# What is Self-Esteem and How Can I Get It?



## truant (Jul 4, 2014)

Having good self-esteem is important for everyone. If you have SA, you've probably often had people tell you that you need to work on improving your self-esteem. So what, exactly, is self-esteem? And how do you "work" on it? How do you get it, and how do you lose it?

This thread is for active discussion about this topic. Feel free to share your own experiences and ideas, but remember that this is in the Positive Thinking forum, so the emphasis is on helping each other gain self-esteem.

*My Understanding of Self-Esteem 
*
I'll start. Here's my understanding of self-esteem:

Self-esteem is not a "thing" that you have, it's an emotional response to a particular kind of thought. If you do something you're proud of, you experience positive self-esteem; if you do something you're ashamed of, you experience negative self-esteem. Self-esteem isn't a "bank" that you make deposits to, it's a consequence of having certain thoughts about yourself, and it can change constantly and drastically.

Of course, you remember having these thoughts and the emotional response that you had to them, so you accumulate a memory of all the times you felt good and all the times you felt bad and this accumulated sense of how often you feel good or bad about yourself is what you think of when people talk about self-esteem. If you often have thoughts about being a failure, you'll remember having all these thoughts and tell people that you have low self-esteem.

So how do you correct your self-esteem? People often tell you to "be positive", but if you have negative thoughts about yourself because you *do* often fail at things you attempt, how can you correct your self-esteem without lying to yourself?

In my experience, there are two basic ways to improve your self-esteem that don't involve lying to yourself. First, by working at things until you start to succeed, at which point you will begin to have positive thoughts about yourself and your accomplishments; and second, by reframing your experiences so that you're focusing on the positive aspects instead of the negative.

The first is the way that most people gain and lose self-esteem. It's natural to feel good about your accomplishments and bad about your failures. Those accomplishments can be anything: acquiring a skill or getting a job or just being a nice person. Working at and succeeding at things is guaranteed to improve your self-esteem as long as you understand the second part, reframing.

Many people who have succeeded at things still have poor self-esteem because they frame their success in a way that invalidates their own efforts. They attribute their success to luck or compare themselves to others who are more successful than themselves. Accomplishment, by itself, isn't enough, you need to understand how reframing works to validate or invalidate your accomplishments.

Some people have issues with reframing and consider it more or less the same as lying to yourself, but it's not. It's not saying "I succeeded" when you failed; it's saying "at least I tried". In that case, you're not thinking of yourself as a failure, but as someone who is trying to get better, which has a different impact on your self-esteem.

There is nothing magical about self-esteem. It's just a consequence of your behavior (succeeding or failing at things) and the way that you frame your successes and failures. By working consistently at things and always framing things in a way that emphasizes the positive over the negative, you can "generate" your own self-esteem (positive thoughts about yourself).

I used to have terrible self-esteem, but by using these techniques (and another, which I won't talk about in this thread) I've given myself excellent self-esteem (too much, lol). I still have areas of my life that need a bit of work, but for the most part I've made drastic improvements to my self-esteem through my own efforts.

What do you think self-esteem is, and how have you gained or lost it?


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## jeanny (Apr 17, 2014)

I'm trying to hypnotize myself. That should work...


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## Neo1234 (Mar 6, 2012)

Great post! Thats all I wanna say.


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## Slyshyguy (Oct 16, 2014)

truant said:


> [/B]
> Many people who have succeeded at things still have poor self-esteem because they frame their success in a way that invalidates their own efforts. They attribute their success to luck or compare themselves to others who are more successful than themselves. Accomplishment, by itself, isn't enough, you need to understand how reframing works to validate or invalidate your accomplishments.


This is true for me. I've had a very low self esteem all my life and I've just recently starting working on my mental. I had done of a bit of work prior to now but nothing too serious. I watched a bunch of positive thinking videos on youtube really focusing on my inner game and its helped a lot but I've just recently realized something huge about myself so let me tell you 

I'm 24 now, I was a virgin until 20 and approaching girls for me was impossible. They were way too powerful and I was scared. I started reading the book The Game which I'm sure everyone knows it by now and everyone knows all of the pick up artist stuff that you can easily find online.

Anyway I started reading a bunch of that stuff and it really helped me in getting girls and it really boosted my self esteem, self confidence... but not for long. That's the thing, all of the stuff I had learned wasn't anything concrete. It was just illusions. I was trying to be alpha when in fact I am not alpha. And deep inside I hated myself for not being a natural... until now.

I've just started to really accept myself the way I am. I've just recently started to accept what I love, what I want, what I need. I'm a beta male and I'm just a very nice guy. All my life I've had this perception that you need to roar like a lion and step on other peoples toes to be respected and admired and I hated myself for being that guy who was getting all nervous that maybe I was playing my music too loud or maybe I wasn't driving fast enough for the car behind me or feeling like I was bothering everyone I was talking to.

For a while I had a very polarized self esteem. I was either too high or too low and very rarely in the middle but most of all I was most often very low. Along with that I also had a huge ego and it cost me relationships so it was tough for me. I never had parents, I grew up with very little mental help. And today I'm proud of myself.

Thinking patterns that used to be,

I'm the worst
I don't deserve to
I'm ugly
I'm not as smart as him/her
I'll never be...
and so much more...

Now I'm more saying stuff like

I lost, I had fun playing and its okay
Why shouldn't I deserve this?
I'm not the best looking guy but I do just fine, love is everywhere
I may not be as smart as him or her but I'm smart in my own way (etc)
I might not ever be this or that but whatever happens I'm sure I will be happy with myself

I'm trying to be the best I can be! I'm a type 1 diabetic and its very hard to manage but I eat super healthy! I go to the gym 4 times a week and I take care of myself, believe in myself. I am my biggest supporter and whenever I want to spread love with the outside world I love myself even more.

