Some comments from a university journalist regarding self-esteem, insecurity and the effects which she saw as promiscuity, abusive relationships etc.

Good for you, I’m glad you’re looking into the area. I’m happy to respond. I’m quite precise on some points so I don’t like loose assertions.

I urge you to ask why you are writing the article. Is it to help people improve their lives? Is it to gain readers? Is it to help them understand the status quo or past? I’m only really interested in the first one.
Without defining self-esteem, a debate about can easily be about prejudice and judging others.

Many people use it incorrectly as meaning “You are acting in ways that ways that do not reflect my values”. That strikes me as intolerance rather than low self-esteem.

Nathaniel Branden, the writer of several books on self-esteem defines self-esteem as “the disposition to experience oneself as competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and as worthy of happiness.” These challenges of life including finding and keeping a job and caring for oneself.

This is a long way from giving each child a medal to make them feel good about themselves. You have to experience life to feel that you can meet its challenges.

More on good and bad definitions of self-esteem

http://www.overcoming-low-self-esteem.com/tag/self-esteem-is-not

To make strong statements that self-esteem makes you healthier, wealthier, happier and a better Christian/ Muslim/ believer, one should have large scale studies to back up those statement. The definition of self-esteem should be clear.

As for treatments for low self-esteem, if you are measuring treatments or interventions, there should be control participants to compare against and neither participant nor facilitator should know whether the treatment or the placebo is being applied. That might work for aspirin, but it can be difficult in a talking cure.

Some challenge the idea that self-esteem is a good thing. Much of this seems to be based on a warped and poor definition of self-esteem.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=exploding-the-self-esteem

I offer people a coaching service to raise their self-esteem, i.e., to help them raise their sense of competence to meet the challenges of life and their sense of being worthy of love. I see these things as self-evidently worthwhile or indeed, I leave it to the client to determine that they are. If they want self-esteem in order to be happy, they are better off doing coaching focused on being happy, their true goal. For my clients, self-esteem is the concept that they are after.

More on N. Branden

http://www.overcoming-low-self-esteem.com/category/theme/six-pillars-of-self-esteem-nathaniel-branden

Do they?
It’s possible to feel that we are worthy of love and competent to move home and find a job and then also sleep around, get into the wrong relationship and do badly in our job. We can feel awful about ourselves and useless at times, but happen to be very good at reviewing legal documents. Self-esteem is a broad, long-ish view of ourselves and doesn’t necessarily have direct impact on our behaviours and relationships.

I see insecurity as different to self-esteem in ways such as you can feel insecure about your job due to the economy but feel that you are a competent person worthy of love.

You could search for Twitter quotes about self-esteem. People on twitter talk openly about low self-esteem.

I can help people raise their self esteem. People don’t even seem to think it can be raised, never mind setting aside time and money to work with a coach.

You haven’t asked about the solution or way to improve one’s life if one is insecure or has low self-esteem. We can spend endless time thinking of excuses and explanations about why and how there is something wrong with us. I believe that any treatment should be focused on the client’s goals and building strengths and resourceful states or feelings.
Are you interested in writing about “Clean Language” as a coaching treatment for insecurity and low self-esteem? I could explain it to you or give you a session. I’m currently working with someone to see if I can raise someone’s self-esteem with three hours of coaching.
Would you do a follow up article on the effectiveness of Clean Language coaching?
How do you measure self-esteem? One widely used method is the Rosenberg scale. It asks about how the participant feels about him/herself, if their see their good qualities and whether they have much to be proud of.

http://www.wwnorton.com/college/psych/psychsci/media/rosenberg.htm

Self esteem and age

http://scienceblog.com/377/global-self-esteem-study-yields-no-feel-good-results/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-esteem

Kind Regards,
Brian Birch

When twitter often put a hashtag code in their messages such as #ifyoureallyknewme, it allows us all to find messages with a common theme. This hashtag interests me because some of the people using it seem to feel to feel bad about themselves.

Look at a few anonymous messages

• #ifyoureallyknewme you’d know I have very low self-esteem, and no confidence.
• #ifyoureallyknewme .. you’d know, i’m not always who i choose to show you. #reallove try get pass my strong persona.
• #ifyoureallyknewme you’d know that i’m not really the person you see on the outside. I wish people could see past my waterline.
• #ifyoureallyknewme you would know tht I’m actually a really sensitive person..but ppl mistake tht for weakness..so I never show it
• #ifyoureallyknewme I care about everyone else before I care about myself.
• #ifyoureallyknewme You would know I sometimes feel like a loner and that noone cares about me.
• #ifyoureallyknewme you’d know that I wished I was better looking :/ I always think I’m not pretty enough -_-
• #ifyoureallyknewme youd know not to ask me whats wrong with me. Ill give you a list if youd like.

I sense low self-esteem, caring for others first, hiding who you are, not feeling you are enough and being overwhelmed.

What would it be like to

• be able to be comfortable with who you are;
• accept that this is what you’re feeling and thinking;
• to remember and be able to list things that make you like yourself and be proud;
• to find ways to be self-assertive, self-accepting and feel okay about what’s happening;
• be able to be honest and accepting of what’s going on;
• show more of yourself to others and be resilient against hurt;
• expect good things for yourself.

