essay about your self esteem

Essay on Self Esteem

Students are often asked to write an essay on Self Esteem in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Self Esteem

Understanding self-esteem.

Self-esteem is the opinion we have about ourselves. It’s about how much we value and respect ourselves. High self-esteem means you think highly of yourself, while low self-esteem means you don’t.

Importance of Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is important because it heavily influences our choices and decisions. It allows us to live life to our potential. High self-esteem leads to confidence, happiness, fulfillment, and achievement.

Building Self-Esteem

Building self-esteem requires positive self-talk, self-acceptance, and self-love. It’s about focusing on your strengths, forgiving your mistakes, and celebrating your achievements.

250 Words Essay on Self Esteem

Introduction.

Self-esteem, a fundamental concept in psychology, refers to an individual’s overall subjective emotional evaluation of their own worth. It encompasses beliefs about oneself and emotional states, such as triumph, despair, pride, and shame. It is a critical aspect of personal identity, shaping our perception of the world and our place within it.

The Dual Facet of Self-Esteem

Self-esteem can be divided into two types: high and low. High self-esteem is characterized by a positive self-image and confidence, while low self-esteem is marked by self-doubt and criticism. Both types significantly influence our mental health, relationships, and life outcomes.

Impact of Self-Esteem

High self-esteem can lead to positive outcomes. It encourages risk-taking, resilience, and optimism, fostering success in various life domains. Conversely, low self-esteem can result in fear of failure, social anxiety, and susceptibility to mental health issues like depression. Thus, it’s crucial to nurture self-esteem for psychological well-being.

Building self-esteem involves recognizing one’s strengths and weaknesses and accepting them. It requires self-compassion and challenging negative self-perceptions. Positive affirmations, setting and achieving goals, and maintaining healthy relationships can all contribute to enhancing self-esteem.

In conclusion, self-esteem is a complex, multifaceted construct that significantly influences our lives. It is not static and can be improved with conscious effort. Understanding and nurturing our self-esteem is vital for achieving personal growth and leading a fulfilling life.

500 Words Essay on Self Esteem

Self-esteem, a fundamental aspect of psychological health, is the overall subjective emotional evaluation of one’s self-worth. It is a judgment of oneself as well as an attitude toward the self. The importance of self-esteem lies in the fact that it concerns our perceptions and beliefs about ourselves, which can shape our experiences and actions.

The Two Types of Self-esteem

Self-esteem can be classified into two types: high and low. High self-esteem indicates a highly favorable impression of oneself, whereas low self-esteem reflects a negative view. People with high self-esteem generally feel good about themselves and value their worth, while those with low self-esteem usually harbor negative feelings about themselves, often leading to feelings of inadequacy, incompetence, and unlovability.

Factors Influencing Self-esteem

Self-esteem is shaped by various factors throughout our lives, such as the environment, experiences, relationships, and achievements. Positive reinforcement, success, and supportive relationships often help to foster high self-esteem, while negative feedback, failure, and toxic relationships can contribute to low self-esteem. However, it’s important to note that self-esteem is not a fixed attribute; it can change over time and can be improved through cognitive and behavioral interventions.

Impact of Self-esteem on Life

Self-esteem significantly impacts individuals’ mental health, relationships, and overall well-being. High self-esteem can lead to positive outcomes, such as better stress management, resilience, and life satisfaction. On the other hand, low self-esteem is associated with mental health issues like depression and anxiety. It can also lead to poor academic and job performance, problematic relationships, and increased vulnerability to drug and alcohol abuse.

Improving Self-esteem

Improving self-esteem requires a multifaceted approach. Cognitive-behavioral therapies can help individuals challenge their negative beliefs about themselves and develop healthier thought patterns. Regular physical activity, healthy eating, and adequate sleep can also boost self-esteem by improving physical health. Furthermore, positive social interactions and relationships can enhance self-esteem by providing emotional support and validation. Lastly, self-compassion and self-care practices can foster a more positive self-image and promote higher self-esteem.

In conclusion, self-esteem is a critical component of our psychological well-being, influencing our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It is shaped by various factors and can significantly impact our lives. However, it’s not a fixed attribute, and with the right strategies and support, individuals can improve their self-esteem, leading to better mental health, relationships, and overall quality of life. Therefore, understanding and fostering self-esteem is essential for personal growth and development.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

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Happy studying!

What is Self-Esteem? A Psychologist Explains

What is the Meaning of Self-Esteem in Psychology? Definition, examples, research, books, tips, facts, tests, TED-talks and more...

“Believe in yourself.”

That is the message that we encounter constantly, in books, television shows, superhero comics, and common myths and legends.

We are told that we can accomplish anything if we believe in ourselves.

Of course, we know that to be untrue; we cannot accomplish anything in the world simply through belief—if that were true, a lot more children would be soaring in the skies above their garage roof instead of lugging around a cast for a few weeks!

However, we know that believing in yourself and accepting yourself for who you are is an important factor in success, relationships, and happiness and that self-esteem plays an important role in living a flourishing life . It provides us with belief in our abilities and the motivation to carry them out, ultimately reaching fulfillment as we navigate life with a positive outlook.

Various studies have confirmed that self-esteem has a direct relationship with our overall wellbeing, and we would do well to keep this fact in mind—both for ourselves and for those around us, particularly the developing children we interact with.

Before you read on, we thought you might like to download our three Self-Compassion Exercises for free . These detailed, science-based exercises will not only help you show more compassion to yourself but will also give you the tools to enhance the self-compassion of your clients, students or employees and lead them to a healthy sense of self-esteem.

This Article Contains:

What is the Meaning of Self-esteem? A Definition

Self-Esteem and Psychology

Incorporating self-esteem in positive psychology, 22 examples of high self-esteem, 18 surprising statistics and facts about self-esteem, relevant research, can we help boost self-esteem issues with therapy and counseling, the benefits of developing self-esteem with meditation, can you test self-esteem, and what are the problems with assessment, 17 factors that influence self-esteem, the effects of social media, 30 tips & affirmations for enhancing self-esteem, popular books on self-esteem (pdf), ted talks and videos on self-esteem, 15 quotes on self-esteem, a take-home message, what is the meaning of self-esteem.

You probably already have a good idea, but let’s start from the beginning anyway: what is self-esteem?

Self-esteem refers to a person’s overall sense of his or her value or worth. It can be considered a sort of measure of how much a person “values, approves of, appreciates, prizes, or likes him or herself” (Adler & Stewart, 2004).

According to self-esteem expert Morris Rosenberg, self-esteem is quite simply one’s attitude toward oneself (1965). He described it as a “favourable or unfavourable attitude toward the self”.

Various factors believed to influence our self-esteem include:

Personality
Life experiences
Social circumstances
The reactions of others
Comparing the self to others

An important note is that self-esteem is not fixed. It is malleable and measurable, meaning we can test for and improve upon it.

Self-esteem and self-acceptance are often confused or even considered identical by most people. Let’s address this misconception by considering some fundamental differences in the nature and consequences of self-esteem and unconditional self-acceptance.

Self-esteem is based on evaluating the self, and rating one’s behaviors and qualities as positive or negative, which results in defining the self as worthy or non-worthy (Ellis, 1994).
Self-acceptance, however, is how the individual relates to the self in a way that allows the self to be as it is. Acceptance is neither positive nor negative; it embraces all aspects and experiences of the self (Ellis, 1976).
Self-esteem relies on comparisons to evaluate the self and ‘decide’ its worth.
Self-acceptance, stems from the realization that there is no objective basis for determining the value of a human being. So with self-acceptance, the individual affirms who they are without any need for comparisons.
Self-esteem is contingent on external factors, such as performance, appearance, or social approval, that form the basis on which the self is evaluated.
With self-acceptance, a person feels satisfied with themselves despite external factors, as this sense of worthiness is not derived from meeting specific standards.
Self-esteem is fragile (Kernis & Lakey, 2010).
Self-acceptance provides a secure and enduring positive relationship with the self (Kernis & Lakey, 2010).
When it comes to the consequences on wellbeing, while self-esteem appears to be associated with some markers of wellbeing, such as high life satisfaction (Myers & Diener, 1995) and less anxiety (Brockner, 1984), there is also a “dark side” of self-esteem, characterized by egotism and narcissism (Crocker & Park, 2003).
Self-acceptance is strongly associated with numerous positive markers of general psychological wellbeing (MacInnes, 2006).

Self-esteem has been a hot topic in psychology for decades, going about as far back as psychology itself. Even Freud , who many consider the founding father of psychology (although he’s a bit of an estranged father at this point), had theories about self-esteem at the heart of his work.

What self-esteem is, how it develops (or fails to develop) and what influences it has kept psychologists busy for a long time, and there’s no sign that we’ll have it all figured out anytime soon!

While there is much we still have to learn about self-esteem, we have at least been able to narrow down what self-esteem is and how it differs from other, similar constructs. Read on to learn what sets self-esteem apart from other self-directed traits and states.

Self-Esteem vs. Self-Concept

Self-esteem is not self-concept, although self-esteem may be a part of self-concept. Self-concept is the perception that we have of ourselves, our answer when we ask ourselves the question “Who am I?” It is knowing about one’s own tendencies, thoughts, preferences and habits, hobbies, skills, and areas of weakness.

Put simply, the awareness of who we are is our concept of our self .

Purkey (1988) describes self-concept as:

“the totality of a complex, organized, and dynamic system of learned beliefs, attitudes and opinions that each person holds to be true about his or her personal existence”.

According to Carl Rogers, founder of client-centered therapy , self-concept is an overarching construct that self-esteem is one of the components of it (McLeod, 2008).

Self-Esteem vs. Self-Image

Another similar term with a different meaning is self-image; self-image is similar to self-concept in that it is all about how you see yourself (McLeod, 2008). Instead of being based on reality, however, it can be based on false and inaccurate thoughts about ourselves. Our self-image may be close to reality or far from it, but it is generally not completely in line with objective reality or with the way others perceive us.

Self-Esteem vs. Self-Worth

Self-esteem is a similar concept to self-worth but with a small (although important) difference: self-esteem is what we think, feel, and believe about ourselves, while self-worth is the more global recognition that we are valuable human beings worthy of love (Hibbert, 2013).

Self-Esteem vs. Self-Confidence

Self-esteem is not self-confidence ; self-confidence is about your trust in yourself and your ability to deal with challenges, solve problems, and engage successfully with the world (Burton, 2015). As you probably noted from this description, self-confidence is based more on external measures of success and value than the internal measures that contribute to self-esteem.

One can have high self-confidence, particularly in a certain area or field, but still lack a healthy sense of overall value or self-esteem.

Self-Esteem vs. Self-Efficacy

Similar to self-confidence, self-efficacy is also related to self-esteem but not a proxy for it. Self-efficacy refers to the belief in one’s ability to succeed at certain tasks (Neil, 2005). You could have high self-efficacy when it comes to playing basketball, but low self-efficacy when it comes to succeeding in math class.

Unlike self-esteem, self-efficacy is more specific rather than global, and it is based on external success rather than internal worth.

Self-Esteem vs. Self-Compassion

Finally, self-esteem is also not self-compassion. Self-compassion centers on how we relate to ourselves rather than how we judge or perceive ourselves (Neff, n.d.). Being self-compassionate means we are kind and forgiving to ourselves, and that we avoid being harsh or overly critical of ourselves. Self-compassion can lead us to a healthy sense of self-esteem, but it is not in and of itself self-esteem.

We explore this further in The Science of Self-Acceptance Masterclass© .

Esteem in Maslow’s Theory – The Hierarchy of Needs

The mention of esteem may bring to mind the fourth level of Maslow’s pyramid : esteem needs.

While these needs and the concept of self-esteem are certainly related, Maslow’s esteem needs are more focused on external measures of esteem, such as respect, status, recognition, accomplishment, and prestige (McLeod, 2017).

There is a component of self-esteem within this level of the hierarchy, but Maslow felt that the esteem of others was more important for development and need fulfillment than self-esteem.

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Dr. Martin Seligman has some concerns about openly accepting self-esteem as part of positive psychology . He worries that people live in the world where self-esteem is injected into a person’s identity, not caring in how it is done, as long as the image of “confidence” is obtained. He expressed the following in 2006:

I am not against self-esteem, but I believe that self-esteem is just a meter that reads out the state of the system. It is not an end in itself. When you are doing well in school or work, when you are doing well with the people you love, when you are doing well in play, the meter will register high. When you are doing badly, it will register low. (p. v)

Seligman makes a great point, as it is important to take his words into consideration when looking at self-esteem. Self-esteem and positive psychology may not marry quite yet, so it is important to look at what research tells us about self-esteem before we construct a rationale for it as positive psychology researcher, coach, or practitioner.

Examples of these characteristics are being open to criticism, acknowledging mistakes, being comfortable with giving and receiving compliments, and displaying a harmony between what one says, does, looks, sounds, and moves.

People with high self-esteem are unafraid to show their curiosity, discuss their experiences, ideas, and opportunities. They can also enjoy the humorous aspects of their lives and are comfortable with social or personal assertiveness (Branden, 1992).

Although low self-esteem has received more attention than high self-esteem, the positive psychology movement has brought high self-esteem into the spotlight. We now know more about what high self-esteem looks like and how it can be cultivated.

We know that people with high self-esteem:

Appreciate themselves and other people.
Enjoy growing as a person and finding fulfillment and meaning in their lives.
Are able to dig deep within themselves and be creative.
Make their own decisions and conform to what others tell them to be and do only when they agree.
See the word in realistic terms, accepting other people the way they are while pushing them toward greater confidence and a more positive direction.
Can easily concentrate on solving problems in their lives.
Have loving and respectful relationships.
Know what their values are and live their lives accordingly.
Speak up and tell others their opinions, calmly and kindly, and share their wants and needs with others.
Endeavor to make a constructive difference in other people’s lives (Smith & Harte, n.d.).

We also know that there are some simple ways to tell if you have high self-esteem. For example, you likely have high self-esteem if you:

Act assertively without experiencing any guilt, and feel at ease communicating with others.
Avoid dwelling on the past and focus on the present moment.
Believe you are equal to everyone else, no better and no worse.
Reject the attempts of others to manipulate you.
Recognize and accept a wide range of feelings, both positive and negative, and share them within your healthy relationships.
Enjoy a healthy balance of work, play, and relaxation .
Accept challenges and take risks in order to grow, and learn from your mistakes when you fail.
Handle criticism without taking it personally, with the knowledge that you are learning and growing and that your worth is not dependent on the opinions of others.
Value yourself and communicate well with others, without fear of expressing your likes, dislikes, and feelings.
Value others and accept them as they are without trying to change them (Self Esteem Awareness, n.d.).

Based on these characteristics, we can come up with some good examples of what high self-esteem looks like.

Imagine a high-achieving student who takes a difficult exam and earns a failing grade. If she has high self-esteem, she will likely chalk up her failure to factors like not studying hard enough, a particularly difficult set of questions, or simply having an “off” day. What she doesn’t do is conclude that she must be stupid and that she will probably fail all future tests too.

Having a healthy sense of self-esteem guides her toward accepting reality, thinking critically about why she failed, and problem-solving instead of wallowing in self-pity or giving up.

For a second example, think about a young man out on a first date. He really likes the young woman he is going out with, so he is eager to make a good impression and connect with her. Over the course of their discussion on the date, he learns that she is motivated and driven by completely different values and has very different taste in almost everything.

Instead of going along with her expressed opinions on things, he offers up his own views and isn’t afraid to disagree with her. His high self-esteem makes him stay true to his values and allows him to easily communicate with others, even when they don’t agree. To him, it is more important to behave authentically than to focus on getting his date to like him.

23 Examples of Self-Esteem Issues

Here are 23 examples of issues that can manifest from low self-esteem:

You people please
You’re easily angered or irritated
You feel your opinion isn’t important
You hate you
What you do is never good enough
You’re highly sensitive to others opinions
The world doesn’t feel safe
You doubt every decision
You regularly experience the emotions of sadness and worthlessness
You find it hard keeping relationships
You avoid taking risks or trying new things
You engage in addictive avoidance behaviors
You struggle with confidence
You find it difficult creating boundaries
You give more attention to your weaknesses
You are often unsure of who you are
You feel negative experiences are all consuming
You struggle to say no
You find it difficult asking for your needs to be met
You hold a pessimistic or negative outlook on life
You doubt your abilities or chances of success
You frequently experience negative emotions, such as fear, anxiety or depression
You compare yourself with others and often you come in second best

It can be hard to really wrap your mind around self-esteem and why it is so important. To help you out, we’ve gathered a list of some of the most significant and relevant findings about self-esteem and low self-esteem in particular.

Although some of these facts may make sense to you, you will likely find that at least one or two surprise you—specifically those pertaining to the depth and breadth of low self-esteem in people (and particularly young people and girls).

Adolescent boys with high self-esteem are almost two and a half times more likely to initiate sex than boys with low self-esteem, while girls with high self-esteem are three times more likely to delay sex than girls with low self-esteem (Spencer, Zimet, Aalsma, & Orr, 2002).
Low self-esteem is linked to violence, school dropout rates, teenage pregnancy, suicide, and low academic achievement (Misetich & Delis-Abrams, 2003).
About 44% of girls and 15% of boys in high school are attempting to lose weight (Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse, n.d.).
Seven in 10 girls believe that they are not good enough or don’t measure up in some way (Dove Self-Esteem Fund, 2008).
A girl’s self-esteem is more strongly related to how she views her own body shape and body weight than how much she actually weighs (Dove Self-Esteem Fund, 2008).
Nearly all women (90%) want to change at least one aspect of their physical appearance (Confidence Coalition, n.d.).
The vast majority (81%) of 10-year old girls are afraid of being fat (Confidence Coalition, n.d.).
About one in four college-age women have an eating disorder (Confidence Coalition, n.d.).
Only 2% of women think they are beautiful (Confidence Coalition, n.d.).
Absent fathers, poverty, and a low-quality home environment have a negative impact on self-esteem (Orth, 2018).

These facts on low self-esteem are alarming and disheartening, but thankfully they don’t represent the whole story. The whole story shows that there are many people with a healthy sense of self-esteem, and they enjoy some great benefits and advantages. For instance, people with healthy self-esteem:

Are less critical of themselves and others.
Are better able to handle stress and avoid the unhealthy side effects of stress.
Are less likely to develop an eating disorder.
Are less likely to feel worthless, guilty, and ashamed .
Are more likely to be assertive about expressing and getting what they want.
Are able to build strong, honest relationships and are more likely to leave unhealthy ones.
Are more confident in their ability to make good decisions.
Are more resilient and able to bounce back when faced with disappointment, failure, and obstacles (Allegiance Health, 2015).

