Reflections On Getting Over Low Self-Esteem

This article will discuss some of the things that helped me get over my poor self-esteem. More than some of the other pieces I've written, this is a reflection on what worked for me. Low self-esteem is a complicated and wide ranging problem. I can't say my experiences will map on to everyone else's. I also think I can only throw a few ideas at the problem, there's no way I can totally address this whole issue in a half dozen points.

Many of the people who don't do well socially have poor self-esteem and all the insecurities that come with it. I certainly did. In fact, I remember it being one of the first problems I sought out help for. I just felt bummed out about my crappy life situation and was drawn to advice on how to improve my self image. It was almost like doing better socially came second to feeling better about the fact that I was so hopeless in that area.

Now I'm not some super confident guy who never feels bad about himself. I still have doubts and insecurities, but so does everyone. I'd like to think mine are more on that level now, as opposed to those times in first year when I'd spend an entire Saturday evening laying on my bed dwelling on what a hopeless loser I was.

As I just said, I think poor self-esteem comes in different flavors. I believe I was mostly down on myself because I had true weaknesses and my poor self image was a realistic appraisal of my where I stood in life. I felt like a loser because I really was one in a lot of ways. I wasn't measuring up in the areas that were important to me. But otherwise I had a fairly happy childhood, my parents were nice to me, I never experienced any abuse or trauma, and I felt I was a worthwhile human being. When I worked on my weaknesses, my self image slowly came around.

Other people may have a more deep-seated variety of poor self regard. I admit that my knowledge about this area is pretty shaky. They may feel worthless because of how their parents treated them when they were five, or from abuse they suffered at age twelve. They may still think they're fundamentally flawed no matter how much they achieve or improve. They may have everything going for them on the outside but still be totally insecure and down on themselves, in other words their self-esteem is out of touch with how they're really doing. I can't say how much this article will help people in the second category.

Legitimately get over the weaknesses that feed your poor self-esteem

I think the biggest contributor to my getting over my low self-esteem wasn't anything that involved directly trying to become more confident, or less down on myself. Instead, over the years I chipped away at my problems and accomplished things that were important to me. I made friends, did better with the opposite sex, and generally became more socially competent. I became more of the person I needed to be to feel good about myself, and my self image rose accordingly.

That's not the whole story of course, it's just that I've read a lot of articles on how to improve self-esteem and hardly any of them mention the idea of improving in your weak areas. So I wanted to get that concept up there first because I think it's important and sometimes overlooked. Here are some more tips:

Figure out a good plan to improve yourself

Getting over your real problems is best in the long run, but I found a big bite was taken out of my day-to-day insecure feelings as soon as I defined my problems and hit on a good road map to fixing them. Where before I more had these vague feelings of, "I suck, I'm a loser, no one likes me.", my mind was now more goal-oriented and thinking along the lines of, "Okay, I'm weak in areas x,y,z, and I need to do d,e,f to get there." Instead of seeing myself as an unlikeable dweeb, I now saw myself as more a socially adept person in training. The emotional element was taken out of the equation somewhat. There was nothing wrong with me at my core, I just needed to put in the time and the effort to get where I wanted to be.

Learn to cut down on your negative, harsh, and unrealistic thinking

Low self-esteem is all about how you think of yourself. If you change your thoughts, you can improve how you see yourself. A lot of self-esteem advice falls into this general area. My experience with it is that it can be quite helpful, but it won't fix your confidence overnight. Just knowing you should be thinking a certain way, or feeling a certain way about life, doesn't mean your thoughts will instantly realign themselves.

It's more that first learning about how your thinking can sabotage you gets the ball rolling, but overall I find it takes years for your thought patterns to come out of their old habits. I also find that cleaning up your counterproductive thoughts helps a lot in the sense of tuning up what you already have, but it won't fill in all the blanks in terms of skills and experience you're currently missing. The other factor is the one I just mentioned of building strengths in the areas that matter to you.

Here's some information on the kinds of counter productive thinking people with poor self-esteem can fall into. I'm pretty much just summarizing widely available information from other sources into one area:

Cognitive Distortions

People with poor self image, depression, anxiety, and some other issues often have distorted thinking that doesn't reflect reality, and which can serve to sustain their problems. The list of cognitive distortions people can make is pretty well established. Here they are with some examples drawn from the kind of thinking I've had at times. You'll notice that several of the categories blur into each other somewhat or produce similar outcomes.