When I wake up in a bad mood (happens quite a bit :mum) I restructure my thinking and I tell myself hurry up and spread love. I go see a room mate "did u sleep well? want some coffee?" I'm not a sucker I'm just a lover, I like a bunch of girly stuff and I like to gossip and talk about feelings and thats fine. I want to be who I really am. I don't want to be afraid to tell anyone what I like and what I want to do.


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## Cenarius (Aug 2, 2014)

Problem: how do you reframe your experiences? I can say the words "At least I tried, I should feel proud" but that doesn't mean my brain, emotionally, is going to accept those words as true.


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## Blue Sponge (Sep 22, 2014)

I learned this by doing CBT. How I got myself to believe in positive thoughts was telling myself that if I don’t, I’m robbing myself of the chance to succeed. In CBT there’s a thing called a “negative core belief”. We tend to think that our views are formed by the brain collecting factual evidence, but what the brain does is look for evidence that already fits our pre-existing beliefs. The brain is lazy like that. Anyway, once I allowed myself to have a positive belief, I started looking for evidence to reinforce it, and eventually I did manage some success which I also took as evidence to further reinforce my belief.

The thing is, in the real world, effort is not always rewarded with success. Sometimes you need luck, sometimes you just lack talent/genetics. The real world sucks. The drawback of relying on the first way is that if you fail, you loose self esteem. When you start believing that you are a loser, you’re always going to be a failure, etc, your behaviour will reflect that, and you’re pretty much shooting yourself in the foot before you start anything. 

So for me, my belief came first. I don’t think of it as lying to myself. Or I’d rather lie to myself than give myself zero chances of succeeding. The latter is, imo, a much worse thing that you can do to yourself. 

I started believing things like “I’m not a loser”, and “I’m not socially awkward”, and it worked, to an extent. It also became easier to reframe things to suit this new world view. I can’t undo twenty years’ worth of negative core beliefs in the space of a year, obviously, so I feel I’m not quite there yet. But I did end up having much more self-esteem than I had originally.


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## P1e2 (Jan 18, 2014)

Self esteem to me means I tried a new job and I succeeded at it. Or it means I pushed myself a little bit past my comfort zone and succeeded and I can say "yes I can do that again successfully." And I wish I could stand up to past bullies tactfully and tell them whats what and move on gracefully and with dignity. That would be the best kind of self esteem for me.


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## truant (Jul 4, 2014)

jeanny said:


> I'm trying to hypnotize myself. That should work...


Hypnosis is something you can do in addition to developing skills and reframing your experience. I'm working with self-hypnosis as well.



sonny680 said:


> Great post! Thats all I wanna say.


Thanks, sonny680. 



Slyshyguy said:


> I started reading a bunch of that stuff and it really helped me in getting girls and it really boosted my self esteem, self confidence... but not for long. That's the thing, all of the stuff I had learned wasn't anything concrete. It was just illusions. I was trying to be alpha when in fact I am not alpha. And deep inside I hated myself for not being a natural... until now.
> 
> I've just started to really accept myself the way I am. I've just recently started to accept what I love, what I want, what I need. I'm a beta male and I'm just a very nice guy. All my life I've had this perception that you need to roar like a lion and step on other peoples toes to be respected and admired and I hated myself for being that guy who was getting all nervous that maybe I was playing my music too loud or maybe I wasn't driving fast enough for the car behind me or feeling like I was bothering everyone I was talking to.


Thanks for sharing Slyshyguy.

I think terms like "alpha" or "beta" just impose restrictions on the way that you imagine yourself. There's no reason why you couldn't have a mix of both alpha and beta traits. What's important is that you go after the traits that are important to you, personally.

I think you're "untrue" to yourself when you go after things that you don't really want. If you want to be a particular way, it's not untrue to pursue it, even if you don't see a lot of it in yourself at the moment. I'm very shy, but I don't _want _to be shy, so I don't feel like trying to be more social is being "untrue" to myself.



Cenarius said:


> Problem: how do you reframe your experiences? I can say the words "At least I tried, I should feel proud" but that doesn't mean my brain, emotionally, is going to accept those words as true.


Reframing is sort of tricky because people confuse it with positive thinking. They overlap, but they're not the same thing. Reframing is all about choosing which part of an experience to focus on. With reframing, you never add something to an experience that isn't already there. If you try something and fail and you *don't* feel proud of the attempt, telling yourself that you _should _feel proud is just going to make you feel bad for not feeling proud; you're trying to add something to the experience that isn't there, which is why your brain won't accept it emotionally. Some people, on some level, _will _feel proud, though, and for those people, focusing on the feeling of pride is a useful way to reframe it.

Almost every experience has positive and negative aspects, but many people have trained themselves to only look at the negative aspects. They see anything that doesn't go perfectly as a failure, even if they gained something useful from it. So maybe you tried to get a girl's number and you failed and you don't feel proud about trying. How can you reframe that? Well, was there any part of that experience that you thought you did well? Did you learn anything at all from that experience?

Picking up women is just a skill, like learning how to play pool. You don't become a pool shark by playing a half-dozen games. You keep playing and playing and playing and you learn everything you can from each game. If you just think: "Well, I lost that game, too. I just suck. I'll never be good at this game" then that's exactly what you'll get. The good pool players are the ones who know how to reframe. They think: "Well, I lost that game, but I made that one really good shot. Maybe I can do that again." There's no lying involved, no attempt to "be positive", just a choice to focus on what was good about the experience instead of what was bad. The first pool player is just going to give up, the second one is going to play another game to see if he can make that shot again. I'm guessing that a lot of the people who are really successful do this automatically: they just always focus on what went well and keep trying to outdo themselves, they don't focus on their failures.