I’m a Self-Esteem Life Coach and I help people feel better about themselves and to feel able to cope well with life’s challenges.

If you’d like to hear more about what I do, please

1) sign up to my email list on the form on the top right on this website.  I won’t spam you or sell your email address.  I’ll offer blogs, videos and other messages to help you understand what’s going on and make whatever changes that you’d like.

2) Follow me on twitter and facebook.

This video discusses a twitter quote that links to overcoming low self-esteem:

• It completely ruins my fragile self-esteem when someone follows me, reads my tweets, realizes I’m not interesting, and then unfollows. Sigh.

Nathaniel Branden’s six pillars of self-esteem are:

Brian Birch explains how you can succeed in overcoming low self-esteem.
The Six pillars are
-Personal Integrity
-Living Consciously
-Self-Responsibility
-Self-Acceptance
-Self-Assertiveness
-Living Purposefully

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Six Pillars of Self Esteem Nathaniel Branden and Overcoming low self-esteem

I coach on self esteem and couldn’t resist commenting when someone on twitter wrote:

• Gunna just become a contained bottle and not show anyone how i feel it would be best that way (Author withheld for privacy)

Avoiding contact with people can be a sign of low self esteem.  Let me stress that from one comment, I can’t tell much about this author’s self-esteem and it may not be reflective on them or how they see themselves.   I’m just using it as a real life example.

Nathaniel Branden in 1969 briefly defined self-esteem as “…the experience of being competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and being worthy of happiness”.  Other authors talk about it being linked to having unrealistic expectations of yourself and others; not trusting others and not opening up to others.

Several clients of mine have talked about difficulties about feeling adequate and worthy of the love or affection of others.  For people who don’t love themselves, it’s hard to believe that others like them and so interacting with others can be very painful.

I know my coaching approach works.  It was developed by psychotherapists and I’ve seen dramatic changes in one or a few sessions.  In a first session, one client told me things she said she had never told anyone, just after telling me she didn’t open up to people.

My coaching method uses very open questions to firmly keep the focus on what the client says.  On the quote above, I could ask:

• Is there anything else about “not show anyone how i feel”?
• What kind of “contained bottle”?
• What would you like to have happen?

Notice that I haven’t offered advice about what I guess the situation is.  I don’t believe I’ll know with any real certainty and depth.  The questions flexibly follow the client to keep discovering about their situation, their strengths and their opportunities.  Because of the right focus on the right things, gradually or suddenly, the client’s world becomes better, opportunities are clear and choices are possible.

It’s important that a coaching approach provides benefits that last.  Too many self-help or coaching ideas are quick fixes that turn out to be short-term highs.

I’m not sure there’s a quick way for me to convince you that help is available if you want it.  Telling you to “Trust me” can hardly be expected to when you’re not sure whether to even trust yourself.  So please think of what would help you choose a good next step.  What would help make sure you overcome your low self-esteem a little bit more each day?  If you’d like more ideas, my introductory video is a good place to start.

Here are some of my messages from twitter, often the longer ones.

@goldiehawn Children are an asset to the family – allow them to contribute – we don’t give self esteem – its earned-but can be taken away

Tweet of the day

Self confidence is very important. But without compassion and humility, it’s just arrogance.  by MsKerslake (Keeli Kerslake)

Someone on twitter talked about parents supporting self-esteem in a way that means they ensure all the children get a trophy on sports day. I’ve even heard of a school cancelling its sports day because some children felt sad when they lost.

Overcoming-low-self-esteem.com

While it may be tempting, giving kids stuff just for turning up is different to ensuring their self esteem is high. I’m not against giving them something, just don’t lie to them. Yes, it’s a lie even when it’s well intentioned. I still have medals somewhere for coming second in a two boy swim and finishing a long distance run long after almost everyone else had changed out of their sports gear. They were on different days in case you think I did some kind of Junior Iron Man competition. It helped me feel part of the team, it acknowledged my effort and made me feel cared for. But I never seriously thought it was for sporting achievement and it was partly an embarrassment as it symbolised trying rather than winning.

I’m not convinced you’ll fool the child. You may even deliver the meta-messages that you don’t even think of them as a serious competitor and that you think childish and foolish. Most importantly, you may miss that while self-confidence is about believing you can achieve things, self-esteem is about how you feel about yourself. It’s the bit after they get the medal. If they know they are being shielded, not considered capable of winning and they have no evidence of actual learning or achieving, how are they going to get self-esteem?

Shielding children from most competitions and challenges does not help them develop the skills to deal with challenges when you’re not around. Rich children can be very insecure when they realise they have been shielded.

Reality happens; to you and to your child. Self-esteem comes from acknowledgement of reality, accepting your strengths and having realistic expectations.

Remember the Truman Show film?  Would Jim Carey thank the people who altered his reality and made him do all that work to make sense of what reality was?

Piaget:  “Every time we teach a child something, we prevent him from inventing it himself.”