All-or-Nothing Thinking / Black & White Thinking

Seeing the world in simplistic absolute terms. This may involve extreme comparisons like Perfect vs. Useless, or words like 'never' or 'always'. People may think things such as, "Not everyone in my class loves me, so that means I'm a total loser", or "That conversation didn't go perfectly, therefore I'm hopeless at socializing."

Overgeneralization

Taking a few isolated incidences and making sweeping generalizations about yourself or your life. e.g., "That one person didn't invite me out. No one likes me.", "Those people I just talked to weren't interesting. I have nothing in common with anybody."

Filtering

Applying a 'dark-tinted' mental filter to your perceptions so that you see and dwell on the bad aspects of something but ignore the good. This can involve "seeing what you want to see". e.g., Noticing all the incidences where people seem to ignore or act indifferent towards you, while overlooking all the times they're friendly. In the past I thought I was totally hopeless socially, but there were plenty of moments where I did just fine. I just saw past them them because they didn't support my belief that I was a loser.

Disqualifying the positive

When you dismiss positive events for no good reason, probably while being all too eager to believe the negative ones. e.g., If someone tells you you're good looking, you ignore it because it's so obvious you're ugly; Writing off a fun experience at a party as an isolated fluke, because you know deep down you suck and no one could like you.

Jumping to conclusions

When you quickly assume something negative, even though it has no basis in reality. There are two variations, one involving how people think, the other how something will turn out.

Mind reading

When you believe someone thinks a certain, usually negative, way, even though you have no real evidence to support it. e.g., "I just know everyone hates me.", "He didn't say hello to me in the hall because he thinks I'm a loser.", "My friends don't really like me. They all think I'm weird.", "My roommate's friends all think I'm a snob. I totally blew it when I met them last night."

Fortune telling

When you jump to conclusions by assuming something will turn out a certain way, though the belief has shaky grounding. e.g., "There's no way I'm going to have fun at the bar tonight.", "If I meet up with these people, they're going to start giving me a hard time because I'm a vegetarian."

Magnification and minimization

Overstating or understating how something really is, again with a poor reason to back up your thinking. e.g., "Everyone is way more sociable than I am. They're totally confident and have no insecurities.", "The first week of college is totally critical. It makes or breaks you socially. If you don't make friends during that time then you're screwed for the next four years."

Catastrophizing

Dwelling on the worst thing that could possibly happen. Can also mean to see a situation as totally hopeless or unbearable, when it's really just uncomfortable. e.g., "If I chat to my coworker and things go wrong, then he'll tell my boss what a loser I am and I'll get fired.", "I have no plans this weekend. I just can't take it. My life is over."

Emotional reasoning

Thinking that because your emotions are telling you something is X, that it is truly is X. e.g., Thinking that because you feel like the world's biggest loser, that you actually are; Believing that other people are all jerks, because you're in a grumpy mood at that moment; Feeling like your entire life is boring, because you're bored at that moment.

Should statements

Constraining yourself with unrealistic expectations about how you 'should' be. e.g., "People should invite their friends to hang out at least once a week, otherwise it's a sign they hate you.", "I should always have brilliant things to say in conversations.", "I should always be the life of the party."

Labeling

Slapping simplistic labels on things in order to explain them, rather than looking at the unique facets of the situation. e.g.,"I'm a nerd. That's why I'm so hopeless with people.", "She's a hipster. Hipsters wouldn't like someone like me.", "I'm an introvert. There's no way I'll be able to do that."

Personalization

Thinking you or others directly caused something to happen, when other forces may have been at work. e.g., "He's in a bad mood because of something I did to offend him." (when he really just had a crappy day at work), "Everyone wants to call it an early night because I'm so boring to be around" (they're really just tired).

Unrealistic goals and expectations

Some of the cognitive distortion points got at this. One factor in some people's poor self-esteem is that they expect too much from themselves. I used to do this sometimes. I thought I had to be the coolest, most popular, most self-confident guy I knew or that meant I was nothing. If I went to a party, I thought that if I didn't have everyone hanging off my every word, it meant I wasn't likeable or worthy. You get the idea.

You know how all through this site it talks about just teaching you to be a happily average person? I found I was a lot easier on myself when I changed my overall social goal from, "I have to be super charismatic and make everyone like me" to, "I just want to be contentedly normal." It's easy for me to go out and meet the standards of being a normal, more-or-less capable, not-at-all-perfect human. I always fail and feel bad about myself when I set the goal of being the most popular and respected guy in the room.

