Getting esteem from someone else never creates self-esteem. ~Pia Melody

When I was growing up, my mom worked as a jr. high school guidance counselor. Friends would meet me, learn what my mom did for a living, and then ask if I had pep talks on self-esteem all the time. I don’t know if self-esteem was at the forefront of my mom’s work with her jr. high students, but the term is pretty pigeon-holed.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Rather than thinking about a person who feels good about themselves, “self-esteem” usually conjures up affirmations, juvenile exercises or practices, and other tools and techniques that seem like won’t work. Whatever it might mean for them to “work.”

What would having good self-esteem look like? What would improving it do? If you could.

Oxford Languages says that self-esteem is

confidence in one’s own worth or abilities; self-respect.

Pia Mellody has done plenty of research on and provides training for building self-esteem. She has books on creating self-respect in order to unclench from dependent relationships. Pia provides hands-on activities to change the way you relate to yourself and the people in your life. She talks about self-esteem stemming from our awareness of our inalienable and unvarying worth and says it is not subject to the vagaries of the judgment of others.

Therefore, it makes sense that, though others may contribute to our self-esteem by giving feedback on our abilities, in order to qualify as self-esteem, it must be there no matter what feedback we get.

The esteem we receive from others is other-esteem, and it varies according to those from whom it is received ~Pia Melody

So many of us, lacking our own sense of self, depend upon the evaluations of others in order to know who we are. In order to believe we are okay.

How do we gain security in ourselves, so that compliments or positive feedback are icing on the cake, not what we need in order to keep going?

Many things can contribute to feeling good about yourself and your abilities. And there are plenty of things that distract from it. I’ll share a few that I see often in my therapy practice.

Habits that Repel Self-esteem

~Perfectionism

Not hard to guess that this would detract from feeling good about yourself. If you can’t give yourself credit unless you’ve met a very specific outcome (whether or not that specific outcome is considered “best” by you or anyone else) the chances of ever believing you did a good job are very, very slim. Rigidity about what you will allow yourself to believe was a “good job” almost ensures you will always feel bad about yourself. Don’t kid yourself that a rigid standard will make you a higher achiever. It will actually just make you feel worse about yourself. And it is hard to do well at things when you feel bad.

~Critiquing other people

A person that views the world through a “she thinks she is better than she really is” or “her hair looks bad” views herself critically as well. Even if you have a hard time backing off of negative thoughts about yourself, becoming aware of how harshly you look at others will steer your mindset away from judgement and negativity. As you routinely become kinder in your mind to the people you see everyday, you will routinely become more accepting of what you see in the mirror.

~Believing the Myth that Your Negativity is Being Realistic

If I had a dollar for every person who insisted that saying defeating things like “I’ll fail if I try that” is really just “being realistic”…

It can feel safer to not get our hopes up. If we believe something isn’t possible then we get to keep doing the same old stuff and we don’t have to try anything new or unexpected. We can stay away from success, which might require doing things we haven’t done before, telling ourselves that we can’t. It makes psychological sense why people tell themselves they can’t do things if actually doing them would create a change to their lives – change is stressful. But insisting “I can’t” or that “I am not good enough” or “no one likes me” isn’t “being realistic.”

We can’t predict the future. Many unbelievable things have happened in this world that seemed unrealistic until they happened. When you lie to yourself that you know what the future holds or that you can’t have more than you’ve had before, you are keeping yourself protected from possibilities.

*If you found this piece useful, check out the Body Acceptance Project on Substack.

October 2022