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A Course in Self-Esteem
5. Sources of Low Self-Esteem
by Channing Grigsby
Outline
Dysfunctional Parents, Family, Society, Culture
World View
Interactions & Outcomes in our lives
How others treated us/what they told us about ourselves
Inaccurate Information & False Equations;
Failure to Assert -- Disabled Will, Intent, Purpose
Lack of real learning opportunities
Fearfulness (rather fight than change)
Ungrieved Losses and Unhealed Hurts
Where in the world does this false and lousy opinion of ourselves come from?
The easy, and also false, answer is that it all comes from inside us. A number of my students experienced their low self-esteem as so familiar and so personal that they strongly resisted the idea that it might have come from some source other than themselves (see Acceptance). They were so invested in it that they wanted to claim their low self-esteem was a fair and just assessment, as if they had been disapassionate scientists objectively collecting data, and also a wise and neutral, god-like judge when they examined the evidence and rendered their verdict.
Human behavior, decisions, judgments, attitudes are purposeful, always.
Always purposeful, held or done to some end.
Data is always collected toward some end. Why chose this and not that? And it is also literally the case that what we are able to see is a function of the beliefs we hold, the concepts we possess. For instance, there is a story that native islanders in the Pacific literally could not see the large sailing ships that brought European explorers to their shores, because the natives' only idea of a vessel that moved on water was a small canoe. Conception is based on perception. Most of the goals we have are biased in some way or another. To be successful, for instance, is widely held American ambition, but what defines success? Example: I want to finish this project. But I don't have enough time, I won't be able to do a good job. Oh, well, quick and dirty is okay. Another example: "I really want my child to be smarter than I am. My child must be smarter than I am. Therefore my child is smarter than I am." More often than not, our conclusions are pre-determemed, by our point of view and the questions we ask and the way we ask them. "Still, a man sees what he wants to see/And disregards the rest."
The sources of our self-esteem are complicated, as you might imagine. To the degree that we adopted evidence or conclusions and internalized them, our self-esteem does now reside within us. And now that is perhaps where it comes from, though that was not its original source.
Our sense of ourselves comes in large part from our parents and our family, their world view, their values, their own self-esteem, their abilities to nurture, their expectations and demands. This includes religious values and the general assumptions and overt statements about what human beings are like and about human nature. Are human beings essentially good? Or are we essentially bad and so have to be made good through one device or another? It also comes from the quality of our relationships and how they worked. Although we'll discuss this a great deal more later, it is important to recognize the power discrepancy betwen a child and her parent, whether father or mother. A child cannot defend herself: she depends on her parents to provide her with nurturing and accurate information, about the world and about herself. If accurate information is not available, for whatever reason, the child has a problem and that problem is almost always resolved in favor of the parent. If, for any reason, the parent responds to the child on the basis of his or her own agenda, problems, or limitations, the child is exposed to those as "the way things are." Even if they don't make any sense.
What was the level of self-esteem of the important people in your life when you were a child? It is very difficult for a child to have a higher level of self-esteem than the self-esteem of the person or persons who raised us. As children, we assume our parents are true grown-ups and have their act together. We assume they have no hang-ups or flaws, no axes to grind or anything to compensate for, and that they are healthy in mind, body and spirit — none of which may be true.
Remember: this is not about blame; it's just about trying to find out what really happened and evaluating it for truth and accuracy.
You may find that much of the information that you thought was accurate, clean, and unbiased was in fact distorted, filtered, not necessarily in your best interest, or otherwise inaccurate. It was someone else's judgment according to their standards and abilities and desires, not yours. In the same way you do the best you can, so did they.
Dysfunctional families are structured by their secrets. Everyone in the family, and there are no exceptions, plays out their role. One student told me of being constantly abused, physically, verbally, emotionally, by an older brother, while the parents appeared to be blissfully unaware of that violence. Brothers and sisters, who can play a large part in forming our self-esteem, are also functioning in terms of their personalities, their limits, their agendas. One student, a woman named Sally, remembers her sister once told her she did not have very pretty eyes. Years later, when Sally asked her sister about that telling, crushing comment, the sister barely remembered it, and when reminded then laughingly admitted that she said it because she thought Sally's eyes were in fact prettier than her own, that she had been jealous and wanted to get even. For more than twenty years, Sally carried both the hurt from her sister's comment and the image it created for her: "My eyes aren't very pretty." If we accept this kind of treatment as deserved or appropriate, our self-esteem is damaged.
We also live in a competitive and fragmented society, in which who you are is reflected by what you've got, what you achieve, whether you conform or fit in, how "good" you are, whether you do what you're told. Any one of these demands is complicated enough and fraught with difficulty for someone who has a strong and powerful sense of themselves, but if you are a child trying to build such a sense, life in such a world can be, to put it mildly, difficult indeed.
