Hi, I'm Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist
and I make Mental Health Education videos.
Today, I'm talking about self-esteem, how you get it,
how it ebbs and flows over the course of your life,
and what you can do to make it better.
And this is based on several viewer questions
asking me to talk about self-esteem.
Self-esteem is how you value your self-worth.
It falls on a spectrum from low to healthy to overinflated.
With low self-esteem, you can feel worthless,
inadequate, and non deserving of happiness.
With a healthy level of self-esteem,
you can feel confident and feel like you deserve
the things that come to you.
With an overinflated level of self-esteem,
you can feel entitled to the happiness,
even at the expense of others,
and you can be overly self-promotional and very defensive,
when you don't get the things that you feel you deserve.
Positive experiences create healthy self-esteem
and negative experiences create low self-esteem.
It's still unclear exactly how you develop self-esteem,
but we do know it's influenced by a combination of factors
like your temperament, which is your hard wiring,
your family environment, relationships,
and life experiences.
You can think of self-esteem as a trait that you possess.
That's part of your makeup and it's influenced
by your external environment and can change over time.
Here's the normal pattern of change in self-esteem
across your lifespan.
As a child, you start out with a very high level
of self-esteem, essentially because you don't know
any better and everything's positive and fun.
However, as a child mature, self-esteem declines,
as you're better able to evaluate yourself
against your environment and internalize feedback,
these experiences shape your self appraisal.
And at this stage, your self-esteem is relatively unstable.
Meaning, it's easily shaped by positive
and negative experiences.
Negative experiences can be from your parents,
teachers, or other students.
Traumatic experiences at this age
have a much more significant and long lasting effect
on your self esteem than similar events
happening at a later age.
In adolescence, your self-esteem continues to decline
and researchers believe that this is related to issues
with body image and changes that come with puberty.
Around this time, you're transitioning
from the nurturing elementary school environment
to a more challenging middle and high school experience.
Although the level of your self-esteem drops in adolescence,
it becomes more stable,
meaning that it's less changeable during this period.
Another way of putting it is that your view of yourself
is very fluid and childhood,
but becomes more solidified in adolescence.
So if you develop an abnormally low self-esteem
beyond the usual dip that you have at this age,
it's harder for you to recover from that
to increase your self esteem in the adolescence stage.
It's possible, but it takes more work.
Self-esteem in adulthood increases gradually over time
peaking in the late 60s.
And this is thought to be because of changes,
like establishing a career,
developing a mastery over something,
having a clarity of purpose and creating a legacy
through your family.
And these are just some examples of achievements
you experienced over the course of your adulthood,
that promote feelings of self-worth.
The stability of your self-esteem rises
through young adulthood, and then starts to decline
as you reach midlife and older age.
So this just means that how you feel about yourself
is pretty stable and consistent in early adulthood.
But once you reach midlife, the midlife crisis,
your self esteem is more influenced
by changes in your life circumstances.
Once you get to the 70s and beyond,
your self-esteem starts to decline again,
and this is probably due to changing life roles
like retirement, grandchildren,
or the lack of children or grandchildren.
And this is a time that people will reflect on their lives
and can have a lot of regrets about the choices
that they made.
Health problems and the loss of a spouse are all things
that can negatively affect your self-esteem at this age,
but not all people in their 70s
and beyond have low self-esteem.
Some older individuals can still maintain a high level
or sense of self-worth and just accept their limitations
at this stage of their life.
One of the things about understanding
this normal trajectory of self-esteem
going up and down is that it shows us that adolescence
is a key time to jump in and rally around youths
and do things to bolster their self-esteem.
Similarly, if you have an elderly relative
who recently retired and seems to have lost their way,
know that it's a good time to offer extra support
in the area around helping them feel good about themselves.
If you struggle with low self-esteem,
here are two things that you can do to increase
your self-esteem or help someone increase their self-esteem.
Number one, recognize and utilize your strengths.
People who recognize their strengths and use them
tend to feel better about themselves.
