On the one hand, people with low self-esteem have a very poor opinion of themselves. But on the other hand, they believe that the entire world is permanently concentrated on them, observing their every move, trying to catch them in some gaffe.
I find it impossible to comprehend how they can simultaneously hold the belief that they are worthless pieces of rubbish and that the rest of the universe has nothing better to do than obsess about them all day long.
Clarissa's Blog 
Best I can come up with by way of an explanation, go to this URL, and do a search (ctrl-F on most browsers) on “no-good shits”
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I think this is only a subset of the set of people with low self esteem. Many such people believe that no one has any interest at all in seeing or hearing them, and do their best to avoid any interaction at all.
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But isn’t the idea behind avoiding contact “if I show my face outside, everybody will think I’m fat / ugly / stupid”?
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But isn’t the idea behind avoiding contact “if I show my face outside, everybody will think I’m fat / ugly / stupid”?
I don’t think so. It is more like: I must not presume to disturb anyone when they have more important things to do. I know people who would never write a letter to an author they like for precisely this reason.
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I kinda have self-esteem issues, so maybe I could explain – when I get in my moods, I’m normally convinced everyone is a sadist and enjoys watching me fail, so they’re gonna look for flaws in me every chance they get. Then I get afraid because I think they’ll find them.
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But why do you care about the opinions of such nasty sadistic characters? Also, why should they waste time on observing such a flawed individual?
(I obviously don’t think you are flawed. I’m just trying to understand the logic. This is something I need for my personal life.)
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Well, like I said, I’m normally convinced that they enjoy watching others fail, which is why they’d only observe the people who they expect to fail.
The reason I care about these peoples’ opinions is because, although I’m filled with all this self loathing, I’m still shallow as all hell and all I want is recognition. I want to fit in with these people That’s why I get so anxious when I think I’m not good enough to fit in.
You could say that social validation from these people wouldnt really be worth much at all, if these people even exist in the first place… and, well, you’d be right. But the problem is I’m normally so overwhelmed by my feelings that I wouldn’t listen to that kind of reason, which is why self-esteem is an issue for me. I couldn’t just say,”Oh, this belief is irrational, I should just discard it.” As much as I’d like to. I’d expect this is the case for a lot of other people with anxiety issues, but at the end of the day I can only really speak for myself.
So I guess what I’m saying is, in an extremely verbose and convoluted sense, is that you should give up trying to understand the logic because there isn’t really much there. 😛
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“I’m still shallow as all hell and all I want is recognition. I want to fit in with these people”
– Ah, here is the self-deprecation, I recognize it! It turns on pretty much right after one says “I”, right? Is it a little like “I should immediately list everything that is bad about myself to defend myself from others criticizing me”?
” I couldn’t just say,”Oh, this belief is irrational, I should just discard it.” As much as I’d like to. ”
– I know! If only one could just talk oneself out of this.
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It could also be like this – because they think their flaws are larger-than-life (and because they focus so much on those flaws), they feel that people can’t help but notice everything wrong about them. It’s not necessarily that they think they’re the center of the universe. It’s just that everything about them must be so wrong that it’s the equivalent of a rotting limb or a rank smell whenever they walk down the street or talk to people, who must be reacting with disgust/disapproval.
Some people with low self-esteem also magnify the flaws in other people too, especially if they have a tendency to measure themselves against others to see how far they fall short (or in some cases surpass) others (part of how they try to fit in socially). Because they might look for and obsess about the shortcomings in everyone around them as well, they mistakenly think that everyone is doing the same thing to them.
It can also be a mental habit. If for instance they grew up in a home where they were closely scrutinized and excessively criticized or punished every day for every little thing they did “wrong”, they can think everyone is like that, even if they logically tell themselves that most people don’t care enough to scrutinize them.
And there are some people with low self-esteem who wallow in it and feel self-important about it in a strange way (because it’s the core definition of who they are), feeling lowly but also wanting everyone to know just how lowly they are (“this is who I am, I’ll never change, pity me, I’m the eternally down-trodden, loathed by everyone”) And then when people react with contempt, it just confirms to them that they’re unworthy and feeds more into the picture of themselves as irredeemably unlovable and unfortunate, and this they use as an excuse to never ever change because it’s just who they are.
