Characteristics of high and low self-esteem?

In a person with high self-esteem the following very important characteristics:

1. Recognition of the need for one’s evolution. He is aware that he is imperfect, but this does not at all detract from the significance of his personality. He shows no shame for himself, his mistakes and failures. He knows that he is in constant development and can correct any of his mistakes, analyzes situations and draws the right conclusions for himself.

2. Constantly seeks opportunities for his own development and self-knowledge, develops his communication effectiveness.

3. I agree, if necessary, to reconsider my beliefs, my confidence, my opinion, while respecting my own and others’ opinions.

4. When communicating with others, such a person strives to understand the interlocutor and the world around him.

5. Has clear life goals, for which he finds support and information.

6. Takes responsibility for the fulfillment of his goals and for his feelings, understanding the difference between actions, their fulfillment and his feelings.

7. Without losing control of the overall situation, he is able to live in the feeling of the current moment.

8. Does not use irrational values ​​accepted by his environment.

He's good understands his values, those who guide him through life, and also realizes his roots. A person's level of self-esteem is so important aspect life, it can be said that almost all life’s difficulties are related to poor self-esteem. This emotional imbalance and immaturity of a person, poor academic performance, a tendency towards addiction and suicide and many other things that complicate our lives come from low self-esteem.

The person with high self-esteem is in harmony with himself and others, so he is able to live a full, vibrant life. Without high self-esteem there cannot be a quality holistic life. High self-esteem does not exclude a person from having difficulties in life associated with the loss of people close and dear to him, losses, regrets and failures, but allows a person to perceive these events differently and choose a positive cycle without falling into negative living their problems.

Look closely at the diagram below:

You will find that losses, lack, troubles and troubles cause ordinary human feelings in every person: regret, anger, sadness, fears, which a person expresses. But he can go either in the left circle or in the right circle. If a person goes traveling in his grief in left circle and begins to cultivate bitterness in himself, then he risks falling into chronic melancholy, feeling like a victim, experiencing bad feelings, helplessness, despair and a depressed state for a long time.

When he chooses another path, positive, then with all the initial feelings, he is still able understand what is happening and your resources. He accepts responsibility for his own understanding of events, your position and own actions. He is able to understand and accept what caused his suffering, then remove it from himself, forgive, and make a sharp turn in the positive direction of events.

Accepting himself and what happened, maintaining self-love will allow him to accept and love other people. This positive path can be chosen by a person with high self-esteem. His high self-esteem will not allow him to talk about events from the role of a victim: “They forced me...” or “They ruined my life...” or “They took away my faith in people...”.

Most likely, his speech will sound from the “I” position:“I was angry because...”, “I allowed someone else to do this to me...”, “I feel sad when I think about her...”, etc., Which allows you to complete a matter that brought a person loss, failure, or bitterness of disappointment, in a positive way?

Accepting responsibility for what happened, understanding your feelings in difficult situations allow him to put an end to the past, relax, forgive (another person or himself, or even better, both) and complete the matter.

These difficult and responsible steps of a person with high self-esteem allow you to accept and love yourself in any situation, be able to love and respect others, thereby increasing your self-esteem even more. A person who has not yet learned to take responsibility for his feelings, as a rule, blames the environment and experiences embitterment.This is a manifestation of low self-esteem.

His bad mood leads him to helplessness and feeling like a victim. In this state, a person loses the ability to realistically assess the situation and does not see the possibility of solving the impasse. Troubles begin to fall on him one after another, he becomes depressed, steadily leading to chronic hopelessness or illness.

We will talk about how to develop self-esteem in yourself and how important it is later, in the following articles.

Start:

"People with high self-esteem"

A confident person has attractive energy. Such a person easily comes into contact with other people, skillfully and easily gets everything he wants and easily overcomes all obstacles in his path. The secret of inner self-confidence and own strength Ah lies in high (not inflated) self-esteem. High self-esteem does not arise in one day - people go to this for years, and sometimes decades, they change their lifestyle, thinking, and habits. And we will talk about the habits of people who value themselves below. Let's look at what habits people with high self-esteem have.

….Plan.

Through this habit, people can become successful and increase their self-esteem. Planning gives you confidence in the future, your strengths and provides a sense of control over your life. Confident people plan their lives and prefer to influence circumstances rather than give in to their weight.