The other thing is, you don't have to reframe everything. If you screw something up and you can't see anything positive in it, then just let yourself wallow for a bit. As long as you're reframing in other areas of your life, it's going to start bleeding over into the areas where you're having problems. Maybe you suck at interacting with women but you're reframing really well when it comes to your career. At some point, you discover that you've got money and a nice car and a good job and women just start being more interested in you. Or maybe you're teaching yourself how to play the guitar, or you're working out a lot. You don't have to turn everything into a battle; just focus on those areas where you do feel like you have some control. Over time, you'll learn how to reframe experiences that seem impossible to you right now.

The important thing is to just be aware that _you're reframing all the time_. Every thought that you have is just a way of framing an experience. If you ask for a girl's number, you can frame that as a failure, or you can frame it as something else. No one frame is "more true" than any other frame, they're just different aspects of the same experience. There's really little point framing experiences in a negative way because those kinds of frames only lead you to feel bad about yourself or restrict yourself. Since you're going to give your experience a frame anyway, it might as well be a frame that makes you feel better about yourself and that gives you motivation to keep trying and improving. That's using your brain constructively instead of self-destructively.


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## truant (Jul 4, 2014)

Blue Sponge said:


> I learned this by doing CBT. How I got myself to believe in positive thoughts was telling myself that if I don't, I'm robbing myself of the chance to succeed. In CBT there's a thing called a "negative core belief". *We tend to think that our views are formed by the brain collecting factual evidence, but what the brain does is look for evidence that already fits our pre-existing beliefs.* The brain is lazy like that. Anyway, *once I allowed myself to have a positive belief, I started looking for evidence to reinforce it, and eventually I did manage some success which I also took as evidence to further reinforce my belief.*


The bold stuff is really important. No matter what your thought is, your brain will do its best to find evidence to support it. This evidence-gathering nature of the brain is what creates distortions of perception. If you think you're a failure, your brain will automatically begin looking for evidence to support it, and ignoring evidence that contradicts it. The first thing it does is go over all your memories of failing. Then it will "encourage" you to keep failing so that your belief is constantly being reinforced. The same thing happens with positive beliefs, which is why you should believe positive things about yourself even if you don't have much evidence to support them. That's positive thinking, in a nutshell.



Blue Sponge said:


> The thing is, in the real world, effort is not always rewarded with success. Sometimes you need luck, sometimes you just lack talent/genetics. The real world sucks. *The drawback of relying on the first way is that if you fail, you loose self esteem.* When you start believing that you are a loser, you're always going to be a failure, etc, your behaviour will reflect that, and you're pretty much shooting yourself in the foot before you start anything.


You're absolutely right. Relying on the first way alone is not enough. I think that's why it's important to reframe "failure" as something else. As learning or trying to get better.



P1e2 said:


> Self esteem to me means I tried a new job and I succeeded at it. Or it means I pushed myself a little bit past my comfort zone and succeeded and I can say "yes I can do that again successfully." And *I wish I could stand up to past bullies tactfully and tell them whats what and move on gracefully and with dignity*. That would be the best kind of self esteem for me.


When I think about people like that, I like to remind myself that success is the best revenge.


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## cosmicslop (Nov 24, 2012)

Great post, truant. Every time I thought I was building self esteem, it would crumble. I guess my foundation of self-esteem isn't great because I'm not reframing my experiences effectively. I need to shift the focus of the right things. I'll keep that in mind about correcting self-esteem rather than gaining or losing it. That's a very insightful way of putting it.


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## Slyshyguy (Oct 16, 2014)

I agree truant, good stuff.


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## ScorchedEarth (Jul 12, 2014)

Hoo boy, this topic. I've given it a lot of thought so far. I've never agreed with the notion that high self-esteem is a must-have to be happy. To me, it's dangerously close to arrogance, certainly a stepping-stone. When I hear someone bragging, I instantly dislike them. I feel that humility is much more admirable and, to me, much easier to get along with. The only thing to watch out for is that you don't sell yourself so short that you feel you can't do anything. As long as you're not limiting yourself, humility is far preferable to this vaunted self-esteem, as far as I'm concerned.

I actually go in the opposite direction. For my own thoughts, I actually make a point of reinforcing the negativity. I do consider myself ugly, and fairly dumb, and boring, etc. Now would I do that? Here are the reasons:

1. It prevents me from becoming complacent. I find that when I was OK with how I was, there was simply no impetus to improve. 

2. I pre-empt and neutralize any criticism, insults or put-downs. You'd be very hard-pressed to find ways to attack my ego that I don't already use constantly.

3. Humility, in my mind, is one of the most admirable traits to have. I feel comfortable with people who are meek and don't self-aggrandize, while I find boisterous confidence downright threatening. So it's only fair that I follow that pattern myself.

Now, all that said, it's not a simple matter of spewing insults at myself all day, every day, and believing them without question. I have to balance it with reality and utility. Take my reflexes for example. I feel, and have some reason to believe, that I'm fast to react to sudden changes without thinking. But you won't ever hear me bragging about it, you'd have to phrase your questions very specifically to make me say that I have good reflexes, and I constantly remind myself that they are not the best, they never will be, and that I'll probably never have a practical use for them. I just keep it all hush-hush and let others reach their own conclusions.

I'm sure it's true that when you hide your abilities like that or downplay them, you'll be handicapped when it comes to opportunities. That's fine by me. That's not self-limitation, it's limitation imposed by others who are conditioned to an society of self-aggrandizement and egocentricity. As always, sticking by my principles comes first. And I'll be the first to admit I'm stubborn as a mule, especially when my self-perception is being challenged.


