Article 1 of a five-part series exploring whole person self-esteem.
Everyone has an inner voice in their mind. A virtual voice that is yours, but it doesn’t seem like it. A voice that often speaks as your personal critic in a calm, authoritative manner saying, “I see you. I will judge and evaluate every aspect of you. Then, I will accept or reject what isn’t good enough.” But that critic is lying and distorting the facts to reject everything about you. That inner critic’s judgement is that you will never be good enough. Then as your confidence and ability to see your value and worth as a person crumbles, you discover you are suffering the consequences of low self-esteem.
So how do you deal with such a harsh and unfair, yet intimate, virtual critic in your head?
The first step is to face that critic with vulnerability and courage. Actually, to embrace that critic as you realize its voice is too intimate and involved to be ignored. Instead, listen to those harsh words and actively validate them. “I heard my critic say, ‘I am flawed.’” “I am not good enough.” “I am worthless.”
Then take a step back to gain perspective. Let the validation cut through the overwhelming emotions and bring into focus a more realistic perspective of the painful judgements.
The challenge regarding self-esteem is that you can’t accurately see or fairly judge yourself, because you can’t see your whole self. Just like you can’t actually lift yourself up by your shoestrings; accurately hear your real voice, or even describe from personal experiences the colour of your eyes.
The way around this inaccurate self-assessment conundrum begins by exploring the awkward process of being human. Accept that you might judge yourself inaccurately and incompletely. Add some unreasonable empathy, unexpected support, and perhaps even a bit of undeserved forgiveness and grace to accept those limits. Then widen your view to catch the full picture of you and your strengths and weaknesses, beauty and flaws, wisdom and foolishness. The process to build honest whole person self-esteem beings when you accept your limitations of facing yourself.
Facing yourself is not the same as facing your self-image, your history, or your choices. You are more than the image in the mirror. Facing yourself requires looking at and then beyond the masks, mirrors, and walls that have defined and limited your perspective. Facing yourself requires recognizing what is visible and invisible by being vulnerable. Reflective. Open. Authentic.
Facing who you are is not easy; but not facing who you are is even worse. Worse because then you accept the judgements of your inner critic as true, valid, and accurate. But they are not. That is why the BCA Holistic approach strives to help you see all of you – who you are; what you do, and how you connect. You are way more than a few flaws, broken bits or dysfunctional damage. BCA explores and builds self-esteem by embracing flaws and all. A Self-esteem embrace with three distinct building blocks that hug and overcome a splintered self-esteem view to reveal your incredible and undeniable value, abilities and worth as a flawed and perfect human being.
Here is a picture of the BCA whole person self-esteem approach that reveals the three building blocks to see and evaluate who you are, what you do and how you connect.
Using the BCA whole person approach to self-esteem breaks down into 1) Self-worth – having an inherent, divine value just from being born and existing as you; 2) Skill-worth – judging your abilities and skills to learn and demonstrate your talents and mastery; and 3) Social-worth – evaluating your connections and interactions with the world that reveal your popularity and relationships.
Each aspect of self-esteem is distinct and constantly changing in a dynamic, interactive, and integrated process reacting to and impacting your developing sense of self. You are born with an inherent sense of self-worth because being yourself is all that a newborn baby knows. Then as you grow, you begin developing skills to express yourself and start evaluating and developing your competence with a sense of skill-worth. Finally, a child starts recognizing that they have real life and virtual connections to others and the world and begin developing a sense of social-worth.
Self-worth is just being yourself. Nothing more is every required. You are always a 10 out of 10. Perfect just being you. You are amazing simply by being born and alive. In fact, the estimated odds of you existing in this moment are 1 in 10 to the power of 2,685,000. (8) That is a 10 followed by 2,685,000 zeros. There is no name for a number that big. It is just too large. The odds of being born are small in comparison, estimated at a mere 1 in 400 trillion. That is how unique you are just by being you. In a very real sense, you being you at this moment is a miracle. You are always good enough.
Skill-worth is about what you can do. Anything that you can practice and improve doing is a skill. Everyone has their own unique skill set and abilities based on what they value and goals that they want to accomplish. For example, charisma is a skill, and so is talking, chess, driving, maths, eating well, personal hygiene, and soccer. You can rate your skills or abilities from 0–10, with “0” as no skill or ability and “10” being the absolute best you can be at something. You get to decide your own ranking of your skills and abilities.
Social-worth is about how you connect to others; share yourself and are seen in the real and virtual world. Social-worth is not under your complete control and is impacted by many outside influences, including social media, professional roles or titles, and accomplishments. Social-worth can also be highly volatile with sudden and significant changes without your input. Social-worth can be rated as negative or unpopular at -10, neutral or unseen at 0, or outstanding and popular at +10. Your rating is based on such factors as relationships, connections, popularity, profession, fate, luck, accomplishments, or social footprint. You have input of your social-worth but not complete control, and often you aren’t even the deciding factor of how you are viewed. Social-worth reflects your connections and virtual existence in a real world.
Understanding and raising your self-esteem is complex, comprehensive, and challenging. It is also essential for building and maintaining confidence in knowing your value, developing abilities, and managing connections. This article presented the basic framework of whole person self-esteem. The next one will explore the virtual voice of your inner critic and the challenges of changing that conversation.
Dane Jorento, MSW, LICSW is a speaker offering keynotes, seminars, and workshops on mental health, trauma, ADHD, and relationships. He specialises in BCA Holistic Therapy, EMDR, and DBT approaches.