Given the facts on the sad state of self-esteem in society and the positive outcomes associated with high self-esteem, it seems clear that looking into how self-esteem can be built is a worthwhile endeavor.

Luckily, there are many researchers who have tackled this topic. Numerous studies have shown us that it is possible to build self-esteem, especially in children and young people.

How? There are many ways!

Recent research found a correlation between self-esteem and optimism with university students from Brazil (Bastianello, Pacico & Hutz & 2014). One of the most interesting results came from a cross-cultural research on life satisfaction and self-esteem, which was conducted in 31 countries.

They found differences in self-esteem between collective and individualistic cultures with self-esteem being lower in collectivist cultures. Expressing personal emotions, attitudes, and cognitive thoughts are highly associated with self-esteem, collectivist cultures seem to have a drop in self-esteem because of a lack of those characteristics (Diener & Diener 1995).

China, a collectivist culture, found that self-esteem was a significant predictor of life satisfaction (Chen, Cheung, Bond & Leung, 2006). They found that similar to other collectivist cultures, self-esteem also had an effect on resilience with teenagers. Teenagers with low self-esteem had a higher sense of hopelessness and had low resilience (Karatas, 2011).

In more individualistic cultures, teenagers who were taught to depend on their beliefs, behaviors, and felt open to expressing their opinion had more resilience and higher self-esteem (Dumont & Provost, 1999).

School-based programs that pair students with mentors and focus on relationships, building, self-esteem enhancements, goal setting , and academic assistance have been proven to enhance students’ self-esteem, improve relationships with others, reduce depression and bullying behaviors (King, Vidourek, Davis, & McClellan, 2009).

Similarly, elementary school programs that focus on improving self-esteem through short, classroom-based sessions also have a positive impact on students’ self-esteem, as well as reducing problem behaviors and strengthening connections between peers (Park & Park, 2014).

However, the potential to boost your self-esteem and reap the benefits is not limited to students! Adults can get in on this endeavour as well, although the onus will be on them to make the changes necessary.

Self-esteem researcher and expert Dr. John M. Grohol outlined six practical tips on how to increase your sense of self-esteem, which include:

6 Practical Tips on How to Increase Self-Esteem

1. take a self-esteem inventory to give yourself a baseline..

It can be as simple as writing down 10 of your strengths and 10 of your weaknesses. This will help you to begin developing an honest and realistic conception of yourself.

2. Set realistic expectations.

It’s important to set small, reachable goals that are within your power. For example, setting an extremely high expectation or an expectation that someone else will change their behavior is virtually guaranteed to make you feel like a failure, through no fault of your own.

3. Stop being a perfectionist.

Acknowledge both your accomplishments and mistakes. Nobody is perfect, and trying to be will only lead to disappointment. Acknowledging your accomplishments and recognizing your mistakes is the way to keep a positive outlook while learning and growing from your mistakes.

4. Explore yourself.

The importance of knowing yourself and being at peace with who you are cannot be overstated. This can take some trial and error, and you will constantly learn new things about yourself, but it is a journey that should be undertaken with purpose and zeal.

5. Be willing to adjust your self-image.

We all change as we age and grow, and we must keep up with our ever-changing selves if we want to set and achieve meaningful goals.

6. Stop comparing yourself to others.

Comparing ourselves to others is a trap that is extremely easy to fall into, especially today with social media and the ability to project a polished, perfected appearance. The only person you should compare yourself to is you (Grohol, 2011).

The Positivity Blog also offers some helpful tips on enhancing your self-esteem, including:

Say “stop” to your inner critic.
Use healthier motivation habits.
Take a 2-minute self-appreciation break.
Write down 3 things in the evening that you can appreciate about yourself.
Do the right thing.
Replace the perfectionism.
Handle mistakes and failures in a more positive way.
Be kinder towards other people .
Try something new.
Stop falling into the comparison trap.
Spend more time with supportive people (and less time with destructive people).
Remember the “whys” of high self-esteem (Edberg, 2017).

Another list of specific, practical things you can do to develop and maintain a good sense of self-esteem comes from the Entrepreneur website:

Use distancing pronouns. When you are experiencing stress or negative self-talk, try putting it in more distant terms (e.g., instead of saying “I am feeling ashamed,” try saying “Courtney is feeling ashamed.”). This can help you to see the situation as a challenge rather than a threat.
Remind yourself of your achievements. The best way to overcome imposter syndrome—the belief that, despite all of your accomplishments, you are a failure and a fraud—is to list all of your personal successes. You might be able to explain a couple of them away as a chance, but they can’t all be due to luck!
Move more! This can be as simple as a short walk or as intense as a several-mile run, as quick as striking a “power pose” or as long as a two-hour yoga session; it doesn’t matter exactly what you do, just that you get more in touch with your body and improve both your health and your confidence.
Use the “five-second” rule. No, not the one about food that is dropped on the ground! This five-second rule is about following up good thoughts and inspiring ideas with action. Do something to make that great idea happen within five seconds.
Practice visualizing your success. Close your eyes and take a few minutes to imagine the scenario in which you have reached your goals, using all five senses and paying attention to the details.
Be prepared—for whatever situation you are about to encounter. If you are going into a job interview, make sure you have practiced, know about the company, and have some good questions ready to ask. If you are going on a date, take some time to boost your confidence, dress well, and have a plan A and a plan B (and maybe even a plan C!) to make sure it goes well.
Limit your usage of social media. Spend less time looking at a screen and more time experiencing the world around you.
Meditate. Establish a regular meditation practice to inspect your thoughts, observe them, and separate yourself from them. Cultivating a sense of inner peace will go a long way towards developing healthy self-esteem.
Keep your goals a secret. You don’t need to keep all of your hopes and dreams to yourself, but make sure you save some of your goal striving and success for just you—it can make you more likely to meet them and also more satisfied when you do.
Practice affirmations (like the ones listed later in this piece). Make time to regularly say positive things about yourself and situations in which you often feel uncertain.
Build your confidence through failure. Use failure as an opportunity to learn and grow, and seek out failure by trying new things and taking calculated risks (Laurinavicius, 2017).

Now that we have a good idea of how to improve self-esteem , there is an important caveat to the topic: many of the characteristics and factors that we believe result from self-esteem may also influence one’s sense of self-esteem, and vice versa.

For example, although we recommend improving self-esteem to positively impact grades or work performance, success in these areas is at least somewhat dependent on self-esteem as well.

Similarly, those who have a healthy level of self-esteem are more likely to have positive relationships, but those with positive relationships are also more likely to have healthy self-esteem, likely because the relationship works in both directions.

While there is nothing wrong with boosting your self-esteem, keep in mind that in some cases you may be putting the cart before the horse, and commit to developing yourself in several areas rather than just working on enhancing your self-esteem.

Can We Help Boost Self-Esteem Issues with Therapy and Counseling?

Based on research like that described above, we have learned that there are many ways therapy and counseling can help clients to improve their self-esteem.

If done correctly, therapy can be an excellent method of enhancing self-esteem, especially if it’s low to begin with.

Here are some of the ways therapy and counseling can a client’s boost self-esteem:

When a client shares their inner thoughts and feelings with the therapist, and the therapist responds with acceptance and compassion rather than judgment or correction, this can build the foundations of healthy self-esteem for the client.
This continued acceptance and unconditional positive regard encourage the client to re-think some of their assumptions, and come to the conclusion that “Maybe there’s nothing wrong with me after all!”
The therapist can explain that self-esteem is a belief rather than a fact and that beliefs are based on our experiences; this can help the client understand that he could be exactly the same person as he is right now and have high self-esteem instead of low, if he had different experiences that cultivated a sense of high self-esteem instead of low self-esteem.
The therapist can offer the client new experiences upon which to base this new belief about herself, experiences in which the client is “basically acceptable” instead of “basically wrong.” The therapist’s acceptance of the client can act as a model for the client of how she can accept herself.
Most importantly, the therapist can accept the client for who he is and affirm his thoughts and feelings as acceptable rather than criticizing him for them. The therapist does not need to approve of each and every action taken by the client, but showing acceptance and approval of who he is at the deepest level will have an extremely positive impact on his own belief in his worth and value as a person (Gilbertson, 2016).

Following these guidelines will encourage your client to develop a better sense of self-love , self-worth, self-acceptance , and self-esteem, as well as discouraging “needless shame” and learning how to separate herself from her behavior (Gilbertson, 2016).

One of these methods is meditation—yes, you can add yet another benefit of meditation to the list! However, not only can we develop self-esteem through meditation , we also gain some other important benefits.

When we meditate, we cultivate our ability to let go and to keep our thoughts and feelings in perspective. We learn to simply observe instead of actively participate in every little experience that pops into our head. In other words, we are “loosening the grip we have on our sense of self” (Puddicombe, 2015).

While this may sound counterintuitive to developing and maintaining a positive sense of self, it is actually a great way to approach it. Through meditation, we gain the ability to become aware of our inner experiences without over-identifying with them, letting our thoughts pass by without judgment or a strong emotional response.

As meditation expert Andy Puddicombe notes, low self-esteem can be understood as the result of over-identification with the self. When we get overly wrapped up in our sense of self, whether that occurs with a focus on the positive (I’m the BEST) or the negative (I’m the WORST), we place too much importance on it. We may even get obsessive about the self, going over every little word, thought, or feeling that enters our mind.

A regular meditation practice can boost your self-esteem by helping you to let go of your preoccupation with your self, freeing you from being controlled by the thoughts and feelings your self-experiences.

When you have the ability to step back and observe a disturbing or self-deprecating thought, it suddenly doesn’t have as much power over you as it used to; this deidentification with the negative thoughts you have about yourself results in less negative talk over time and freedom from your overly critical inner voice (Puddicombe, 2015).

Self-esteem is the topic of many a psychological scale and assessment, and many of them are valid, reliable, and very popular among researchers; however, these assessments are not perfect. There are a few problems and considerations you should take into account if you want to measure self-esteem, including:

Lack of consensus on the definition (Demo, 1985).
Overall gender differences in self-esteem (Bingham, 1983).
Too many instruments for assessing self-esteem, and low correlations between them (Demo, 1985).
The unexplained variance between self-reports and inferred measures such as ratings by others (Demo, 1985).

Although these issues are certainly not unique to the measurement of self-esteem, one should approach the assessment of self-esteem with multiple measurement methods in hand, with the appropriate level of caution, or both.

Still, even though there are various issues with the measurement of self-esteem, avoiding the measurement is not an option! If you are looking to measure self-esteem and worried about finding a validated scale, look no further than one of the foundations of self-esteem research: Rosenberg’s scale.

Measuring Self-Esteem with the Rosenberg Scale

The most common scale of self-esteem is Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale (also called the RSE and sometimes the SES). This scale was developed by Rosenberg and presented in his 1965 book Society and the Adolescent Self-Image.

It contains 10 items rated on a scale from 1 (strongly agree) to 4 (strongly disagree). Some of the items are reverse-scored, and the total score can be calculated by summing up the total points for an overall measure of self-esteem (although it can also be scored in a different, more complex manner—see page 61 of this PDF for instructions).

The 10 items are:

1. On the whole, I am satisfied with myself. 2. At times I think I am no good at all. 3. I feel that I have a number of good qualities. 4. I am able to do things as well as most other people. 5. I feel I do not have much to be proud of. 6. I certainly feel useless at times. 7. I feel that I’m a person of worth. 8. I wish I could have more respect for myself. 9. All in all, I am inclined to think that I am a failure. 10. I take a positive attitude toward myself.

As you likely figured out already, items 2, 5, 6, 8, and 9 are reverse-scored, while the other items are scored normally. This creates a single score of between 10 and 40 points, with lower scores indicating higher self-esteem. Put another way, higher scores indicate a strong sense of low self-esteem.

The scale is considered highly consistent and reliable, and scores correlate highly with other measures of self-esteem and negatively with measures of depression and anxiety. It has been used by thousands of researchers throughout the years and is still in use today, making it one of the most-cited scales ever developed.

The Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (1967/1981)

The second most commonly used reliable and valid measure for self-esteem is The Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory. Within this test, 50 items are included to measure the test-takes attitudes towards themselves, by responding to statements with the selection of “like me” or “not like me” (Robinson, Shaver & Wrightsman, 2010).

Initially created to test the self-esteem of children, it was later altered by Ryden (1978) and now two separate versions exist; one for children and one for adults.

Find out more about taking this test here .

It might be quicker to list what factors don’t influence self-esteem than to identify which factors do influence it! As you might expect, self-esteem is a complex construct and there are many factors that contribute to it, whether positively or negatively.

For a quick sample of some of the many factors that are known to influence self-esteem, check out this list:

Commitment to the worker, spouse, and parental role are positively linked to self-esteem (Reitzes & Mutran, 1994).
Worker identity meaning is positively related to self-esteem (Reitzes & Mutran, 2006).
Being married and older is linked to lower self-esteem (Reitzes & Mutran, 2006).
Higher education and higher income are related to higher self-esteem (Reitzes & Mutran, 2006).
Low socioeconomic status and low self-esteem are related (von Soest, Wagner, Hansen, & Gerstorf, 2018).
Living alone (without a significant other) is linked to low self-esteem (van Soest et al., 2018).
Unemployment and disability contribute to lower self-esteem (van Soest et al., 2018).
A more mature personality and emotional stability are linked to higher self-esteem (van Soest et al., 2018).
Social norms (the importance of friends’ and family members’ opinions) about one’s body and exercise habits are negatively linked to self-esteem, while exercise self-efficacy and self-fulfillment are positively linked to self-esteem (Chang & Suttikun, 2017).

If you’re thinking that an important technological factor is missing, go on to the next section and see if you’re right!

Although you may have found some of the findings on self-esteem covered earlier surprising, you will most likely expect this one: studies suggest that social media usage negatively impacts self-esteem (Friedlander, 2016).

This effect is easy to understand. Humans are social creatures and need interaction with others to stay healthy and happy; however, we also use those around us as comparisons to measure and track our own progress in work, relationships, and life in general. Social media makes these comparisons easier than ever, but they give this tendency to compare a dark twist.

What we see on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter is not representative of real life. It is often carefully curated and painstakingly presented to give the best possible impression.

We rarely see the sadness, the failure, and the disappointment that accompanies everyday human life; instead, we see a perfect picture, a timeline full of only good news, and short blurbs about achievements, accomplishments, and happiness .

Although this social comparison with unattainable standards is clearly a bad habit to get into, social media is not necessarily a death knell for your self-esteem. Moderate social media usage complemented by frequent self-reminders that we are often only seeing the very best in others can allow us to use social media posts as inspiration and motivation rather than unhealthy comparison.

You don’t need to give up social media for good in order to maintain a healthy sense of self-esteem—just use it mindfully and keep it in the right perspective!

By viewing self-esteem as a muscle to grow we establish a world of new opportunities. No longer do we have to view ourselves in the same light.

Use these 10 tips to strengthen the attitudes towards yourself:

1. Spend time with people who lift you up 2. Giveback by helping others 3. Celebrate your achievements, no matter the size 4. Do what makes you happy 5. Change what you can – and let go of what you can’t 6. Let go of perfectionism ideals 7. Speak to yourself like a friend 8. Get involved in extra-curricula’s 9. Own your uniqueness 10. Create a positive self-dialogue.

Influential American author, Jack Canfield explains “Daily affirmations are to the mind what exercise is to the body.” (watch this YouTube clip).

Affirmations are a great way to boost your self-esteem and, in turn, your overall wellbeing. There are tons of examples of affirmations you can use for this purpose, including these 17 from Develop Good Habits :

Mistakes are a stepping stone to success. They are the path I must tread to achieve my dreams.
I will continue to learn and grow.
Mistakes are just an apprenticeship to achievement.
I deserve to be happy and successful.
I deserve a good life. I deny any need for suffering and misery.
I am competent, smart, and able.
I am growing and changing for the better.
I love the person I am becoming.
I believe in my skills and abilities.
I have great ideas. I make useful contributions.
I acknowledge my own self-worth; my self-confidence is rising.
I am worthy of all the good things that happen in my life.
I am confident with my life plan and the way things are going.
I deserve the love I am given.
I let go of the negative feelings about myself and accept all that is good.
I will stand by my decisions. They are sound and reasoned.
I have, or can quickly get, all the knowledge I need to succeed.

If none of these leap out and inspire you, you can always create your own! Just keep in mind these three simple rules for creating effective affirmations:

The affirmations should be in the present tense. They must affirm your value and worth right here, right now (e.g., not “I will do better tomorrow” but “I am doing great today.”).
The affirmations should be positively worded. They should not deny or reject anything (i.e., “I am not a loser.”), but make a firm statement (e.g., “I am a worthy person.”).
The affirmations should make you feel good and put you in a positive light. They should not be empty words and they should be relevant to your life (e.g., “I am a world-class skier” is relevant if you ski, but is not a good affirmation if you don’t ski.).

Use these three rules to put together some positive, uplifting, and encouraging affirmations that you can repeat as often as needed—but aim for at least once a day.

There are many, many books available on self-esteem: what it is, what influences it, how it can be developed, and how it can be encouraged in others (particularly children). Here is just a sample of some of the most popular and well-received books on self-esteem :

Self-Esteem: A Proven Program of Cognitive Techniques for Assessing, Improving, and Maintaining Your Self-Esteem by Matthew McKay, PhD ( Amazon )
The Self-Esteem Guided Journal by Matthew McKay & C. Sutker ( Amazon )
Ten Days to Self-Esteem by David D. Burns, MD ( Amazon )
The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem: The Definitive Work on Self-Esteem by the Leading Pioneer in the Field by Nathanial Branden (if you’re not a big reader, check out the animated book review video below) ( Amazon )
The Self-Esteem Workbook by Glenn R. Schiraldi, PhD ( Amazon )
The Self-Esteem Workbook for Teens: Activities to Help You Build Confidence and Achieve Your Goals by Lisa M. Schab, LCSW ( Amazon )
Believing in Myself by E Larsen & C Hegarty. ( Amazon )
Being Me: A Kid’s Guide to Boosting Confidence and Self-Esteem by Wendy L. Moss, PhD ( Amazon )
Healing Your Emotional Self: A Powerful Program to Help You Raise Your Self-Esteem, Quiet Your Inner Critic, and Overcome Your Shame by Beverly Engel ( Amazon )

Plus, here’s a bonus—a free PDF version of Nathaniel Branden’s The Psychology of Self-Esteem: A Revolutionary Approach to Self-Understanding That Launched a New Era in Modern Psychology .