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## BlazingLazer (Jul 16, 2011)

Cenarius said:


> Problem: how do you reframe your experiences? I can say the words "At least I tried, I should feel proud" but that doesn't mean my brain, emotionally, is going to accept those words as true.


I'm glad you brought this up. This is a HUGE problem for me. There have been countless experiences I've had the past few years that weren't the most positive. And even though I know deep down that most of the negative experiences aren't a big deal, I somehow can't sync that to the emotional part of my brain to accept that. Which is why I still continue to feel bad about most experiences.

What do I do about that?


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## BlazingLazer (Jul 16, 2011)

Also, I enjoy reading your posts, truant. It's genuinely refreshing to see positive, realistic posts that lack the nonsense fluff that a lot of other "positive" posters here try to push.


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## truant (Jul 4, 2014)

cosmicslop said:


> Great post, truant. Every time I thought I was building self esteem, it would crumble. I guess my foundation of self-esteem isn't great because I'm not reframing my experiences effectively. I need to shift the focus of the right things. I'll keep that in mind about correcting self-esteem rather than gaining or losing it. That's a very insightful way of putting it.


There are lots of ways to sabotage yourself. Even if you succeed at something, you'll lose that self-esteem the moment something bad happens and you "remember" that you're a "failure". If you find that no matter what you do you're constantly crashing, you might have one of these general beliefs about your worth or competence as a person. It's possible to correct those beliefs as well, but it can take a bit of work.



Slyshyguy said:


> I agree truant, good stuff.


Thanks.



LawfulStupid said:


> I've never agreed with the notion that high self-esteem is a must-have to be happy. To me, it's dangerously close to arrogance, certainly a stepping-stone. When I hear someone bragging, I instantly dislike them. I feel that humility is much more admirable and, to me, much easier to get along with. The only thing to watch out for is that you don't sell yourself so short that you feel you can't do anything. As long as you're not limiting yourself, humility is far preferable to this vaunted self-esteem, as far as I'm concerned.


I think the important thing is that your goals make you happy. Everybody is going to have their own associations for things like self-esteem and humility, etc., so what works for one person isn't necessarily going to work for someone else. You're framing self-esteem a particular way, and that frame is different than the one that I have, and that's fine. The world is big enough for lots of different perspectives and values. I'm certainly not arguing that people should use these techniques to "conform" to a particular script.


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## BehindClosedDoors (Oct 16, 2014)

In my experience, most people who act as though they have high self esteem are simply putting on a great act. False bravado, so to speak. I've been in with the popular kids in school from time to time and one thing I found out is that they are just as scared and insecure as the rest of us. They rise and fall just as we do. The difference is this...they put on a good front. They act like they're "all that" and everyone else just believes it blindly because they seem to have so much confidence. People respond well to that and they get rewarded for their behavior so they keep it up. It works for them. Truth be told, we're just not that good of fakers.


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## truant (Jul 4, 2014)

BlazingLazer said:


> There have been countless experiences I've had the past few years that weren't the most positive. And even though I know deep down that most of the negative experiences aren't a big deal, I somehow can't sync that to the emotional part of my brain to accept that. Which is why I still continue to feel bad about most experiences.
> 
> What do I do about that?


There are lots of things that could be going wrong. Are memories of these past experiences still bothering you? Are you still having these same kinds of experiences over and over again? Do you feel bad about not feeling better about the experiences you've had?

I think it's very important to be honest about how an experience makes you feel. Regardless of what you think other people think you should be feeling ("It's not a big deal, just forget it, lighten up, etc.") what you _are _feeling is a direct response to how you've framed the situation. Trying to cover up one feeling with a new feeling not only doesn't work, it makes it harder for you to be clear about what you actually think about what happened. Your emotional responses are a direct response to your thinking.

Think about one of these upsetting experiences and write down exactly what happened, how it made you feel, and what it made you think about yourself. Your description of the experience is the frame -- it's what you focused on while you were having that experience. There were other things going on, but that's what your brain decided was important to notice. A different person going through the same experience would have approached it with a different frame; they would have noticed different things and their thoughts and emotional (and physical) responses would have been different.

The thoughts that that experience made you think about yourself are how you framed yourself in that moment. A different person would have had different thoughts and would have framed themselves differently.

Your emotions are the consequence of all of these thoughts: given that experience (based on how you framed -- and therefore, perceived -- it) and what it made you think about yourself (how you framed yourself) that emotional response was inevitable. If any of those thoughts had been different, your emotional response would have been different.

It may not be practical for you to try to reframe a really negative experience. Your time might be better spent developing yourself in other areas. Your accomplishments in these other areas will "bleed" into other areas of your life (change how you think about yourself, which will result in changing how you frame/perceive situations). This happens all the time irl. People who were unpopular in school go on to become successful professionals and become popular later in life.



BlazingLazer said:


> Also, I enjoy reading your posts, truant. It's genuinely refreshing to see positive, realistic posts that lack the nonsense fluff that a lot of other "positive" posters here try to push.


Thank you. I'm sorry it took so long to get back to you, but I needed to think about it a bit.



BehindClosedDoors said:


> In my experience, most people who act as though they have high self esteem are simply putting on a great act. False bravado, so to speak. I've been in with the popular kids in school from time to time and one thing I found out is that they are just as scared and insecure as the rest of us. They rise and fall just as we do. The difference is this...they put on a good front. They act like they're "all that" and everyone else just believes it blindly because they seem to have so much confidence. People respond well to that and they get rewarded for their behavior so they keep it up. It works for them. Truth be told, we're just not that good of fakers.


This is _often _true. People can fake just about anything, especially if there's a strong incentive, like being popular. But there are real differences between people as well. Some people almost always feel miserable by thinking terrible things about themselves, and other people almost always feel good because they're doing what they want and accomplishing their objectives.