….Rejoice.

The ability to enjoy little things is one of the keys for successful and confident people. They celebrate every small breakthrough, achievement, gift of fate and sincerely rejoice at it. Joy builds confidence and boosts self-esteem naturally. After all, if we have something to be happy about, then there is no reason to doubt and not believe in ourselves.

….Trust.

It is precisely self-confident people who know how to correctly evaluate themselves who tend to trust people the most. With their trust, they help other people to believe in themselves, open up to them, and due to this they are rarely disappointed. And if they are let down, this does not kill their faith in themselves and people - they simply draw conclusions regarding specific person and continue to move on.

….Analyze.

A correct and adequate assessment of the situation helps strong people maintain confidence and not take on more than they can handle. Such people know what they can and cannot do, and therefore constantly analyze themselves, their achievements and mistakes, in order to better recognize themselves and their capabilities. A self-confident person is not one who can turn a blind eye to his shortcomings, but one who analyzes, highlights strengths and takes into account weaknesses.

….Develop.

It is impossible to sit idle and still have high self-esteem. To maintain your level of self-confidence, you must continually prove your worth to yourself. Continuous development strengths and eliminating shortcomings helps to maintain an adequate assessment of one’s own personality and build confidence in one’s abilities.

….Tell the truth.

An honest person has nothing to fear, so confident people are always frank and tell the truth, counting on sincerity from others. The habit of telling the truth gives ease and freedom, which helps to achieve greater personal growth.

….Listen.

The people who talk the most are those who carry little value in their words. A self-confident person does not strive to show in words what he is capable of. Such people silently do their work, and they do not need to shout about it at every corner. They remain calm because they know the motive behind their every action and word, and do not need the approval of those around them.

….Conquer fear.

If a person says that he is not afraid of anything, this does not indicate his high self-esteem. Most likely he is stupid or mentally ill. People cannot live without fear - this is our physiology. Our body has mechanisms that trigger feelings of fear when necessary. Fear provides an incentive to action. But strong and confident people know how to overcome their fears by listening to them and understanding the possible risks. Every small victory over fear gives even more confidence and inner strength.

….Rest.

An unrested person is weak person who does not have enough energy to achieve life goals. That's why, successful people looking for their confidence in rest and recovery. When a person regularly replenishes his energy reserves, he becomes stronger and more confident, because he knows that with such potential he is capable of great achievements.

….Praise yourself.

As one of the greats said, you cannot entrust such responsible work to other people. Therefore, it is worth praising yourself, rewarding for the slightest achievements, and giving compliments. This is important, because sometimes there is simply no one to hold kind words, and the praise you say to yourself inspires, adds energy and helps you become stronger and more confident.

Inflated self-esteem of a person (in psychology) is a human problem associated with an adequate assessment of oneself. There is no clear answer to the question of whether high self-esteem is good or bad. This phenomenon has both positive and negative aspects. A positive characteristic is self-confidence. Bad characteristics: increased level egoism, overestimation of one’s own strengths and capabilities.

Signs of high self-esteem

Signs of inflated self-esteem are manifested in a person’s behavior. The psychology of how a person evaluates himself directly affects relationships with other people. If overconfidence prevails, problems arise in the communication process. The worst of them is when a person is left completely alone.

Inflated self-esteem has signs:

1. A person is convinced that he is always right. At the same time, significant arguments can be given in favor of an alternative opinion, but this does not influence the individual in any way.
2. Confidence in the existence of the only correct point of view - personal. A person denies the existence of an opposing opinion as such. If, due to some circumstances, he still needs to accept someone else’s point of view, he will still consider it incorrect.
3. Another characteristic of high self-esteem is to reserve last word. The person is confident that only he can draw conclusions and determine the further course of events.
4. One of the signs of a self-confident person is the inability to apologize or ask for forgiveness.
5. With high self-esteem, a person blames others for his troubles. If something doesn't work out, it means other people are to blame. If a person reaches some heights, then this is only his merit.
6. An individual has the opinion that only he and no one else can bear the title “best”.
7. A great desire to be the first in everything, not to make mistakes.
8. Having high self-esteem, a person expresses his point of view even when he is not asked to do so. He believes that others are always interested in his opinion on any issue.
9. The personal pronoun is often used in speech.
10. With any failures or mistakes, a feeling of irritability and confusion sets in. A person easily goes off course.
11. Increasing self-esteem is characterized by a disdainful attitude towards other people's criticism. A different opinion is perceived as disrespect, so you should not pay attention to it.
12. Failure to soberly consider risks. A self-confident person often takes on complex matters that are fraught with certain dangers.
13. Fear of looking insecure, weak, helpless.
14. High level of egoism.
15. Personal interests and needs always come first.
16. A person often interrupts his interlocutor because he is used to talking more than listening.
17. With signs of self-confidence, an individual tends to teach others, even in small things.
18. Arrogant tone.

