Low Self-Esteem
As soon as we become aware of ourselves, and our surroundings, self-esteem begins to develop. In an ideal world, our self-esteem would highlight and reflect each of our successes. However even while it’s vital for psychological survival, our perception of our own value can be harmful if it doesn’t satisfy some basic needs. The article “The Feeling of Self-Esteem” defines self-esteem as the feelings, both good and bad, that we have about ourselves. How well we think of our own appearance and performance, as well as how content we are with social interactions, can all be indicators of self-esteem. Mood swings, trouble communicating with people, and interpersonal conflict are just a few of the many repercussions of low self-esteem.
Even while feelings of self-worth can fluctuate quickly, it appears that everyone has a baseline amount of self-worth that determines whether they are generally happy or unhappy with who they are. The sociometer theory focuses on the relationship between general self-esteem and social interactions. In the sociometer theory, one’s sense of acceptance by others is measured by their own self-esteem. Individuals who suffer from low self-esteem think they are less attractive, caring, and they also think they are less worthy of good things coming to them. It seems counterintuitive that people with negative self-views prefer negative evaluations, while discrediting positive ones, but they cannot escape their baseline of harshness. Authors Mckay and Fanning of “A Proven Program of Cognitive Techniques for Assessing, Improving, and Maintaining Your Self-Esteem” explain how a person’s self-evaluations are greatly influenced by the particular circumstances they face in life. It is more likely that people may self-verify the negative aspects of their own self-concept in situations where they are insecure about their flaws.
Even while feelings of self-worth can fluctuate quickly, it appears that everyone has a baseline amount of self-worth that determines whether they are generally happy or unhappy with who they are. The sociometer theory focuses on the relationship between general self-esteem and social interactions. In the sociometer theory, one’s sense of acceptance by others is measured by their own self-esteem. Individuals who suffer from low self-esteem think they are less attractive, caring, and they also think they are less worthy of good things coming to them. It seems counterintuitive that people with negative self-views prefer negative evaluations, while discrediting positive ones, but they cannot escape their baseline of harshness. Authors Mckay and Fanning of “A Proven Program of Cognitive Techniques for Assessing, Improving, and Maintaining Your Self-Esteem” explain how a person’s self-evaluations are greatly influenced by the particular circumstances they face in life. It is more likely that people may self-verify the negative aspects of their own self-concept in situations where they are insecure about their flaws. In “Mechanisms Underlying Self-Esteem Differences in Motivation to Repair Sad Moods,” authors Joanne Wood and colleagues describe how the Sociometer theory clarifies the contextual factors influencing feelings of unworthiness and how recent research suggests recalling a previous rejection reduces mood, undermines self-worth, and casts doubt on one’s sense of personal deservingness. This causes people with low self-worth to decrease productivity and get themselves out of depressive states. Their true self-perception is depressed by their incapacity to improve positivity in their life while attempting to preserve cognitive balance.
People who have low self-esteem will discover that self-verification and self-enhancement work against each other. Author Olivia Evans describes how people look for evidence to support their beliefs about themselves, whether they are favorable or negative, in her article “Self Verification Theory.” Even when others give them positive feedback, people still have a tendency to hold onto the same assumptions about themselves. The self-verification theory states that even in situations where acceptance is offered, feelings of rejection endure. As a result, if one was reared in a setting where accomplishment is valued highly, even top performers may struggle with self-doubt. Having been taught from infancy to cultivate self-assurance and self-worth, they interpret any setback as a personal failure. Helping someone’s self-worth reflect their successes might have the unintended consequence of making them always feel unfulfilled and on the hunt for wholeness, as author Alison Berman points out in her article titled “The Dangers of Basing Self-worth on Achievement.”