If reading is not a preferred method of learning more, fear not! There are some great YouTube videos and TED Talks on self-esteem. A few of the most popular and most impactful are included here.

Why Thinking You’re Ugly is Bad for You by Meaghan Ramsey

This TED talk is all about the importance of self-esteem and the impact of negative self-esteem, especially on young people and girls. Ramsey notes that low self-esteem impacts physical as well as mental health, the work we do, and our overall finances as we chase the perfect body, the perfect face, or the perfect hair. She ends by outlining the six areas addressed by effective self-esteem programs:

The influence of family, friends, and relationships
The media and celebrity culture
How to handle teasing and bullying
The way we compete and compare ourselves with others
The way we talk about appearance
The foundations of respecting and caring for yourself

Meet Yourself: A User’s Guide to Building Self-Esteem by Niko Everett

Another great TEDx Talk comes from the founder of the Girls for Change organization, Niko Everett. In this talk, she goes over the power of self-knowledge, self-acceptance, and self-love. She highlights the importance of the thoughts we have about ourselves and the impact they have on our self-esteem and shares some techniques to help both children and adults enhance their self-esteem.

Self-Esteem – Understanding & Fixing Low Self-Esteem by Actualized.org

This video from Leo Gura at Actualized.org defines self-esteem, describes the elements of self-esteem, and the factors that influence self-esteem. He shares why self-esteem is important and how it can be developed and enhanced.

How to Build Self Esteem – The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem by Nathaniel Branden Animated Book Review by FightMediocrity

This quick, 6-minute video on self-esteem outlines what author Nathaniel Branden sees as the “Six Pillars” of self-esteem:

The practice of living consciously Be aware of your daily activities and relationship with others, insecure reflections, and also personal priorities.
The practice of self-acceptance This includes becoming aware and accepting the best and the worst parts of you and also the disowned parts of ourselves.
The practice of self-responsibility This implies realizing that you are responsible for your choices and actions.
The practice of self-assertiveness Act through your real convictions and feelings as much as possible.
The practice of living purposefully Achieve personal goals that energize your existence.
The practice of personal integrity Don’t compensate your ideals, beliefs, and behaviors for a result that leads to incongruence. When your behaviors are congruent with your ideals, integrity will appear.

The speaker provides a definition and example of each of the six pillars and finishes the video by emphasizing the first two words of each pillar: “The Practice.” These words highlight that the effort applied to building self-esteem is, in fact, the most important factor in developing self-esteem.

Sometimes all you need to get to work on bettering yourself is an inspirational quote. The value of quotes is subjective, so these may not all resonate with you, but hopefully, you will find that at least one or two lights that spark within you!

“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”

Sharon Salzberg

“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”

Michel de Montaigne

“The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.”

“Dare to love yourself as if you were a rainbow with gold at both ends.”

“As long as you look for someone else to validate who you are by seeking their approval, you are setting yourself up for disaster. You have to be whole and complete in yourself. No one can give you that. You have to know who you are—what others say is irrelevant.”

“I don’t want everyone to like me; I should think less of myself if some people did.”

Henry James

“Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.”

Louise L. Hay

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?”

Marianne Williamson

“I don’t entirely approve of some of the things I have done, or am, or have been. But I’m me. God knows, I’m me.”

“To me, self-esteem is not self-love. It is self-acknowledgement, as in recognizing and accepting who you are.”

Amity Gaige

“Self-esteem is as important to our well-being as legs are to a table. It is essential for physical and mental health and for happiness.”

Louise Hart

“Self-esteem is made up primarily of two things: feeling lovable and feeling capable. Lovable means I feel people want to be with me. They invite me to parties; they affirm I have the qualities necessary to be included. Feeling capable is knowing that I can produce a result. It’s knowing I can handle anything that life hands me.”

Jack Canfield

“You can’t let someone else lower your self-esteem, because that’s what it is—self-esteem. You need to first love yourself before you have anybody else love you.”

Winnie Harlow

“A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.”

“Our self-respect tracks our choices. Every time we act in harmony with our authentic self and our heart, we earn our respect. It is that simple. Every choice matters.” Dan Coppersmith

17 Exercises To Foster Self-Acceptance and Compassion

Help your clients develop a kinder, more accepting relationship with themselves using these 17 Self-Compassion Exercises [PDF] that promote self-care and self-compassion.

Created by Experts. 100% Science-based.

We hope you enjoyed this opportunity to learn about self-esteem! If you take only one important lesson away from this piece, make sure it’s this one: you absolutely can build your own self-esteem, and you can have a big impact on the self-esteem of those you love.

Self-esteem is not a panacea—it will not fix all of your problems or help you sail smoothly through a life free of struggle and suffering—but it will help you find the courage to try new things, build the resilience to bounce back from failure, and make you more susceptible to success.

It is something we have to continually work towards, but it’s absolutely achievable.

Stay committed.

Keep aware of your internal thoughts and external surroundings. Keep focused on your personal goals and all that is possible when self-doubt isn’t holding you back.

What are your thoughts on self-esteem in psychology? Should we be encouraging it more? Less? Is there an “ideal amount” of self-esteem? We’d love to hear from you! Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

You can read more about self-esteem worksheets and exercises for adults and teens here .

Thanks for reading!

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Self Compassion Exercises for free .

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Interesting, and clear and quite precise in this definitions…..definitions are the most important.

Extremely good article addressing the prevalence of low self-esteem in Western society and how to overcome it. But did it consider the possibility self-esteem could ever be too high? I am still influenced by my old-school upbringing, where being labeled as “conceited” was a a thing. I was told that’s only an attempt to compensate for low self esteem, along with “egomania” and other disorders, but perhaps related to the driven personalities that have influenced much of history.

Excellent, Elaborative, Enduring and Eloquent ESSAY 🙂 Loved this article, very clear, very informative, very useful and practically implementable if determined to improve the quality of one’s life. THANK YOU is a small word for the author of this article.

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Why It's Important to Have High Self-Esteem

Sarah Vanbuskirk has over 20 years of experience as a writer and editor, covering a range of health, wellness, lifestyle, and family-related topics. Her work has been published in numerous magazines, newspapers, and websites, including The Spruce, Activity Connection, Glamour, PDX Parent, Self, Verywell Fit, TripSavvy, Marie Claire, and TimeOut New York.

Rachel Goldman, PhD FTOS, is a licensed psychologist, clinical assistant professor, speaker, wellness expert specializing in eating behaviors, stress management, and health behavior change.

Verywell / Laura Porter

What Is Self-Esteem?

Defining High Self-Esteem
Why It's Important

Risks of Low Self-Esteem

Can you have too much self-esteem.

Contributing Factors

Cultivating High Self-Esteem

Ways to improve self-esteem.

It's easy to discount the importance of having high self-esteem. However, having positive personal regard can be the difference between feeling good about and taking care of yourself and not.

We've likely all heard the advice to believe in yourself, value yourself, be your own cheerleader, and that you can't fully love others until you love yourself —and all of that is true. But what exactly does that really mean in real life? Essentially, that having high self-esteem is vital to a successful, happy life .

But how exactly do you know if your self-esteem is high enough? Below, we'll take a look at what self-esteem is, why it's important, and how to build yours up.

We'll also break down the negative effects of having low self-esteem, the difference between occasionally being down on yourself and truly having poor self-esteem, whether your self-esteem can be too high, factors that contribute to low self-esteem, and tips for cultivating a more positive self-outlook and self-respect.

In order to have high self-esteem, it's important to understand what self-esteem really is. Self-esteem is giving respect and admiration to yourself. The American Psychological Association defines self-esteem as "the degree to which the qualities and characteristics contained in one’s self-concept are perceived to be positive."

High self-esteem is not just liking yourself but generally affording yourself love, value, dignity, and respect, too. Positive self-esteem also means believing in your capability (to learn, achieve, and contribute to the world) and autonomy to do things on your own. It means you think your ideas, feelings, and opinions have worth.

In other words, self-esteem is how you feel about yourself (inside and out), encompassing what you think about and value in yourself and how you relate to others. It's also related to how you feel others view, treat, and value you. This is why those in abusive situations or who have experienced trauma (particularly as children) are more likely to suffer from low self-esteem, concurrently and in the future, as a result.

Self-esteem isn't dependent entirely on one thing or set of thoughts. Instead, a person's self-esteem is made up of your view of all the things that define you as a person, including your personality, accomplishments, talents, capabilities, background, experiences, relationships, and physical body, as well as how you perceive others see you.

Each person may put a particular emphasis on certain areas that impact self-esteem, such as putting extra importance on your looks , relationship status, talents, or professional accomplishments (or lack thereof), when forming your self-image and how you feel about it.

Self-Esteem vs. Depression

Note, too, that low self-esteem is not the same as depression . While the two concepts overlap, low self-esteem is considered a risk factor for depression (see more on this below) rather than being the same thing.

While depression is a mental health condition that impacts the mind and body, self-esteem describes the way you think and feel about yourself. Additionally, some people have more stable self-esteem, while other's feelings about themselves are more mood- and life event-reactive—and more prone to plummet.

Remember, whether your self-esteem is high or low is influenced by the many factors that make you, you—some of which are in your control, some are not.

Ultimately, what matters most is what you focus on from those many factors and how much grace and compassion you afford yourself with regard to the things you're less thrilled about.

Whether you realize it or not, your self-esteem is the picture you paint of yourself, the parts of you that you choose to emphasize. Essentially, as famed naturalist philosopher Henry David Thoreau once said, "The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”

What It Means to Have High Self-Esteem

High self-esteem means generally holding yourself in positive regard. This doesn't mean you love everything about yourself or think you are perfect. On the contrary, even for those with high self-esteem, it's common to be self-critical and have some parts of yourself that you are less proud of or happy with than other elements.

However, if you have high self-esteem, the positive thoughts about yourself outweigh the negative—and the negative doesn't make you discount your worth as a person . High self-esteem can also fluctuate depending on the circumstance.

Essentially, high self-esteem is a frame of mind that lets you celebrate your strengths, challenge your weaknesses, and feel good about yourself and your life. It allows you to put daily ups and downs in perspective because, at your core, you value, trust, and respect yourself. High self-esteem helps you say, "I've had a bad day," for example, instead of saying, "I have a bad life."

High self-esteem also helps you understand that everything isn't about you, enabling you to not take everything personally and not be overly reactive. Strong self-respect lets you see beyond yourself and feel confident of your place in the world.

Characteristics of high self-esteem include:

Holding yourself in positive regard
Celebrating your strengths and challenging your weaknesses
Keeping daily ups and downs in perspective
Having strong self-respect and self-confidence

Interestingly, having high self-esteem does not always align with the circumstances or qualities that you might objectively assume should correlate with feeling good about yourself.

For example, some research shows that physical attractiveness does not predict high self-esteem . In fact, one study showed that teens with "facial attractiveness" scored lower on self-esteem ratings than their peers. In other words, the person who seems to have it all—great job, romantic partner, beauty, fit body—may not see it that way.

Signs of High Self-Esteem

How do you know if you have high self-esteem? Here are a few signs:

You feel comfortable expressing your opinions, if they are different from those around you.
You're confident in your abilities.
You don't let challenges hold you back.
You don't let a setback change how you feel about yourself.
You treat yourself with love and respect versus calling yourself names or discrediting yourself.
You're willing to set boundaries with people who don't value and respect you

Why High Self-Esteem Is Important

According to the American Psychological Association, having high self-esteem is key to positive mental health and well-being. High self-esteem is good because it helps you develop coping skills , handle adversity, and put the negative into perspective.

If you have a higher self-concept you also don't tend to put undue focus, blame, self-doubt, hopelessness, or weight on the parts you aren't happy about. You're also better able to cope with stress , anxiety, and pressure, whether from school, work, home, or peers.

Rather than feeling hopeless , stuck, or unworthy due to any perceived "failings," a person with high self-esteem is more likely to look for what they can change or improve upon. If struggling with a project at work, for example, someone with high self-esteem might ask a supervisor for help coming up with solutions versus berating themselves for being ineffective at their job.

Conversely, someone with low self-esteem is more likely to become entrenched in negative feelings about themself. In fact, research shows that feeling positive and respectful about yourself, particularly as a child, goes a long way in helping you adapt and adjust to the challenges of life.

A healthy self-concept and self-respect can enable you to realize that it's not the end of the world if something goes wrong, someone rejects you, you make a mistake, or you have some faults.

Self-Esteem and Prosocial Behavior

High self-esteem is also linked to prosocial behavior (actions with the intent to benefit others, such as generosity and qualities like empathy), flexibility, and positive familial relationships. In fact, a 2014 study found that college students with higher self-esteem and more loving and supportive relationships with their families were more successful at school and adapted better to the social adjustment of living in a new environment.

Self-Esteem and Stress

How you experience stress is also strongly related to your level of self-esteem. Prosocial behavior (which, as noted above, is more likely with higher self-esteem) is known to reduce the negative impact of stressors on daily life, helping you to manage stress more effectively. Studies have also found a positive relationship between positive self-esteem and motivation to accomplish goals, self-efficacy, and self-control. Higher levels of self-esteem are also predictive of greater academic success.

High Self-Esteem Boosts Overall Well-Being

Additionally, high self-esteem is considered to be protective against many mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety. In fact, studies show that having high self-esteem is directly correlated to your satisfaction with your life and to the ability to maintain a favorable attitude about yourself in challenging situations.

Research also shows that people with higher self-esteem are happier in their jobs, have better social relationships, and generally, a more positive sense of well-being.

Like many elements of mental health, researchers often describe self-esteem as existing on a spectrum.

Like anything in life, your self-image is prone to change and grow as you mature and live your life, and in response to key life events.

However, it's also true that people tend toward a certain set-point of self-esteem that can be persistent, whether high, low, or somewhere in between. Social interactions, attention, emotional regulation, decision-making, and life satisfaction are all impacted by lower self-image.

As noted above, when you have high self-esteem, you're better able to shake off unfavorable events and the negative judgments or moods of others that may be directed your way. Conversely, when you have a lower self-concept, you're more likely to take criticism or rejection personally and to assume someone else's problems are about you.

This combination can make people with low self-esteem more reactive to day-to-day circumstances and personal interactions. Those with lower self-esteem are also less likely to keep their emotions in check, cope well with challenges, and look at life from a healthy perspective.

Often low self-esteem means small things become blown up into bigger issues that can feel insurmountable, further ratcheting down self-regard.

Feeling Down vs. Poor Self-Esteem

Essentially, low self-esteem isn't just having a bad mood or a bad day. Everyone feels down when negative things happen but these feelings typically pass and, especially for those with positive self-esteem, don't have a drastic impact on self-worth. Instead, low self-esteem is a chronically negative self-image that, while it may ebb and flow with the positive and negative events in your life, for the most part, stays with you over time, regardless of life circumstances.

Your level of self-regard may be, in part, a function of the natural variation in personality types , affect, genetics, and/or in response to upbringing, peers, and life events. However, when self-esteem is particularly low, as noted above, it can put you at risk of many mental health challenges.

Susceptibility to Depression

The link between low self-esteem and mental health conditions is particularly strong. Interestingly, research shows convincingly that poor self-esteem contributes to depression , rather than the reverse. This means that depression doesn't create low self-regard. Instead, thinking poorly of yourself makes you more vulnerable to depression.

Additionally, studies indicate that higher self-esteem offers protection from mental health conditions, likely due to the improved coping skills, higher positivity, and resiliency that comes with this more accepting and affirmative self-talk. Essentially, low self-esteem begets feeling bad about yourself, which makes leading a fulfilling life, reaching your goals , and having positive social and intimate relationships harder.

Critically, studies show that low self-esteem is highly correlated to depression, anxiety , emotional problems, substance use , stress, eating disorders , and suicidal ideation . Research also shows a strong correlation between low self-esteem and anxiety disorders , particularly with social phobias and social anxiety disorder .

If you or a loved one are having suicidal thoughts, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 for support and assistance from a trained counselor. If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911. For more mental health resources, see our National Helpline Database .

Risky Behaviors

Studies also show a link between poor self-esteem and an increased risk of risky health behaviors, particularly in teens, such as drug and alcohol use, drunk driving, self-harm , smoking, and carrying a weapon. Essentially, those who value and respect themselves the least are more willing to make more dangerous choices that may impact their health and safety.

Additionally, improvements in self-esteem are shown to be helpful in the recovery from addiction . In fact, studies show that this relationship of low self-esteem and poor choices is particularly evident in adolescents who already are at a disadvantage for decision-making due to their still-developing executive function skills . Research has also found a link between low self-esteem and risky sexual behaviors in teens.

Low Self-Confidence

Research also finds a clear correlation between low self-confidence and low self-esteem, as well as the reverse. Additionally, having high self-confidence encourages self-reliance, self-advocacy, and trust in yourself and your abilities, all factors that bolster high self-esteem—and create a framework for positive mental health and quality of life.

An unrealistic or overly elevated self-concept may be as unhealthy as a negative one. However, it's important to distinguish between healthy high self-esteem and arrogance. High self-esteem is not being egotistical, thinking you are infallible, or better than others.

High Self-Esteem vs. Arrogance and Narcissism

Arrogance is when a person's self-concept veers from reality and becomes the dominant force in their life, and we might assume that too much self-esteem equals an inflated ego.

However, this type of narcissistic self-concept isn't necessarily a natural progression from healthy self-esteem, which values the self but not above all others.

Instead, narcissism or arrogance describes a person who focuses primarily on themselves, considers themselves more important or worthwhile than others, and often, doesn't even think about how their actions impact those around them. Really, it can be argued that what looks like "too much self-esteem" is actually the opposite.

In fact, while narcissists may seem to have high self-esteem, studies show that grandiose beliefs about yourself often actually mask a poor self-image, feelings of shame, and self-directed anger hiding underneath.

People with narcissistic personality disorder are also more prone to comorbid mental health conditions like depression and anxiety, experience feelings of helplessness, and have unstable personal relationships.