Causes of high self-esteem

Most often, high self-esteem is formed at the time of primary socialization. Inflated opinion about oneself occurs in the process of parental upbringing, preschool education educational institutions, school. A person with high self-esteem at a more mature age is no longer able to break the directions of communication with others that have been established in the mind.

The reasons for high self-esteem lie in the following:

1. Parental narcissism. The problem begins to arise during the period of raising children. The child does not receive adequate satisfaction of emotional needs, because... parents perceive it and treat it as a way of self-affirmation. Inflated self-esteem compensates for the lack of these positive experiences.
2. The reason for overestimation of self-esteem may be that the individual is the first or only child in the family. This problem is especially evident in families who have not been able to have a child for a long time.
3. The problem can be spoilage in childhood. This happens in cases where the parents incorrectly built the “child-adult” relationship: they paid him excessive attention, put his interests first, did not limit the child in anything, satisfied all the whims on demand, no matter what.
4. Appearance. In some cases, it is common for a person to consider himself better than others because of his own attractiveness. Bright appearance is perceived by a person as some kind of advantage over others. More often than not, this behavior is characteristic of women rather than men.
5. Inflated self-esteem can be formed by teachers. Some teachers single out students on the basis of personal sympathies, high material, social status schoolchild's parents.
6. No testing of one's own abilities. For example, a child may cope well with the workload at a regular school, but studying at a more prestigious institution would require more effort from him. If an individual never encounters serious challenges along the way, he may begin to attribute to himself the presence of outstanding abilities.
7. Having a rare natural talent. Such people are often said to be unique, which is why a person develops a high opinion of himself.
8. Financial security. When an individual does not need anything, his self-esteem becomes excessively high.

Individuals who have increased self-confidence often come into conflict with people whose level of self-esteem is much lower than theirs.

Reason high level self-conceit in each specific case can be determined using psychodiagnostic methods.

Inflated self-esteem in children and adolescents

High self-esteem is formed under the influence of certain factors. Sometimes parents are overzealous in their desire to praise their child, because of this, children develop an incorrect perception of themselves in relation to others.

A high level of self-esteem in children and adolescents is due to:

1. Narcissism. Many parents believe that there is nothing wrong with constantly praising their teenagers. However, when parents too often focus on the child’s appearance and talents, the latter develops a clear idea that he is unique and has an advantage over others. Thus, teenagers become narcissistic “narcissists”.
2. No punishment. If parents encourage their child even for the slightest successes, without paying attention to misdeeds, the teenager’s level of self-esteem increases. In case of failures or mistakes, the child looks for the reason on the outside, but not in himself.

To develop healthy self-esteem in a child, it is recommended:

1. Give teenagers the opportunity to feel protected.
2. Let the child know that he is loved and accepted in the family, school, etc. Without this identification, a teenager may experience a feeling of loneliness and rejection.
3. For good, full development, a child must have goals. This way he will be able to direct energy and thoughts in the right direction.
4. Give the child the opportunity to cope with difficulties on his own. In this way, people develop competence and a sense of their own strength.
5. Allow yourself to become responsible. Being a teenager isn't easy. At this age, it is important to make it clear to the child that each step leads to certain consequences. This way he will learn to make decisions more consciously and in case of failures he will not look for reasons in others, but will take full responsibility upon himself.
6. Allow your teenager to be helpful. When a child contributes to a particular activity, he develops the idea that his opinion is also taken into account and matters.
7. Teach your child to be disciplined. If parents give real assessments, recommendations for action and opportunities to test themselves in a given situation, the child will begin to think, reason, find solutions to problems, and consider the consequences of actions that he may commit. This type of self-reflection is essential for continued growth.
8. Encourage real merit and achievements.
9. Give your child the correct understanding of failure. It is important to explain that mistakes are not a reason to fall into despair, but an incentive to improve yourself and your skills.