Maybe I should have just said that.

I’m getting interested in people’s views on God and self-esteem now.  Here is another quote from Twitter:

• Trusting God and not myself will be mistaken for pessimism and low self esteem by the world.

I’m going to tweet the guy and ask about this.  I advocate for people to have high self-esteem.  If they put God or others first, I see no problem as long as it’s along the lines of  “I put others first AND I value myself“.

If someone is thinking “I don’t value myself and so God or other people should come first”, then they have low self-esteem.  I think a reasonable interpretation of the bible advocates humility (not arrogance) and loving others but not low self esteem.

Now, let’s send that tweet to see what the guy meant.

Thanks for the quote on Twitter, @TheSCICoach.

Actually, we communicate with metaphor far more than we think.  Metaphors often link one idea or thing to something physical or something we can feel.

Metaphors are underlined in these messages from Twitter.

• Depression darkens ~ repels optimistic ones ~ no one wants blackness #haiku @Jannagae
• “Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.” – Viktor Frankl @FastSelfHelp
• A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool from a mountain top. #quote @SuuperG
• “A man’s homeland is wherever he prospers.”- Aristophanes (c. 448 – 385 BCE),Greece #Quote @AnnieSage
• The deepest craving in human beings is the need to be appreciated. #quote William James @skigerman
• To err from the right path is common to mankind. -Sophocles #quote @rahmalam
• Do not believe that possibly you can escape the reward of your action. – Ralph Waldo Emerson. #quote @EmersonRalphyW

I’ve underlined some of the metaphors.  Scientists and linguists are realising how fundamental metaphors are for us to speak.  Clean Language coaching uses questions that often explore the metaphors we use.  This is the coaching method I use to help people overcome low self esteem.  To build confidence.  To grow taller. Metaphors abound.  Images hidden in words.

Please comment or retweet if you liked this post.  I’d be interested in your comments about metaphors you notice too.

Someone on twitter says:

• Will women ever be able to trust themselves or have enough self esteem to acknowledge that their doubts are usually right??!

Brian says:

There are three parts to this I’d like to comment on.

How can women acknowledge what is true?

Are women’s doubts usually right?

How does this affect women’s self esteem?

How you answer the questions can have quite an effect on your self esteem.

Let’s take the first question; How can women acknowledge what is true?

We tell ourselves a lot of things in the day.  “We’ll get there on time.” “It’ll be OK.”  “I look well wearing this.”  “He doesn’t like me.”

Let’s pick up on the last one.  “He doesn’t like me.”  A good coach can ask you questions about it.  I’ll imagine a conversation.

Coach: And how do you know he doesn’t like you?

Client: He doesn’t look at me much and he didn’t offer me a drink when I finished mine.

Coach: And he didn’t look at you and didn’t offer you a drink.  And is there anything else about him?

Client: He should have offered me a drink.

Coach: And he didn’t look at you much and didn’t offer you a drink. And is there anything else about him?

Client: He did say he had a bad day and had damaged his car.  Maybe he was distracted.

Now, by asking very simple questions, the coach has gently found out more about the situation and started to find evidence that both challenges the first conclusion and supports other opinions.  This coaching process encourages the client to separate out their opinions from objective facts.  It also allows them to acknowledge whatever they know, feel, sense as intuition or sense physically.  People know things in these different ways, and the coach allows them to acknowledge what they know and to separate it from their conclusions.

The client is gathering evidence that supports new interpretations of the situation.

• He damaged his car and is obsessed with it.  This has nothing to do with how attractive I am.
• He might like me but is too distracted right now.

So this is a way to acknowledge what is true (what you know, sense, have intuition about) and to be able to separate it from what is an opinion, an interpretation or a conclusion.  The coaching technique here is called Clean Language and it’s great at helping a client understand what’s going on without confusing the issue with offering the coach’s own interpretations.

Are women’s doubts usually right?

That’s a pretty broad question.

What kind of doubt are those doubts?

How do you know if those doubts are right?

The original statements often change after some good questions.  “Men are bad” may change to “The guy last night was rude to me”.  “I won’t be able to convince my friend” may change to “I’ll have to give my friend a great reason to do what I want”.

This leads me to my re-interpretation of the question “Are women’s doubts usually right?”. “Women have enough evidence both to support and dismiss their doubts so they may want to find out a bit more about the situation.”  You may have a different way of saying it.

How does this affect women’s self esteem?

The “Clean Language” process here is about looking at the words, slowing things down and realising exactly when we jump to conclusions.  It’s a bit like showing you that jump and asking if you want to do that jump.  For some reason I’m reminded o the book title “Fear the fear and do it anyway”.  The author acknowledges a subjective truth of feeling fear and chooses to do it anyway.  There is self esteem in those choices.

Clean Language coaching helps clients separate out the feelings, the interpretations and the actions.  It still takes work and patience, but the results are impressive.

Will women ever be able to trust themselves or have enough self esteem to acknowledge that their doubts are usually right??!

How about:

When women acknowledge the truth, they will both trust themselves and have high self-esteem.

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