A look at Self-Esteem as part of the bigger picture of Self-Worth
The first in a series of posts to support you to improve your self-worth because you are worthy, you are enough AND when we see the worth in ourselves, we can see the worth in others and the world becomes a kinder place.
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
Less than
I hear words like “I can’t do that” or “Who wants me around” or “I’m not good enough” a lot. I hear it from my clients, I hear it from my friends and family. I hear it in snippets of conversations when I’m out. It often feels like, as a society, we have a problem with knowing our worth.
I’m not going to throw social media under the bus because it’s a popular thing to do, but what I will say is that the sheer amount of content there is online, gives us access (in the very palms of our hands) to a mass of pictures, stories, lifestyles (if they’re real), relationships and so much more to compare ourselves to.
Comparison-itis is the scourge of modern life and no wonder many of us end up not feeling good enough.
Add to that, the advertising we are bombarded with – how we should look, eat, cook, live our lives, parent; products and just stuff we should buy and use (although they only care about the buying bit, obviously) – all in the name of living our best life. This is, of course, the heart of capitalism! We buy into the idea, and yes we all do it to varying degrees, that if only we do all those things and have all that stuff, we will have an amazing life. It is all so damn superficial, and it makes me mad (and I am just as susceptible, believe me).
And if you’re an HSP (highly sensitive person) like me, you’ll take all this in and process it at a really deep level. Hard not too, when we’re told from a young age that we’re too sensitive, need to toughen up, get a thicker skin, stop being dramatic and so many other things. This makes me mad too!
Validation
None of us are immune to this insidious messaging – even when we know it’s there – quite simply because we’re human. I am sucked into it because I am human. “But is there really anything wrong with it” I hear you ask?
I am not in the business of telling anyone what is right and what is wrong for them. That is not my call. I do know, from personal experience, that by no longer looking outside myself for validation and instead looking inside and validating myself, I am living a much more contented life.
I no longer engage in behaviour to make me feel better (if only fleetingly) by numbing my pain. I no longer think I’m broken and not good enough. Now I feel like this, I want others to know it is possible. I am a little evangelical about it at times, to be honest.
If you’re not sure what I mean by “validation” and “validating”, let me explain.
Validation is something we experience when our feelings or opinions are recognised as valid or worthwhile.
External validation is when we look to others, maybe our friends or family, our colleagues and, sometimes, even people on social media or in adverts, to recognise our feelings or opinions as valid.
For example, we have a decision to make and ask all manner of people what we should do instead of trusting ourselves to make the right one. It’s okay to ask what other people think or what they would do but it becomes problematic when we can’t make a decision ourselves and then, when we do, we worry incessantly whether we’ve made the right decision and what other people would have done in our place.
In the counselling world, this is known as an external locus of evaluation, based on the work of Carl Rogers (the pioneer of person-centred counselling). I trained to level 4 in counselling, where we studied Carl Rogers, and his work has a big influence in my coaching.
Internal validation is the flip side of this. The recognition of our feelings or opinions comes from within us. We might have asked others what they think but we make a decision for ourselves, and we trust that it is the right decision. Occasionally, with the benefit of hindsight, we may have made a different decision but we know and trust that we made the best decision we could at the time we made it, based on the information we had at that time.
Self-Esteem
So how can we move from external validation to internal validation? There are a few parts to this, and I’ll take them one at a time over a series of posts.
I’m going to start with self-esteem. I think it’s something most of us have heard of and have an understanding about.
Self-esteem is how we value and perceive ourselves.
Those two ideas are intrinsically linked, aren't they? If you perceive you are lacking in some way, you will have a low self-value and vice versa. Is that how it is for you? Is it possible to have a low self-value but perceive ourselves as amazing? I don't think I know anyone like that but perhaps you do.
To the Core
Self-esteem and self-worth (or self-value, if you prefer) go to the very core of who you are and how you show up in the world. If you speak to yourself in an unkind way a lot of the time ("You're rubbish", "Why did you do that?", "You're so stupid", "I told you you couldn't do it", "Who do you think you are" .......sound familiar?) the chances are you’re not going to feel great about yourself.
You hear yourself saying these things, either out loud or in your head, and you start to believe them. The more you do it, the more you hear it and in time it becomes a core belief.
People around you hear you saying it to yourself and they begin to believe it., about you and then sometimes about themselves too.
Your children hear you saying it and they begin to talk to themselves like that.
Can you see how, what starts off as a throw away comment, can very easily become an ingrained belief? You perceive yourself as lacking in some way, not good enough, and it results in low self-esteem. The ripple effect spreads much wider than you realise too.
Our childhood circumstances, what happens to us over our lifetime, particularly at major developmental stages, together with how we deal with the comparison-itis I talked about in the introduction, all go to inform how we perceive ourselves. Sometimes what life has thrown at you, as Julia Roberts says in Pretty Woman, makes the bad stuff easier to believe.
You’re not clever enough, slim enough, rich enough, funny enough. Your house is not big enough. Your car is not fancy enough. Your children aren’t well-behaved enough. You just don’t fit in.
How many things do we beat ourselves up about? Low self-esteem looks like:
Being afraid to take risks
People-pleasing
Seeing yourself as lucky/should be grateful
Allowing others to treat you poorly
You are “needy”
You do things you don’t want to do
You worry and overthink things you have said and done
You block people out easily
Fundamentally, we are so busy comparing ourselves to others and beating ourselves up for all the things that we are not, that we are not seeing the truth of the brilliant, unique human beings we are. It's my mission to try and change that because if we are kinder to ourselves, we can be kinder to others and the world is a kinder place.
Next time I’ll be looking at self-care. The path to better self-esteem and ultimately knowing and feeling that you are enough (which you are) starts, in my opinion, with self-care.
To find more about being an HSP, you can listen to the HSP Connection podcast that I co-host with Robbie Leigh. If you want to connect with other HSPs, you can join the HSP Connection Community that I co-run with Robbie. As I say above, it’s important to connect with other HSPs who just get it. Find your people.
And if you want support with how being an HSP shows up for you, how to shape your life in a way that supports you better and what is your particular sensitive strength, I am an HSP coach and I'd love to have a chat so contact me using the contact button at the top of the home page.