I used to feel horrible about myself; it got so bad at one point that I thought obsessively about killing myself. But I got out of it. I still get depressed on occasion, but most of the time I feel pretty good about myself. I've accomplished things and those accomplishments have changed how I look at myself. I no longer look at things the way that I used to, so my responses are different.

Not all self-confidence is faked, but true self-esteem doesn't need to be expressed in an exaggerated fashion, either. Many people with high self-esteem are completely unobtrusive.


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## BlazingLazer (Jul 16, 2011)

truant said:


> There are lots of things that could be going wrong.


Yeah, that's possible. Kind of scary to think, if that's the case.



> Are memories of these past experiences still bothering you? Are you still having these same kinds of experiences over and over again? Do you feel bad about not feeling better about the experiences you've had?


I'm pretty sure I could answer yes to all 3 here. I still continue (especially lately) to get experiences that I interpret as negative. But it might be that I set the bar too high on expecting positive feedback. Sometimes, I'll abruptly remember past experiences not going well and then I'll just feel bad out of nowhere.



> I think it's very important to be honest about how an experience makes you feel. Regardless of what you think other people think you should be feeling ("It's not a big deal, just forget it, lighten up, etc.") what you _are _feeling is a direct response to how you've framed the situation. Trying to cover up one feeling with a new feeling not only doesn't work, it makes it harder for you to be clear about what you actually think about what happened. Your emotional responses are a direct response to your thinking.


Yep. I constantly do this. I know deep down these certain experiences make me feel pretty down about myself (in the sense that I feel I'm always doing something "wrong"), but I try to deny the inward feeling, push it aside and try (ok, struggle) to focus on something else. I think it's because I feel silly about having that feeling because I feel like I'm the only one emotionally incapable of handling the situation.



> Think about one of these upsetting experiences and write down exactly what happened, how it made you feel, and what it made you think about yourself. Your description of the experience is the frame -- it's what you focused on while you were having that experience. There were other things going on, but that's what your brain decided was important to notice. A different person going through the same experience would have approached it with a different frame; they would have noticed different things and their thoughts and emotional (and physical) responses would have been different.
> 
> The thoughts that that experience made you think about yourself are how you framed yourself in that moment. A different person would have had different thoughts and would have framed themselves differently.


Thanks on the advisement on this one. A lot of it all comes down to my first thought(s); feeling like I'm always being singled out and attacked. Another problem I have regarding this specifically is that I never see my bad situations happening to other people around me (not that it never happens, I just don't see it, so I emotionally don't believe it), and even if I did it upsets me that I think that they would probably handle it a lot better than I would.



> Your emotions are the consequence of all of these thoughts: given that experience (based on how you framed -- and therefore, perceived -- it) and what it made you think about yourself (how you framed yourself) that emotional response was inevitable. If any of those thoughts had been different, your emotional response would have been different.


I don't doubt that at all. It just makes me wonder if I can make significant changes to myself on this. I know currently the way I'm interpreting a lot of things just contributes to a lot of mental/emotional drain and there's hardly any of the reverse, even though the latter HAS happened in some cases.



> It may not be practical for you to try to reframe a really negative experience. Your time might be better spent developing yourself in other areas. Your accomplishments in these other areas will "bleed" into other areas of your life (change how you think about yourself, which will result in changing how you frame/perceive situations). This happens all the time irl. People who were unpopular in school go on to become successful professionals and become popular later in life.


Maybe. I don't know how much trying to reframe things might help. It may work over time, maybe not so much. I just wish I could find something that works, or rather, have the momentum to do whatever seems like a step in the right direction with all this.



> Thank you. I'm sorry it took so long to get back to you, but I needed to think about it a bit.


No worries. Sorry that it took forever for me to respond, as I needed some adequate time and energy to fully flesh out my thoughts on this (also sorry if it's too much text!). Glad to read that you've made progress from dark times, as well.


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## truant (Jul 4, 2014)

Sorry for the delayed response.



BlazingLazer said:


> I'm pretty sure I could answer yes to all 3 here. I still continue (especially lately) to get experiences that I interpret as negative. But it might be that I set the bar too high on expecting positive feedback. *Sometimes, I'll abruptly remember past experiences not going well and then I'll just feel bad out of nowhere.*


The memories are being triggered by something. Whether they're a result of a train of thought, or triggered by contextual cues, or a response to another psychological need you'd have to figure out yourself. In any case, they arise because they are relevant to your current self-thinking. If you change how you think about yourself, there's a good chance you'll stop thinking about those experiences. They'll still be there, they just won't "intrude" the way they do now.



BlazingLazer said:


> Yep. I constantly do this. I know deep down these certain experiences make me feel pretty down about myself (in the sense that *I feel I'm always doing something "wrong"*), but I try to deny the inward feeling, push it aside and try (ok, struggle) to focus on something else. I think it's because I feel silly about having that feeling because I feel like I'm the only one emotionally incapable of handling the situation.


I've already talked about being honest about your feelings. Trying to feel something else just buries the problem and makes it harder to fix whatever's bothering you.

The part in bold is important because it's a way that you've framed yourself and it's going to cause problems. As long as you feel this way, you're going to be looking for evidence to support it, like a person who is overly sensitive and looking for any evidence that someone is "slighting" them. You're looking for evidence of failure where there might not be any. That's going to shape your perception of events, and your perception of an event is going to shape how you respond to it. In other words: you're "priming" yourself to repeat past mistakes.