We got and we get many messages about ourselves from the interactions we had with other people, and whether we were successful in getting our needs met in them. I have an older brother who preceeded me through the same schools and who excelled at math. Unfortunatly, I did not excel in math, and I had the same math teacher. She kept asking why, if my brother could do this so easily, I could not. The message I got from her about my math skills did not serve to make me feel good about myself (or about my brother). We also learn a lot about ourselves from the outcomes we experience: how things come out, how our efforts paid off, the results we get. And how those around us reacted to those outcomes. If I heard it once, I heard it a hundred times when my school report cards came out: "You're not working to your potential." Nobody ever bothered to explain to me what that meant except in hugely general terms, like "you're not working to your potential," said over and over again. If we tried something and failed, what lesson did we learn? What did other people say? Many people learn that they shouldn't bother to try.
We came to conclusions about ourselves based on the way people treated us. If we were abused, our tendency was to think that we deserved it. If we were treated lovingly, our tendency was to think we deserved it. In addition, when we're kids, other people verbally tell us a huge amount, from "What a pretty child," to "I wish you were never born." Frequently, we learn that somewhere in us there is a basic flaw, some area of life we simply can't handle. Girls, for instance, are not expected to be mechanical in ability; boys are not expected to be soft. What is your flaw? Who told you it was a flaw? Why did they tell you?
Sometimes we find ourselves in no-win situations. Gregory Bateson called these double-binds: damned if you do, damned if you don't. One student came to a realization that in his family on the one hand he was criticized for failing and on the other he was admonished for surpassing his brother if he succeeded. The classic no-win story I remember is about the mother who comes home with two new blouses for her daughter. Her daughter is thrilled and taking the shopping bag runs to her room to try one on. She comes back, preening in her new blouse that fits just right. "Mother, it's wonderful," she says. Her mother replies, "What's the matter, you didn't like the other one?"
Our self-esteem is also at risk when we're punished. How severely? For what offenses? How fair was it? There are what are called "punishing gestures." These are the physical gestures: a movement of hand or arm, a raised eyebrow, an expression on the face. These gestures, sometimes very subtle, are warnings to children that patience is about gone and they had better stop doing something. Such a gesture can silence a child instantly. These gestures constitute disapproval and are subject to the same kinds of questions as punishment: how often, were they appropriate, were we really out of line or did those gestures represent an attempt at iron-handed control?
To survive in our growing up, we develop a voice inside our head that is designed to assist us to survive and to help keep us safe. That voice talks, sometimes constantly, to us, warning, criticizing, trying to get us to do better. Call this internal voice your Inner Critic. There are real problems with our Inner Critic, of which much more later, but the issue is that frequently the critic puts us down unmercifully. The message is negative; the judgment is negative: both equal low self-esteem.
We also came to our own judgments about events in our lives and our experiences. We also decided whether it was okay to make a mistake or not and then to disapprove of ourselves if we did. "Well, that was a really stupid thing to do." In other words, we judged ourselves, and drew conclusions from our experiences. But the question is, by what standards? Were they humane and forgiving, or condemning?
We have models in our heads of what we would like to live up to. We can see some of our own strengths and weaknesses. We take areas of our own life, positive and negative, and project them outward onto others. We may admire a best friend for being outgoing and confident, what we would like to be but think we are not. So far so good — such an outgoing friend may help us have experiences we would otherwise miss. But if we constantly compare ourselves to the other, and fall constantly short, we wind up constantly reinforcing our own low self-esteem.
Projections also work on us when they come from other people. My father had an image of me as successful business person (something he wished he were) and he often communicated that to me. I resented it, but for a long time could not help comparing myself to that image he had, and needless to say I fell short.
We work to create the reality we expect. One of the most common thoughts running through the mind of a person with low self-esteem, especially when facing a challenge, something new, different, or difficult, is, "I can't handle this." And guess what? We don't handle it well. If I tell myself I won't have a good time at the party I'm going to, I am likely to behave in ways that generate exactly that reality, eliciting from other people indifferent responses, proving my premise.
Our tendency is to assume that the information we receive is accurate and unbiased. It probably wasn't/isn't. Consider the sources of the information you received about yourself. Consider the purpose of the information you received. Was it for your benefit, or the benefit of the person providing it? If you are a girl being raised in a family dominated by a man who hates women, what will be the quality of the information you get about yourself and your womanhood?
We also are victimized by what I call illusion, the appearance of a reality which is not true. Almost all of us function in terms of some illusion. For instance, we defend and behave as if the known is preferable to the unknown, as if where we are really is preferable to where we could be. This position is expressed in sayings like, "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know," (even if the devil you're talking about is yourself (great self-esteem there, huh?). Such conclusions are almost always based on ignorance, since we rarely know realistically where we could be. We may also carry an illusion that if we really tried,we could do anything.
We also establish false equations and false logical structures in our heads. For instance, assume you're working on a large project that is expensive in terms of money, or time, or effort. You decide not to pay that price, so you drop the project and leave it unfinished. So far so good. But at this point, after the fact, many people store that experience (I didn't finish that project) as a failure (I failed to finish that project), letting it reinforce a lurking fear of failure. Soon they have turned it around, saying that not finishing the project proves that they are a failure. So long as we believe the illusion we have created ("I am a failure, I am not competent") those illusions control our lives.
