adults. On the other hand, if somebody hurts you directly or tries to put you down, you will be more capable to stand up for yourself or to turn away and leave behind the conditions that do not suit you.

You will be more willing to make changes and take risks that are too frightening for many people who rather stay and live in bad conditions. From this new state of mind you cannot easily accept bad conditions any more: poor working circumstances, harassment at work, dull, hopeless relationships. Without too many words and theories, you know that you are capable and deserving of creating something better. Spontaneously, you move towards your goals and it's easier and easier, since you are open to learn your lessons – and loving your true self is one of the most important lessons in life.

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