Factors Contributing to Low or High Self-Esteem

While, as noted above, a complex web of influences combine to shape your identity, personality, and self-concept, there are specific factors that predict high or low self-esteem. Namely, factors that impact self-esteem include whether or not you had a supportive upbringing, where your needs, thoughts, feelings, contributions, and ideas are valued. Positive thinking , heredity , personal outlook, your peers, and other role models all matter a lot as well.

Experiencing challenging life events or trauma like divorce, violence, racism, neglect, poverty, a natural disaster, being bullied, or otherwise treated poorly can also contribute to low self-esteem.

The effectiveness of your coping skills , the relative positivity of your personal outlook, and general resiliency, all factors that can be innate or learned, greatly impact the influence negative experiences may have on your self-esteem as well.

Cultivating high self-esteem (and resiliency) is no easy task, but it's certainly possible and within your grasp—and can make a huge difference in your life. As noted above, it's key to understand that a significant component of self-esteem is your thought patterns, what you focus on, and optimism rather than simply on objective facts or events of your life.

In other words, it's about what you see (and say to yourself) when looking at your physical self, skills, accomplishments, or future potential.

Building up your self-esteem takes work, determination, and a willingness to examine and counter negative thoughts about yourself—and to actively bolster your self-image with positive ones. It's vital to give yourself grace, to let go of certain things that bother you as well as to work on those areas that you can (and want) to change.

If you value yourself, and have high enough self-worth, you also know that you deserve to take care of yourself, which then can contribute to trying to do things to improve your self-esteem. It's difficult to take care of yourself if you think poorly of yourself.

Studies show that forgiving yourself for things you regret can also help improve self-esteem. Essentially, it's about accepting and loving yourself as you are.

When to Get Help

If you have low self-esteem, it can be helpful to work with a counselor or other mental health professional to begin changing your negative self-talk and improve how you see and value yourself.

As noted above, improving your self-esteem takes practice and intention but is well worth your efforts, as there is a clear link between high self-esteem and quality of life. Some strategies that can help you think more favorably about yourself include the following:

Accept Compliments

Notice the urge to deflect praise and instead, hear it and let it in. Interestingly, research shows that difficulty accepting compliments is directly correlated with low self-esteem.

Give Yourself a Break

Forgive yourself for mistakes and squash your negative self-theories and self-talk . No one is perfect or loves everything about themselves. Don't expect that of yourself. When you start on a negative spiral, ask yourself if you're being fair to yourself or realistic.

Love Yourself—Flaws And All

Yes, you may have things you wish were different, want to change, or just plain aren't happy with, but love and respect yourself anyway.

Value the Person You Are

Aim to accept and find worth in who you are right now. Seek out and feel pride in what makes you unique, happy, and valued.

Recognize the Importance of High Self-Esteem

Once you begin to see how your view of yourself impacts life satisfaction and well-being, you may be more motivated to alter your thinking and value yourself more.

Seek Support

Therapy, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy , can help you work on issues that may be impeding your positive self-outlook and help you build skills to disrupt negative self-talk and attain a more optimistic view of yourself.

Start a Gratitude Journal

In a gratitude journal , write down all the positive things in your life, the things you like about yourself, the accomplishments or qualities you are proud of—then read it over whenever you're feeling down about yourself.

Take Note of Your Thoughts

When negative ones arise, actively choose to either work productively on the issues or decide to let them go. When you have positive thoughts, aim to amplify them, particularly whenever less favorable thinking pops up.

Think of Yourself as a Friend

You're likely to be more patient, forgiving, kind, encouraging, supportive, and proud as you assess a friend than you are of yourself. So, next time you're beating up on yourself, step back, shift your perspective, and look at yourself as you would a friend.

Work on Yourself

If there are things about yourself or your life that you don't feel good about, consider what changes you can make. Then, make a plan to put those changes into action.

A Word From Verywell

High self-esteem is key to life satisfaction. For some, this frame of mind comes easily, for others it's more of a struggle. Luckily, wherever you may be on the self-esteem spectrum, you can work on improving your vision, support, compassion, and love of yourself.

After all, the relationship you have with yourself may ultimately be the one that matters most—it gifts you the resiliency, confidence, kindness, motivation, and love that informs the rest of your life and helps you be the best person you can be.

You might also want to consider reaching out to a therapist to help you learn the skills needed to build your self-esteem.

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By Sarah Vanbuskirk Sarah Vanbuskirk has over 20 years of experience as a writer and editor, covering a range of health, wellness, lifestyle, and family-related topics. Her work has been published in numerous magazines, newspapers, and websites, including The Spruce, Activity Connection, Glamour, PDX Parent, Self, Verywell Fit, TripSavvy, Marie Claire, and TimeOut New York.

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Self-esteem: Take steps to feel better about yourself

Harness the power of your thoughts and beliefs to raise your self-esteem. Start with these steps.

Low self-esteem can affect nearly every aspect of life. It can impact your relationships, job and health. But you can boost your self-esteem by taking cues from mental health counseling.

Consider these steps, based on cognitive behavioral therapy.

1. Recognize situations that affect self-esteem

Think about the situations that seem to deflate your self-esteem. Common triggers might include:

A work or school presentation
A crisis at work or home
A challenge with a spouse, loved one, co-worker or other close contact
A change in roles or life events, such as a job loss or a child leaving home

2. Become aware of thoughts and beliefs

Once you've learned which situations affect your self-esteem, notice your thoughts about them. This includes what you tell yourself (self-talk) and how you view the situations.

Your thoughts and beliefs might be positive, negative or neutral. They might be rational, based on reason or facts. Or they may be irrational, based on false ideas.

Ask yourself if these beliefs are true. Would you say them to a friend? If you wouldn't say them to someone else, don't say them to yourself.

3. Challenge negative thinking

Your initial thoughts might not be the only way to view a situation. Ask yourself whether your view is in line with facts and logic. Or is there another explanation?

Be aware that it can be hard to see flaws in your logic. Long-held thoughts and beliefs can feel factual even if they're opinions.

Also notice if you're having these thought patterns that erode self-esteem:

All-or-nothing thinking. This involves seeing things as either all good or all bad. For example, you may think, "If I don't succeed in this task, I'm a total failure."
Mental filtering. This means you focus and dwell on the negatives. It can distort your view of a person or situation. For example, "I made a mistake on that report and now everyone will realize I'm not up to the job."
Converting positives into negatives. This may involve rejecting your achievements and other positive experiences by insisting that they don't count. For example, "I only did well on that test because it was so easy."
Jumping to negative conclusions. You may tend to reach a negative conclusion with little or no evidence. For example, "My friend hasn't replied to my text, so I must have done something to make her angry."
Mistaking feelings for facts. You may confuse feelings or beliefs with facts. For example, "I feel like a failure, so I must be a failure."
Negative self-talk. You undervalue yourself. You may put yourself down or joke about your faults. For example, you may say, "I don't deserve anything better."

4. Adjust your thoughts and beliefs

Now replace negative or untrue thoughts with positive, accurate thoughts. Try these strategies:

Use hopeful statements. Be kind and encouraging to yourself. Instead of thinking a situation won't go well, focus on the positive. Tell yourself, "Even though it's tough, I can handle this."
Forgive yourself. Everyone makes mistakes. But mistakes aren't permanent reflections on you as a person. They're moments in time. Tell yourself, "I made a mistake, but that doesn't make me a bad person."
Avoid 'should' and 'must' statements. If you find that your thoughts are full of these words, you might be putting too many demands on yourself. Try to remove these words from your thoughts. It may lead to a healthier view of what to expect from yourself.
Focus on the positive. Think about the parts of your life that work well. Remember the skills you've used to cope with challenges.
Consider what you've learned. If it was a negative experience, what changes can you make next time to create a more positive outcome?
Relabel upsetting thoughts. Think of negative thoughts as signals to try new, healthy patterns. Ask yourself, "What can I think and do to make this less stressful?"
Encourage yourself. Give yourself credit for making positive changes. For example, "My presentation might not have been perfect, but my colleagues asked questions and remained engaged. That means I met my goal."

You might also try these steps, based on acceptance and commitment therapy.

1. Spot troubling conditions or situations

Again, think about the conditions or situations that seem to deflate your self-esteem. Then pay attention to your thoughts about them.

2. Step back from your thoughts

Repeat your negative thoughts many times. The goal is to take a step back from automatic thoughts and beliefs and observe them. Instead of trying to change your thoughts, distance yourself from them. Realize that they are nothing more than words.

3. Accept your thoughts

Instead of resisting or being overwhelmed by negative thoughts or feelings, accept them. You don't have to like them. Just allow yourself to feel them.

Negative thoughts don't need to be controlled, changed or acted upon. Aim to lessen their power on your behavior.

These steps might seem awkward at first. But they'll get easier with practice. Recognizing the thoughts and beliefs that affect low self-esteem allows you to change the way you think about them. This will help you accept your value as a person. As your self-esteem increases, your confidence and sense of well-being are likely to soar.

In addition to these suggestions, remember that you're worth special care. Be sure to:

Take care of yourself. Follow good health guidelines. Try to exercise at least 30 minutes a day most days of the week. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Limit sweets, junk food and saturated fats.
Do things you enjoy. Start by making a list of things you like to do. Try to do something from that list every day.
Spend time with people who make you happy. Don't waste time on people who don't treat you well.

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Self-esteem self-help guide. NHS inform. https://www.nhsinform.scot/illnesses-and-conditions/mental-health/mental-health-self-help-guides/self-esteem-self-help-guide. Accessed May 4, 2022.
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How to Write About Yourself in a College Essay | Examples

Published on September 21, 2021 by Kirsten Courault . Revised on May 31, 2023.

An insightful college admissions essay requires deep self-reflection, authenticity, and a balance between confidence and vulnerability. Your essay shouldn’t just be a resume of your experiences; colleges are looking for a story that demonstrates your most important values and qualities.

To write about your achievements and qualities without sounding arrogant, use specific stories to illustrate them. You can also write about challenges you’ve faced or mistakes you’ve made to show vulnerability and personal growth.

Start with self-reflection, how to write about challenges and mistakes, how to write about your achievements and qualities, how to write about a cliché experience, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about college application essays.

Before you start writing, spend some time reflecting to identify your values and qualities. You should do a comprehensive brainstorming session, but here are a few questions to get you started:

What are three words your friends or family would use to describe you, and why would they choose them?
Whom do you admire most and why?
What are the top five things you are thankful for?
What has inspired your hobbies or future goals?
What are you most proud of? Ashamed of?

As you self-reflect, consider how your values and goals reflect your prospective university’s program and culture, and brainstorm stories that demonstrate the fit between the two.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

Writing about difficult experiences can be an effective way to show authenticity and create an emotional connection to the reader, but choose carefully which details to share, and aim to demonstrate how the experience helped you learn and grow.

Be vulnerable

It’s not necessary to have a tragic story or a huge confession. But you should openly share your thoughts, feelings, and experiences to evoke an emotional response from the reader. Even a cliché or mundane topic can be made interesting with honest reflection. This honesty is a preface to self-reflection and insight in the essay’s conclusion.

Don’t overshare

With difficult topics, you shouldn’t focus too much on negative aspects. Instead, use your challenging circumstances as a brief introduction to how you responded positively.

Share what you have learned

It’s okay to include your failure or mistakes in your essay if you include a lesson learned. After telling a descriptive, honest story, you should explain what you learned and how you applied it to your life.

While it’s good to sell your strengths, you also don’t want to come across as arrogant. Instead of just stating your extracurricular activities, achievements, or personal qualities, aim to discreetly incorporate them into your story.

Brag indirectly

Mention your extracurricular activities or awards in passing, not outright, to avoid sounding like you’re bragging from a resume.

Use stories to prove your qualities

Even if you don’t have any impressive academic achievements or extracurriculars, you can still demonstrate your academic or personal character. But you should use personal examples to provide proof. In other words, show evidence of your character instead of just telling.

Many high school students write about common topics such as sports, volunteer work, or their family. Your essay topic doesn’t have to be groundbreaking, but do try to include unexpected personal details and your authentic voice to make your essay stand out .

To find an original angle, try these techniques:

Focus on a specific moment, and describe the scene using your five senses.
Mention objects that have special significance to you.
Instead of following a common story arc, include a surprising twist or insight.

Your unique voice can shed new perspective on a common human experience while also revealing your personality. When read out loud, the essay should sound like you are talking.

If you want to know more about academic writing , effective communication , or parts of speech , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Academic writing

Writing process
Transition words
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Paraphrasing

Communication

How to end an email
Ms, mrs, miss
How to start an email
I hope this email finds you well
Hope you are doing well

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First, spend time reflecting on your core values and character . You can start with these questions:

However, you should do a comprehensive brainstorming session to fully understand your values. Also consider how your values and goals match your prospective university’s program and culture. Then, brainstorm stories that illustrate the fit between the two.

When writing about yourself , including difficult experiences or failures can be a great way to show vulnerability and authenticity, but be careful not to overshare, and focus on showing how you matured from the experience.

Through specific stories, you can weave your achievements and qualities into your essay so that it doesn’t seem like you’re bragging from a resume.

Include specific, personal details and use your authentic voice to shed a new perspective on a common human experience.

Cite this Scribbr article

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Courault, K. (2023, May 31). How to Write About Yourself in a College Essay | Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved April 2, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/college-essay/write-about-yourself/

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Self-Esteem, Essay Example

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Self-esteem could be described as one’s worth in his/her own eyes. I realized early in my life that we usually give huge weight to others’ opinions of ourselves and as a result strive to be what others want us to be rather than who we actually are. This led to a life full of contradiction and I eventually decided to learn more about myself including my strengths and weaknesses. Surprisingly, this approach also helped me better understand other people and my friends soon started trusting me just as one trusts his/her own family members. They would share everything with me because they claimed I do not judge people and can put myself in others’ shoes. The experience proved to be more educational than I could have ever imagined as if I had completed an academic degree in human relations or psychology. As I learnt more about myself and about other people, I became more confident in my abilities and also learnt to ignore others’ skepticism regarding my abilities and goals. But at the same time, improved self-esteem has also made me more appreciative of human potential and I now focus more on the good side of the people rather than the negative side. I make active efforts to recognize the true potential in people and encourage them to become the best they are and this approach doesn’t only define my personal life but also my professional life. As I see the world, there are seven billion people on earth but everyone wants to feel important and be valued. They want to be appreciated for their individual traits and they are constantly seeking approval from others to boost their own morale. Just as negative opinions hurt one’s morale and even self-esteem, positive reinforcements sometimes do more to inspire people than any other incentive.

Self-esteem has also taught me to be respectful towards people from different generations as well as cultural backgrounds. Just as there are certain universal truths, there are also universal traits shared by different cultures. I have also learnt that respect is the key to open communication and ensuring cooperation from others. Everyone has a different view of life and the world and one may have different opinions but it is always possible to make others feel important by showing respect for their views. Similarly, when we display positive behavior such as protecting others’ self-esteem, we also influence others to adopt the same behaviors in their lives.

I am proud of what I have been able to achieve but I have not come this far just because I had self-esteem but also because many others demonstrated their trust in me. A society prospers when we take care of those who are most vulnerable and this is why I have been inspired to pursue in career in nursing whether as a care provider at the moment or a nurse educator in the near future. People surprise us when they are in a supportive environment. Thus, the key to a more prosperous society is to have high self-esteem and also to encourage others to be their best.

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Brilliant Self Esteem Essay: Writing Guide & Topics

Self-esteem is a personal trait that has proven to withstand both high and low tides. It is a state which carries within itself a wide range of beliefs about oneself. Also referred to as self-respect, self-esteem is the confidence in one’s worth or abilities.

It is a subject of great interest to many people. Having a spiced up and captivating essay about self-esteem can guarantee a considerable readership or high grades for students. Many people, especially college students, have a problem with this, and hence we are here to help.

To start us off, let us look at a self-esteem essay example on the effect of social media on self-esteem:

Effect of Social Media on Self-Esteem Essay

“In the last decade, social media has tremendously gained popularity. Its impact and power have left permanent effects on many people and different facets of life. Many people have, therefore, developed high or low self-esteem concerning social media. More research shows that there exists a strong relationship between self-esteem and social media. Facebook has caused a decrease in self-esteem in many people.

Many teenagers are using social media, especially Facebook, to build relationships. There are a lot of people on Facebook of all ages, races, gender, and ethnicity. It is, therefore, natural for teens to mingle and socialize on this platform. Most of the people on social media purport to live “flashy lifestyles,” while in reality, that is not the case. It, therefore, creates a decreased self-esteem on those who cannot live up to those standards.

Social media, through social networking sites, enables people to make social comparisons. For instance, people may try to copy the lifestyles of celebrities. However, those who cannot meet their celebrity status tend to have low self-esteem. The psychological distress of such individuals is higher, resulting in low levels of self-esteem. Many people have, therefore, become victims of lower self-esteem and, consequently, low self-growth.

In conclusion, social media has a very high impact on the self-esteem of individuals. Usage of social media for social networking, communication, and building and maintaining of relationships has diverse effects. There should be sufficient information to help people not fall victims of these adverse effects.”

From the self-esteem essay conclusion above, it is evident that we have not introduced any new idea. You only need to restate the thesis statement and provide a solution to the problem.

We are now going to explore some exciting self-esteem topics with explanations on what to cover in such essays.

“What is Self-Esteem Essay” Topics

Self-esteem essay, Low Self-Esteem: An expository essay

Here, you will have clearly and concisely investigate low self-esteem, evaluate pieces of evidence, expound on it, and provide an argument concerning it.

What is Self-esteem? A critical analysis of theories on the function of self-esteem.

Such an essay requires you to explore the various approaches that show the role of self-esteem in individuals or society at large.

Understanding the concept of self-esteem

It is a topic that digs deep into the breadth and depth of self-worth and makes readers get a clear picture.

A descriptive study of self-esteem

It is about describing or summarizing self-esteem using words instead of pictures.

State self-esteem

Topics on Social Media and Self-Esteem Essay

The Paradox Effect of social media on self-esteem

Describe how social media is giving off the illusion of different choices while making it harder to find viable options.

Self-esteem and ‘vanity validation’ effect of social media

Show how the interaction of people with social media for an extended period, inevitably feels compelled to continue to check for updates.

