Self-esteem, as we’ve been told for a quite some time, or self-compassion, in which we softly speak to ourselves as if we were speaking to a best friend?
In 1986, California state assemblyman John Vasconcellos proposed a special task force to promote self-esteem among Californians, which he claimed may be “a vaccination for significant societal diseases” such as teen pregnancy and drug usage.
This initiative ended three years later, and it was largely seen as having done nothing.
This wasn’t surprising to Kristin Neff, a psychology professor at the University of Texas.
Though the desire for big egos continues to echo as a pop-psych cure-all, she believes it is misguided and generally pointless.
There is nothing wrong with being confident, but the issue is how we attempt to achieve high self-esteem. That’s usually done by criticizing others or comparing ourselves to others. This is not only unrealistic, but it may also lead to narcissism or depressive episodes under difficult circumstances, according to Neff.
Self-compassion, on the other hand, is a better path, according to Neff. In other words, being harsh toward self is not a healthy way, but rather speaking to yourself in a gentle way as you would do to your best friend that you dearly love and respect, even when they screw up, is the healthy approach to your difficulties.
Self-esteem fails us, especially in hard times, but increasing our compassion for ourselves is the better way.
Let’s find out why.
What are some of the most common situations in which we hear about building self-esteem?
As Kristin Neff points out, it appears to be profoundly rooted in today’s society, where we have extremely high levels of self-esteem, which has sadly led to narcissism.
People believed that self-esteem was the key to their psychological wellness because of the large self-esteem movement, which according to Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell, has resulted in a generation of narcissists.
Jenny Crocker speaks about it openly, where she urges all to stop the costly pursuit of high self-esteem.
Because it’s not having high self-esteem that’s the issue; but obtaining it at the expense of others.
This means being frequently focused on feeling unique and superior to others, which leads to the pursuit of that emotion in order to maintain that position. This is when the problems begin.
When you take self-esteem too seriously, you become a narcissist.
Narcissists have difficulty forming connections and because they intentionally drive people away, there are definitely maladaptive consequences to their narcissistic behavior.
In order to have better self-esteem we must feel exceptional and above-average, and most likely we’d be offended, perhaps insulted, by comments like “Oh, your performance was ordinary or an average” because we translate this as “I am an average or lower than others.“
Which is so not true!
The problem lies in the comparison with others. When we fail, self-esteem vanishes just when we need it the most.
In those moments, we try to puff ourselves up, seeing ourselves as better in almost any culturally defined quality. But it seems like none of it is helping our situation nor did our mood change.
According to a substantial body of studies, it is shown that bullying is mostly triggered by the pursuit of high self-esteem—the process of feeling special and superior above others. In the bigger picture, it looks something like this: “So if I can pick on the weird, nerdy kid, I feel better about myself or I can get a self-esteem boost right away.“
Then, if you look at things like prejudice, one way to create a social comparison is, if we believe our religion or ethnic group is better than others, we’re actually boosting our self-esteem.
So there’s an issue right there.
The truth of the matter is, that it’s logically impossible for everyone to be above average all of the time, because someone will always be doing it better on some level.
So eventually, we’re setting ourselves up for failure.
So the question is, when I see „somebody do that better than me“, how do I respond to it? Do I accept, or does it make me feel deeply insecure?
Self-esteem is frequently linked to achievement.
The first of the three domains on which it is dependent is peer approval. This can happen to us with any person that we communicate with, like with other kids at school or coworkers.
We tend to burden ourselves with questions like “what do they think of me,“ which leads to a bad source of information because they don’t know you well and you have no idea what they truly think of you.
There is also this – perceived appearance or modern looks, which are extremely damaging to women and are also the most crucial sector for female self-esteem.
Boy don’t suffer that much at that department because growing up they rate their own attractiveness pretty high. The standards of beauty are much higher for girls than for boys.
The last point is the success, which means to feel good about yourself only when you achieved great success. This is totally harmful and unhealthy, because we cannot really achieve impossible things just because we see others achieve more than us.
You can check about self-righteousness in this article
What is self-compassion? Why is better than self-esteem?
Self-compassion means treating yourself with the same kind of kindness, care, compassion, as you would treat those you care about—your good friends, your loved ones.
Self-kindness is one of the components attached to self-compassion, and it is also the most obvious.
We have been entangled with ideas that everyone lives perfect lives, because of what is shown on the social media platforms.
What’s important in self-compassion, is the recognition of common humanity—in other words, the understanding that all people are imperfect, have flaws, make mistakes and all people have imperfect lives.
So having this in mind, when we fail, make mistakes, or we see that things are going as planned or failed to do all the tasks on the “do to list“ or couldn’t take care of our children especially during and after the pandemic, we end up beating ourselves up, which causes even more suffering on top of everything, and we tend to isolate ourselves from the rest of humanity.
Self-compassion comes when the attitude changes from “poor me“ to “it’s okay flaws are also part of life.“
The first one is a circle of not being able to get out, the second is accepting emotions and imperfections as part of life but also knowing that there is beauty in it too. You get more sense of what is brokenness which reminds you that everyone has a fight on their own.
Everyone struggles one way or another.
Your mistakes can benefit you and others as well.
The people of Ukraine have shown great bravery by showing us their wounds, tears and suffering. When we think about it – wounds connect us closer, because it shows that we understand things more deeply.
The acknowledgment of our weaknesses, tears, suffering, and brokenness to ourselves and trustworthy people is the open door to grow from the experiences we face daily.
We stop pretending by becoming honest to ourselves about our sufferings, which leads us to being gentle and compassion toward ourselves as we would do it for our beloved one.
For example, some research has been done with war veterans to determine their level of self-compassion and how they cope with traumatic experiences — are they an inner enemy or an inner ally?
The vets who were an inner ally instead of an inner enemy cope much better and were much less likely to develop PTSD symptoms.
It also enhances motivation because more self-compassionate people are less fearful of failure when they fail.
There was a study where a group of people was helped to be more self-compassionate about failure (on the exam). Later on, when they had a chance to study for a second test, they actually studied longer than people who were not educated on how to be self-compassionate.
Another unexpected finding is that self-compassionate people are more likely to take personal responsibility for harming others and are more likely to apologize.
When it’s safe to make a mistake, compassion for oneself provides us the tools to admit it and see clearly, being able to recognize where we sinned and than ask for forgiveness.
Self-compassion helps us be motivated. It helps us take responsibility.
It’s neither selfish nor self-indulgent, and it leads to stronger relationships.
Conclusion
We’ve noticed that most of us have a lot more experience being compassionate to others than we have with ourselves, yet being patient with ourselves is important, especially when we screw up.
“What would I say to a close friend I cared about in this situation?” is the question that will motivate anyone to get up and try again without labeling one self with horrible names.
However, it’s important to remember to be conscious that we aren’t using self-compassion in a deceptive or shallow way to make the suffering go away and pretend there isn’t a problem when there is. We should know that it’s okay to be honest with ourselves, because once we acknowledge the problem, framing it in a larger compassionate perspective will allow us to be kind with ourselves and learn more from your experiences.
What are your thoughts on this topic? Which way is better according to you?
And do you struggle to be compassionate toward yourself?
Let us know in the comments bellow!