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I don’t think it works that way …
Most people I would say have low self esteem seem to believe that they will be judged to be inadequate when judged, so they avoid situations where they can be judged. For example a person with body image issues will avoid going to the pool because they’re afraid people will think less of them; they don’t go to the pool and believe that everyone is judging them harshly.
Usually, if the person can get over their self esteem problems to actually do what they’re afraid of they tend to realize that people care far less than they feared.
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I know one can get really desperate dealing with people with low self-esteem.
But the problem is that this cannot be rationally explained. Self-esteem has little to do with logic anyway, whether it is low or high. It is known that ‘normal’ people have a tendency to overestimate both their abilities and the positive impression they make on others.
Slightly depressed people are the most realistic, severely depressed or anxious people are so negative that they are unrealistic again… They have a distorted self-image, like anorexic people have who think they are fat and are slowly killing themselves. It is a psychological illness, which has a very bad impact on people’s life long-term, so it should not be taken too lightly and should not be left untreated. Otherwise it can easily lead to depression — not surprisingly, since people with low self-esteem will not stand up for themselves, which is very bad for one’s soul.
The only way out is really to accept help. Behavioral therapy has been proved to work well with such issues. There is no digging in the past involved and the therapies are very standardized. It seems to be a condition that can be treated relatively easily compared to other psychological problems.
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” Behavioral therapy has been proved to work well with such issues. There is no digging in the past involved ”
– How can that be? How can one resolve an issue without addressing its causes?
“Slightly depressed people are the most realistic”
– This sounds like you are advocating depression.:-)
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“- How can that be? How can one resolve an issue without addressing its causes?”
I don’t know why it is like this. But if I google ‘treatment for social anxiety’, I find many different sources claiming CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) is the most effective treatment. To me it makes some sense. I am very much in favour of psychotherapy for many issues, but to overcome phobias, psychotherapy has not helped me… even if I know the cause of my phobia exactly, it remains unchanged. Fear carves deep pathways into the brain and they can only be altered by actual confrontation, which I imagine is what CBT does more than psychotherpay.
“- This sounds like you are advocating depression.”
No, I am not… 🙂 Depression is a bad thing. I don’t think realism is more important than mental health.
That is just an interesting finding from some studies (e.g. here: http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xge/108/4/441/).
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“- How can that be? How can one resolve an issue without addressing its causes?”
The causes often are versions of things my parents and friends told me or did to me long ago that I replay in my head, altered for whatever situation I’m in now. Without a time machine to go back and tell those people that they’re full of shit, there isn’t much I can do about the causes. Yeah, I can go back and tell the people now that they were full of shit then, but often they don’t even remember what they said or did.
Cognitive behavior therapy focuses on ways to stop the tape reel in my head and tell it that it’s full of shit rather than focusing on how the tape reel was made originally.
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“Cognitive behavior therapy focuses on ways to stop the tape reel in my head and tell it that it’s full of shit rather than focusing on how the tape reel was made originally.”
– But that was precisely my question: how can you make it stop without addressing the way it first appeared in your head? I’m really curious about this.
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As a practical matter, the therapies don’t ask someone to go back and find the source of the tape recording but ask someone to notice as quickly as possible when the recording starts to play and to interrupt it — often by writing the messages down — and writing down why the thought is ridiculous and a realistic assessment of the situation. The behavioral part of it also asks someone to do what is dreaded and assess whether the result is as bad as expected. It doesn’t prevent the thoughts or dread from happening, which I think is what you are looking for, but with practice, it does reduce trust in those thoughts and feelings when they happen.
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Very interesting! Thank you for explaining how this works.
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As a practical matter, the therapies don’t ask someone to go back and find the source of the tape recording but ask someone to notice as quickly as possible when the recording starts to play and to interrupt it — often by writing the messages down — and writing down why the thought is ridiculous and a realistic assessment of the situation.
That’s actually a pretty good explanation of it.
I’ve seen that in a lot of non-professional efforts (as in not therapists and head doctors) the advice is to not dwell on those past pains but instead tips on things like to to tell yourself you aren’t a screwup and when a bad thought comes to mind to dispell it with something positive.
I’m a big fan of going back to the beginning of things to figure out why they are there. Which is probably why I have such a hard time efforts to boost myself up….