The Dark Side of Social Media: How It Affects Self-Esteem
Social Media and Confidence

How is one’s self-worth in terms of confidence boosted by social media?

Social media and depression

Let readers see how depression can result from the use of social media with real-life experiences.

Importance of Self-Esteem

Self-Concept and Self-Esteem Essay Topic Ideas

Explain how self-concept underpins self-esteem. Evaluate the different approaches to self-esteem. You can also discuss the application of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs of self-actualization. Giving the usefulness of the motivational theory for boosting self-esteem will add weight to your essay.

Topic Ideas on How to Improve Self-Esteem

Tips to Improve Self-Esteem

Give detailed and well-researched advice on how people can boost their self-esteem

Steps to Improving Self Esteem

Here are more topic ideas on how to improve self-esteem: 1. Top 5 tactics to change how to improve how you see yourself 2. Things you can do to boost your self-esteem 3. Understanding and building low self-esteem

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Building Self-Esteem

13 February, 2020

8 minutes read

Author: Donna Moores

Evidently, self-esteem is seen as a personal trait which tends to be enduring and stable, the one that encompasses within itself a host of beliefs about oneself. In reality, self-esteem means different things to diverse people. To some it means feeling good and loving yourself unconditionally. To others it is a feeling which is at the center of one's being of self-confidence, self-worth and respect. Therefore, it is vital for one to have high self-esteem since it paves the way for love and success in life (Bruceeisner, 2012).

Certainly, people often overlook the importance for individuals to have a healthy or positive self-esteem. On the very basic level, a positive self-esteem is delineated by various qualities. They include being able to accept responsibilities for one’s own actions, respect and tolerance for others, being able to handle criticisms, and of course, being able to take charge of one’s own life. Also, it’s about taking a great pride in your own achievements, possessing a great level of integrity and loving others while being loved. The majority of people in the community, especially those in the business and entrepreneurial sectors, believe that possessing a healthy or positive self-esteem will aid in being a successful professional in your field of work.

In the medical field of the economy, for example, doctors, nurses and other people working in the medical community have a belief that possessing a positive self-esteem is very crucial in the maintenance of a healthy life by individuals. In contrast to the thought that a positive or healthy self-esteem is vital in an individual’s professional life, it also plays a very important role in alleviating psychological disorders.

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What Are the Effects of Underappreciation?

When an individual possesses a low self-esteem, he or she tries to impress others or prove others a focal point in their lives. However, this is deemed to be a total waste of one’s time and energy and can even result in psychological issues. In particular, a person without a healthy or positive self-esteem tends to have contempt towards people and usually acts arrogantly. They usually blame themselves for their actions and failures, lack confidence in themselves and mostly doubt their acceptability and self-worth (Reasoner, 2012).

These elements do not only show the negative part of an individual’s life. They are also quite unhealthy to the emotional well-being of an individual. This is because an unhealthy or negative self-esteem is damaging to an individual’s emotional health. This backs the fact that a healthy or positive self-esteem indeed can aid in alleviating psychological disorders.

The Relation of Self-Esteem to Science

One of the peculiar psychological disorders that are mostly stroked by self-esteem is known as Borderline Personality Disorder. Individuals are not willing to validate their feelings for other people or trust others when they usually do not feel well about themselves. People who suffer from borderline personality disorder coupled with a poor self-esteem can exasperate the anger which is mostly present in this type of psychological issue. More often than not, a burst of angry tirade is as a result of a lot of unresolved matters which have been posponed for later. Hence, the only way a person with borderline personality can assert his or her feelings or thoughts is through anger. In addition, having a healthy or positive self-esteem can help alleviate this issue and curtail the feeling of anger associated with borderline personality.

In particular, an individual who experiences borderline personality psychological disorder most often associates some form of suspicion to people who want to be their friends. A person with this kind of issue has a feeling that their friendship with others will end as the time goes on. This is because they think they have nothing to offer in the new friendship, which is actually wrong. Therefore, possessing a healthy or positive self-esteem can aid an individual who has a psychological disorder like the borderline personality to comprehend the fact that they deserve to be happy and achieve success in everything they do. Specifically, this is linked to their professional life or personal life, and also to the sense of self-worth.

A typical example of it is when an individual gets a job that he or she has always wanted, let say a dream job. A person possessing a psychological disorder like borderline personality will position himself or herself for failure. Meanwhile, the staff may use the opportunity given a mistake and can even flare up at the employer for placing them in a position to fail. On the other hand, an individual with a healthy or positive self-esteem will realize that he or she indeed deserves the job. In addition, they’ll recognize and appreciate the opportunity given to him or her to achieve success. A person with a healthy self-esteem will thank and respect the one who gave him that opportunity.

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The Importance of Rational Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is significant to an individual’s well-being and mental health since it has the capability of leading him or her to a more deserving social behavior and better health. Obviously, low self-esteem is often characterized with a range of broad social problems and mental disorders like eating disorders, depression, suicidal tendencies and anxiety. Notably, some schools of thought in the field of medicine, most often in the field of psychological disorders, believe that healthy physical and mental health are a result of comprehending the development of self-esteem and its outcomes.

Self-esteem can, therefore, be explained as the sum of a person’s knowledge and beliefs about his or her personal qualities and attributes. It is a cognitive composition that combines the concrete and abstract views about oneself and also controls the possession of information of self-relevance. Moreover, an individual who possesses suicidal tendencies has the urge or feeling of hurting himself or herself as he/she is feeling unhappy and unworthy.

Consequently, having a healthy or positive self-esteem alleviates any negative emotions and feelings an individual with any form of suicidal tendencies might go through. In addition, research has proven that self-esteem is a crucial psychological factor which contributes to quality and healthy life. It has also been proven with research that subjective well-being extremely corresponds with high self-esteem (Zimmerman, 2000). Therefore, it plays a major role in the mental well-being and happiness of individuals.

Overall, self-esteem and mental well-being of an individual are directly related. Any alteration in a person’s self-esteem, be it high self-esteem or low self-esteem, will affect the psychology of that person. Likewise, a healthy or positive self-esteem definitely helps in alleviating psychological disorders and puts an individual on the pedestal of high belief and confidence in him or herself.

Bruceeisner, D. (2012). Meaning of Self-Esteem. Squidoo Journal Website Retrieved from: http://www.squidoo.com/self_esteem
Reasoner, R. (2012). The True Meaning of Self-Esteem. National Association for Self-Esteem Website Retrieved from:http://www.self-esteem-nase.org/what.php
Zimmerman, S.L. (2000). Self-Esteem, Personal Control and Optimism. Midwestern University. Dissertation Abstract. Retrieved from:http://her.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/4/357.full#ref-123

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The Increasing of Self-Esteem Importance Essay

self-esteem is often considered an important part of personality and individuality. The self-actualizing process, with its creative transformations, not uncommonly leads to a moment of peak experiencing, experiencing that in a powerful, time-free moment reveals life’s unitary substrata, the ocean of the individual waves. These transformative experiences transpose one’s ethical consciousness accordingly. self-esteem can be increased with the help of motivation, effective communication with colleagues and friends, and ethical behavior. Researchers admit that persons are compassionately concerned with humanity and life as a whole. Yet they have a strong sense of themselves, their autonomy, and their special need for privacy.

Berger;s ideas (2010) — proposing a motivational ground beyond deficiency and a new understanding of psychological health — served to spark self-esteem and to give a new value centering to educational psychology. McKey and Fanning (2000)admit that such terms as “consciousness,” which for years under behaviorism had been ruled out of order, plays a crucial role in increasing self-esteem. The concept of self-esteem offers conceptual support for the emergence of many forms of cognitive behaviors. In general, personal needs and values involve achievements and personal improvement, a desire to prove professional skills and knowledge. The willingness of members of a community to contribute their services toward achieving the group’s purpose is another element which research has shown to be important to the work that has to be accomplished. Positive thinking should support dialogue and activities in a wide range of areas.

While building self-esteem, beyond this establishment of special ends (happiness, self-actualization, and so on), which we have called fulfillment, the path of fulfillment is itself existential. That is, one’s self, one’s understanding, and one’s sense of ethics are all transformed in this process. McKey and Fanning (2000) bring into the fulfillment debate virtually all contemporary psychology insights (creativity, developmental, physiological, and so on). As to the spiritual, other “esoteric” traditions took up the issues we now consider spiritual and even mystical. Indeed, An individual following an spiritual path comes to recognize more than one’s own interest in others’ interests, indeed comes to actually see one as other. This is part of a consciousness process in which one goes beyond what comes to be recognized as the illusion of separate selfhood. As regards the values-ethics crisis and the unique contribution Maslow could make, on the one hand, The whole range of human need and value states and does so from vantage points that include the bio-physiological, sociological, anthropological, and, of course, psychological as well as spiritual. Moreover, having deconstructed most modern institutional supports, including the very rationalistic moorings underpinning modern ethics, deconstructionists have left a void that seems best potentially filled by a philosophy (Berger, 2010).

In sum, in order to increase self-esteem a person should pay special attention to relations and communication with friends and other people, create positive behavior patterns and follow moral rules in all actions. The issues of authenticity, alienation, and identity, which were originally raised in another time and context by existentialists, along with issues of values, ethics, and spirituality, now reemerge to relevance as reality becomes increasingly an imitation simulacrum of itself. The self is not something fixed, but is in transformation, and its self image passes through all the ambiguity, diversity, and irony that have come to characterize postmodern thought itself.

Berger, K. S. (2010). Invitation to the Life Span. New York: Worth Publishers.

McKey, M., Fanning, P. (2000). Self-Esteem: A Proven Program of Cognitive Techniques for Assessing, Improving, and Maintaining Your Self-Esteem. New Harbinger Publications; 3 edition.

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Self-Esteem

What you should know about self-esteem, be who you are meant to be, but first you must figure out who that is..

Posted May 28, 2023 | Reviewed by Hara Estroff Marano

What Is Self-Esteem?
Find counselling near me
You don't have to accept the values you inherited.
Fitting in is not belonging.
Approval is an addiction.
Be good enough, not perfect.

Depression : I’ve studied it, treated it, and experienced it.

Everyone with depression suffers from a lack of self-esteem . In a previous essay , I addressed the bio in Engel's important biopsychosocial model for depression, 1 which holds that there are biological, psychological, and social factors that contribute to the development and maintenance of depression. For some, self-esteem dominates the psych component of the biopsychosocial model of their depression.

My patients often say, “I just want to be happy.” I respond, “A pill isn’t going to fix it. Are you willing to do the work to make that happen?”

Growing up in a bubble

I grew up in a small town in rural Nebraska, where everyone looked alike, thought alike, and believed alike. My values were passed down to me: Boys don’t cry. Always compete to win. Never show your vulnerability because someone will beat the crap out of you if you do.

But I cried, felt vulnerable, and didn’t like sports. I tried to fit in and was somewhat successful. But to fit in, I sealed off from others a large part of who I am. My high school friends would be surprised to know how lonely and powerless I felt.

Fitting in is not belonging

Accepting that I was gay was not so much coming out as letting others in. Gay people don’t own this issue. Straight people also need to present themselves as who they really are. You rarely find lasting friendships until you show up as your unabridged self.

The formula for self-esteem

This diagram gives a visual picture for building self-esteem. My patients easily grasped the concept; the work involves implementing it.

The left circle represents the ideal self or simply the person you want to be. The right circle is self-assessment , the person you think you are. Where the circles overlap comprises self-esteem. In other words, we feel good about ourselves when we see ourselves being the person we want to be.

But before becoming who you are meant to be, you must first figure out who that is.

Our ideal self is the sum of all the traits, values, and qualities we cherish. We want to be competent, attractive, well-liked, and morally good.

My early ideal grew from the tribal nature of my Swedish hometown in Nebraska. We "inherit" our original social, religious, and political values. Those values are all the shoulds . They are also all the should nots .

I knew who I should be. But I also knew who I shouldn’t be. I’d inherited prejudices against people who are different and didn’t share those rural Nebraska values. Inside this bubble, I’d had no exposure to those from different regions, religions, or cultures that might challenge those values.

I wanted to be loved by those who had passed down those values to me, and I believed I would not be loved if I didn’t share them. I felt I couldn’t risk their disapproval.

Brené Brown writes : “When your path is clearly laid out before you, it really isn’t your path."

Whose life was I living?

As I matured, I wanted to puncture that bubble. As I exposed myself to a larger world, I realized I could deconstruct those values dictated to me. I could retain some values, adapt or adopt new ones, and create something that was all my own. I needed to take back control of my life and become the person I wanted to be. With few exceptions, I didn’t lose the love of those who were important to me.

When people consider changes, they magnify the negative and minimize the positive consequences. Psychologists refer to this fear as awfulizing .

The ideal self is not a perfect self. Those who strive for perfection will fail because perfection doesn’t exist. I'd sought to be a perfect dad. Reading Winnicott’s description of good-enough parenting relieved me of that pressure. My kids confirm I wasn’t the perfect parent; I trust they find me good enough. No one else’s opinion really matters to me.

Our ideal self should be ambitious but still attainable. If it’s too easy, we think anyone could do that. Too monumental and we set ourselves up to fail. And our ideal evolves as our life changes.

Self-assessment

Depressed people misperceive themselves; they castigate themselves. Their self-assessment circle is tiny, so there is little overlap to define self-esteem. They blame themselves, their parents, and a dystopian world. And their circles of ideal self and self-approval swim around in a cesspool of shame and guilt .

Absolutisms dominate their narratives: Always/never, everyone/no one . I tell them: “Listen to how you speak. You sound like a teenager ! What are the facts? Doing one bad thing does not always make you a bad person. Stop saying, ‘I’m sorry.’ When you say ‘I should' or 'I shouldn’t,’ who is speaking for you?”

People use drugs, alcohol , gambling, food, sex , and porn as elixirs to compensate for damaged self-esteem. Approval operates in the brain in much the same way as addictions.

You get a hit of approval. It feels good, but it is transient and superficial. So, you go back for another. And another. But the high from each diminishes. Drugs first make you feel high, but then you need them just to feel normal.

You don’t need permission to live your life; you must seize it. But how does one do that?

Shame and guilt

The formula I outline above has nothing in it about approval. Approval does not lead to self-esteem. The only thing that matters is the approval you learn to give yourself. When I began to align who I wanted to be with who I thought I was, my shame and guilt subsided.

Your homework

Here are the steps you need to take to feel good about yourself:

Take charge of who you want to be and show up as that person.
Learn to see yourself as you are. You're good enough.
Look to yourself rather than others for approval.

Dedicate some time to yourself. In the monastic tradition, give your phone to someone and fast from all technology. Lay out your own path for your life. Write down your resume as you wish it to read five years into the future. Include your professional, personal, and financial goals . Keep it in a drawer and review it three or four times a year. Measure yourself by your progress. Use it to define and prioritize manageable interim goals.

Self-esteem is not a gift someone gives you. You have to do the work.

Read more about the physical and genetic elements of depression of Engel's biopsychosocial model.

1. Papadimitriou G. The "Biopsychosocial Model": 40 years of application in Psychiatry. Psychiatriki. 2017 Apr-Jun;28(2):107-110. Greek, Modern, English. doi: 10.22365/jpsych.2017.282.107. PMID: 28686557.

Loren A. Olson, M.D., D.L.F.A.P.A . is a board-certified psychiatrist, a gifted storyteller, and the author of No More Neckties and Finally Out: Letting Go of Living Straight .

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Essay On Self Confidence

500 words essay on self confidence.

Self-confidence refers to the state of mind where a person pushes their boundaries and encourages belief within oneself. It is something which comes from self-love. In order to have confidence in yourself, one must love oneself to get freedom from constant doubt. This essay on self confidence will help you learn more about it in detail.

The Key to Success

It won’t be far-fetched to say that self-confidence is the key to success. If not, it is definitely the first step towards success. When a person has self-confidence, they are halfway through their battle.

People in school and workplaces achieve success by taking more initiatives and being more forward and active in life. Moreover, they tend to make better decisions because of having confidence in oneself.

Thus, it makes them stand out of the crowd. When you stand apart, people will definitely notice you. Thus, it increases your chances of attaining success in life. Alternatively, if there is a person who does not trust or believe in himself, it will be tough.

They will find it hard to achieve success because they will be exposed to failure as well as criticism. Thus, without self-confidence, they may not get back on their feet as fast as someone who possesses self-confidence.

In addition to gaining success, one also enjoys a variety of perks as well. For instance, you can find a job more easily. Similarly, you may find the magnitude of a difficult job lesser than it is.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Importance of Self Confidence

Self-confidence allows us to face our failure and own up to it in a positive light. Moreover, it helps us to raise many times. This helps instil a quality in use which ensures we do not give up till we succeed.

Similarly, self-confidence instils optimism in us. People who have self-confidence are not lucky, they are smart. They do not rely on others to achieve success , they rely on their own abilities to do that.

While self-confidence is important, it is also important to not become overconfident. As we know, anything in excess can be bad for us. Similarly, overconfidence is also no exception.

When you become overconfident, you do not acknowledge the criticism. When you don’t do that, you do not work on yourself. Thus, it stops your growth. Overlooking all this will prove to be harmful.

So it is essential to have moderation which can let you attain just the right amount of self-confidence and self-love which will assure you success and happiness in life.

Conclusion of the Essay on Self Confidence

All in all, a person will gain self-confidence from their own personal experience and decision. No one speech or conversation can bring an overnight change. It is a gradual but constant process we must all participate in. It will take time but once you achieve it, nothing can stop you from conquering every height in life.

FAQ on Essay on Self Confidence

Question 1: What is the importance of self-confidence?

Answer 1: Self-confidence allows a person to free themselves from self-doubt and negative thoughts about oneself. When you are more fearless, you will have less anxiety . This is what self-confidence can offer you. It will also help you take smart risks and get rid of social anxiety.

Question 2: How do you develop self-confidence paragraph?

Answer 2: To develop self-confidence, one must first look at what they have achieved so far. Then, never forget the things you are good at. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, so focus on your strengths. Set up some goals and get a hobby as well. Give yourself the pep talk to hype up your confidence.

