“You’re stupid, you’re fat, you’re ugly, and nobody likes you.”
— a typical, self-denigrating attitude
To Be Adequate
We have a prejudice that those who cannot perform at the level we expect are mentally challenged and, likewise, those who excel in performance have greater mental power. None of this are true. Performance is not a reflection of your mental ability.
Many of us go further. We equate performance with value, so that those who perform better are worth more. Value is not as easy to measure as performance, so we rarely assert our value or decry our lack, but it’s there in our hearts. Personal value is an issue of self worth.
People who feel they are deficient often work to exceed expectations in order to prove they are excellent or at least adequate. That is, we have many people working to redeem themselves from an accusation of inferiority. These people usually don’t proclaim their guilt, but they’re usually the people most convinced of it.
Why are we so often our own accusers? Is this healthy, and can our efforts to redeem ourselves succeed (Hermann, 2002)? Perhaps we are like inveterate alcoholics always in a state of weakness. According to the tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous, once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. The only escape is abstinence.
Western culture is a culture of scarcity. The pressure to demonstrate one’s adequacy pervades almost everything, everywhere, and affects almost everyone. The only ones who seem to be immune are those who either already have proved themselves or who don’t care. But of those who don’t care, it’s rare to find people who never questioned their value, yet there are such people.
The people who do not feel the need to prove themselves form a special group. These are people who are not or never were infected with a sense of inadequacy, inferiority, or guilt. These people are free from the shadow of self-doubt. We’d like to know how this is accomplished. Can we really prove ourselves, and to whom should we appeal?
To Be Inadequate
People burdened with self-doubt see those without self-doubt as redeemed. Many people feel they can redeem themselves through work hard or, pathologically, through suffering. These people might become athletes, entrepreneurs, or over-achievers but, if the reward is not forthcoming, they may turn to more hedonistic coping strategies.
It is fair to ask if people understand self-doubt: theirs or anyone else’s. Why do they need to prove themselves, and can they?
“Self-handicapping is a strategy in which people who are uncertain about their likelihood of success, paradoxically, will sabotage their own performance.”—Robert M. Arkin, psychologist (Arkin, 2001)
When I was young, I felt inadequate. Looking back, I felt alone, but what that meant was not clear to me at the time. In order to feel alone one has to have something to compare it to, otherwise it’s just the normal state of things. It would be more accurate to say that I felt deprived. Later I felt inadequate.
Inadequacy is learned. First, you have to know what you need, and then you have to recognize you cannot get it. That alone is not enough, you have to feel it’s your fault. Once you’ve achieved that, then you can feel inadequate.
Learning how you came to feel inadequate would be valuable. It’s a maze that takes years to get stuck in; years of being rewarded for making the wrong decisions. If we questioned ourselves more, we might be less liable to develop self-injurious ideas and emotional weaknesses.
This is why learning confidence in childhood is important as it puts you in a better position to recognize a toxic environment. This is why poor education, which is by far most of what passes as education, is destructive to individuals and society. People who don’t learn to love themselves early likely never will.
Self-inadequacy is a spectrum disorder. A few people are overly full of themselves and a few are utterly empty. The rest of us lie somewhere on the spectrum. A deprived childhood is only partly to blame; a lot of the blame lies with the culture and how we’re lured into believing what we’re told.
Christianity etc.
I find Christianity’s concept of original sin to be abhorrent. It’s the idea that you’re guilty of being fundamentally spiritually flawed in ways that you can’t know and there’s nothing you can do about it. The issue is not a hot topic for most people, and it’s rarely discussed, yet I think it has a pernicious effect.
The idea that you’re redeemable only by dint of authority is not part of Christ’s teaching (Spencer, 2021). I don’t blame the religion’s founders, I blame our culture for degrading people, a trend that has continued to evolve over time. Similar ideas are latent in secular systems that encourage some people to feel inherently better than others.
From the idea of being inherently cursed or blessed comes a plethora of sicknesses. Once these ideas are inserted into the culture, religion is no longer needed to sustain them. Similar to the way a virus can insert its DNA into the host, impaired personal worth inserts itself into the culture.
We can trace this back to religion because it’s stated in the bible. Among Calvinists we find people self-declared as in need of absolution. My family was not religious and our background was Jewish. Judaism also carries the low self-esteem virus which tends to manifest as elitism.
We can also trace it back to public school where, as children we were manipulated into reciting useless information to sadistic agents. Anyone who feels entitled to tell children how to think and act is sadistic. Teachers demonstrate self-worth by debasing others, and they do this to make themselves feel worthy. I learned of that personality trait from my overachieving father, who did that in his weaker moments.
Elitism is a strategy for coping with inadequacy. For those of us lacking in self-love, being normal is being inferior. We search for a way to show we’re special, but demonstration is never enough to overcome a lack of self-faith.
Doubting what you feel is a very old feature of Western culture. This lack of insight kept Europe in the Dark Ages for one thousand years. It’s interesting to return to history and learn of the lack of self-confidence that supported blind faith in the earth-centered conception of the universe (Trusted, 1991).
Self-Hatred versus Self-Love
My ex is well-liked in her fundamentalist congregation. Like everyone, she has some odd behaviors you wouldn’t know without a detailed history. She also hates herself. Childhood abuse and religious perversion lie at the root. Low self-esteem has brought her back to the same mindset that fostered the abuse. Becoming ensnared in a cycle of abuse is sometimes referred to as Stockholm Syndrome, the belief that only your accuser can redeem you.
I was told of an ultra-marathon runner who will not be satisfied until they win in the major races. Ultra-marathons are foot races of typically 100 miles. Being a regional champion is not enough. In truth, being a national champion will never be enough. Nothing will ever be enough. In the words of this person’s counselor, their predominant character trait is self-hatred. In particular, they loathe their body, so it’s from their body they must exorcize their deficiency.
