The illusion of self-esteem

When self-esteem is low, we are often manipulated by fear. Fear of reality, to which we feel inadequate. Fear of facts about ourselves or others that we have denied, disowned or repressed. Fear of the collapse  of our pretense. Fear of exposure. Fear of the humiliation of failure and sometimes, the possibilities of success. We live more to avoid pain than to experience joy

If we feel that crucial aspects of reality with which we must deal are hopelessly closed to our undemanding, if we face the key problem of life with a basic sense of helplessness, if we feel that we dare not pursue  certain lines of thought because of the unworthy features of our own character that would be brought to light, if we feel, in any sense whatever that reality is the enemy of our self-esteem, these fears tend to sabotage the efficacy of consciousness, thereby worsening the initial problem.

If we face the basic problems of like with an attitude of who am I to know? Who am I to judge? Who am I to decide? Or it is dangerous to be conscious or it is futile to try to think or understood, we are undercut at the outset. A mind does not struggle for that a regards as impossible or undesirable.

Not that the level of our self-esteem determines our thinking. The causation is not that simple. What self-esteem affects is our emotional incentives. Our feelings tend to encourage or discourage thinking, to draw us toward facts, truth, and reality, or away from them, toward efficacy or away from it.

That is why the first steps of building self–esteem can be difficult. We are challenged to raise the level of our consciousness in the fact of emotional resistance. We need to challenge the belief that our interests are best served by blindness. What makes the project often difficult is our felling that is only our unconsciousness that makes life bearable. Until we can dispute this idea, we cannot begin to grow in self-esteem.

The danger is that we will become the prisoners of our negative self-image. We allow it to dictate our actions. We define ourselves as mediocre or weak or cowardly or ineffectual and our performance reflects this definition.

While we are capable of challenging and acting contrary to our negative self-image and many people so, at least on some occasions the factor that tends to stand in the way is our resignation to our own state. We submit to feelings of psychological determinism. We tell ourselves we are powerless. We are rewarded for doing so, in that we do not have to take risks or awaken from our passivity.

Poor self-esteem not only inhibits thought, it tends to distort it. If we have a bad reputation with ourselves and attempts to identify the motivation of some behavior, we can react anxiously and definitively and twist our brains not to see what is obvious or our of a sense of guilt and generalized unworthiness, we can be drawn not the most logical explanation of our behavior but to the most damaging, to that which puts us in the worst light morally. Only self-condemnation feels appropriate, or if we are confronted with unjust accusations for others, we may feel disarmed and incapable of confuting the claims, we may accepts the charge as true, paralyzed and exhausted by a heavy feeling of how can I decide?

The poor self-esteem is not confidence but fear. Not to live, but to escape the terror of life, is the fundamental goal. Not creativity, but safely, is the ruling desire. And what is sought for others values, promise to be forgiven, to be accepted, on some level to be taken care of.

The high self-esteem seeks new frontiers, if low self-esteem avoids challenges, high self-esteem desire and needs them. If low se-esteem looks for a chance to be absolve, high elf –esteem looks for an opportunity to admire.