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'Our kids are not OK,' child psychiatrist Harold Koplewicz says

Terry Gross

The founder of the Child Mind Institute explains why young people are experiencing unprecedented levels of anxiety and depression — and what parents can do about it. His book is Scaffold Parenting.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. There are so many reasons for children to be anxious today beyond all the standard childhood problems. There's the setbacks from the COVID lockdown, mass shootings in schools, feelings they're not measuring up to the great lives they see represented on social media, fears about the whole planet being in jeopardy. It's hardly unusual for parents to be unsure how to handle their child's anxiety, depression, learning problems, anger, tantrums. And it can be difficult for parents to evaluate whether their child should see a therapist or take medication.

My guest, child psychiatrist Harold Koplewicz, has dealt with these issues with many children and their parents. And there have been times he's been confounded about issues his own children faced. He's the founding president of the Child Mind Institute. Its stated mission is transforming the lives of children and families struggling with mental health and learning disorders by giving them the help they need to thrive. The institute also conducts related research.

From 1997 to 2009, he was the first director of the NYU Child Study Center. Koplewicz recently stepped down from his 25-year tenure as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology. His latest book is titled "Scaffold Parenting: Raising Resilient, Self-Reliant And Secure Kids In An Age Of Anxiety." Dr. Harold Koplewicz, welcome to FRESH AIR. What are some of the problems and anxieties you're seeing now that you can connect to outside problems, like the COVID lockdown and its lingering aftereffects? How are you seeing that manifest in the children's anxieties that you're seeing?

HAROLD KOPLEWICZ: Well, I think our kids are not OK. And unfortunately, they weren't doing very well before COVID. But COVID has had a negative effect on all children. Children with mental health disorders and kids who are typically developing children being locked up for two years and living with fear that somebody close to you - someone near and dear - will die is very problematic. And we also know that 1 million Americans did die, which means that about 170,000 American children lost a caregiver or a parent.

And if we go back to 2001, after 9/11, we lost 3,000 Americans. And I can tell you that in New York, in certain pockets - Staten Island, where there were a lot of firemen, and Manhasset, where there were a lot of finance people who were in the building, and certainly people around ground zero - it was very hard to get kids to go back to school. Attendance rates didn't return to 9/10 - to September 10 levels for over a year and sometimes even longer.

So we do know that this kind of traumatic event is going to have lingering effects. And we have seen increases in anxiety disorders and in depression, particularly in girls but certainly even in boys. There are higher rates of kids trying to hurt themselves. And there is even an increase in the number of young people who have committed suicide. So there is no doubt that we had a problem before. And we have a greater problem now.

GROSS: The average child isn't necessarily, like, watching cable news or reading the newspaper. But you pick up a lot of this on social media. And it's also just in the air. Like, everybody's talking about these issues, like, environmental catastrophe, you know, political divisions. Is this the end of democracy? Is the planet burning? I mean, you're just - it's just in the air now.

KOPLEWICZ: Well, you know, there's something dramatically changed between 2010 and 2018. So the numbers start to jump when we started looking at children's mental health. There were higher rates of visits to emergency rooms by kids for suicidal thought and suicidal behavior. And the increase in the number of kids who died from suicide went from around 5,000 to 6,000. Now, just think about that. If it was diabetes, if it was cancer, that would have made the front page of every newspaper every single day. It would be on cable news 24/7. And somehow, we don't take mental health disorders as seriously as we take physical disorders.

And so, you know, what happened between 2010 and 2018 is that all of us started carrying a device with us that connected us to everybody on the planet 24/7. And that definitely had a negative effect on a certain percentage of the population. So I want to be clear that social media is not like smoking. It doesn't - it's not terrible for everyone. But it is particularly bad for kids who have mental health disorders. And we've really looked at this very carefully at the Child Mind Institute, where we had done a study before COVID that was looking for an objective test - a biological test. Psychiatry is the only discipline in medicine that doesn't have an objective test - doesn't have a chest X-ray or a blood test or a strep test. And therefore, that's the holy grail, right? We make the diagnosis with clinical information, which is how you start all diagnosis in every part of medicine. But you can confirm it with an EKG or with a brain scan. So psychiatry is missing that.

And so we started something called the Healthy Brain Network, where we offered any parent who was worried about their child - who was between the ages of 5 and 21 - a free psychiatric evaluation, free neuropsych testing, which looks for learning disabilities, a functional MRI and EEG, physical fitness, cardiovascular status, nutritional status. And this became the - and is still the largest collection of the developing brain of kids 5 to 21 that's ever been collected. And we share it with scientists around the world, who make an agreement with us that they won't try to find out who the subjects are.

GROSS: Wait. So is the point of this to figure out, is there a - like, a biological diagnosis you can make? Does the cohort of people who have, like, depression or anxiety or whatever share certain biological markers? Is that the point?

KOPLEWICZ: That would be the point. The real trick is, can you tell the difference between one atypical child and another? Not the difference between a typical developing child and someone who may have a mental health disorder or a learning disorder but the difference between Terry, who has anxiety, and Harold, who has depression. And is there something on the EEG or on the functional MRI? Can we find a definitive objective test? But the good news here is that when you collect all this data - and it turns out that 9% of the 7,000 kids that participated did not have a disorder. They had symptoms, but they didn't meet psychiatric criteria for a diagnosis. You now have described, very accurately and very specifically, phenotypically what these kids look like. And then you get COVID. And you find that their use of social media jumps. They are using the internet six to eight hours a day. And a...

GROSS: All the kids in the study?

KOPLEWICZ: No, no, no. Just a large percentage of them. And we start defining that as problematic internet usage. Not only are you using it a lot, but when you force them to stop, they get distressed. It almost feels like an addiction, right? And we do know that - it turns out for the 9%, who are typically developing kids, that when you use the internet more than six to eight hours a day, you will sleep less. You will exercise less. And you'll have less interactions in real life. All three of them are important for healthy brain development, but you don't become mentally ill. However, if you have a mental health disorder and you start behaving that way, your symptoms get worse. It's almost like a toxic agent. It turns out that the internet usage of over six to eight hours a day can make your symptoms of depression, your symptoms of ADHD significantly worse, which is a really important phenomena.

GROSS: Why do you think that is?

KOPLEWICZ: Well, it's a very good question. Why? Our guess is that for these kids, someone who has depression, they're already socially more isolated than the average person, and they start losing their skill set and their ambition to interact with the rest of the world. Kids with ADHD can get very hyper-focused with certain activities and at times feel very lost, very impulsive, feel very often like a failure when they can't pay attention in school or are missing things that everyone else is picking up. So what's important about this is that if you're a parent and you know your child has one of these disorders, you have to be very aware that their usage of social media, it could potentially be toxic and it has to be controlled. It can't be unlimited. Not that it's good for anyone to have unlimited, but it's particularly bad for those kids.

So we know that social media was out there between 2010 and 2018. And unfortunately, there's no regulation on it. And it means that parents have to be more aware. I mean, I think of it as, you know, a jungle, right? The jungle is an exciting place, very nutritious fruit and vegetables and lots of terrific stuff. Maybe medicines even can get discovered in the jungle. But it also has snakes, it also has dangerous plants that can kill you, it also has animals. And therefore, if you're going to let your child participate, you should be a very active participant in that permission.

GROSS: So if you think that social media can be very harmful to certain children, how would you suggest parents try to limit their time on social media? That's something that is really hard to do.

KOPLEWICZ: I think it is challenging, but I think it's very doable. We also have some good data. We know that parents who are using the internet in a, you know, problematic way are more likely to have kids that are doing it. Parents have to model this. They have to have periods where, we're putting the phone away at nighttime, and you're not allowed to look at it because we want you to sleep. We do want to look and see how much time you're spending on it, and we want you to be aware of how much time you're spending on it. So it's not, you know, punitive. It's a collaboration, especially if they're a teenager or a pre-teen. But I also think that, you know, it's time for us to get much more sophisticated about this.

GROSS: I want to talk with you a little bit about suicide since you brought it up. And I want to ask you first - just in terms of our show, we always give warnings when we're going to be talking about suicide. And we always give the suicide prevention hotline number, the idea being that hearing talk about suicide can almost be encouraging to someone who has had suicidal ideation. So do you think that's helpful?

KOPLEWICZ: Well, I think it's important to recognize that even if it's a small percentage, to give people that information - that lifeline is very important - and also to let them know that they're not alone. So I think the way to think about this is, why are teenagers so much more at risk than you or me? And the way to think about a teenager is, they feel everything. They're boiling. They're freezing. I hate you. I love you. You know, what happened to I'm warm or it's a little cool in here? That doesn't happen. And in some ways, it's really kind of terrific because they are so creative and they see opportunity everywhere. And they don't recognize risk very well.

I mean, there's some really interesting studies of a teenage boy who goes and picks up a friend to come into his car. And the teenager driver is wearing a seatbelt, and the teenage male who sits down next to him doesn't put a seatbelt on, and the teenage driver takes his seatbelt off. He goes and picks up a girl, and the girl gets into the car and she puts her seatbelt on, and the teenage driver now puts his seatbelt on.

So they're very easily moved by their peer group in a way that they hadn't been before. And parents should note this, that even though the peer group becomes significantly more influential when you're a teenager, parents are still the most influential factor in a kid's life. But it's important that parents keep talking, keep sharing their viewpoint, keep listening to their kid's viewpoint and not back off because their kids say, well, everyone's doing it.

GROSS: A child comes into your office, let's say a teenager comes into your office. You think that the possibility of this teenager attempting suicide is real. What do you do to try to prevent that from happening?

KOPLEWICZ: Well, it really depends on how serious they are about the attempt. Do they have a plan? Have they been thinking about it a long time? Have they stopped doing their usual pleasurable experiences? They no longer are hanging out with friends or not eating the food that they love. And you have to really recognize that if they are very serious about it, you have to intervene. You have to save their lives. You have to either say to them, I don't feel you're safe, or ask them if they feel safe, and then sometimes make the decision that they have to be in an environment where they'll be watched, in a hospital. Or you'll talk to their parents and see can they watch them until this mood and this ideation actually passes.

GROSS: So I just want to pause here and give the national Suicide and Crisis hotline number. And this is the number to call or to text. It's 988, so it's a simple number. Just three numbers, 988, to either call or text the national Suicide and Crisis hotline. So if you are having thoughts of suicide, please get some help. Well, let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Harold Koplewicz and he is a child psychiatrist, the founding president of the Child Mind Institute. His books include "Scaffold Parenting: Raising Resilient, Self-Reliant, And Secure Kids In An Age Of Anxiety." We have to take a short break here, and we'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Dr. Harold Koplewicz. He is a child psychiatrist, he's the founding president of the Child Mind Institute, and his books include "Scaffold Parenting: Raising Resilient, Self-Reliant, And Secure Kids In An Age Of Anxiety."

You specialize in ADHD - attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Why don't you define what the symptoms are and how to recognize it?

KOPLEWICZ: So it's a challenge for lots of people to think about it because they think, oh, aren't we all hyperactive at some time? But the difference here is a deficit in attention toward what's normal developmentally. So the attention span of a 5-year-old is very different than the attention span of a 10-year-old. But any individual who has ADHD is chronically less attentive, tends to be more impulsive, and if they have hyperactivity, they're moving around more. They can get themselves into physical problems because they basically have ants in their pants. They're constantly in motion. The diagnosis when you have hyperactivity is much easier to make than when you just have ADD without H. But it's a chronic illness, and therefore, it may change over time. Your symptoms might lessen. Hyperactivity might go away when you become a teenager. But you are always going to have a shorter attention span and going to be more impulsive than the average person your age.

GROSS: I think this is one of the problems in which brain imaging is starting to be used - fMRIs, where you can see, like, which parts of the brain light up in different situations and different thoughts. How are fMRIs being used in ADHD?

KOPLEWICZ: Right. It's the holy grail for us to find that objective test. One of the things we've discovered at the Child Mind Institute is that the way your brain connects to itself while a child's at rest turns out to be diagnostic. It's called connectomes. So does the front of the brain connect to the side of the brain or to the back of the brain?

And what's been very interesting is that we took a few hundred scans and sent them to a group of people who were statisticians, who were electrical engineers, and asked them if they could group those different scans in different buckets. And we found the group that actually won this competition were statisticians from Hopkins. And they said, well, these 150 scans go together, and these 50 scans go together, and these hundred scans go together. And these are individuals who have never seen a patient with psychiatric disorder. But what's really interesting - in bucket one, the overwhelming majority of those patients had ADHD. In the group of 50, they had autism. And the group of a hundred, they had both ADHD and autism. So we're really excited by the fact that we have found something that might lead us to a definitive, objective test.

Now, the important part for everyone to remember - it's not just one child. It's not a strep test - yes, you're positive or someone else is negative. It's a group difference. But that's the way we're going to get closer and closer to making a definitive diagnosis.

GROSS: So in a study like the fMRI study that you were referring to, how do you know whether the brain is reflecting the behavior or whether the behavior is predetermined by the brain? Do you know what I mean?

KOPLEWICZ: Sure. Well, it's...

GROSS: It's, like, if I move my left arm - if I say, I'm going to move my left arm right now, and I'm doing it with intent, it's going to register on an fMRI, probably. But it's not like I have a disorder that's moving my left arm. It's, like, I've decided to behave this way, and it's registering in my brain.

KOPLEWICZ: So, you know, let's think about this for a second. This is exactly where the field of research in functional MRI has gone to. You know, they used to give a trigger to a kid. You know, pay attention to this while you're in the machine, or we're going to show you scary faces and see what happened to the brain. It turns out that the most powerful way of doing this is just letting kids rest or sleep in the functional MRI. And your brain is incredibly active while you're at rest or sleeping. And that's when you're going to see most of these connections. So in the case of the study, we weren't triggering them. We weren't saying, you know, this clearly should be what makes the - you know, we'll catch them being inattentive, and then we'll look at the MRI. We're just looking at their brains at rest.

GROSS: Oh, that's really interesting. So has this affected your treatment at all?

KOPLEWICZ: So we're not there yet. You know, it's not ready for prime time. I wish it - you know, I could say, oh, we're going to give everyone EEGs, because they're only 60 bucks, and an MRI is 500, and we found some correlation. That's what I'm hoping for. But, you know, science has to wait for real data. So at this moment, we still have to rely on clinical diagnosis. You're asking parents what they think. You're asking teachers and report cards, because this is not something that just pops up when you're about to apply to college or because you didn't make partner at the law firm. This is a lifelong illness. And you can document that by looking at things from a longitudinal basis.

And then you have to examine the child. The child basically confirms the diagnosis or doesn't. I think it's fascinating when you do give a kid meds, and they do significantly better, that a young child will tell you the medicine's not working. And you say, really? What's changed? He said, my teacher is much nicer. I said, that's really interesting.

GROSS: (Laughter).

KOPLEWICZ: You take a pill and your kid - your teacher's much nicer. That really is absolutely amazing. And they said, yeah. You know, you're 8 years old. OK.

GROSS: Well, we need to take another break here, so let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Dr. Harold Koplewicz. He's a child psychiatrist. He's the founding president of the Child Mind Institute. And his books include "Scaffold Parenting: Raising Resilient, Self-Reliant And Secure Kids In An Age Of Anxiety." We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Dr. Harold Koplewicz. He's a child psychiatrist and the founding president of the Child Mind Institute. His books include "Scaffold Parenting: Raising Resilient, Self-Reliant, And Secure Kids In An Age Of Anxiety." Your middle son has dyslexia. No one realized it at first. How did you discover what it was? Because this is, I assume, one of the issues that you treat as a child psychiatrist.

KOPLEWICZ: Right. Well, I think dyslexia has very often been put into another category until about the last 25 years, so that it was something educational experts did and not necessarily child psychiatrists. And brain scans and functional MRIs have changed that, but in the case of our family, he was 4 years old. We were visiting his grandmother for a day, and she was a pretty neutral individual, very careful not to say anything critical or even say anything overly praising, and she mentioned that she had trouble understanding him. And we said, Well, you know, his articulation isn't great. And she said, no, his stories are out of sequence, and I don't think he knows my name. I love listening to him, but everything seems a little mixed up. And I was the one who said, you know, we should listen to grandma here.

And we went on this journey to figure out what was wrong. We had him tested, and the tester said, oh, he's very bright. Well, at 4 years old, you don't read on these kinds of neuropsych testing, but she did mention that he had some word retrieval problems and that he couldn't name certain things, and she was concerned that maybe he didn't recognize the alphabet. And I remember at the time saying, What do we do about it? And she said, well, it's going to cost a lot of money, and it's going to take a lot of time. And I thought, well, he's 4 years old. He has a lot of time. And for this, we'll find a lot of money. We'll mortgage our house. He's got to learn how to read.

So we went on this journey, and it turned out that we wasted a lot of time. There were a lot of dead ends where we thought we were doing well, but it turns out he was memorizing words, that he couldn't decode the language. He couldn't tell the difference between Sally, Susan, and Sarah. And it was only by third grade, when math turned into word problems, that we saw how frustrated he was and how he recognized that he was ahead of kids in math but way behind them in reading, and he knew this was happening. And that gave us the moment to reevaluate and figure out a more evidence-based approach.

GROSS: Which was?

KOPLEWICZ: Well, it turns out that a multisensory approach to learning how to read, teaching kids the sounds of the language, brother sounds, what your lips look like, and there was a program called Lindamood-Bell, which is now in 50 states, and it's very intensive. You spend 4 hours a day doing these exercises with a different tutor every hour, and then you do another 30 minutes or 40 minutes of homework. And they basically teach you how to break the code, that the rest of us are learning how to read with only one side of our brain, and they are teaching you how to read thinking that, you know, your brain thinks it's Italian or Spanish, that you're learning a foreign language. It's really a remarkable intervention.

GROSS: I'm going to stop you. What do you mean by that, that your brain thinks you're learning a foreign language?

KOPLEWICZ: When we learn a foreign language, we use both sides of our brain. When we're learning...

GROSS: We do?

KOPLEWICZ: Yes.

GROSS: (Laughter). I hadn't heard that before.

KOPLEWICZ: Right. So when we're learning our native language, we activate one side of the brain, and kids with dyslexia underactivate that brain. And so when you teach them a new way of learning, it's like teaching them a foreign language, and so when you check what's going on in a functional MRI, they're lighting up both sides of their brain. The thing that's really awful about dyslexia, as far as I'm concerned, is what it does to kids' self-esteem. You know, once a year, I get to interview someone who's struggled with it, whether it's Orlando Bloom or Ari Emanuel or, you know, Lorraine Bracco, and you hear how bad they felt about themselves.