Self-hatred is not a topic of casual conversation and it’s not something people are even curious about. Most of us feel somewhat guilty of or vulnerable to it, so we don’t talk about it. It’s easy to speculate where self-loathing comes from, and it’s never easy to share.
My three books on learning, beginning with The Learning Project (Stoller 2019), are ostensibly about self-love. But self-love is not so much a thing as a process. You can’t isolate or extract it, but you can see it in the character of people who have it. It is the source of creativity, value, and self-acceptance.
I find myself attracted to people who have self-worth as well as people who don’t. There is a similarity in these polar opposites: the ones who have it and the ones who need it. People who are alike weakly attract like. Two people who value themselves easily work together.
Two needy people can strongly attract one another because they may offer just what the other needs, and nothing satisfies more than having your needs met. Co-dependent relationships are created by insecure people who are too satisfied to change and too fragile to grow. This might have described my parents.
Opposites also attract, but not in the same way for each. If you lack self-worth, it’s tempting to think those who have it can give it to you. If you have self-worth, then you know you can show it to those who don’t have it. You also recognize that those who don’t know it, can’t see it and won’t appreciate it.
Experience has taught me that you can sense a person’s self-esteem without knowing them. You see self-worth in the traits of being forthright, direct, open, and acting with integrity. Self-worth leads to self-faith, and a person you can trust. It’s a subtle perception to which dogs are better attuned than people. They can smell it.
When I was young, I lacked this sense. I was told explicitly by school teachers and implicitly by my weak parents that I didn’t have value and I would have to find it. I listened to many people who were consumed by this toxic attitude before I understood the creative path shown to me by a few people who loved themselves.
False Approval
Physical beauty and strength are widely celebrated and insubstantial measures of meaning. Like all false endorsements, these are “bait and switch” enticements. The lure is affirmation for someone who feels deficient; the switch lies in both the insubstantial endorsement and the exploitation that comes with it.
Women have been lured into seeking affirmation of beauty by being trained to think they’re ugly and inferior. Men have been lured into seeking affirmation of strength by being trained to think they’re weak and insignificant (Caulfield, 2015).
Social affirmations of a person’s beauty or strength are really affirmations of ugliness and weakness. Because these forms of approval are based on false appearances, a person’s belief in their true appearance is degraded, and they make us less likely to reveal our true selves.
Seeking affirmation of beauty or strength is seeking approval for high performance. The difference resides in the degree you learn to accept your true self. If you depend on being seen as beautiful or strong, then a more authentic self-value without that affirmation is disparaged. Your false self is endorsed, but you can never feel truly invested in it. If you are not satisfied with your best performance you’re fucked. Until you are satisfied with yourself, you will never be satisfied with anyone.
"It is a psychological game, it really is... You gotta know what to say, and when not to say it. In the room, when you’re working with them… on the mat right here… you've got a kid that comes off the mat and he's destroyed. If you go over there and pat him on the back that frigin’ sucks, man. You make him feel worse.”—Lou Giani, wrestling coach (Stoller 2019b).
You find self-worth when you discover what’s deeply meaningful. It doesn’t need to be something others support and you don’t need the approval of others. In fact, being judged as successful by others is a trap because it’s not you that is endorsed, but other people’s needs.
Money and Media
Most of us feel money is deeply meaningful. We disparage the superficiality of money, but we’re addicted to it. This is similar to our addictions to social approval for beauty, strength, and performance. Consider your hesitance to reveal the amount of your salary or savings, and reflect on what this means in terms of self-value and how you value others.
In each case, what we crave is either given to us by others who don’t care about us, or taken by us from others from whom we don’t care about. This is the defining character of social media. Many complain about it.
Rejecting the attraction of social media is less an affirmation of higher values, and more a reliance on them. It’s the irritation of being held to yet another false standard, and a preference to return to the false standards that feel more substantial. People who reject social media do not recognize real value, they just want endorsements that are under their control.
Where social media is a trend to increasingly scarce false approval, those feeling deprived want more available false approval. Speaking as a person who has found a modicum of self-approval and self-love, I couldn’t give a shit about my profile on social media, aside from whether or not it supports my business.
All that I’ve said has focused on what’s false, but no amount of rejection is satisfying. To find self-love you need to engage with what’s fortifying. I’ll address that next week.
References
Arkin, R. M. (2001 Fall). Self-doubt, handicaps, and hard work. Eye on Psi Chi 6 (1). https://doi.org/1092-0803.Eye6.1.18
Caulfield, T (2015, May). The pseudoscience of beauty products, The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/05/the-pseudoscience-of-beauty-products/392201/
Hermann, A. D., Leonardelli, G. J., & Arkin, R. M. (2002 Mar). Self-Doubt and Self-Esteem: A Threat from within. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(3), 395-408. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234168335_Self-Doubt_and_Self-Esteem_A_Threat_from_within
Spencer, D.(2021 Summer). Does St. Paul Believe in Original Sin? Yeah, but so What? Journal of Analytic Theology 9. https://doi.org/10.12978/jat.2021-9.030011181517
Stoller, L. (2019). The learning project: Rites of passage. Mind Strength Balance. https://www.mindstrengthbalance.com/learn/index.htm
Stoller, L. (2019b). Lou Giani: wrestling coach, from The learning project: Rites of passage. Mind Strength Balance. https://www.mindstrengthbalance.com/learn/interviews/lougiani_text.htm
Trusted, J. (1991). Physics and metaphysics: Theories of space and time. Routledge.
High Performance Therapy I: A Sense of Lacking (podcast)