Low Self Esteem isn’t a Character Flaw - Here’s Why.

J.J. Duggard | 3.11.2020 | 11.47.48cst

Here’s a common misconception about people with “low self esteem”. Yes, you can have “too little” meaning it can be “low”, but the misconception in this is that self esteem is supposed to be 100%, and anything beneath that is “low”. This however is incorrect.

Self-esteem was never meant to be 100% in the first place, and it’s not a character flaw to identify yourself in others. It’s natural. It’s human. It’s empathetic and it’s a survival mechanism. So relax, if you get hurt and have an identity crisis when people you love criticize, neglect, or abandon you, you’re completely sane.

People are symbiotic with one another. Self-esteem is a very small part of who we are, and it’s possible to have too much. Esteem in general is our survival mechanism to maintain the survival of our species through an open approval system. External esteem plays a large part in keeping society moral. Young children however have an imbalanced general esteem, and schools, government, media, advertising and paid programming are all promoting self-esteem to children who are having low external esteem due to broken homes and parents who pay more attention to adult woes than their own children. Society suffers because of this daily; the plights of immorality, and it multiplies thrice-fold, yearly.

Self esteem is self worth and your confidence in yourself to survive. Your self worth is also how you view your life, what you have built, or who you have chosen to be in your life. Your external esteem (the larger portion of your general esteem) in is how you view yourself in the eyes of those who you trusted and chose to love and include in your life. It’s not two separate areas of your mind in which you can max out. It’s like the air fuel ratio in a vehicle; there has to be a balance for everything to run ‘properly’. Neither self nor external esteem/validation is ‘optional’ to maintain moralhood in our society. This is why many solo empowerment movements which promote self esteem and independence, fall short on tearing down the family unit or dragging the people who provide the external esteem through the mud. These people create these movements, likely because they entrusted their esteem unknowingly with the wrong people.

You will entrust your value and general esteem into your counterparts and people you trusted into your life. This is important for realizing that we often become the company we keep. These people we invest most of our time, love, trust and esteem in are a huge part of their lives and our behavior should reflect how they respond to our investment.

Your esteem levels change based on who you value. The more esteem you have to seek in yourself, the less value you are going to have in everyone else. Valuing trusted loved ones more than yourself should never be viewed as a character flaw. Valuing only yourself should never be seen as empowering or strong and independent. Having extremely high self esteem makes you more likely to be complacent with your own bad behavior. It also makes you more likely to put your own wants over other people’s needs. Self esteem isn’t everything, but when it becomes all you have, you put those who value you at risk for being hurt, because they value you, and you place all your value in only yourself.

We can’t always choose the people in our lives, meaning that people were born or raised with a smaller or larger capacity for esteem than others. This depends on our foundation. If we have small capacities for worth in general, both our view on our life and humanities worth can easily offset or become imbalanced.

People who are imbalanced by childhood strife or a lack of external esteem and validation will struggle with seeking that esteem. They’ll either find no room for their own identities once they have more than a handful of people in their life, or they will rely solely on themselves, dismissing any constructive resolution or criticism from others in character flaws, and are more likely to hurt others to protect that identity. Both of these types of people are more likely to become overwhelmed, paranoid, and possibly destroy relationships intentionally or unintentionally to subconsciously or consciously avoid rejection. They do not believe it’s possible that someone loves them, so they sabotage the relationship themselves to prevent rejection. These people will also take from and criticize others’ self esteem in order to feel superior or fill their own. They will speak about the matter as if self esteem is king, and external esteem is unnecessary in order to redefine their own system of value to make up for what they lack. This does more harm than good in the long run, and will often push others away.

It’s a wonderful natural and loving tendency to invest and swap worth, love and trust with those we chose to participate in our time here to live. We are supposed to do so. It’s not a negative. It’s not an oddity. It’s not a moral issue.

We are filled with esteem since the day we are born. It’s just love; love for our life, and the confidence to live it.

If someone has low general esteem, they invested their esteem in the wrong places, or were manipulated to do so by people that painted a nice picture that didn’t really exist in real life.

If someone is suggesting you should love less, trust less, invest less, because they are worried that they might might steal your love and confidence in life from you, then they are critiquing the wrong individual and should look within.

If they feel they have to hurt or lie to others about who they are to get attention or fulfill their needs and make their lives worth living, then their external and self esteem needs a little help too. Break the chain, and encourage them to reach out. Give them as much validation as you can afford without sacrificing your own esteem system. Have enough self esteem to fall back on just in case someone hasn’t been completely honest with themselves about who they are. Reserve enough space to have people in your life to give love to.

Yes, make space for people, as no man is an island.

We know, you all say that you ‘keep to yourself’ and ‘don’t like to socialize’. Thanks for reaching out and socializing with all of us to tell us that. 😉 Seriously, you should love yourself, but we need to start loving each other.