Cognitive distortions are the cause of these anxiety-inducing events and low opinions about oneself. This article, “15 Cognitive Distortions To Blame for Negative Thinking,” describes cognitive distortions as the ways in which our thoughts can trick us into believing less of ourselves in comparison to the outside world. These deeply rooted mental filters or stereotypes, according to a Harvard Health report, make people feel less confidence in themselves and raise their anxiety levels. One’s feelings and opinions regarding a circumstance become the actual perspective of the issue, regardless of any contradicting information. Prescott Lecky’s thesis, as presented in “The Handbook of Social Psychology,” holds that people are compelled to cling to persistent self-views because they provide their beliefs with a strong sense of coherence. Everyone experiences cognitive distortions from time to time. Numerous more cognitive filters, such as catastrophizing and excluding the good, are frequently used in emotional thinking, as discussed in “15 Cognitive Distortions To Blame for Negative Thinking.” It is a part of the human experience, although people who become angry or depressed easily tend to feel it more than others.
When unpleasant events occur, people with low self-esteem often react emotionally with greater negativity. Negative self-evaluations come from the critical, judgmental inner voice that lives in our minds and seems normal and familiar. It could be harder for those who lack assurance and confidence to control their inner critic. In the book “A Proven Program of Cognitive Techniques for Assessing, Improving, and Maintaining Your Self-Esteem,” author Matthew Mckay explains that although the internal critic appears to have a free will and autonomy, it is all a delusion. The critic is a psychological jackal who preys on people’s optimistic views of themselves, undermining and demolishing their self-assurance.
In general, we exist on a continuum that some would consider successful, and others would perceive as failure, sometimes tragically even ourselves. We are neither who we think we are nor who other people think we are. Our thoughts, which are impacted by our concerns of being exposed and being inauthentic, have a significant impact on our moods and behaviors. In the article, “Why Low Self-Esteem may be Resistant to Change,” author Robert Joseph claims that inclusionary status has no direct bearing on an individual’s success or failure. People who have poor self-esteem could therefore be less aware of their own successes and failures.
References
https://psychcentral.com/lib/cognitive-distortions-negative-thinking. 15 Cognitive Distortions to Blame for Your Negative Thinking. (2016, May 17). Psych Central.
https://medium.com/personal-growth/the-dangers-of-basing-self-worth-on-achievement-54d125633b33. Berman, A. E. (2015, November 7). The Dangers of Basing Self-worth on Achievement. Personal Growth.
https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.82.1.128. Heimpel, S. A., Wood, J. V., Marshall, M. A., & Brown, J. D. (2002). Do people with low self-esteem really want to feel better? Self-esteem differences in motivation to repair negative moods. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(1), 128–147.
https://opentextbc.ca/socialpsychology/chapter/the-feeling-self-self-esteem/. Jhangiani, D. R., & Tarry, D. H. (2022). 3.2 The Feeling Self: Self-Esteem.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167203029007010. Josephs, R., Bosson, J., & Jacobs, C. (2003). Self-Esteem Maintenance Processes: Why Low Self-Esteem may be Resistant to Change. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 920–933.
McKay, M., & Fanning, P. (2016). Self-Esteem: A Proven Program of Cognitive Techniques for Assessing, Improving, and Maintaining Your Self-Esteem. New Harbinger Publications.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/how-to-recognize-and-tame-your-cognitive-distortions-202205042738. MD, P. G. (2022, May 4). How to recognize and tame your cognitive distortions. Harvard Health.
https://www.simplypsychology.org/self-verification-theory.html. Self-Verification Theory. (2022, November 3).
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rowan/detail.action?docID=1023907. Van Lange, P. A. M., Kruglanski, A. W., & Higgins, E. T. (2011). Handbook of Theories of Social Psychology: Volume Two. SAGE Publications, Limited.
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0012881. Wood, J. V., Heimpel, S. A., Manwell, L. A., Link to external site, this link will open in a new tab, & Whittington, E. J. (2009). This mood is familiar and I don’t deserve to feel better anyway: Mechanisms underlying self-esteem differences in motivation to repair sad moods. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(2), 363–380.
Counterintuitive Fall 2024 
First, I separated your long paragraphs whenever I encountered a new Main Idea.
There should now be one main idea per paragraph: the ideal situation.
Then I produced a topic sentence for each new paragraph.