Think about it. Every day, you go to work, and every day, you feel like a failure, so it's not surprising that you think you're stupid or that you don't want to be there. And what they - all these successful people have in common is a great mom. You know, Barbara Corcoran has it, and she told me that the nuns were really giving her a tough time in parochial school. And her mother said, don't listen to the nuns. You are not stupid. They're stupid. Well, having a mom who's telling you you're still bright or Orlando Bloom's mom, who said, let's do poetry - you know, those are these great moms who are basically saying, I'm on your side, and we're going to figure this out. But for those who don't have those moms, school is impossible. There's high school dropout rates. There are high rates of getting involved in the juvenile justice system because you're not in school. And when we look at the juvenile justice system, we see that 70% of the inmates have dyslexia.

GROSS: You know, I used to think that dyslexia was a problem with, like, reversing words, so you'd have to read slowly 'cause words would get reversed in your mind, but it's much more profound than that. Can you give us, like, the latest understanding of what dyslexia is?

KOPLEWICZ: Sure. So that's a myth, you know, the d, the b. What it really is, first of all, it's a brain-based disorder, and there's two major symptoms. One is alphabet recognition, being able to look at the A and knowing it's an A and looking at the D and knowing it's a D. And we all learned that, kind of, you know, very easily. And the other (inaudible) awareness, hearing the sounds of the language, being able to say to yourself or let your brain recognize that S-L-O-W comes out slow and S-H-O-W comes out show. And so you have to be able to hear those two different phonemes. And I will tell you that now that America is recognizing that this kind of evidence-based learning is really important, that we have to teach kids phonemes, we have to teach them how to read no matter who they are, we are really addressing this in an earlier age, so kids who have dyslexia will be picked up sooner and will be able to get interventions that are more effective, again, before it affects their self-esteem.

GROSS: So let me reintroduce you here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Doctor Harold Koplewicz. He's a child psychiatrist, author of the book "Scaffold Parenting: Raising Resilient, Self-Reliant And Secure Kids In An Age of Anxiety" and founding president of the Child Mind Institute. We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Dr. Harold Koplewicz, the founding president of the Child Mind Institute, author of the book "Scaffold Parenting: Raising Resilient, Self-Reliant And Secure Kids In An Age Of Anxiety." He's a child psychiatrist and has been one for how many years?

KOPLEWICZ: Almost 40.

GROSS: OK. So this is a kind of personal question, but knowing what you know now - and there's so much more research that's been done into childhood, you know, behavioral problems and mental health disorders - do you think you had any undiagnosed problems as a child?

KOPLEWICZ: I don't think so, but...

GROSS: And I don't mean that, like...

KOPLEWICZ: No, no, no.

GROSS: ...I recognize symptoms in (laughter)...

KOPLEWICZ: No, no, no. Yeah.

GROSS: ...In how you're behaving...

KOPLEWICZ: I - but I know - but I would tell you that I clearly became much more of a student when I was in college than I was in high school. I had Eastern European parents. I had parents who survived the Holocaust and got to the United States in 1949. And they didn't believe that education was a journey. It was a destination. And they couldn't wait until, you know, you graduated and go to college. And so I was two years younger than everyone in elementary school. And I think that was most probably not a great idea - that most boys developed, you know, late. And so that was a problem.

And I would also tell you that, you know, the parents that I had when I was growing up were much more traumatized by the Holocaust than the parents I had later on in life, when they were in their 80s and 90s and were less anxious and the nightmares had stopped and they felt more comfortable in the United States - and also comfortable that, you know, I was going to be successful. I had graduated medical school. I had children. They - I was married. And that seemed to really calm them down.

But I do recognize that they were overly invested in my being successful because they were trying to recreate stuff that they lost. My parents were both - by the way, my father had graduated law school in 1936, and my mother was in law school in 1938. And neither one of them ever practiced law. They came to this country as immigrants. They had to start all fresh again. My father started a business. I think they struggled financially. My mother eventually went back to school and got a B.A. and then an MSW. But there was this idea of what could have been if there wouldn't have been the Holocaust. And therefore, my sister and I had to carry, you know, that weight, which is, you know, understandable but was very unpleasant when it was happening.

GROSS: Were your parents in camps?

KOPLEWICZ: My father was literally in 14 concentration camps and the Warsaw Ghetto. And how is that possible? Well, at the very first camp, they asked, who knows how to make airplanes? And my father raised his hand. And when asked about that, he said, well, they had already killed the lawyers. And he figured, well, I know how to use a screwdriver. I'll figure it out. And he went from camp to camp. And he was with one other man who kept being moved with him, and they got a little piece of metal. And the other guy was very artistic, and he engraved a sailboat and a horn of plenty. And on the other side, every time they moved from one camp to another, my father inscribed the date and the name of the camp. And they were hoping that it would be at least a record, that what they were experiencing would be recorded and documented. And that piece of metal, by the way, is at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in New York - I'm sorry, in D.C., in Washington...

GROSS: Yeah.

KOPLEWICZ: ...D.C.

GROSS: Yeah. So you mentioned your - so your mother was in camps, too?

KOPLEWICZ: No. My mother got papers as a Catholic and - false papers as a Catholic and walked out of the ghetto. And in some ways, it was more trying for her in the respect that - think about it. You have fake papers, and if the Gestapo stops you and starts really examining the papers and starts asking you questions like, what is your mother and father's name? Oh, they're dead. OK. And what was your priest's name? And where are you from? It wouldn't take very long.

So she moved around 16 different villages, outside of Warsaw, working as a maid. And she was a terrible housekeeper, so it is really amazing how she managed to do that, because she - you know, she really had a very tough time and was very isolated and just basically, you know, surviving from day to day. And it was, I think, a little more than two years where she was moving around. The war ended first in Poland. And so my father didn't come and find her until several months later.

GROSS: Oh, they were married before the war started.

KOPLEWICZ: Well, I wish I could tell you that's true, and that was the story I was told. But it turns out that when my then-12-year-old son was doing a - my wife insisted that if he was going to be bar mitzvahed, it had to be intergenerational. So he kept asking my mother her life story and recording it. And at a certain point, my son said, I don't understand, Grandma. Where was the infrastructure in the ghetto for you to get married? And my mother said, oh, you know, in the Jewish religion, you can get married and become the stars and the moon. And my son said, I don't think that's true. I think you need a contract.

KOPLEWICZ: And she said, well, August 12. It was the day I lost my virginity with your grandfather. And he came home and said, I don't know if Grandma and Grandpa ever were married. I think they're celebrating the day they had sex. So I called my mother and said, I don't understand. Why did you tell him that? She said, I never slept with anybody else, and I thought, enough. And he asked much better questions than you ever did.

KOPLEWICZ: So I think they got married when they were leaving Poland to go to a displaced persons camp in Germany. But - and I have to tell you as an example, their people - my mother was madly in love with my father before the war. You know, she lusted for him. He was very attractive, and he was a lawyer already. And then after the war, when he returned, he was skin and bones. And, you know, he was truly a different person. And she was a different person. She was no longer a bit of a princess. She was a survivor. She knew hard (ph) - and she - he came and found her. And she said, I'm going to let you come in, but I'm leaving. I've got papers to go either to Palestine or to Australia or Canada or the United States. I'm not staying here. And he said, well, I am staying here. I'm a lawyer, and we're going to make a lot of money. And she said, that's OK.

The idea that they lived together for three months and she got the papers and he decided to go with her - it's really a very romantic story that they fell in love again. And my father, every year on their anniversary, would give my mother - if they had money, he gave her a red rose for every year they were together and three white roses for the three years they weren't together with the same note - life had no color without you. So they really rediscovered each other and I think gave - that bond was so close. In some ways, my sister and I sometimes felt out of it because they were such a partnership that that's what carried them through later on.

GROSS: What impact do you think it had on you as a child to know that they were having these nightmares, these concentration camp...

KOPLEWICZ: Oh, it was nightmares.

GROSS: ...Or posing-as-a-Catholic kind of nightmares? Did they tell you about that? Could you sense it? And in the same mode there, like, did they let on what they had experienced and how traumatic it was?

KOPLEWICZ: So the stories were never consistent or chronological, so you only got bits and pieces. You know, something about the showers - right? - that one of my grandmothers died in the showers. You know, I hate to tell you that they didn't explain the camps to me, but you also knew that they were so upset by it that you didn't pursue it. You didn't ask them a lot of things. And I can certainly tell you that since they weren't very Jewish by education or training, the holidays were just terrible. I mean, you know, most people light a memorial candle for all the people that have died in their family. Well, all their brothers and sisters and their parents and their cousins, so that, you know, there were, like, 10 yahrzeit candles, these memorial candles, but they weren't kept in the kitchen. Like, all the ghosts were on the dining room table for Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur. And it's kind of amazing the transformation they made over time - that, you know, they were literally able to become more stable and calmer and more effective as adults.

GROSS: You must have grown up with a very dark view of life.

KOPLEWICZ: At times, yes. You know, at time, yes. And yet the amazing part about my parents were they couldn't care less about material things. So other kids would live in houses near us in Queens and then in Nassau County, where the slip covers, plastic slip covers were put on the furniture, and my mother would say, What are they waiting for? You know, they'll be dead. If something broke in our house, my mother never cared about it. I mean, it really gave them a whole different attitude about what was important, and certainly, material things were not important to my parents. They had lost a lot because they stayed. You know, I used to say, why didn't you come to America, for God's sakes? and my mother would say, Al Capone and peasants - they came to America, not - you know, not the intelligentsia. You know, she's kind of snobby about, you know, her academic credentials and who her family was, but, you know, they lost a lot because they didn't want to leave property or whatever it was or the life that they had.

GROSS: So one last question. You know, some parents really want to be their children's best friend, and some parents really want to maintain their stature as the authority figure, not the best friend. And in terms of being a parent yourself, I'm curious where you fit on that spectrum, if you are comfortable talking about that.

KOPLEWICZ: Sure. Well, I'm not my kid's best friend, you know, and that's OK, because even though they're all adults now, which is a whole different kind of relationship... I mean, my children are 41, 37, and 35. It really is frightening...

KOPLEWICZ: ...To see that one of my kids has gray hair. You know, it's like, how did this happen? Because I'm still 35. You know, but all along, I think there is this pull that you certainly want your kids to love you because you love them so much, but it's OK for them not to like you because you do have to protect them. And when you protect them, there are certain things that they want to do that you know are dangerous for them or are just not good for them or not healthy for them. And so I think it's very hard, if not impossible, to be a friend, which is be a peer - right? - and share the same point of view and not have control. Your friend does not have control over you. It's much more equal. And I don't think that's possible as a parent. I think the best type of parenting, by the way, is an authoritative parent who has a lot of warmth but has a lot of control. So both the kid and the parent know, at the end of the day, the parent is going to make the decision, maybe with input from the child. But at the end of the day, it's not a democracy. It's going to be the parent who has the responsibility to make those decisions.

GROSS: Dr. Harold Koplewicz, thank you so much for talking with us.

KOPLEWICZ: Oh, it's been a pleasure, Terry.

GROSS: Dr. Harold Koplewicz is the founding president of the Child Mind Institute. His latest book is titled "Scaffold Parenting." After we take a short break, Justin Chang reviews what he describes as a marvelous new movie. This is FRESH AIR.

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The Case for Marrying an Older Man

A woman’s life is all work and little rest. an age gap relationship can help..

In the summer, in the south of France, my husband and I like to play, rather badly, the lottery. We take long, scorching walks to the village — gratuitous beauty, gratuitous heat — kicking up dust and languid debates over how we’d spend such an influx. I purchase scratch-offs, jackpot tickets, scraping the former with euro coins in restaurants too fine for that. I never cash them in, nor do I check the winning numbers. For I already won something like the lotto, with its gifts and its curses, when he married me.

He is ten years older than I am. I chose him on purpose, not by chance. As far as life decisions go, on balance, I recommend it.

When I was 20 and a junior at Harvard College, a series of great ironies began to mock me. I could study all I wanted, prove myself as exceptional as I liked, and still my fiercest advantage remained so universal it deflated my other plans. My youth. The newness of my face and body. Compellingly effortless; cruelly fleeting. I shared it with the average, idle young woman shrugging down the street. The thought, when it descended on me, jolted my perspective, the way a falling leaf can make you look up: I could diligently craft an ideal existence, over years and years of sleepless nights and industry. Or I could just marry it early.

So naturally I began to lug a heavy suitcase of books each Saturday to the Harvard Business School to work on my Nabokov paper. In one cavernous, well-appointed room sat approximately 50 of the planet’s most suitable bachelors. I had high breasts, most of my eggs, plausible deniability when it came to purity, a flush ponytail, a pep in my step that had yet to run out. Apologies to Progress, but older men still desired those things.

I could not understand why my female classmates did not join me, given their intelligence. Each time I reconsidered the project, it struck me as more reasonable. Why ignore our youth when it amounted to a superpower? Why assume the burdens of womanhood, its too-quick-to-vanish upper hand, but not its brief benefits at least? Perhaps it came easier to avoid the topic wholesale than to accept that women really do have a tragically short window of power, and reason enough to take advantage of that fact while they can. As for me, I liked history, Victorian novels, knew of imminent female pitfalls from all the books I’d read: vampiric boyfriends; labor, at the office and in the hospital, expected simultaneously; a decline in status as we aged, like a looming eclipse. I’d have disliked being called calculating, but I had, like all women, a calculator in my head. I thought it silly to ignore its answers when they pointed to an unfairness for which we really ought to have been preparing.

I was competitive by nature, an English-literature student with all the corresponding major ambitions and minor prospects (Great American novel; email job). A little Bovarist , frantic for new places and ideas; to travel here, to travel there, to be in the room where things happened. I resented the callow boys in my class, who lusted after a particular, socially sanctioned type on campus: thin and sexless, emotionally detached and socially connected, the opposite of me. Restless one Saturday night, I slipped on a red dress and snuck into a graduate-school event, coiling an HDMI cord around my wrist as proof of some technical duty. I danced. I drank for free, until one of the organizers asked me to leave. I called and climbed into an Uber. Then I promptly climbed out of it. For there he was, emerging from the revolving doors. Brown eyes, curved lips, immaculate jacket. I went to him, asked him for a cigarette. A date, days later. A second one, where I discovered he was a person, potentially my favorite kind: funny, clear-eyed, brilliant, on intimate terms with the universe.

I used to love men like men love women — that is, not very well, and with a hunger driven only by my own inadequacies. Not him. In those early days, I spoke fondly of my family, stocked the fridge with his favorite pasta, folded his clothes more neatly than I ever have since. I wrote his mother a thank-you note for hosting me in his native France, something befitting a daughter-in-law. It worked; I meant it. After graduation and my fellowship at Oxford, I stayed in Europe for his career and married him at 23.

Of course I just fell in love. Romances have a setting; I had only intervened to place myself well. Mainly, I spotted the precise trouble of being a woman ahead of time, tried to surf it instead of letting it drown me on principle. I had grown bored of discussions of fair and unfair, equal or unequal , and preferred instead to consider a thing called ease.

The reception of a particular age-gap relationship depends on its obviousness. The greater and more visible the difference in years and status between a man and a woman, the more it strikes others as transactional. Transactional thinking in relationships is both as American as it gets and the least kosher subject in the American romantic lexicon. When a 50-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman walk down the street, the questions form themselves inside of you; they make you feel cynical and obscene: How good of a deal is that? Which party is getting the better one? Would I take it? He is older. Income rises with age, so we assume he has money, at least relative to her; at minimum, more connections and experience. She has supple skin. Energy. Sex. Maybe she gets a Birkin. Maybe he gets a baby long after his prime. The sight of their entwined hands throws a lucid light on the calculations each of us makes, in love, to varying degrees of denial. You could get married in the most romantic place in the world, like I did, and you would still have to sign a contract.

Twenty and 30 is not like 30 and 40; some freshness to my features back then, some clumsiness in my bearing, warped our decade, in the eyes of others, to an uncrossable gulf. Perhaps this explains the anger we felt directed at us at the start of our relationship. People seemed to take us very, very personally. I recall a hellish car ride with a friend of his who began to castigate me in the backseat, in tones so low that only I could hear him. He told me, You wanted a rich boyfriend. You chased and snuck into parties . He spared me the insult of gold digger, but he drew, with other words, the outline for it. Most offended were the single older women, my husband’s classmates. They discussed me in the bathroom at parties when I was in the stall. What does he see in her? What do they talk about? They were concerned about me. They wielded their concern like a bludgeon. They paraphrased without meaning to my favorite line from Nabokov’s Lolita : “You took advantage of my disadvantage,” suspecting me of some weakness he in turn mined. It did not disturb them, so much, to consider that all relationships were trades. The trouble was the trade I’d made struck them as a bad one.

The truth is you can fall in love with someone for all sorts of reasons, tiny transactions, pluses and minuses, whose sum is your affection for each other, your loyalty, your commitment. The way someone picks up your favorite croissant. Their habit of listening hard. What they do for you on your anniversary and your reciprocal gesture, wrapped thoughtfully. The serenity they inspire; your happiness, enlivening it. When someone says they feel unappreciated, what they really mean is you’re in debt to them.

When I think of same-age, same-stage relationships, what I tend to picture is a woman who is doing too much for too little.

I’m 27 now, and most women my age have “partners.” These days, girls become partners quite young. A partner is supposed to be a modern answer to the oppression of marriage, the terrible feeling of someone looming over you, head of a household to which you can only ever be the neck. Necks are vulnerable. The problem with a partner, however, is if you’re equal in all things, you compromise in all things. And men are too skilled at taking .

There is a boy out there who knows how to floss because my friend taught him. Now he kisses college girls with fresh breath. A boy married to my friend who doesn’t know how to pack his own suitcase. She “likes to do it for him.” A million boys who know how to touch a woman, who go to therapy because they were pushed, who learned fidelity, boundaries, decency, manners, to use a top sheet and act humanely beneath it, to call their mothers, match colors, bring flowers to a funeral and inhale, exhale in the face of rage, because some girl, some girl we know, some girl they probably don’t speak to and will never, ever credit, took the time to teach him. All while she was working, raising herself, clawing up the cliff-face of adulthood. Hauling him at her own expense.

