Self esteem: Did you always have it? If not, how did you acquire it?

This is another one of those silly quasi-self-help threads; you’ve been warned!

Lately I’ve begun to realize that I have essentially zero self-esteem and that this is not a normal thing. I’m 27 now, and as far as I can remember I’ve always thought of myself as a worthless piece of shit, even (or perhaps especially) as a child.

Do you have any self esteem? If so, do you remember how you developed it, or was it something you just always had?

You can’t give yourself self-esteem, but you can earn it. It takes time, but it can start today.

Get in the habit of doing the right thing; exercise your honesty and integrity. Demonstrate the values that you hold dear.

Be what you wish to seem.
Roddy

I’ve always had high self esteem but it wasn`t until almost finished with college that other people started to realize it.

Why don’t you start by thinking about the sorts of things that you associate with not being a worthless piece of shit? And tell us about them.

People value very different things so it’s important to identify exactly what you value. You might have two people, both professionally very successful and both bad with the opposite sex. One of them might feel bad about himself because he’s lonely and fails at relationships while the other thinks he’s fucking awesome because he’s got a lot of money.

I think you should reflect on it and pick some concrete things that you could do to make you like yourself more. If you finally lose the weight you’ve always wanted to lose, it’s not going to completely change your self image. But it’ll improve your self image and more importantly you’ll start to see yourself as someone who can accomplish the goals they set out for themselves.

I’ve always had fairly good self-esteem, even when I was depressed (which I’m sure helped). On the other hand, it seems like everyone else in my family doesn’t, so apparently I’m a freak in that regard.

I often chide my mother for putting herself down.

So that’s the main thing I can advise: don’t let yourself put yourself down. If you find yourself saying bad things, correct yourself. It may take years of practice to change.

Congratulate yourself for any accomplishments, even tiny ones. This may seem silly and vain, but it helps (whenever I’m feeling down, this is something I do more. It really does help).

Do things and succeed at them.

Seriously, that’s it. All this touchy-feeling self-esteem building crap our parents saddled on us was actually counter productive. The only way to build actual self-esteem is to do things that are kinda hard and to be successful at them.

There’s a risk you’ll fail of course, but you can’t let that stop you. Do it again and again until you get it.

Let me ask you this: what would look different in your life if you did have self-esteem? Would you ask someone out on a date? Would you ask your boss for a raise? Would you take a class in pottery? Would you write a novel? Write down a list of all the things you would try if you had good self-esteem.

Now do them. Seriously. Pick something on your list and do it, just like you’d do it if you had good self-esteem. When you’re done, pick something else.

I’m pretty sure my parents instilled it in me; I don’t think I acquired it on my own.

Early teachers probably had a bit to do with it too.

My husband was just commenting last night about how self-assured I am.

We came up with the theory that I work hard to be ‘right’ in my daily life and support that with research and learning from my mistakes.

‘Right’ can mean anything from being factually correct about something (or knowing when I am not), consistently doing things that fit in my personal moral definition or using existing knowledge/research to accomplish something efficiently and effectively.

Since I am always feeling ‘right,’ I feel good about myself and portray confidence.

(The flip side of this is that if I am doing something ‘wrong,’ I can get depressed and unsure and go off the deep end. But that is happening far less frequently of late.)

One gets self-esteem by engaging in esteemable behavior.

I didn’t have it until my early twenties. I built it by looking for ways to be of service to others. Volunteer work, acts of kindness, things as simple as holding a door for someone, or smiling at a coworker, or as large as building a reading program for the children in local homeless shelters.

Strange as it may seem, developing true humility includes the honest recognition of one’s gifts as well as one’s deficits. It also includes a sense of obligation to share one’s gifts. IMO true humility is the basis of self-esteem.

The final act for me was recognizing that how I spoke to others was also how I spoke to myself. I had been raised in a shockingly critical household, where almost every conversation was based on a criticism of someone (often me as the youngest and easiest target.) By disciplining myself to give x-many compliments each day, (started with 1, and worked my way up) I slowly taught myself to look for the good in people, and became comfortable with positive thinking. This naturally flowed into my self-speak becoming more positive as well.

[QUOTE=Roderick Femm]
You can’t give yourself self-esteem, but you can earn it. It takes time, but it can start today.

Get in the habit of doing the right thing; exercise your honesty and integrity. Demonstrate the values that you hold dear.

Be what you wish to seem.

[/QUOTE]

This is pretty much it. The trick is realizing how hard it is to put an “Esteem Checkpoint” in front of many/most decisions you make every day and then really stick by the conclusion.

If you ask yourself “What would a person with self-esteem do?” and you come up with a response that is different from what you would have done - do you follow-through with the better response? That is when change happens.

Insert the checkpoint; follow through with the better behavior that came from the checkpoint. Easy to summarize; a lifetime of work.

I have incredibly high self-esteem, but only because I’m so very awesome in every way.

:smiley:

Other posters have it right: set goals and work hard to achieve them & do everything you can to live up to your ideals.