If you agree that any sentence accurately reflects the main idea for any paragraph, you can use or adapt it to suit your needs.
As soon as WE become aware of OURselves, and OUR surroundings, self-esteem begins to develop. In an ideal world, our POSITIVE self-esteem WOULD REFLECT AND AMPLIFY OUR individual achievements and accomplishments. HOWEVER, OUR ASSESSMENT OF OUR of self-worth, while necessary for psychological survival, can be damaging if it fails to meet fundamental requirements. The definition of self-esteem given in the article “The Feeling of Self-Esteem” is the positive or negative emotions WE feel about OURselves. Self-esteem can be determined by how well people think of OUR own performance and appearance, as well as how happy WE are with social interactions.
—The bold sentence is the topic sentence, and makes a good opener.
—Here I also moved that sentence and emphasized that self-esteem can be either positive or negative as early as possible.
—You’ll save a lot of language, avoid a lot of pronoun disagreements, and create an empathy bridge with your readers, if you use WE as your go-to pronoun.
While self-esteem is an emotion-changing state that can quickly shift from low to high, it seems we all have a baseline esteem level that makes us generally satisfied or unsatisfied with ourselves. The sociometer theory focuses on how social interactions affect overall self-esteem. Self-esteem is a gauge of acceptance among others, according to the sociometer theory. People who struggle with low self-esteem perceive themselves as less appealing and loving than those who are confident, and they also believe that they are less deserving of favorable outcomes. Mood swings, trouble communicating with people, and interpersonal conflict are just a few of the many repercussions of low self-esteem. It seems counterintuitive that people with negative self-views prefer negative evaluations, while discrediting positive ones, but they cannot escape their baseline level.
Authors Mckay and Fanning of “A Proven Program of Cognitive Techniques for Assessing, Improving, and Maintaining Your Self-Esteem” explain how a person’s self-evaluations are greatly influenced by the particular circumstances they face in life. For a student who has studied hard, a poor score on an exam can lead to conflicting, contradictory results. For High Esteem individuals, this can be dismissed as a temporary setback, but Low Esteem individuals conclude that they didn’t do well because of their inferiority, which develops self-doubt and unfavorable feelings. It is more likely that people insecure about their flaws will self-verify the negative aspects of their own self-concept in situations where they face failure.
Authors Joanne Wood and colleagues, in their article “Mechanisms Underlying Self-Esteem Differences in Motivation to Repair Sad Moods,” explain how the Sociometer theory clarifies the contextual factors influencing feelings of worthiness, in addition to the reasons why various dispositions are linked to varying degrees of such feelings. According to current research, remembering a past rejection lowers mood, weakens one’s feeling of self-worth, challenges one’s sense of personal deservingness, and makes individuals who have low self-esteem lose motivation to bring themselves out of a depressed mood. Their inability to enhance positivity in their lives while trying to maintain cognitive balance depresses their actual self-perception.
People who have low self-esteem will discover that self-verification and self-enhancement work against each other. In the article “Self Verification Theory,” author Olivia Evans explains how people seek information to validate either their positive or negative self-concepts. People tend to maintain constant beliefs about themselves even in the face of positive feedback from others. In accordance with the self-verification theory, feelings of rejection persist even when the world offers acceptance.
Therefore, even high achievers can be riddled with self-doubt if they have been raised in an environment that is obsessed with achievement. Advised from birth to develop self-confidence and self-esteem, they see any failure as a personality flaw. Author Alison Berman notes in her article “The Dangers of Basing Self-worth on Achievement” that helping an individual’s self-worth to reflect their accomplishments has the unintended consequence of making them constantly feel unfulfilled and on the lookout for wholeness.
These experiences of anxiety and negative self-evaluations are due to cognitive distortions. Cognitive distortions are the ways in which our minds can deceive us into thinking poorly ourselves relative to the outside world, according to the article “15 Cognitive Distortions To Blame for Negative Thinking.” An article in Harvard Health states that these ingrained mental filters or preconceptions cause people to feel less confident in themselves and increase anxiety levels. Regardless of any contradictory knowledge, one’s emotions and sentiments about a situation become the true view of the scenario. “The Handbook of Social Psychology” presents that Prescott Lecky’s thesis believes people are forced to hold onto persistent self-views because it gives their beliefs a strong sense of coherence.
