Self-esteem is the assessment we make about our worth and is based on the thoughts, emotions and experiences that we have collected about ourselves during our lives.
When we do something or act in a way that we believe is correct, the level of self-esteem automatically increases and when we feel that we have behaved in an incorrect way, our self-esteem is damaged. All this tells us that the person is not born with a fixed and static concept of what he or she is, but that it is formed and developed progressively based on many variables such as: personality traits, psychological needs, family education…
As a person grows, they develop a series of rules or formulas that help you give meaning to yourself, the world and what surrounds you. These formulas determine how what the person perceives and observes will be classified and with the passage of time and through learning, they end up almost automatically associating certain situations with specific characteristics. For example: smell of coffee: moment of tranquility; either because it is breakfast time or after lunch or a break at work, but on most occasions when we have smelled coffee, we have then had a brief period of rest or tranquility. This association has occurred so many times that in the end simply mentioning the word coffee is already associated with a moment of well-being.
However, as mentioned above, there are universal psychological needs in all people, which we need to cover to have good psychological health and which can decisively mark the standards by which we classify information.
Psychological needs
What are the psychological needs by which we move and that drive us to act?
Need for affection, need to love, to be and feel loved and approved. This need for love and approval that we all have can become so distorted that it creates pathologies based on the obligatory need to feel supported and approved by others, even to the point of maintaining harmful intimate relationships (and not wanting to break them): Emotional dependence, Dependent personality disorder, Borderline personality disorder.
The need to have a certain self-confidence, that is, the security of feeling useful, of worth, of producing. If it is not satisfied, it can generate work addictionFor example.
Need for personal fulfillment or understanding, based on the security of finding meaning in things, the world and oneself.
These 3 psychological needs can be covered from childhood, mainly by the people who take care of these minors. But when this does not occur, in adulthood a person can develop psychological disorders, such as depression or anxiety or disorders related more specifically to the psychological need that was not met.
Self-esteem assessment
Sometimes we are not aware of the low value we have in a certain area of our life or even in an aspect of ourselves, since we may never have considered it. In order to improve self-esteem, it is necessary to reflect on the score that a person has in different areas of life and their person:
After having described yourself, you must keep in mind that when you have low self-esteem, you tend to see yourself more negatively than you really are.
It is important to ask yourself: what is the area of your life to which you should pay the most attention? And what is the area in which you feel most satisfied and for which you want to show gratitude?
We must also question another exercise of reflection: with respect to Health, Sex, Money, Happiness, Old Age, Success, Love, God, spirituality, what are the beliefs that we have within us that have been transmitted to us and that determine us What time do we have a good concept about ourselves? For example: what was my mother’s opinion of men? Has it influenced me in any way?
Normally, ideas about these matters have been transmitted to us from parents to children, either directly, with a clear message, or indirectly, without words but with gestures, expressions or silences that told us if it was good, bad or uncomfortable. All this information weighs more than what we believe in each of us, therefore, it is important that we analyze it, to know if we agree and if we want to keep or change it.
The importance of thoughts and beliefs in self-esteem
When people react, we do not stop to think if the interpretations we make are correct or not and we usually take them as true and true.
One way to determine if what we have thought is appropriate or not is to “put a thermometer” on the consequences of those behaviors that we emit in us. On most occasions (not always) when we react and have negative feelings that cause us discomfort, it is because we have probably misinterpreted the information received. There are different ways of misinterpreting reality, such as cognitive distortions among which are generalization, polarized thinking, that is, either it is white or it is black, etc., irrational beliefs According to Ellis, among the most common may be the ideas that: we need and have to be approved by all people, that we have to achieve anything we set our minds to; that things have to go the way we believe; that people have little control over negative situations that cause us disturbances, etc…
These 2 ways of biasing information generate feelings such as sadness, anxiety, guilt, anger that undermine and reduce self-esteem and that, sometimes, the person, simply by realizing that he is thinking about them, can change and modify them to feeling better. But on other occasions, we maintain these thoughts despite knowing that they cause us harm.
