What
is Self-esteem?
Self-esteem definition pertaining to
the most straightforward meaning of how one evaluates oneself or one’s worth.
In other words, self-esteem refers to the overall refection of one’s self,
encompasses rigid beliefs and emotional response. Self-esteem helps the
individual to feel happiness or grief in response to rigid beliefs. The high
self-esteem leads to joy, self-acceptance and satisfaction with life. In
contrast, low self-esteem leads to many social, emotional, behavioural and
psychological issues.
In the current modern times, low
self-esteem is a common issue among people. The high level of competition in
academic, social, personal, and career life, people often compare themselves
with other people regardless of individual difference. These unfair comparisons
are the core cause of self-esteem. Furthermore, low self-esteem leads to
numerous other psychological issues. Therefore to boost self-esteem among
people is imperative in the current time. The present article provides several
techniques for assisting people in promoting their self-esteem.
Recognizing Low Self-esteem
The recognition of low self-esteem
is essential to boost high self-esteem. The low self-esteem often expresses in
three basic patterns.
Imposter syndrome
Imposter syndrome refers to false
confidence and accomplishment to mask the weakness of insecurities. A person
manifests false belief to depict the world that he is capable and not insecure
from any challenging situation. Unfortunately, deep down, they are full of
insecurities and loops. Similarly, the trends of tattoos on the body considered
the high status and modernism among female. A recent study recommends that the
females having tattoo’s on their bodies portrays high self-esteem as compared
to that female who does don’t have tattoos on the body. The women with tattoos
have low self-esteem; they use symbols and other techniques to feel superior or
different and rebellious from other people (Kertzman et al., 2019). Such people
think fear to reveal their true and flawed self. Therefore, they use
procrastination or perfectionism to deal with anxiety.
Rebellion
The core cause of low self-esteem is
the current social standards of beauty, status, and cross-cultural trends. The
media has set the standards for the beauty of female in particular weight and
body size. Therefore the overweight or underweight female evaluate themselves
incapable of meeting the standard of the beauty and experience low self-esteem.
As a result, they put on over makeup to look attractive or different or stop
taking an interest in their outer look and prefer to remain messy, or dirty. If
a female put on over makeup or spend extra time on beauty and adopt rebellious
hair cut or fashion often found to have low self-esteem. Similarly, according
to previous studies, the female doesn’t take care of herself and looks messy
and dirty encompasses low self-esteem.
Victimhood
The third expression of low
self-esteem is victimhood, which is common among females as compared to males.
The people who experience helpless in response to challenge manifest
self-pitiness and expect from other people to support them in the phase of
challenges.
Causes of low self-esteem
Multiple social and emotional
aspects lead to low self-esteem, a few are listed below.
Social Standards
The social standards in
socioeconomic status, beauty and fashion and develop esthetic senses which are
leading to low self-esteem among deprived people. Deprivation to meet beauty,
social and fashion standards, people feel low self-esteem.
Traumatic Experiences
Death of a family member, trauma and
mental and physical abuse are also one of the main reason for developing low
self-esteem. Rejection in Close relationship is the major cause of low
self-esteem. Failure at one stage of life leads to success at another stage of
life. Unfortunately, people don’t understand this dilemma and when they
confront any failure to develop low self-esteem. They start generalizing their
failure at each phase of life, and their belief of failure leads to
dissatisfaction with life and low self-esteem. Also, it develops the feeling of
victimization among people.
Sensitivity
Some people are very sensitive and
feel disappointment on minor failures and stressful situations. Oversensitivity
to minor issue leads to low self-esteem, for example, in response to criticism
or failure, they express low self-esteem.
Unrealistic Goals
Setting up unrealistic goals and
unable to achieve the desired outcome is another cause of low self-esteem. The
balance between goals and reality is imperative to maintain high self-esteem.
Impact of low self-esteem
The low self-esteem adversely
affects the life of the individual and swap away from the joy. They stop taking
an interest in pleasurable activities and becomes more self-centred. The low
self-esteem also deteriorates their productive life at school, home and
workplace. The low self-esteem leads to multiple mental or psychological issues
which are listed below.
Eating disorder
To meet the standard of beauty, people often develop an eating disorder. Furthermore, in the cases of stressful phase, they eat less or eat more to reduce their depressive states.Depression
The low self-esteem leads o
depression, as past studies revealed that people with low self-esteem report
depressive symptom. They lost taking an interest in daily activities, feel
depressed nearly every day and avoid joyful activities.
Social anxiety and Isolation
People with low self-esteem feel
severe anxiety in social gathering and prefer avoiding and escaping. The fear
of criticism leads to social anxiety. As they evaluate themselves incapable,
and experience fears to get exposed in front of other people. Such fear
develops extreme social anxiety, which further leads to many behavioural issues
such as isolation.
Dependency
Low self-esteem among people has
given rise to dependency. The people with low self-esteem experience
substantial dependency on others with the belief they cannot do anything
perfectly. The feeling of low self-esteem destroy their confidence to
accomplish any task, and they feel satisfied with the performance of other
people.
Anger
Low self-esteem is consistent with anger,
which is more common among males as compared to female. Females report internal
aggression while males express external aggression in response to low
self-esteem. Anger causes more behavioural and psychological issues such as to
conduct disorder and impulsiveness.
Low Self-esteem and Coping Strategies
The following are effective coping
strategies to boost high self-esteem. In the above example, low self-esteem has
been consistent with the social standard either for beauty status and cultural.
The following coping strategies have been elaborated accordingly.
Alteration of Cognitive Belief
The people ofte believe that beauty is
based on the outer look, but the fact is beauty represent your self-image
created by the cultural standard. How you compare yourself with beauty standard
define your esteem level. Usually, people develop a negative self and body
image. As a result, manifest low self-esteem. I am writing down three aspects
of your physical features and three aspects of behaviour. Behavioural aspects
could be I’m a creative person. I can write well. Or i am a hard worker and
loyal person. Now put the list in order of priorities. The order will help you
understand what is more important to you. The physical feature or behavioural
characteristic; also, it will help to understand that beauty is just one aspect
of personality and behaviour is much more for social communication and
interaction. This exercise will help you understand that we are worst
self-critic than other people.
Have you ever checked the validity of the remarks you got from other people? Look into the mirror and remind those sentences which you heard about yourself from other people. Now
validate it did they say write stuff? Always remember we can always shift our self-image by practising consistent internal dialogue. Instead of practice self-criticism, practice positive statements in the form of internal dialogue. This technique would help you to change your attitude,
belief and behaviour. Also, this technique helps you to develop high self-esteem.
Avoiding Comparison
The people always compare themselves with others in academic achievement, career, social status
and economic status. Life is full of diversity; people are different in terms of religion, caste, sex, sect, social status and appearance. The beauty of life is in diversity if all people would wear the same colour, eat the same food, look-alike, the beauty of life would disappear. Therefore people need to
understand that diversity should be accepted. People are different but equal in
one or the other way. The mindfulness for such acceptance leads to high self-esteem.
Channel your inner Rockstar
Can you judge a fish by her inability to climb a tree? Of course, you cannot because climbing a tree
isn’t a speciality of a fish. You can judge her by her ability to swim in the water. Similarly, you cannot judge yourself with others because they have different skills and specialities, and comparison with them leads to anxiety stress and depressed mood. To boost your self-esteem, identify your inner
rockstar, in what areas you are good ad how you can achieve the success and make more progress.
Exercise
Exercises, meditation and relaxation techniques are very effective, practice such activities on a daily basis to enhance your self-esteem.