Cognitive distortions occur occasionally in everyone. It is explained in “15 Cognitive Distortions To Blame for Negative Thinking” how many additional cognitive filters are commonly utilized in emotional thinking, such as catastrophizing and eliminating the positive. It is an aspect of the human experience, but especially felt by those who are easily agitated or depressed. People with low self-esteem tend to credit negative thoughts, while rejecting positive ones.
Experts explain how low self-esteem affects behavior. For example, it increases ambition and drive. In the Medium.com article “The Dangers of Basing Self-Worth on Achievement,” Alison Berman quotes Thupten Jinpa from her book “Fearless Heart.” Jinpa says, “We’re afraid that if we were to be too gentle and kind with ourselves, to relax our grip, we might not accomplish anything at all. So we keep cracking our internal whip.” But at the same time, it can cause self-sabotage. According to Sara Heimpel and others, in “Do People with Low Self-Esteem Really Want to Get Better?,” negative emotions can affect motivation and cognition, which can lead to disruptions in positive self-regulation.
The majority of self-verification studies show that people who have poor opinions of themselves favor critical assessments, regardless of whether the poor opinion is their own or someone else’s. We may reject a compliment if we believe the source of affirmation to be dishonest or inaccurate. We may also hold onto “nonexistent” negative opinions of ourselves if our prior experiences have prevented us from obtaining fair evaluations of our own performance, according to The “handbook of Social Psychology.” It would seem reasonable that if unpleasant emotions affect our ability to control ourselves, they may also affect how well those negative feelings are handled. Author Robert Joseph makes the argument in the article “Why Low Self-Esteem may be Resistant to Change” that individuals with poor self-esteem may not pay sufficient attention to their own feedback because they are more preoccupied with what other people think of them.
Low Esteem individuals frequently have stronger negative emotional responses to unfortunate occurrences. The judgmental, self-critical inner voice that seems natural and comfortable in our brains is where negative self-evaluations originate. Those with confidence and security shortages may find it more difficult to rein in their inner critic. Author Matthew Mckay describes in his book, “A Proven Program of Cognitive Techniques for Assessing, Improving, and Maintaining Your Self-Esteem,” that it’s all an illusion; the internal critic seems to have a will of its own and a sense of independence. The critic is a psychological jackal who attacks people’s positive self-perceptions, diminishing and destroying their confidence with every attack.
In general, we are neither who we think we are nor who other people think we are, but live on a spectrum some would consider successful and others would see as failure, sometimes, tragically, even ourselves. Our feelings and behaviors are greatly influenced by our thinking, which are in turn influenced by our fears of exposure and inauthenticity. The author Robert Joseph states in the article “Why Low Self-Esteem may be Resistant to Change,” that feelings of success or failure are not directly tied to inclusionary status. As a result, people with low self-esteem may be less conscious of their own experiences of success or failure. According to “15 Cognitive Distortions To Blame for Negative Thinking,” we frequently view ourselvews differently and act in ways based on false assumptions when we accept these negative beliefs as true.
BabyYoda, I have watched in awe at the work you’ve been doing here. Congratulations on your very fine revisions. I hope you’re proud of them. I have graded both your first draft and your Rewrite to reflect your improvements.
Two small chores remain.
Your second paragraph is repeated verbatim as the beginning of your third paragraph. Let the second one stand alone as its own complete paragraph, but remove the repetition from your third. Don’t worry how it affects your word count. This essay is taking its own correct size and shape.
Remove from your References list any sources you don’t explicitly CITE in this paper, even if you benefited from the information you learned from them. ALL your sources can be part of your eventual Bibliography, but the References should name just those you mention in your Definition Rewrite.
I admire your persistence, skill, and determination.