High level of self-esteem in men

Inflated self-esteem in men is common and is a problem both for the individual himself and for those around him. Such a person is accustomed to exaggerating his merits.

High self-esteem is determined by the following characteristics:

1. High sense of self-worth.
2. The man does not pay any attention to criticism, even reasoned criticism. It doesn’t occur to a man that he might not understand something. He is completely confident that he knows everything better than anyone.
3. A person can afford to mock those who, in his opinion, do not deserve respect.
4. The need for constant admiration for oneself. If this does not happen, the man becomes despondent.
5. The desire to be the best everywhere and in everything.
6. Confidence in your own uniqueness and originality.
7. A high level of self-esteem does not allow you to feel what compassion is. If you can already do all this, then this feeling is short-lived.
8. The conviction that everyone around him is jealous.
9. Demonstration of fictitious achievements in order to increase self-esteem.
10. Arrogant behavior, vanity, pronounced selfishness.
11. Mercantile interests. Inflated material demands and desires.
12. Irritability, anger if someone turns out to be better than him.
13. Disguising your negative traits and sides.
14. Commanding tone of communication. Such people often tell others how and what to do.
15. Inability to accept refusals and failures. If the situation has taken an unpleasant and unexpected turn, the man does not know what to do. He becomes confused and depressed.
16. Excessive touchiness. A man is easily offended if he does not receive due admiration for his “merits.”
17. Tendency to swear and scandals. Such men love to take revenge if someone crosses their path.
18. Excessive narcissism. Self-confident men believe that they are the most attractive, and this gives them the right to be dismissive of the people around them.
19. The need for complete control. Such men have a great need for power. They like to feel independent. This is how they show their masculine essence. Otherwise, they feel wounded and inferior.
20. Idealization of yourself, your life.

Inflated self-esteem in men gives rise to such a problem as the constant desire for success and universal love at any cost. After such a man achieves a certain financial position and occupies a high place in society, he considers his ambitions satisfied.

High self-esteem is a problem psychological nature. It will take a lot of time and effort to solve. People with high self-esteem can turn to a psychologist for help, the main thing is that it is voluntary.

If a person has high self-esteem, he can do the following exercise:

• You need to write down 10 main advantages on a piece of paper;
• each needs to be assessed according to severity on a scale from 1 to 5;
• then you should ask your friends and relatives to do the same;
• Then the results obtained are compared and analyzed.

If the estimates are very different, you need to think about why this happened. You should try to determine the real reason for these discrepancies in yourself, your own behavior, and not in other people.

Rules for forming adequate self-esteem

There are several rules for developing good self-esteem:

1. Awareness plays a significant role on the path of transformation. It is important to soberly assess your external and internal data. To do this, it is recommended to look at yourself from the outside more often. You need to carefully analyze your weaknesses and strengths.
2. You should learn to respect the opinions of others and appreciate their merits. Many of them can be excellent specialists in their field.
3. It is recommended that you learn to accept constructive criticism. Resentment is the most wrong reaction in such a situation.
4. When completing tasks, you need to set high goals, but under no circumstances should you get upset or panic if something goes wrong.
5. It's important to remember that everyone has flaws.
6. Self-criticism is a good cure for incorrect self-assessments. It is useful for working on yourself and achieving new results.
7. It is recommended to become realistic. What is important here is the understanding that a person cannot be perfect always and in everything.
8. In your activities, you should take into account not only your own satisfaction from the work done, but also the opinions of others.
9. It is important to allow yourself to make mistakes. Wrong decisions are not a disaster, but only a lesson for the future. You should also remember about personal responsibility for all consequences.
10. It is not recommended to compare yourself with others, to argue whether you are good or bad person works near you.

Inflated self-esteem makes a person arrogant, confident that the people around him owe him something. The individual makes inadequate conclusions about himself, overestimating his own importance. Any deviation from adequate self-esteem is a problem for a person. It is always important to soberly assess yourself and your potential.

What prevails in it, good or bad? However, giving a clear definition to the concept of self-esteem is not so easy. Self-esteem has many sides: it is a person’s attitude towards himself, the feeling we have towards ourselves, the idea of ​​ourselves.