BlazingLazer said:


> Thanks on the advisement on this one. A lot of it all comes down to my first thought(s); feeling like I'm always being singled out and attacked. Another problem I have regarding this specifically is that I never see my bad situations happening to other people around me (not that it never happens, I just don't see it, so I emotionally don't believe it), and even if I did it upsets me that I think that they would probably handle it a lot better than I would.


Well, it's possible that people do treat you differently, but that will be largely in response to your behavior, which you can change. It's important to recognize that you are not your behavior. If someone rejects you, it's your behavior they're rejecting, not you, and you can always change your behavior, which means you can change how people respond to you. Also, it's possible that the problem isn't your behavior at all, which may be unobjectionable, but the attitude of the people you're interacting with, who may be framing you unfairly based on some trivial detail about your appearance or behavior. It's hard to be objective about how you're perceiving things; many people with SA have a tendency to assume too much responsibility and blame themselves for failures that reside in other people. (Or veer in the opposite direction and blame *everything* on other people.)



BlazingLazer said:


> I don't doubt that at all. It just makes me wonder if I can make significant changes to myself on this. I know currently the way I'm interpreting a lot of things just contributes to a lot of mental/emotional drain and there's hardly any of the reverse, even though the latter HAS happened in some cases.


People have a tendency to project their present difficulties into the future and this makes them conceive of change as a really slow process. It doesn't have to be. Some changes can be quite sudden and dramatic.

Projections are always based on present difficulties; those projections are distorted because at the time you make your projection you can't see any other way of being. People tend to think of their problems as things they will continually have to fight, like an alcoholic resisting the urge to drink, but not all problems are like that. Some problems literally disappear when you make a change. They simply no longer present any difficulty whatsoever. It *is* possible to make significant changes, but it's *harder* if you don't believe it's possible -- because of the way you've framed making changes to yourself. You start to change and then think: "No, this is too easy, it'll pass" because it doesn't fit your frame. And then it does.



BlazingLazer said:


> Maybe. I don't know how much trying to reframe things might help. It may work over time, maybe not so much. I just wish I could find something that works, or rather, have the momentum to do whatever seems like a step in the right direction with all this.


I don't think there are any easy solutions. I think having SA is like being lost in a jungle. It's possible to find your way out, but everyone starts out in a different spot, so another person's map isn't much use. You have to make your own way. But having the right tools can make your journey easier. Knowing how your mind works is like having a really sharp machete and a compass. Which is why it's important to be as observant as you can.


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## McFly (Jul 15, 2014)

This is a great thread and should be stickied. You should share more of your wisdom with us all.


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## jever (Jun 16, 2013)

This is properly one of the best self help books on the subject


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## The Sorrow (Aug 29, 2012)

For me success helps the most, but this is often difficult to get. What surprisingly helped was sport.:yes


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## truant (Jul 4, 2014)

jever said:


> This is properly one of the best self help books on the subject


I've read some of Branden's stuff. I don't agree with everything he says, but he has some pretty good insights. I especially like his emphasis on making a commitment to be objective about your experience, especially about what you're feeling. He's well worth reading.


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## BlazingLazer (Jul 16, 2011)

I know it's been a few decades since I've responded... I appreciate having this discussion and the help.



truant said:


> The memories are being triggered by something. Whether they're a result of a train of thought, or triggered by contextual cues, or a response to another psychological need you'd have to figure out yourself. In any case, they arise because they are relevant to your current self-thinking. If you change how you think about yourself, there's a good chance you'll stop thinking about those experiences. They'll still be there, they just won't "intrude" the way they do now.


I certainly understand what you're saying here. I think I often underestimate the laboriousness and time consumption of trying to change how I see things. I'm gradually a bit better than I was a few years ago (through what reason I don't really know), but there still big issues I face.



> *I've already talked about being honest about your feelings. Trying to feel something else just buries the problem and makes it harder to fix whatever's bothering you.*
> 
> The part in bold is important because it's a way that you've framed yourself and it's going to cause problems. As long as you feel this way, you're going to be looking for evidence to support it, like a person who is overly sensitive and looking for any evidence that someone is "slighting" them. You're looking for evidence of failure where there might not be any. That's going to shape your perception of events, and your perception of an event is going to shape how you respond to it. In other words: you're "priming" yourself to repeat past mistakes.


What's ironic about what you said here is that when I read the bolded, I again felt like I was doing something "wrong", because I automatically first read into it like you were annoyed that you had to repeat yourself here like it wasn't getting through to me. This is one of those examples that could apply to me feeling "wrong", as I mentioned in my post before this one.

I think one reason I tend to "look for" wrongdoing is to alleviate myself from the "drop" in emotional well-being. I feel as though if I'm looking for something positive and then something negative happens, it will devastate me making it harder for me to recover. I understand what you're saying about scoping for negativity becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy though. I think of this "priming" as a case of it being merely more likely to happen, rather than _certain_ to happen.



> Well, it's possible that people do treat you differently, but that will be largely in response to your behavior, which you can change. It's important to recognize that you are not your behavior. If someone rejects you, it's your behavior they're rejecting, not you, and you can always change your behavior, which means you can change how people respond to you. Also, it's possible that the problem isn't your behavior at all, which may be unobjectionable, but the attitude of the people you're interacting with, who may be framing you unfairly based on some trivial detail about your appearance or behavior. It's hard to be objective about how you're perceiving things; many people with SA have a tendency to assume too much responsibility and blame themselves for failures that reside in other people. (Or veer in the opposite direction and blame *everything* on other people.)


Yeah, it could very well be my behavior or it could be something else. What frustrates me is that this is hard to tell. Maybe there's something to me (that I don't realize) that comes off to people as some sort of sign that tells them they should react to me differently. Maybe it's completely the other person. Again, very hard for me to tell for sure.

