The Power of Self-Esteem

“Life is too short to spend it at war with yourself.”

It is the power within us that makes us able to complete the simplest of tasks, the motivation that rolls us out of bed each morning. Self-esteem is defined by Webster’s dictionary as a feeling of having respect for yourself and your abilities. There is a quote that I heard a lot as I was younger, “You have to love yourself before anything else, so in my opinion self-esteem is essential to the existence of the human race. It goes hand in hand with a person having a sense of identity of who they are, without that sense of identity they are subject to depression, a general feeling of worthlessness, and a psychological identity crisis. Self-esteem is the key to people’s optimistic outlook on life, and they feel more empowered about their place in the world around them. We look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs chart and see that it is a big part of the functioning human to have respect from others, and from self. Those with low self-esteem are prone to isolation, false pride, misplaced humor, and, even worse, anger/aggression.

A person suffering from self-depression may be more likely to stay at home than go to a party, and they could have the risk of overindulging themselves in coping habits such as eating, drug use, and drinking alcohol. They could even do something that is less obvious such as dressing in all black, so they don’t stand out when they go out. This person may even feel a need to explain themselves and their actions to others, just because they feel that another person is judging them. The coping strategy seen most by people with low self-esteem is to avoid people, situations, and feelings of betterment completely.

In one of the articles that I used for my research, I found that the authors proposed that the importance of self-esteem lies more in how people strive for it rather than whether it is high or low. We all have a conscious little thinker inside of our heads – the voice seems to be like a tape recorder playing back to us our fears, weaknesses, and shortcomings. It expects us to be perfect and beats us down for things that go wrong to us in life. The problem with this voice is that it could either be true or falsely striking us, either way, it is always there. The people who are not able to control this voice are more than like suffering from low self-esteem. That voice costs them many opportunities in life – whether that be in intimate relationships, work, meeting strangers, or even trying something new. 

Some factors that may cause a person to start depleting their self-esteem are generalizing their mistakes to being bigger than they are, believing that everyone in the world thinks like them, and thinking that they only have two options in a stressful situation; all or nothing is normally the mentality. People who feel inadequate in life may get a sense that if they can overcontrol their environment that they will be safe from criticism. This thinking is commonly seen in grade school children who bully others. Low self-esteem is so impacting upon the human mind that if a person already suffers from conditions such as depression, anxiety, phobias, psychosis, delusional thinking, or already have an illness or disability they are paired with low self-esteem easily. It’s a very serious matter, for any of these could lead to something extreme as suicide.

The journey for a person who is under the depression that comes with low self-esteem is a long one. It can continue to make the person feel miserable, even if they are trying to get better in life. I have learned that this condition is much more than a person just being “antisocial”, and it is very likely that multiple people who are sad or mad who I come across in life could be struggling with a voice in their head. A voice that is constantly putting them down, and giving them believes that whatever they are going through is more than they can handle and that they should not respect and love themselves.