Personally, I figured out what I wanted to do, how I wanted to live, and who I wanted to be in my early teens, and I’ve done those things, lived that way and been that person ever since. And it totally fucking rocks!

I left home at 16 with none (thanks mom & dad!), and was about your age when I first started to develop any. Like others have said, I started with deciding I wanted to be a good, ethical person and started making decisions based on that. Found a good man who has always thought that I am better than I think I am, which helps enormously. Started engaging in volunteer work, took charge of many more things than I ever thought I could, improved my career skills, etc.

I think I was in my early 40’s before I decided I was not a complete waste of space after all.

For me the trick was to figure out how I’d treat the most awesome person in the world, and then treat myself that way. I wouldn’t call an awesome person bad names, so why would I call myself those names? If I caught myself in the act, then I’d purposely tell myself the opposite. Whenever possible, I’d tie it in with a physical act to cement it in a little more.

An important thing to keep in mind is that you won’t magically get self-esteem one day and then you can forget about it. It’s a lifelong practice. WordMan is right about that.

I kind of disagree with some posters who say that it’s all tied to accomplishments. You are not your accomplishments. It’s quite possible to take up underwater basket weaving and be great at it, and still be down on yourself. And if you end up sucking at it, that’s not going to help you much.

The ultimate measure of self-esteem, IMO, is how you tend to your thoughts. Treat yourself with kindness whether you think you deserve it or not.

My Dad, due a dysfunctional family, had VERY low self-esteem as a child and teenager. He credits going into the army reserves in his late teens for giving him confidence.

I had low self-esteem and was a very shy, mousy child until I spent one week at camp when I was 12. I came home with confidence and the feeling that I was “cool”, whether anybody else thought so or not.

That self-esteem waned considerably when I was 17-20 then 22-25 due to unhealthy relationships (emotional abuse and neglect) but when I was 25 I realized that I was wasting my life so I dumped the guy and went to college. THAT’S when my self-esteem soared and has stayed up there ever since. NOBODY will ever make me feel worthless again.

My advice would be pretty much the same as the previous poster’s advice. Decide how you want to live the only life you have and LIVE IT.

I don’t know how I developed self esteem. I know that emerged when I was a teenager, before the modern pop-psy concept developed. I think it may have been part of adolescent rebellion against my parents, who in their opinion, were the only people who should have self esteem. Later in life, my feelings were well justified by my accomplishments.

The thing is, it’s all relative. Each person should have self esteem for meeting their own goals. I feel sorry for those who measure themselves against others.

I’ve always had pretty good self-esteem. As others have said, it comes from a lifetime of setting difficult goals and then working hard to achieve them.

I like the term ‘self respect’ much better than ‘self esteem’. It’s not about thinking highly of myself, it’s about treating myself with basic kindness and courtesy, because I’m human, dammit, and insisting on the same treatment from others. My mistakes and flaws do not make it okay to abuse me.

The key for me was realizing that I wouldn’t treat an animal the way I treated myself. Every time I made a minor mistake I’d berate myself for it. Every time I was timid I’d mock myself. Every time I hesitated… Yeah, you get the picture. Then I realized that if I treated a dog like that, of course she’d constantly be cowering. So I flipped it completely around for a while - when I started getting anxious I’d tell myself ‘good girl, you’re doing well’ and ‘come on, you got this’. It was a little demented, but comforting on some level way below logic.

A few months later, I was playing with the hypothetical ‘what if there were two of you’ question. I decided that it’d be really uncomfortable being around someone who tries to fill the exact same social niche that I do, so we’d go our separate ways, but I would respect what she was trying to do with her life. Hey, wait. Is that self respect? Yes, I think it is!

If you want to be a great underwater basket-weaver, and you try and become a great underwater basket-weaver, you cannot be down on yourself for failing to accomplish one of your goals. If you are, you have some serious issues and need more help than you will ever get from a message board.

Just like deciding to be a good, helpful person and then becoming a good, helpful person should raise your self-esteem. If accomplishing that doesn’t raise your self-esteem, then you need more help than a message board will be able to provide.

Or hell, if you decide to become the biggest pimp in the world and assemble a truly impressive stables of whores and a nifty wardrobe and fancy cars and a big house and you aren’t impressed with yourself, you need more help than the SDMB will be able to give you.

Be careful when choosing your goals and your ideals, is all. Make sure it’s what you want before you reach out to take it.

Probably true. But I’ve known good and helpful people who are still down on themselves. I used to be one of them. They tend to be people pleasers so that they can compensate for their own perceived inadequacies. The word “doormat” comes to mind. And yes, they often need extra help.

The point I was trying to make, though, was that it might be better to focus on internal qualities rather than external. I might be the best underwater basket weaver in the world, but what happens when arthritis sets in and I can no longer do it? Does that lower my value as a person?

Setting goals you consider worthwhile and working towards achieving them is focusing on internal qualities.