What I also notice is that, aside from myself, I also tend go in the opposite direction and shift complete blame to something else if I'm frustrated enough.

I was actually listening to an excerpt from Albert Ellis regarding what you say about the objection to the action as opposed to the person themselves.



> People have a tendency to project their present difficulties into the future and this makes them conceive of change as a really slow process. It doesn't have to be. Some changes can be quite sudden and dramatic.
> 
> Projections are always based on present difficulties; those projections are distorted because at the time you make your projection you can't see any other way of being. People tend to think of their problems as things they will continually have to fight, like an alcoholic resisting the urge to drink, but not all problems are like that. Some problems literally disappear when you make a change. They simply no longer present any difficulty whatsoever. It *is* possible to make significant changes, but it's *harder* if you don't believe it's possible -- because of the way you've framed making changes to yourself. You start to change and then think: "No, this is too easy, it'll pass" because it doesn't fit your frame. And then it does.


I think what's obstructing me is that I actually like myself, but other's people's reactions don't match up to that, from what I interpret. So that has distorted how I see myself a lot of the time. It feels like an ongoing identity crisis.

I absolutely believe I can change, but I feel like with being brought up in a distorted negative environment (where I practically had to walk on eggshells for years), has warped the cognitive wiring and hardened it so much that the constant struggle makes me question my efforts (or lack thereof) and how others see me.



> I don't think there are any easy solutions. I think having SA is like being lost in a jungle. It's possible to find your way out, but everyone starts out in a different spot, so another person's map isn't much use. You have to make your own way. But having the right tools can make your journey easier. Knowing how your mind works is like having a really sharp machete and a compass. Which is why it's important to be as observant as you can.


I feel like I've well passed the observance stage. The tough part is what to actually do about it. Or maybe it's that I already have and that it's not enough.

A lot of my difficulty is that I simply can't just not expect negative outcomes or make myself see things differently. Even if I do, it's an exhausting chore. Having said that, I do agree that there are things that can change quicker than expected.


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## microbopeep (Apr 28, 2013)

Nice post, but I feel like having high esteem may be merely nothing more than a fantasy. I often feel like crap and worthless if someone is angry at me or shuns me. I don't think I have much worth.


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## truant (Jul 4, 2014)

Sorry about taking ten years to reply. :lol I kept trying, but I could never quite put my finger on what I wanted to say.



BlazingLazer said:


> What's ironic about what you said here is that when I read the bolded, I again felt like I was doing something "wrong", because I automatically first read into it like you were annoyed that you had to repeat yourself here like it wasn't getting through to me. This is one of those examples that could apply to me feeling "wrong", as I mentioned in my post before this one.


Lol. Yeah, not even remotely annoyed. That was 100% your anxiety talking.



BlazingLazer said:


> I think one reason I tend to "look for" wrongdoing is to alleviate myself from the "drop" in emotional well-being. I feel as though if I'm looking for something positive and then something negative happens, it will devastate me making it harder for me to recover. I understand what you're saying about scoping for negativity becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy though. I think of this "priming" as a case of it being merely more likely to happen, rather than _certain_ to happen.


I think most of the negative habits that people with anxiety pick up serve a defensive function. You're trying to protect yourself from embarrassment because you once got really embarrassed, so now you're always on alert for similar situations. But it's massive overkill, and the end result is that you end up embarrassing yourself by trying to avoid embarrassment because your defensive behavior is itself inappropriate. That's how these defensive strategies "creep" -- because the defense you use to avoid embarrassment creates embarrassment, the environmental cues from these additional experiences get stored as additional contexts in which you have to protect yourself, so you end up being anxious in more and more contexts until you finally end up hiding in your bedroom and refusing to open the door.

I think the only way to reverse that is just to act in spite of your fear and then, if you do end up feeling embarrassed, just to admit to yourself that you feel embarrassed (even better if you can admit it to someone you trust), feel your embarrassment, and get it out of your system. Over time you'll reclaim more and more contextual cues by "defusing" them. Being embarrassed sucks, but it's the way you avoid embarrassment that causes your SA to become progressively worse.

The same can be said for defensive strategies you use to protect yourself from fear or anger or any other emotion. Defense mechanisms always manifest as inhibition, which other people are surprisingly adept at detecting; because they make you behave "unnaturally", your behavior seems weird, and if your behavior is weird enough, people avoid you.



BlazingLazer said:


> Yeah, it could very well be my behavior or it could be something else. What frustrates me is that this is hard to tell. Maybe there's something to me (that I don't realize) that comes off to people as some sort of sign that tells them they should react to me differently. Maybe it's completely the other person. Again, very hard for me to tell for sure.


The stuff I wrote above addresses this bit, with the caveat that other people have their own problems, so a lot of the time, even if you are acting weird, people are just being rude/cold/whatever because they themselves are having issues.



BlazingLazer said:


> What I also notice is that, aside from myself, I also tend go in the opposite direction and shift complete blame to something else if I'm frustrated enough.
> 
> I was actually listening to an excerpt from Albert Ellis regarding what you say about the objection to the action as opposed to the person themselves.


I think pretty much everybody blames other people on occasion to protect their ego. I don't think there's anything wrong with it, tbh, as long as you realize that you're just venting and you don't do it in a way that hurts others. You need to let off the steam so that you can cool down.

The problem comes from believing that other people are *always* responsible for your problems. _Sometimes_ other people _are_ responsible, but in my experience it's never true that other people are _always_ responsible. We're always at least partially to blame for the mess that we're in. Otherwise, you're expecting other people to be more responsible than you are, which just isn't fair or realistic.

And it's always a good policy to divorce a person's actions from their essence. People aren't sh*tty, but sometimes they do sh*tty things. The best way to resolve conflicts is to focus on the behaviors and not on the person. But that's way off-topic.



