Tanvi Vidyala, Week 11: The Power of Self-Esteem
Over the last few weeks I’ve been learning about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in my AP Psychology class. It’s a diagram that is familiar to most, considering we spent a good amount of time on it during our one-semester Health class. According to Mr. Maslow, the order of needs that humans have starts with physiological needs, then safety needs, then belongingness and love, and right there above belongingness are esteem needs. Esteem stems from a personal feeling of accomplishment which can be induced both by inner feelings as well as outside recognition and praise.
Most people in our grade are accomplished in their own right objectively speaking. However many of those people still find themselves inexplicably weighed down by a low-self esteem. In our current stage of lie we're still trying to figure out ourselves adding to the nuances and niches of each of our personalities, values, and interests. This leads to a great deal of comparison from person to person. Comparison leads to envy and envy leads to dissatisfaction with one's self.
So what makes esteem so important and a lack of self-esteem so detrimental? According to the National Alliance on Mental Health, research has found that having a low-self esteem is linked to poor relationships, disorders such as Anxiety and Depression, and even substance abuse. High self-esteem on the other hand is associated with maintaining healthy relationships, expressing one's positive traits, and staying motivated through life's struggles.
Self-deprecating humor is a negative-cycle that prolongs low-self esteems. Many fall into this trap too easily at our age as a means to poke fun at one's own insecurities. I remember a few years ago, I couldn’t get through a sentence without adding in some convoluted quip that essentially boiled down to some variation of “I hate myself.” A little too on the nose? Having you insult yourself essentially makes the words you're saying seem more true, both to you and the people around you. Once you become the punchline of your own jokes and at it'll eventually get hard to keep taking punches. Not from a bully. Not from an dissatisfied parental figure. But yourself.
Low-self esteem can trap some in a never-ending cycle, expecting failure, trying less, and often just failing again. According to psychologist, Kendra Cherry, a low-self esteem can be recovered through healthy practices. Some of these include journaling or reflecting on one's negative thoughts whenever they have them. This way they'll be able to get a deeper look into the mental processes that are holding them back. Positive affirmations or self-talk is also proven to help better self-image. Lastly self-love, as cheesy as it sounds, is key to getting out of the cycle of self-hatred. When one forgives themselves for their past mistakes and looks to the future optimistically for change they are far more likely to actually achieve a changed life through their changed mindset.
Sources:
https://www.nami.org/Blogs/NAMI-Blog/July-2016/Why-Self-Esteem-Is-Important-for-Mental-Health
Hi Tanvi! I too, suffer from a crippling lack of self esteem. During quarantine, I did so much nothing except sitting and home and playing video games, while it feels like all my friends have been super productive with their lives, and my self esteem has taken a huge hit. My sense of humor is limited to dark and self-deprecating and everything in your blog that describes what people with low self esteem do sounds exactly like something I would do. I still remember negative things that occurred during my life almost over a year ago and beat myself up over it; its quite fun! Also when I self studied psychology, all I remember about this pyramid was the book saying how humanistic psychology is bad and is not backed by data so it should be taken less seriously or something like that.
ReplyDeleteHello Tanvi, I enjoyed reading your blog post because it highlights one of the main things about people with low self esteem. Low self-esteem in people is often due to the fact that they have poor relationships, whether it is with friends, parents, or whoever. If someone has a bad perception of themselves, or they are holding themselves from achieving what they want because they do not believe they can do it, it is probably because somebody who was very close to them created that image. That is why it is really important who we choose to keep close to us. Some people are really negative, and others have a lot of positive aspects to learn from.
ReplyDeleteHi Tanvi! As surprising as it might seem, by being a junior who takes health, I could still remember our third unit where we learned about the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Triangle that was divided into the sections of physiological needs, safety needs, belongingness and love needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization. At times, I tend to experience low-self esteem and relatively feel like I am running through a cycle where you face failure, try once again, and might be falling back down again. As you have mentioned, at times when I usually feel low, I decide to journal or reflect on my negative thoughts and try to analyze the reasoning behind why I might be feeling the way I am at the moment. Looking through an optimistic lens and getting yourself out of a self-hatred period is important to grow as an individual. I love how you have motivated others to maintain a positive mindset and I hope to read more of your blogs!
ReplyDeleteHey Tanvi, your blog post discussed a crucial part of my humor this week, as self-deprecating humor has become a pretty essential part of my comedy, among other things. I didn't realize that it was so detrimental to my self-esteem, as I had seen it as a way of making light out of things that could potentially weight myself down by considering excessively or unnecessarily even. I think many people in our generation have low esteem and express it in more subtle or even normalized behaviors like self-deprecating humor, which would only lead to the proliferation of these behaviors. Your blog post has given me the chance to reflect on why it is that I have occasional self-deprecating humor, and can help me pinpoint the exact aspects of myself that I would want to fix or improve on.
ReplyDeleteHi Tanvi, I really related to a lot of the things you mention in your blog, and I realized I have a pretty low self esteem. I think as a highschooler, I constantly compare myself too much to other people. Seeing how many difficult classes other people are taking, seeing how productive they are with their time, seeing how many extracurricular activities they are participating in are just some of the many metrics I use to compare myself to those around me. It is hard sometimes to not feel worthless because you are not doing as much as the people around you, but the thing is that comparison is simply damaging to your self esteem, because no matter what you do, there will always be someone who is better than you in some way. I agree with you that instead of being self-deprecating, we should focus on self love and positive self encouragement. Self esteem is important and as highschool students, we need to make an extra effort to be content with ourselves without finding the need to change every little thing.
ReplyDeleteHi Tanvi, your blog post has been really relatable to me, as I, like every other high schooler, will constantly use self hate as the punchline of my jokes. It definitely gets worse with academic stress. I can't count the number of times I have joked about how dumb I am or how bad I am at calculus just to make myself feel better, in some convoluted way. I sometimes think that if I acknowledge my self hatred in a funny way, it will make me feel better, but as you pointed out, it really doesn't. And it stops being funny after a while as well. So I'm going to try to be better and stop making jokes at the expense of my own self. :) Thank you for your blog post, and I look forward to reading more from you.
ReplyDeleteHello Tanvi, this hierarchy actually seems to be extremely fitting and relevant to the average student. Self-esteem has been a major problem for me for years, and my eventual solution to the problem had most of my friends scratching their heads in confusion. I learned to just tell myself that I would be able to accomplish anything, no matter how little I prepared or just how impossible the thing would be. I have learned that when I genuinely believe I can do something or when I simply do not care, I preform the best. I was literally singing during the PSAT and I got a score I thought there was no possible way I could achieve (I am sorry to the person next to me that told me to shut up). Self esteem is such a massive issue, and while my method works for in certain situations, it does not for others, and those are the ones I need to learn to deal with. But one day at a time; Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither will my learning be finished in a day.
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