If your inner dialogue is saying things
like you're unlovable, you're inconsistent,
and or you don't measure up,
then you're going to have a hard time recognizing
your strengths.
In fact, oftentimes that kind of negative thinking
takes over your thoughts and can convince you
that you have no strengths or that the strengths
that you have are not very meaningful.
It's important that you not only recognize your strengths,
but you put them into action.
And to recognize your strengths,
you can ask yourself questions like,
"What are you good at?"
"What do you enjoy doing?"
"What have you done that's been
the most successful for you?"
You want to make sure you identify the characteristics
or behavior behind the action.
So for example, you may say that you're good
at playing video games, but playing video games
is not a strength, but what about that makes you good?
Maybe, it's your ability to strategize.
Maybe you have good hand-eye coordination
that makes you very quick and responsive.
Here's another example,
being a good swimmer is not a strength,
but the physical agility and discipline,
it takes to be good at swimming are strengths.
Another way to identify your strengths
is to look at a list of strengths and check them off.
I have a strengths handout that you can use
for that purpose, and you can download it from my website.
Once you have a list of your strengths,
the next thing you want to do is develop a plan to use
at least one of your strengths every day.
So for example, let's say your strength is flexibility.
You think of yourself as someone who can adapt
to change very well.
A simple plan could be, that could use your strength,
could be to leave your Saturday schedule open
and allow other people to decide
how you will spend your day,
or let's say your strength is patience.
Your plan could be to listen to your loved one,
tell a story for the fifth time without interrupting them.
And you'll even ask followup questions
to show your interest, even though, you know
already know the answers to the questions,
and you're not going to let them know
that you've already heard this.
Another way to recognize your strengths
is to recognize the strengths in others.
You may think that focusing on other people's strengths
may make you feel bad about what you don't have,
but actually, focusing on other people's strengths
keeps you in the mindset of thinking in terms of strengths,
instead of being focused on weaknesses.
Focusing on other people's weaknesses
does not improve your self esteem because critical thinking
is critical thinking, whether you're being judgmental
of others or yourself.
So if you're stuck in a mindset of being critical,
you will ultimately be more critical of yourself
than you are of other people.
But if you set your sights on recognizing the strengths
in other people, it helps you see your strengths.
So here's an example.
You notice that Suzie is very good at multitasking.
She always seems to be able to finish her work
and have extra time leftover.
You say, "I wish I were better at multitasking
seeing Suzie do it so well,
just makes me feel bad about myself."
And that can make you feel bad if you only focus on Suzie.
But if you pull back and get a broader view,
you'll notice that John is not good at multitasking
but he's very good at making people feel welcome.
And Nicole has a good eye for detail.
You start to see that no one is good at everything.
We all have our strengths and weaknesses.
And as such, we all have ways
that we can use our strengths
to contribute to the collective good.
And the better you get at noticing strengths,
the more sensitive you become to noticing your own strengths
and recognizing your strengths and positive qualities
helps you bolster the value that you give yourself.
Number two, learn to accept compliments.
People with low self esteem have trouble
accepting compliments.
They usually make you feel uncomfortable.
You tend to downplay them or say things to shut down
the compliments.
So what you need to do is learn to hear the compliments
and appreciate them.
And an easy way to do this is to prepare statements
ahead of time that you would say
in response to the compliments,
it could be as simple as, "Thank you,
that's kind of you, I appreciate you saying that."
Tolerating compliments does two things.
It helps you get used to hearing positive feedback,
and it also helps the person giving you the compliment
to feel good about extending kindness to you.
It's a gift for someone to compliment you.
And it takes a certain level of security
on the complementors part to feel good enough
about themselves to give you the spotlight.
Therefore, you want to allow this other person
to show you this kind of generosity.
Your self assessment is at the heart of your self esteem.
And even if someone took it away from you
because of the way they treated you, you can take it back.
It's not easy, it's a series of small steps
that add up over time, like compounding interest.
For more on temperament, watch this video.
I hope this helps you with self-esteem issues.
See you next time.