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“I’m a big fan of going back to the beginning of things to figure out why they are there. ”
– I am, too. What can be more important than understanding oneself?
” when a bad thought comes to mind to dispell it with something positive”
– And welcome kidney stones, hypertension and a whole bouquet of other diseases!
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Well, this is a little hard to explain. I am someone with low self-esteem. I don’t necessarily think the world is concentrated on me, but I feel like people would notice any little annoying thing I do and then hate me. And it’s not like I can easily dismiss their opinions because I feel like *anyone* who has an opinion of me at all will have a negative one. You know how there are those people who everyone finds annoying; they don’t like to hang out with those people, but they do so because the people are constantly inserting themselves into whatever’s going on? I feel like I may be one of those people.
I also sometimes feel I’m not noticeable, though, because I’m very dull. And no one has a positive or negative opinion of me; it’s like I may as well not exist. Also, I’m afraid that my presence might bother people.
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I recently read a very helpful l description about social anxiety, which went something like this:
‘Most people believe that they are the spectator in a theatre, and everyone else is on stage. They have fun watching and criticizing the actors. Socially anxious people feel like they are the actor, and everyone else is watching them and judging them.’
Since I have read this, I am sometimes trying to pretend I am the spectator. I direct all my concentration away from myself and from how well I am performing, and direct it towards the others I am talking with. I really watch them, as if I was the one judging them, and not the other way round. You should try it sometime…. it makes a huge difference.
When I do this, I suddenly see how other people are trying to make a good impression on me, trying to please me, how they are a little nervous too. But you cannot see it while you are obsessing on the impression you are making, and with that, you further distort the image you have of yourself and the world, thinking everyone else is at ease and knows how to behave….
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This sounds right to me. Extreme self-consciousness is an issue I struggle with, even when people are actively praising me. I have this comic taped up on my wall to remind me not to worry so much:
http://www.viruscomix.com/page481.html
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Amazing comic! :)) I need to tape this to my wall as well.
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Interesting. Although because of my low self-esteem, I often think there’s no way anyone cares if they make a good impression on me. On others, sure. But me? Sometimes I don’t know.
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I wonder if Western individuality is such a burden, that it tends to lead to low self-esteem. The individual against the world is a disproportionate affair.
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This is not an “individual vs world” issue. This is an “individual vs parents who don’t love their child issue.” Whether one is Eastern, Western, Southern or Northern make zero difference.
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Maybe that is a large part of it — the parental attitude issue. I also think that social isolation makes the role of parents more important than it has to be.
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What do you mean by “social isolation”?
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I think if kids have a lot of peers to play with, the effect of the parents might be circumscribed. You see it with African kids.They don’t relate too much to the parents, so long as they are with their peers.
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“I think if kids have a lot of peers to play with, the effect of the parents might be circumscribed. ”
– Parents can easily make their child incapable of playing with other kids if they have the goal of isolating her. That was my situation, for example.
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Yes, it can happen, but it is harder to produce that effect in African societies.
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Not sure if it comes across in this, and I have to return to teaching in a couple of minutes, but you might be able to see that the way Africans relate to each other is very lateral. No standing alone and not much contrivance to be individuals. Just checking what their peers are doing and going with the vibe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEERsi9MhDo&feature=relmfu
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I do like how your blog brings up these self-reflective questions 🙂 Certainly struggling with a similar issue right now… so let me add this thought.
For me, I am successful by most other people’s definition (at least from a career standpoint) but am pretty unhappy where I am at. Since I know that I am underachieving, as well as dealing with other personal issues/situations I feel like I’m often a piece of crap. So part of the reason i feel like everyone is judging me is because I think they must think: “well of course this guy is a schmuck… look how much he is underachieving”. When in reality, they don’t give it too much thought, partially because they don’t nearly know me as well as I do.
Not sure if its clear, but I guess the point is when you have a thought process that results in low self-esteem and happiness with your spot, any time you interact with others is another chance to have to face your thoughts.
Do I owe you a bill for this chance to be self-reflective? 🙂 lol
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“Do I owe you a bill for this chance to be self-reflective?”
– Ni, I think I owe you for being exposed to this insightful analysis. This is very interesting about interactions with others being about the need to face your own vision of yourself. It’s like seeing your thoughts reflected as if in a mirror. I need to think about this.