The inner critic and negative thought loops

A fairly common piece of self-esteem advice is to learn to tune in to your inner critic, and to challenge it if necessary. As we go about our day, there's usually a little voice in our head commenting on everything we're doing. If you have low self-confidence the voice may be unusually harsh and negative at times: "I suck. I can't do anything right. I'm such a loser. I never know what to say. I'm so shy and awkward. etc, etc."

These negative statements can become a loop that repeats in your mind over and over again, chipping away at your self-confidence. With practice you may be able to boost your self-image by shutting down what your inner critic is saying. First you have to pay attention to when these thoughts come up. Then you have to make it a habit of challenging them, maybe with logic ("There's no proof she thinks I'm a loser") or by getting angry at it ("Shut up you useless voice!"). Over time you can hopefully retrain your inner monologue to be more positive and supportive.

Attribution style

Here's one more psychological concept that you've probably seen before if you've read up on this area. Your attribution style is how you tend to explain to yourself why certain things happen. Confident people are more likely to explain good things as originating from stable, permanent traits within them ("He liked me because I'm so interesting"), and to dismiss bad events as being one-off, outside flukes ("He didn't like me because he's some random, bitter weirdo").

Less confident people are the opposite. They see good things as being external flukes ("She was only nice to me because she was feeling particularly good natured today"), and to think bad events are caused by their stable, permanent traits, ("She didn't like me because I'm a boring loser, and I always will be"). This second kind of attribution style can help sustain poor self-esteem. Just knowing this little factoid won't instantly alter how you see the world, but it can one more little contribution to you eventually learning to be less hard on yourself.

That's the end of the summaries of Self-Esteem 101 concepts. I was definitely happier and less hard on myself once I starting trying to correct the negative things I told myself. I made quick progress fixing my most obvious faulty thinking ("No, you're not a loser for all time because that one conversation didn't go perfectly"). Overall though, it took quite a while before my mentality really came around to me being more comfortable with myself. I don't think I'll ever be 100% clear of negativity or self-criticism either, but that's fine, because I don't think anyone has reached that point. Anyways, back to some other ideas I have about self-esteem:

Ask people for reassurance

One thing that's helped me handle my insecurities is to occasionally voice them to other people and get their reassurance that I have nothing to fret about. Like I may be worried that I'm too uptight and say to a friend, "Man, I feel like I'm too uptight and anal about things sometimes.", and then they'll go, "Nah, I never think that about you. I see you as easy going actually." And I feel better about myself. Sometimes I even get to have a laugh about how silly my worries were. There are some conditions for doing this though:

You can't do it too often, otherwise you'll tend to annoy people, seem like you don't have your act together, and maybe even increase your worries by dwelling on them too much. Every so often you can ask for reassurance to handle the odd insecurity that pops into your head, but that's the extent of it.
You can't do it with everyone. Some people don't have much patience for people saying insecure things, others are fine with it.
You have to take people's responses at face value. If you're worried about how your new haircut looks, you ask what someone thinks, they say you look good, and you think, "I know my hair looks like crap. They're just saying that to be nice.", then there's no point in asking in the first place. Definitely don't ask people, "I feel like a loser. Am I really?" every other day. The idea is to air out your distorted thoughts so they can be shot down by the objective outside world. You have to be semi-confident to use this tip, since it takes some self-esteem to accept good things people say about you.
Ideally, you should mention your insecurity in a fairly casual, off-handed way. Like your insecurities are semi-amusing to you and don't really, really bother you. Don't be a total basket case when you tell people about them.

Learn to live with your insecure thoughts and go about your life as if you don't have them

I'm fairly confident now, but in a typical day plenty of distorted and insecure thoughts will pass through my mind. Like I'll be at work and think for no reason that none of my coworkers really like me. Without fail, before attending a social event my brain will come up with a dozen reasons why I won't have fun and it'll turn out to be a disaster. But they're more like blips of my past mentality coming to the surface. It's mental noise that I ignore for the most part, rather than actually believe.

I've gotten pretty good at keeping these worries hidden away and acting as if I don't have them. My mind may tell me my coworkers hate me, but I'll go about my day as if they don't. I'll worry about hanging out with a new group of people, but go to meet them anyways. You can have insecurities, no one is entirely free of them, but if you don't let them affect your behavior, then they can't really hinder you.