Some people come to therapy with a curious difficulty when they try to talk about self-esteem.
They do not think of themselves as incapable. They know they have built a great deal in their lives; they are often competent, responsible and appreciated. If I asked them to list their strengths, they could probably do it.
And yet it does not take much for all of that to suddenly lose its weight.
A comment from a manager. Someone not replying in quite the way they expected. A person seeming slightly less enthusiastic than usual. A small mistake that would probably be irrelevant to anyone else.
For a few hours, it can feel as though all the evidence they have collected in their favour has somehow stopped counting.
This is one of the forms of self-esteem I find most interesting: not necessarily believing that you have little worth, but feeling that your worth needs to be continually confirmed.
When your sense of worth always feels provisional
At first, this can seem almost paradoxical. How can I know that I am competent and still feel inadequate so easily?
Perhaps because knowing that we have good qualities and feeling sufficiently secure in our own worth are not quite the same thing.
We may have developed a realistic, even positive, view of ourselves while having learned at a deeper level that this position needs to be maintained: I need to do well, be interesting, avoid disappointing people, be desirable, be useful, not make too many mistakes.
The sense of worth is not absent. It is conditional.
As long as those conditions are being met, we may feel relatively settled. But when something challenges them, even slightly, the thought does not remain simply, I made a mistake. It can quickly become something far more personal:
Perhaps I’m not as capable as I thought.
Perhaps they’ve realised I’m not good enough.
Perhaps I don’t really deserve the place I occupy.
The problem here is rarely a lack of achievement. Quite often there is plenty of it. The problem is that success seems to have a remarkably short memory, while mistakes have a particular talent for staying with us.
The finish line that keeps moving
This may be one reason some people achieve a great deal and enjoy very little of it.
An important accomplishment brings relief, perhaps satisfaction, but it does not last long. A few days later it simply becomes what had to be done. The expected standard moves a little further ahead.
What felt difficult yesterday becomes today’s minimum.
And so we continue.
From the outside, this can look like ambition. And of course ambition may be part of it. But there is a difference between wanting to do well and needing to do well in order to feel all right about yourself.
The second makes every challenge much more expensive.
You are not simply preparing a presentation; something about your sense of self is being protected. You are not merely receiving criticism; a particular image of yourself feels at risk. You are not simply disappointing someone; somehow, their disappointment seems to say something about your worth.
Research on perfectionism describes this relationship well: when self-esteem depends too heavily on meeting high standards, a mistake can stop being information and begin to feel like a verdict.
And living continually in anticipation of a verdict is exhausting.
Perhaps the point is not to learn to value yourself more
When someone tells me in therapy, “But I know I have value,” I tend to believe them.
I do not think every insecurity hides a person who, deep down, simply “doesn’t love themselves enough”. I find that explanation too simple.
Sometimes the problem is not having a negative opinion of yourself. It is having a relationship with yourself that becomes most fragile precisely when you need it most.
When you make a mistake. When someone chooses somebody else. When you do something mediocre. When you are confused, needy, jealous or tired. When you encounter a part of yourself that does not fit the image you have worked hard to build.
Perhaps self-esteem tells us less about how we feel when things are going well and much more about how we treat ourselves when we do not particularly like ourselves.
It is a subtle distinction.
We can spend our lives trying to become a version of ourselves that is finally good enough to be beyond criticism. Or, gradually, we can develop the capacity not to abandon ourselves every time we discover that we are imperfect.
The second path is less impressive.
It is probably also more solid.
Staying on your own side
This does not mean excusing everything we do or no longer questioning ourselves. A good relationship with yourself does not mean believing you are always right.
It means being able to look at something you dislike without immediately turning it into a condemnation.
I made a poor decision can remain a statement about the decision rather than becoming I am incapable of making good decisions.
This person doesn’t want me does not necessarily have to become I am undesirable.
I wasn’t at my best today can remain one unimpressive day without the whole of our identity being put on trial.
In therapy, I often find this transition particularly revealing: how quickly a specific experience becomes a global definition of the self.
Sometimes it happens so quickly that we barely notice it.
What can actually begin to change?
Perhaps we do not need to add more evidence to the list of reasons why we should feel worthy. If the list already exists and has not been enough, making it longer may simply leave the underlying problem untouched.
It may be more useful to begin noticing the invisible conditions we have attached to our right to feel good enough.
Completing a few sentences, even just privately, can sometimes reveal quite a lot:
I can feel comfortable with myself as long as…
It would be difficult for me if other people discovered that I can also be…
When I make a mistake, what I am really afraid of is…
In order to feel like a person of value, I need to be…
There is no need to find the perfect answers. The point is to begin seeing the contract.
Then comes a second movement, and often a more difficult one: allowing ourselves small experiences in which the contract is not fulfilled, and noticing what happens.
Leaving something simply “good enough”. Accepting a compliment without immediately explaining why it is not entirely deserved. Not correcting every impression someone might have of us. Doing something we are not particularly good at. Admitting that we need something.
Not because these actions will magically improve our self-esteem.
But because, little by little, they allow us to test a different possibility: that our worth might survive even when we are doing nothing to prove it.
Becoming larger than the image we have of ourselves
Perhaps this is the part that interests me most.
Some of the suffering around self-esteem comes from trying to remain identical to a particular version of ourselves: competent, generous, strong, desirable, intelligent, independent.
But a person is inevitably more contradictory than their best definition.
We can be capable and make mistakes. Generous and sometimes selfish. Strong and need help. Intelligent and make a foolish choice. Confident in one place and vulnerable in another.
Perhaps becoming more secure does not require us to eliminate these contradictions.
Perhaps it means developing enough internal space to contain them.
And then the opposite of feeling inadequate is not necessarily feeling exceptional.
It may simply be being allowed, sometimes, to be human.
Perhaps a more stable sense of self-worth begins there: not when we have finally collected enough evidence that we are valuable, but when we no longer need to keep presenting the evidence, even to ourselves.