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I have the opposite sensation. People can’t reflect me back to myself. Sometimes, they reflect visions of me that I can’t make any sense of — and then, I write a book about it. 😉
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“I have the opposite sensation. People can’t reflect me back to myself. Sometimes, they reflect visions of me that I can’t make any sense of ”
– It’s because you don’t suffer from this issue. I don’t either which is why it’s very important for me to understand people who do.
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No, I don’t suffer from low self esteem and never have. I do suffer from the sense that people are generally a bit weird, and crazy. I think it has to do with investment in self-image. I tried to get with the program and invest in a self-image for a while, so that I could be part of contemporary Western culture, but I’m an abject failure at that. I do easily fit into collectivist (Japanese, Zimbabwean) cultures, psychologically, if not socially.
Here is another example of African children playing. How do they differ from the ways Western children navigate the playground?
http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/african-children-playing.html
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“I do suffer from the sense that people are generally a bit weird, and crazy.”
– 🙂 🙂 At least twice a day I say, “People are weird!”
“How do they differ from the ways Western children navigate the playground?”
– I wouldn’t be able to know because I was isolated from any such experiences as a child. 😦 Maybe anybody else can tell us?
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Ok. Here are some urban Zimbabwean women at a women’s hostel, where I taught self-defence. How do they differ from Western women in similar learning contexts?
http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/zimbabwean-women.html
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Everybody looks very happy. 🙂
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Not only that, they are elated; manic.
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But it’s not an individualist vs collectivist distinction. My people would stand there super self-consciously with fake smiles and feeling extremely uncomfortable and miserable. And we are a collectivist society where concepts such as self-esteem, individual, personal space and privacy cause nothing but surprise and laughter.
That’s why my people drink so much. That’s the only way to relax.
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Maybe it’s an individualist versus shamanist distinction. In my upbringing, it felt like surging. We — all of us — would suddenly experience the same vibe, and then we would … surge. It’s possible to break out in song, or to engage in some other form of mimicry, or kind of building on each other’s mood with more and more outrageous statements.
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I think Muster is on to something in regards to the individual and collective ideas. Here is a joke for most of us Westerners.
“They had a meeting for functional families and only two showed up. They were both in Denial”. 🙂
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When I lived in a collectivist society, I hardly noticed my father’s strange behaviour at all — although he was often violent, had weird projections and would suddenly lash out. But, after migration, there was nothing to mitigate the weirdness. Also, nobody believed me about it — nobody.
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I agree with Matt. We project our own thought processes onto the world, it is impossible not to do so. If I am hostile to myself, I start viewing the world and the people as hostile. People who hate everyone else usually hate themselves.
It all starts and ends with the relationship one has with oneself.
Unfortunately for some of us, we tend to treat ourselves like our parents treated us
… which again is related to the relationship the parent had with him/herself.
Low self-esteem is thus transported over the generations into eternity if we don’t stop it…
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“It all starts and ends with the relationship one has with oneself.
Unfortunately for some of us, we tend to treat ourselves like our parents treated us
… which again is related to the relationship the parent had with him/herself.
Low self-esteem is thus transported over the generations into eternity if we don’t stop it…”
– You are absolutely completely and totally right.
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For a portion of my life (and, when I was younger, this portion constituted the majority of my life), I was bullied by the majority of my classmates and by my sibling. This meant that the majority of people I came into contact with were in fact permanently concentrated on me, observing my every move, and trying to catch me in some gaffe. I had years of solid empirical evidence backing up that idea, and it wasn’t until years later that I even began accumulating evidence to the contrary.
It also stands to reason that, since my bullies were so focused on nitpicking me, they would also assume that others are focused on nitpicking them. (If you notice flaws in others, why would you think they’d be blind to the same flaws in you?) Since whatever drove them to do this was coming from within, it probably took even longer to get rid of it.
So if you multiply this by the bullies and victims in every schoolyard across the country, you’ve got a significant number of people who have every reason to believe that they are being scrutinized and judged.
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This sounds absolutely horrifying. But it explains a lot. The person who inspired this post was also a victim of vicious bullying for years.
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I’m a person with low self-esteem and I definitely don’t think everyone is concentrating on me and my flaws. On the contrary, I don’t believe that anybody gives much of a fuck about me at all.
Take that as you will.
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