BlazingLazer said:


> I think what's obstructing me is that I actually like myself, but other's people's reactions don't match up to that, from what I interpret. So that has distorted how I see myself a lot of the time. It feels like an ongoing identity crisis.


It's really good that you like yourself. That's immensely important.

The reason why other people's reactions don't match yours is because when you think about your "self", it's the uninhibited self that you know is "you" deep down inside, not the outer self that displays all of the inhibited defense mechanisms that other people see. If you dropped all of your defenses, everyone would see the real you that you like. The crisis comes from the disconnect between your inner and outer selves. The good news is that what other people don't like is your defensive behaviors, not the inner you. (They might not like _everything_ about the real you, but odds are that if you like you, others will too.)



BlazingLazer said:


> I absolutely believe I can change, but I feel like with being brought up in a distorted negative environment (where I practically had to walk on eggshells for years), has warped the cognitive wiring and hardened it so much that the constant struggle makes me question my efforts (or lack thereof) and how others see me.


Unless you're still living in that environment (and I hope you're not), the defenses you developed to cope with that environment are no longer necessary. You're like someone who grew up in the Arctic who's moved to the Equator but still wears a parka. Your defenses were probably useful in the environment in which they developed, but now they're causing more harm than good.

I don't honestly believe that anyone's learned behavior is permanent; if you learned it, you can learn new behaviors to replace them. I think the main thing that prevents people from changing is (a) the belief that they can't change, which we've discussed, and (b) the desire to avoid experiencing unpleasant negative emotions which our current defenses are supposed to protect us from (but which actually just make things worse). If you believe you can change, and you're willing to experience negative emotions as they arise instead of trying to avoid them through your defenses, you'll change.



BlazingLazer said:


> I feel like I've well passed the observance stage. The tough part is what to actually do about it. Or maybe it's that I already have and that it's not enough.
> 
> A lot of my difficulty is that I simply can't just not expect negative outcomes or make myself see things differently. Even if I do, it's an exhausting chore. Having said that, I do agree that there are things that can change quicker than expected.


See above.


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## truant (Jul 4, 2014)

microbopeep said:


> Nice post, but I feel like having high esteem may be merely nothing more than a fantasy. I often feel like crap and worthless if someone is angry at me or shuns me. I don't think I have much worth.


I'm sorry I didn't get to this sooner, microbopeep.

I have my own reasons for believing that everyone is worth exactly the same amount as everyone else, but it's probably too much to explain my reasoning here, suffice to say that, in my mind, everyone is like Superman, but they all use their strength in different ways: healthy people use their strength to solve problems and help themselves and other people; some people who are unhealthy use their strength to hurt others; and other people who are unhealthy use their strength to hurt themselves. Everyone's potential is more or less the same, but different people use their strength to achieve different objectives.

If you feel worthless, the problem is that you're using your strength against yourself, and because you have a lot of strength, you're really good at it. If other people are hurting you and you agree with them, you're teaming up against yourself. If you could redirect your strength, you'd probably be amazed at how much you could accomplish. But our strength is always directed by our beliefs about ourselves and about the world, and if you don't want to believe that this strength is available, no one can force you to redirect it.

You do have worth, and you deserve to feel good about yourself because even if you've spent your whole life helping other people tear yourself down, your real potential is always there waiting to be redirected.


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## Mrs Salvatore (Mar 27, 2014)

@Sin


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## truant (Jul 4, 2014)

*Healthy and Unhealthy Self-Esteem vs High and Low Self-Esteem*

People should stop talking about high and low self-esteem. That's an incorrect way to understand how self-esteem actually works. What we should talk about is _healthy_ and _unhealthy_ self-esteem.

There are two kinds of unhealthy self-esteem:

*deflated*, where your opinion of yourself is too low; and
*inflated*, where your opinion of yourself is too high.

A person with deflated self-esteem (what we usually call low self-esteem) is always down on themselves and discounts anything positive said about them; a person with inflated self-esteem is always too pleased with themselves and discounts anything negative said about them (usually violently). When people say they don't like people with high self-esteem, that's the kind of person they're talking about.

A person with healthy self-esteem is able to be objective about their strengths and weaknesses. They can talk about their weaknesses without feeling ashamed, and they can talk about their strengths without feeling "ashamed for bragging".

*Validation* is _nice_ if you have healthy self-esteem, but it is not necessary. Validation is only _necessary_ if you have unhealthy self-esteem, and it is necessary to the degree that your self-esteem is unhealthy.


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## Esteban (Dec 8, 2014)

Excellent thread, truant


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## Terranaut (Jul 11, 2013)

It would take too many words to say what it is. If one has low self-esteem however it can be because they judge themselves by the standards of others and find that they always fail to "measure up". Sometimes they are correct to feel that way in some contexts--like me for instance. I feel proud of my mind but I withdraw if my body is flabby. I don't feel terrible about it because I'm used to being lonely. But my whole range of self-esteem is great when I overcome my obesity and can look good in normal people clothes. Then I not only feel good about my inner self but my exterior and am willing to assert myself much more socially. 

Others don't have this dichotomy and are blessed with not having the obesity/compulsive eating struggle. But what they haven't yet done is discover capacity in themselves for independent thought which can be put into action and tend to feel like losers if not keep telling themselves they are. One way to overcome that is to find out what you can do in your locale that interests you and try to distinguish yourself as being one of, if not "the" best at encompassing that whole activity. See a shrink and get medication is you have to. Let society defeat you--never ever defeat yourself. You'll find that usually there is no one out there who will make it their agenda to hold you down and that it has been all in your head that others care to defeat you. They are worried just the same about others defeating them--unless they have achieved freedom from those negative voices.


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