Self Esteem - Building self esteem and self confidence...

Many people may say, "I don't have a distorted self-image. I know myself thoroughly and accurately, and I know for a fact that I am inadequate." Very capable and gifted people who have come to think of themselves as inadequate may not budge from their belief even in the face of undeniable evidence to the contrary.

One woman, a highly skilled physician who had graduated from college and had won the coveted Phi Beta Kappa Award for scholastic excellence, had intense feelings of inadequacy. When I pointed out to her that she could not possibly deny her intellectual superiority, her response was "When they told me I had won the Phi Beta Kappa Award, I knew they had made a mistake."

Where does this negative attitude toward oneself come from, and why is it so prevalent? We might assume that children who grew up under conditions of poverty and emotional deprivation or abuse would develop negative self-concepts. This is often the case. But we find the same feelings of inadequacy and inferiority in people who grew up in stable and comfortable environments with apparently loving and caring parents.

We can only hypothesize why this occurs. A child's only support are his parents, who care for him and serve as a bridge between his needs and his world. The child must preserve his trust in his parents at all costs. If he sees them as unreliable, the anxiety of being adrift in the world without adequate support is virtually incompatible with sanity. The child must therefore see his parents or other adult caregivers as wise, just, and trustworthy.

If parents punish a child, and the child does not fully understand why he is being punished, the child cannot afford to think, "My parents don't know what they are doing." This thought is too threatening. The child instead concludes, "My parents are right. I deserve this punishment because I am bad." If the child cannot attribute the punishment to anything he did to warrant it, he concludes, "I am bad. Even if I don't do things that are wrong, I am just bad." The child may develop feelings of shame, guilt, and inferiority, even though he may not have any idea why he should feel this way.