One of the biggest topics that come up in therapy is self-esteem. Often clients will report struggling with low self-image and want to do therapy work around building and repairing their view of self. The first step is understanding what self-esteem is. As part of improving our understanding, we are going to look at a way of thinking about the differences between healthy and unhealthy self -esteem. Notice that we do not use the terms high self-esteem and low self-esteem. Those terms can be misleading and give individuals a false idea of what it means to have a healthy view of self.
First, let us start with a definition. According to the Oxford dictionary self-esteem is defined as “confidence in one’s own worth or abilities; self-respect” and according to the website www.verywellmind.com it is defined as “a term used to describe a person’s overall self-worth or personal value.” Our staff has been running groups on self-esteem for years, and one thing we’ve learned is that if you ask 10 people about self-esteem you get 10 different and very broad answers, and none of the answers are necessarily wrong! That is because it is a very broad concept that encompasses much about our sense of self.
It is better to look at self-esteem by separating it into 3 categories (one that describes healthy and two that describe unhealthy). These categories are unhealthy, conditional, and healthy. The post today will focus on unhealthy and healthy self-esteem. So, let us start off by looking at what we call unhealthy self-esteem. If you rank people on a scale where 1 (at the top of the scale) represents the most important people in the world) and 100 (at the bottom of the scale) represents the least important people in the world) and ask people where someone with an unhealthy view of self might rank themselves; most people will identify unhealthy as ranking yourself at or near the bottom of the scale (hence the term low self-esteem). While this is somewhat true it does not describe the entire story.
If unhealthy self-esteem is ranking yourself at the bottom of the scale, then logic would dictate that healthy self-esteem is simply putting yourself at the top. But this does not seem to fit very well either. If someone thinks of themself as more important, more worthy, and better than that those around them that certainly does not sound healthy does it? This type of inflated sense of self is often associated with terms like entitled or narcissistic. People who present this way are generally using this inflated sense of self to compensate for feelings of inferiority or shame. While people may be initially drawn to people who present with this type of self-esteem, over time the relationships break down as the inflated individual will often use or abuse relationships to meet their own ends. Any view of self that leads to these results certainly is not healthy.
So, what about right in the middle of our scale? Again, something does not seem right about this either. Seeing ourselves as less than some people and more than others is still off. This is one of the key components to understanding healthy self-esteem. When we start using comparisons to others to evaluate our value and self-worth, that is an indication that we may need work on our view of self. Instead, a healthy view of self requires us to value ourselves and those around us equally. It is not a tally of accomplishments and abilities that lead to feeling good, it is an understanding and acceptance that every person has intrinsic values regardless of what they excel at and what they struggle with.
Over the next couple of months, we will be posting more about self-esteem. The goal is for people reading to be better able to understand self-esteem, assess their own view of self and start to improve their self-esteem. Please watch for our next post which will be discussing conditional self-esteem. If you have any questions about self-esteem or want to develop a plan to improve the way you view yourself, please do not hesitate to reach out to us here at ITS Therapy.