If we confuse the difference between our wants and our needs, we can easily create fantasies that we secretly expect or demand to be real. Since reality does not always fulfill our fantasies, we can find ourselves in a condition of constant deprivation. The woman or man of or dreams does not show up in our lives. We then try to explain the condition of deprivation, and it becomes either their fault or our fault. But even when we think it's their fault, it's our fault.
There's a Sufi story about a man who sought the perfect woman. Every woman he met fell short of perfection, until finally he met the one paragon, a truly perfect woman. He bragged to his friend about how wonderful she was and how they would live happily ever after together. But the next time his friend saw him, the man was subdued and very quiet. "What happened?" his friend asked. "Oh, but it is very sad," the man said. "She wanted the perfect man."
We pick and choose among all the evidence to support our conclusions. A slot machine player who has won occasionally keeps putting money into the machine because she remembers the times when she won and not the times when she lost. What you choose to remember makes a difference. (And remember, what you are choosing serves a purpose.) Do you remember your wins, or do you remember your losses? Which you remember is in great degree controlled by your orientation. If your self-esteem is low, you probably remember losses more often than wins. If you self-esteem is high, you probably remember wins. It's also true that even in the midst of a great win, there may be a small loss. People with low self-esteem will find that small loss and hold onto it. It comes out as, "Yeah I did a good job, but . . . . " And there is always a but.
How many times have you come away from a conversation or dispute and said to yourself, "If only I'd said __________ (fill in the blank). "If only I'd done ________ (ditto). People with low self-esteem feel unable to assert themselves effectively. In his book on the family, John Bradshaw identifies what he calls a "disabled will,"(1) that carries with it six negative consequences:
impulsiveness
problems making decisions
attempts to control
searching for the grand experience
compulsive behavior
seeing everything in extremes.
People from dysfunctional families often have wills which are disabled. Brashaw defines will as "desire raised to the level of action." We are entitled to want something and we are entitled to take active steps to try to achieve what we want. We are entitled to have been taught how to do that and encouraged to take actions that pursue our desire. With a disabled will, we may start taking action to get what we want and then give up. Sometimes, we don't know how to do what we need. Sometimes we don't allow outrselves to want it hard enough. But often it is because we have been prevented from doing what we wished: we have been told "No!" forever, or we have no belief that our actions will result in fulfilling our wishes. In other words, we have learned that we'll fail to get what we want. So why bother? In such a case, our will has been disabled and we will never get what we want because we can't even try for it. Every human being is entitled to have a will, an intent, and a purpose in their lives. Disabled wills can be repaired and enabled.
Lack of Learning Opportunities
If you think of a family as primarily a mechanism for teaching children what they need to know, it becomes obvious that some families are good at this task and others are not. An abused child is likely to have missed essential learning experiences, often in the most intangible realities of life, such as how to love or how to be intimate. For instance, in my family, my father kept an iron-lock on the issue of money, as if money were a deep and dark secret he wanted no one to know about (for him, it probably was). The result is that I did not learn about money in my family and it is an area of life I still have trouble with. Since adult males are supposed to know how to handle money, this hole in my experience does not support a high level of self-esteem for me.
If we aren't taught, or don't learn, about fear in our lives, and its role and function, we may be dominated by it. If we don't believe our own efforts will be successful in getting us what we want, we will be fearful about our desires. Our immediate reaction to any change or new experience may be negative. The result is that we will fight and struggle to stay exactly where we are, rather than change.
One of the sources of low-esteem is low self-esteem itself, and our acceptance of it as "normal," as the way it is, as the way it should be. It has been so much a part of our lives for so long, it is as if we can't imagine anything else. We have accepted it. Such acceptance is completely understandable and also a very bad idea. Dislodging this aceptance is one of our primary tasks if we wish to improve how we feel about ourselves.
In my opinion, without doubt, the primary source of low self-esteem is our unhealed hurts and ungrieved losses. We have low self-esteem because we have not healed our hurts and we have not grieved our losses, and because of the fact that we have not. We still carry those hurts which we have not healed and those losses which we have not grieved, and they are heavy, and terrifying, and we know they are there, and their existence costs us our own self-respect. Though we'll discuss this much more later, these two realities, overtly or covertly, dominate our lives, and in a complicated, somewaht layered way, they are in fact the primary source of low self-esteem.
In the same way that we are rarely taught what to do with fear, we are not taught or are taught badly about pain and about loss. The first sentence of Scott Peck's bestselling book The Road Less Traveled is "Life is difficult." A friend of mine recently told me it took him three months to get past that first sentence so he could read Peck's book. Many people are in absolute, raging denial about what many others would call a fact of life. Few families arm their children with knowledge or understanding or philosophy or tools for responding to that fact of life. If we're taught a fairy tale that we can or should have everything, and we strive for and partially get but do not get it all and still experience pain or loss, we think the fault is our own — that we're doing something wrong. Not true. But we wind up living in a prison, confined by unhealed hurts and ungrieved losses.
© 1997, C. Grigsby, All Rights Reserved. 2 Aug 1988
Comments? E-mail to: Channing