I find a post on Reddit where five thousand men try to define “ a woman’s touch .” They describe raised flower beds, blankets, photographs of their loved ones, not hers, sprouting on the mantel overnight. Candles, coasters, side tables. Someone remembering to take lint out of the dryer. To give compliments. I wonder what these women are getting back. I imagine them like Cinderella’s mice, scurrying around, their sole proof of life their contributions to a more central character. On occasion I meet a nice couple, who grew up together. They know each other with a fraternalism tender and alien to me. But I think of all my friends who failed at this, were failed at this, and I think, No, absolutely not, too risky . Riskier, sometimes, than an age gap.

My younger brother is in his early 20s, handsome, successful, but in many ways: an endearing disaster. By his age, I had long since wisened up. He leaves his clothes in the dryer, takes out a single shirt, steams it for three minutes. His towel on the floor, for someone else to retrieve. His lovely, same-age girlfriend is aching to fix these tendencies, among others. She is capable beyond words. Statistically, they will not end up together. He moved into his first place recently, and she, the girlfriend, supplied him with a long, detailed list of things he needed for his apartment: sheets, towels, hangers, a colander, which made me laugh. She picked out his couch. I will bet you anything she will fix his laundry habits, and if so, they will impress the next girl. If they break up, she will never see that couch again, and he will forget its story. I tell her when I visit because I like her, though I get in trouble for it: You shouldn’t do so much for him, not for someone who is not stuck with you, not for any boy, not even for my wonderful brother.

Too much work had left my husband, by 30, jaded and uninspired. He’d burned out — but I could reenchant things. I danced at restaurants when they played a song I liked. I turned grocery shopping into an adventure, pleased by what I provided. Ambitious, hungry, he needed someone smart enough to sustain his interest, but flexible enough in her habits to build them around his hours. I could. I do: read myself occupied, make myself free, materialize beside him when he calls for me. In exchange, I left a lucrative but deadening spreadsheet job to write full-time, without having to live like a writer. I learned to cook, a little, and decorate, somewhat poorly. Mostly I get to read, to walk central London and Miami and think in delicious circles, to work hard, when necessary, for free, and write stories for far less than minimum wage when I tally all the hours I take to write them.

At 20, I had felt daunted by the project of becoming my ideal self, couldn’t imagine doing it in tandem with someone, two raw lumps of clay trying to mold one another and only sullying things worse. I’d go on dates with boys my age and leave with the impression they were telling me not about themselves but some person who didn’t exist yet and on whom I was meant to bet regardless. My husband struck me instead as so finished, formed. Analyzable for compatibility. He bore the traces of other women who’d improved him, small but crucial basics like use a coaster ; listen, don’t give advice. Young egos mellow into patience and generosity.

My husband isn’t my partner. He’s my mentor, my lover, and, only in certain contexts, my friend. I’ll never forget it, how he showed me around our first place like he was introducing me to myself: This is the wine you’ll drink, where you’ll keep your clothes, we vacation here, this is the other language we’ll speak, you’ll learn it, and I did. Adulthood seemed a series of exhausting obligations. But his logistics ran so smoothly that he simply tacked mine on. I moved into his flat, onto his level, drag and drop, cleaner thrice a week, bills automatic. By opting out of partnership in my 20s, I granted myself a kind of compartmentalized, liberating selfishness none of my friends have managed. I am the work in progress, the party we worry about, a surprising dominance. When I searched for my first job, at 21, we combined our efforts, for my sake. He had wisdom to impart, contacts with whom he arranged coffees; we spent an afternoon, laughing, drawing up earnest lists of my pros and cons (highly sociable; sloppy math). Meanwhile, I took calls from a dear friend who had a boyfriend her age. Both savagely ambitious, hyperclose and entwined in each other’s projects. If each was a start-up , the other was the first hire, an intense dedication I found riveting. Yet every time she called me, I hung up with the distinct feeling that too much was happening at the same time: both learning to please a boss; to forge more adult relationships with their families; to pay bills and taxes and hang prints on the wall. Neither had any advice to give and certainly no stability. I pictured a three-legged race, two people tied together and hobbling toward every milestone.

I don’t fool myself. My marriage has its cons. There are only so many times one can say “thank you” — for splendid scenes, fine dinners — before the phrase starts to grate. I live in an apartment whose rent he pays and that shapes the freedom with which I can ever be angry with him. He doesn’t have to hold it over my head. It just floats there, complicating usual shorthands to explain dissatisfaction like, You aren’t being supportive lately . It’s a Frenchism to say, “Take a decision,” and from time to time I joke: from whom? Occasionally I find myself in some fabulous country at some fabulous party and I think what a long way I have traveled, like a lucky cloud, and it is frightening to think of oneself as vapor.

Mostly I worry that if he ever betrayed me and I had to move on, I would survive, but would find in my humor, preferences, the way I make coffee or the bed nothing that he did not teach, change, mold, recompose, stamp with his initials, the way Renaissance painters hid in their paintings their faces among a crowd. I wonder if when they looked at their paintings, they saw their own faces first. But this is the wrong question, if our aim is happiness. Like the other question on which I’m expected to dwell: Who is in charge, the man who drives or the woman who put him there so she could enjoy herself? I sit in the car, in the painting it would have taken me a corporate job and 20 years to paint alone, and my concern over who has the upper hand becomes as distant as the horizon, the one he and I made so wide for me.

To be a woman is to race against the clock, in several ways, until there is nothing left to be but run ragged.

We try to put it off, but it will hit us at some point: that we live in a world in which our power has a different shape from that of men, a different distribution of advantage, ours a funnel and theirs an expanding cone. A woman at 20 rarely has to earn her welcome; a boy at 20 will be turned away at the door. A woman at 30 may find a younger woman has taken her seat; a man at 30 will have invited her. I think back to the women in the bathroom, my husband’s classmates. What was my relationship if not an inconvertible sign of this unfairness? What was I doing, in marrying older, if not endorsing it? I had taken advantage of their disadvantage. I had preempted my own. After all, principled women are meant to defy unfairness, to show some integrity or denial, not plan around it, like I had. These were driven women, successful, beautiful, capable. I merely possessed the one thing they had already lost. In getting ahead of the problem, had I pushed them down? If I hadn’t, would it really have made any difference?

When we decided we wanted to be equal to men, we got on men’s time. We worked when they worked, retired when they retired, had to squeeze pregnancy, children, menopause somewhere impossibly in the margins. I have a friend, in her late 20s, who wears a mood ring; these days it is often red, flickering in the air like a siren when she explains her predicament to me. She has raised her fair share of same-age boyfriends. She has put her head down, worked laboriously alongside them, too. At last she is beginning to reap the dividends, earning the income to finally enjoy herself. But it is now, exactly at this precipice of freedom and pleasure, that a time problem comes closing in. If she would like to have children before 35, she must begin her next profession, motherhood, rather soon, compromising inevitably her original one. The same-age partner, equally unsettled in his career, will take only the minimum time off, she guesses, or else pay some cost which will come back to bite her. Everything unfailingly does. If she freezes her eggs to buy time, the decision and its logistics will burden her singly — and perhaps it will not work. Overlay the years a woman is supposed to establish herself in her career and her fertility window and it’s a perfect, miserable circle. By midlife women report feeling invisible, undervalued; it is a telling cliché, that after all this, some husbands leave for a younger girl. So when is her time, exactly? For leisure, ease, liberty? There is no brand of feminism which achieved female rest. If women’s problem in the ’50s was a paralyzing malaise, now it is that they are too active, too capable, never permitted a vacation they didn’t plan. It’s not that our efforts to have it all were fated for failure. They simply weren’t imaginative enough.

For me, my relationship, with its age gap, has alleviated this rush , permitted me to massage the clock, shift its hands to my benefit. Very soon, we will decide to have children, and I don’t panic over last gasps of fun, because I took so many big breaths of it early: on the holidays of someone who had worked a decade longer than I had, in beautiful places when I was young and beautiful, a symmetry I recommend. If such a thing as maternal energy exists, mine was never depleted. I spent the last nearly seven years supported more than I support and I am still not as old as my husband was when he met me. When I have a child, I will expect more help from him than I would if he were younger, for what does professional tenure earn you if not the right to set more limits on work demands — or, if not, to secure some child care, at the very least? When I return to work after maternal upheaval, he will aid me, as he’s always had, with his ability to put himself aside, as younger men are rarely able.

Above all, the great gift of my marriage is flexibility. A chance to live my life before I become responsible for someone else’s — a lover’s, or a child’s. A chance to write. A chance at a destiny that doesn’t adhere rigidly to the routines and timelines of men, but lends itself instead to roomy accommodation, to the very fluidity Betty Friedan dreamed of in 1963 in The Feminine Mystique , but we’ve largely forgotten: some career or style of life that “permits year-to-year variation — a full-time paid job in one community, part-time in another, exercise of the professional skill in serious volunteer work or a period of study during pregnancy or early motherhood when a full-time job is not feasible.” Some things are just not feasible in our current structures. Somewhere along the way we stopped admitting that, and all we did was make women feel like personal failures. I dream of new structures, a world in which women have entry-level jobs in their 30s; alternate avenues for promotion; corporate ladders with balconies on which they can stand still, have a smoke, take a break, make a baby, enjoy themselves, before they keep climbing. Perhaps men long for this in their own way. Actually I am sure of that.

Once, when we first fell in love, I put my head in his lap on a long car ride; I remember his hands on my face, the sun, the twisting turns of a mountain road, surprising and not surprising us like our romance, and his voice, telling me that it was his biggest regret that I was so young, he feared he would lose me. Last week, we looked back at old photos and agreed we’d given each other our respective best years. Sometimes real equality is not so obvious, sometimes it takes turns, sometimes it takes almost a decade to reveal itself.

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That Viral Essay Wasn’t About Age Gaps. It Was About Marrying Rich.

But both tactics are flawed if you want to have any hope of becoming yourself..

Women are wisest, a viral essay in New York magazine’s the Cut argues , to maximize their most valuable cultural assets— youth and beauty—and marry older men when they’re still very young. Doing so, 27-year-old writer Grazie Sophia Christie writes, opens up a life of ease, and gets women off of a male-defined timeline that has our professional and reproductive lives crashing irreconcilably into each other. Sure, she says, there are concessions, like one’s freedom and entire independent identity. But those are small gives in comparison to a life in which a person has no adult responsibilities, including the responsibility to become oneself.

This is all framed as rational, perhaps even feminist advice, a way for women to quit playing by men’s rules and to reject exploitative capitalist demands—a choice the writer argues is the most obviously intelligent one. That other Harvard undergraduates did not busy themselves trying to attract wealthy or soon-to-be-wealthy men seems to flummox her (taking her “high breasts, most of my eggs, plausible deniability when it came to purity, a flush ponytail, a pep in my step that had yet to run out” to the Harvard Business School library, “I could not understand why my female classmates did not join me, given their intelligence”). But it’s nothing more than a recycling of some of the oldest advice around: For women to mold themselves around more-powerful men, to never grow into independent adults, and to find happiness in a state of perpetual pre-adolescence, submission, and dependence. These are odd choices for an aspiring writer (one wonders what, exactly, a girl who never wants to grow up and has no idea who she is beyond what a man has made her into could possibly have to write about). And it’s bad advice for most human beings, at least if what most human beings seek are meaningful and happy lives.

But this is not an essay about the benefits of younger women marrying older men. It is an essay about the benefits of younger women marrying rich men. Most of the purported upsides—a paid-for apartment, paid-for vacations, lives split between Miami and London—are less about her husband’s age than his wealth. Every 20-year-old in the country could decide to marry a thirtysomething and she wouldn’t suddenly be gifted an eternal vacation.

Which is part of what makes the framing of this as an age-gap essay both strange and revealing. The benefits the writer derives from her relationship come from her partner’s money. But the things she gives up are the result of both their profound financial inequality and her relative youth. Compared to her and her peers, she writes, her husband “struck me instead as so finished, formed.” By contrast, “At 20, I had felt daunted by the project of becoming my ideal self.” The idea of having to take responsibility for her own life was profoundly unappealing, as “adulthood seemed a series of exhausting obligations.” Tying herself to an older man gave her an out, a way to skip the work of becoming an adult by allowing a father-husband to mold her to his desires. “My husband isn’t my partner,” she writes. “He’s my mentor, my lover, and, only in certain contexts, my friend. I’ll never forget it, how he showed me around our first place like he was introducing me to myself: This is the wine you’ll drink, where you’ll keep your clothes, we vacation here, this is the other language we’ll speak, you’ll learn it, and I did.”

These, by the way, are the things she says are benefits of marrying older.

The downsides are many, including a basic inability to express a full range of human emotion (“I live in an apartment whose rent he pays and that constrains the freedom with which I can ever be angry with him”) and an understanding that she owes back, in some other form, what he materially provides (the most revealing line in the essay may be when she claims that “when someone says they feel unappreciated, what they really mean is you’re in debt to them”). It is clear that part of what she has paid in exchange for a paid-for life is a total lack of any sense of self, and a tacit agreement not to pursue one. “If he ever betrayed me and I had to move on, I would survive,” she writes, “but would find in my humor, preferences, the way I make coffee or the bed nothing that he did not teach, change, mold, recompose, stamp with his initials.”

Reading Christie’s essay, I thought of another one: Joan Didion’s on self-respect , in which Didion argues that “character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life—is the source from which self-respect springs.” If we lack self-respect, “we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out—since our self-image is untenable—their false notions of us.” Self-respect may not make life effortless and easy. But it means that whenever “we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously un- comfortable bed, the one we make ourselves,” at least we can fall asleep.

It can feel catty to publicly criticize another woman’s romantic choices, and doing so inevitably opens one up to accusations of jealousy or pettiness. But the stories we tell about marriage, love, partnership, and gender matter, especially when they’re told in major culture-shaping magazines. And it’s equally as condescending to say that women’s choices are off-limits for critique, especially when those choices are shared as universal advice, and especially when they neatly dovetail with resurgent conservative efforts to make women’s lives smaller and less independent. “Marry rich” is, as labor economist Kathryn Anne Edwards put it in Bloomberg, essentially the Republican plan for mothers. The model of marriage as a hierarchy with a breadwinning man on top and a younger, dependent, submissive woman meeting his needs and those of their children is not exactly a fresh or groundbreaking ideal. It’s a model that kept women trapped and miserable for centuries.

It’s also one that profoundly stunted women’s intellectual and personal growth. In her essay for the Cut, Christie seems to believe that a life of ease will abet a life freed up for creative endeavors, and happiness. But there’s little evidence that having material abundance and little adversity actually makes people happy, let alone more creatively generativ e . Having one’s basic material needs met does seem to be a prerequisite for happiness. But a meaningful life requires some sense of self, an ability to look outward rather than inward, and the intellectual and experiential layers that come with facing hardship and surmounting it.

A good and happy life is not a life in which all is easy. A good and happy life (and here I am borrowing from centuries of philosophers and scholars) is one characterized by the pursuit of meaning and knowledge, by deep connections with and service to other people (and not just to your husband and children), and by the kind of rich self-knowledge and satisfaction that comes from owning one’s choices, taking responsibility for one’s life, and doing the difficult and endless work of growing into a fully-formed person—and then evolving again. Handing everything about one’s life over to an authority figure, from the big decisions to the minute details, may seem like a path to ease for those who cannot stomach the obligations and opportunities of their own freedom. It’s really an intellectual and emotional dead end.

And what kind of man seeks out a marriage like this, in which his only job is to provide, but very much is owed? What kind of man desires, as the writer cast herself, a raw lump of clay to be molded to simply fill in whatever cracks in his life needed filling? And if the transaction is money and guidance in exchange for youth, beauty, and pliability, what happens when the young, beautiful, and pliable party inevitably ages and perhaps feels her backbone begin to harden? What happens if she has children?

The thing about using youth and beauty as a currency is that those assets depreciate pretty rapidly. There is a nearly endless supply of young and beautiful women, with more added each year. There are smaller numbers of wealthy older men, and the pool winnows down even further if one presumes, as Christie does, that many of these men want to date and marry compliant twentysomethings. If youth and beauty are what you’re exchanging for a man’s resources, you’d better make sure there’s something else there—like the basic ability to provide for yourself, or at the very least a sense of self—to back that exchange up.

It is hard to be an adult woman; it’s hard to be an adult, period. And many women in our era of unfinished feminism no doubt find plenty to envy about a life in which they don’t have to work tirelessly to barely make ends meet, don’t have to manage the needs of both children and man-children, could simply be taken care of for once. This may also explain some of the social media fascination with Trad Wives and stay-at-home girlfriends (some of that fascination is also, I suspect, simply a sexual submission fetish , but that’s another column). Fantasies of leisure reflect a real need for it, and American women would be far better off—happier, freer—if time and resources were not so often so constrained, and doled out so inequitably.

But the way out is not actually found in submission, and certainly not in electing to be carried by a man who could choose to drop you at any time. That’s not a life of ease. It’s a life of perpetual insecurity, knowing your spouse believes your value is decreasing by the day while his—an actual dollar figure—rises. A life in which one simply allows another adult to do all the deciding for them is a stunted life, one of profound smallness—even if the vacations are nice.

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Essay on Self Esteem
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What is Self-Esteem? A Psychologist Explains

This Article Contains:

Self-Esteem and Psychology

Self-Esteem vs. Self-Concept

Self-Esteem vs. Self-Image

Self-Esteem vs. Self-Worth

Self-Esteem vs. Self-Confidence

Self-Esteem vs. Self-Efficacy

Self-Esteem vs. Self-Compassion

Esteem in Maslow’s Theory – The Hierarchy of Needs

Download 3 Free Self-Compassion Exercises (PDF)

Download 3 Free Self-Compassion Tools Pack (PDF)

23 Examples of Self-Esteem Issues

6 Practical Tips on How to Increase Self-Esteem

2. Set realistic expectations.

3. Stop being a perfectionist.

4. Explore yourself.

5. Be willing to adjust your self-image.

6. Stop comparing yourself to others.

Measuring Self-Esteem with the Rosenberg Scale

The Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (1967/1981)

Why Thinking You’re Ugly is Bad for You by Meaghan Ramsey

Meet Yourself: A User’s Guide to Building Self-Esteem by Niko Everett

Self-Esteem – Understanding & Fixing Low Self-Esteem by Actualized.org

How to Build Self Esteem – The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem by Nathaniel Branden Animated Book Review by FightMediocrity

17 Exercises To Foster Self-Acceptance and Compassion

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