Why do we keep those negative thoughts or criticisms in our minds?
It is difficult to understand how we pay attention to these thoughts and criticisms when they have a negative impact on our self-esteem and cause us suffering. There are 2 phenomena:
He positive reinforcement That is, when one performs a behavior that is later rewarded and the probability of doing that behavior again increases. In this case, we listen to criticism, to those thoughts that criticize us for “the need to do good” for example: Criticism encourages us to try to guide ourselves by values that we believe are good and so that we do not stray from that path.
He negative reinforcement It also causes the behavior to increase, but it occurs when there is a negative situation: stress, sadness, pain… and an action is taken to stop this negative situation. Here criticism fulfills the “need to control painful feelings”: such as the fear of rejection…If my inner voice tells me “don’t try it with that girl because she will reject you” and I listen to it, my self-esteem is less damaged. because I haven’t gotten to act. If I had acted and gone to her and rejected me, my self-esteem would be much more damaged.
However, we are distorting a situation because we are PRE-assuming how ANOTHER person is going to react. We may have the illusion that we control what she thinks of us and this is uncertain since we can only control what basically depends on ourselves.
Attribution and elements that increase self-esteem
The assumption that individuals make to discover the motives, the reasons why events occur, is the basis of attribution theory.
Determining the reasons why a person or ourselves has acted helps us to know ourselves, understand ourselves and classify them in our minds and fundamentally helps us build the first of the 3 fundamental elements, according to Mc Cay and Fanning, to increase self-esteem, which is understanding.
Comprehension: It is the necessary element to change the perspective and the way of interpreting situations and problems. Understanding why others may have acted in a certain way and trying to deduce whether they were trying to cover a need or lack will help us understand that person.
The next element for good self-esteem is acceptance It means assuming the events that have occurred without evaluating or judging them. Acceptance from others involves acknowledging the events that have happened and eliminating the judging part.
But in addition to being able to understand the situation and accept it, you have to be able to forgive It involves starting from scratch with all those situations and sufferings that harmed you.
These 3 elements help and are essential for the person to value themselves positively and have a good concept of themselves.
Self-esteem and assertiveness
The assertiveness “It is considered the ability to skillfully transmit opinions, intentions, positions, beliefs and feelings”, it allows increasing the self-esteem of the people involved in that communication since it transmits feelings of acceptance, understanding, trust, respect and the ability to put themselves in the place of the other. other.
Every day we face situations with which we feel uncomfortable, or we lie when giving an answer to someone to avoid an unpleasant consequence or their anger, etc… When these situations generate important negative consequences for us, it is time to learn to defend our feelings. rights and our points of view from assertiveness.
The way we react to a situation in general can be summarized as 3 types of answers:
the assertive that is the correct one, the one that on a personal level when we execute it makes us feel good, with a high level of self-esteem and “at peace” with ourselves. Every time we broadcast it, we experience a great feeling of satisfaction.
the aggressive: Saltó defines it “as a defense against a situation that the person perceives as a source of danger or threat to himself, although in reality it is not or is to a lesser extent.” We see a threat where there probably is none and, furthermore, our response is to attack, which will later generate feelings of aggressiveness and anger with the other and with ourselves, for not having resolved the situation more effectively.
the passive: It consists of not responding in any way to those situations where we are supposed to give a response. This behavior of “not acting” is caused by the fear fundamentally of an aggressive response, a response of enormous anger or anger on the part of the other person. The saying, the “straw that breaks the camel’s back” perfectly defines a person’s endurance in responding, until they explode in a more intense way than if they had responded in the first situation that caused them discomfort.
As can be seen, passive and aggressive responses generate unpleasant feelings in both cases and decrease self-esteem. The only way to feel with higher self-esteem is to learn to formulate assertive responses.