The American psychologist Virginia Satir studied the problem of self-esteem a lot. She believes that high self-esteem, which consists of a person’s ability to honestly, lovingly and truly evaluate himself, is the basis of psychological well-being.

As V. Satir notes, as a rule, people with high self-esteem have the following qualities:

◦ Such a person creates an atmosphere of honesty, responsibility, compassion and love around himself.

◦He feels important and needed, feels that the world has become better because he exists in it,

◦He trusts himself, but is able to ask for help from others.

◦Thanks to a sense of self-worth, a person is able to see, respect and accept the high value of other people.

◦Such a person never uses rules that would contradict his feelings, but on the other hand, he never follows the lead of his experiences.

Note that having high self-esteem does not guarantee constant feeling success and the absence of life defeats or failures. A person with high self-esteem does not always feel at his best; he may face difficulties in life, worry negative emotions. But high self-esteem allows such a person not to hide from difficulties. He is ready to admit and accept the experience of his own failure, not to turn a blind eye to it and not to behave as if it does not exist. He perceives difficulties as temporary, as a natural result of the crisis that has arisen, which may turn out to be the beginning of some new opportunities.

If a person's self-esteem is not high enough, then such a person, as a rule, will deny the existence of any troubles in life, ignore negative experiences and behave in any situation as if everything is fine. This reaction to life's difficulties can be a sign that we underestimate and do not recognize ourselves and, as a rule, only makes them worse.

Simultaneously low self-esteem forces a person to accumulate experience of failure, mistakes, defeats, which can create a feeling of personal failure or even hopelessness. Therefore, as V. Satir writes, people with low self-esteem tend to constant fear. Such a person constantly foresees something unpleasant in the future.

How is self-esteem formed?

The first five years of life are the most important for developing self-esteem. At this time, the child focuses only on the assessments that the people around him give him as individuals.

In adulthood, the formation of self-esteem is influenced by various factors: our relationships with loved ones (friends, parents, loved ones), our educational and professional successes or failures, and much more.

Huge role The process of communication plays a role in the formation of self-esteem. How other people perceive us affects our self-image. Here, every word, facial expression, gesture or intonation addressed to us by another person can be important, although as a rule we are not aware of our reaction to them.

V. Satir suggests conducting the following experiment: when communicating with people who are significant to you, carefully monitor what happens to you when they contact you. What reaction do the words of another person evoke in you: a feeling of your own worth or, conversely, a feeling of humiliation?

What helps you maintain high self-esteem?

Firstly, an attentive and caring attitude towards people helps to maintain high self-esteem. own feelings and experiences. At any time, especially in a difficult or tense situation, it is useful to answer the following questions:

How do I feel now?

What's happening to me now?

How do I react to what is happening?

How do I feel about my reaction?
To better understand what high or low self-esteem is, it is also useful to analyze our past life experiences:

At what points in your life did your mood lift and make you feel deeply valuable?

What events was this connected with?

What were your sensations, feelings, experiences in those days?

We can remember other situations when we made some mistake or mistake and felt powerless and humiliated. Although such memories may bring some pain, they allow you to look at the difficulties experienced from a new perspective:

How did you feel in these situations?

What was particularly unpleasant for you?

What did these situations teach you?

What would you do differently now?

Maintaining high self-worth is only possible if we maintain special honest, trusting and sincere relationships with other people. As V. Satir writes, “a sense of self-worth can only be formed in an atmosphere where any individual differences, where love is expressed openly, where mistakes serve to gain new experience, where communication is frank and trusting, and rules of conduct do not turn into frozen dogmas, where personal responsibility and honesty of everyone are an integral part of relationships.”

Of course, the relationships described above can be considered as an ideal to which we need to strive, but in how our relationships with others are built, a lot depends on us. We have the power to accept the people around us as they are, to openly express our feelings, to behave respectfully, responsibly and honestly towards them, and as a rule, this style of behavior has a huge impact on our relationships.

“If low self-esteem is bad, then perhaps high self-esteem is something worth striving for,” you will think and... you will be wrong. Many psychologists have agreed that high self-esteem is not the same thing as healthy self-esteem. High self-esteem has many gradations. For example, unstable and superficial high self-esteem is no different from low self-esteem. People with unstable high self-esteem compensate for their suspiciousness with an obsessive tendency to defend and defend their self-esteem for any reason.

High self-esteem is considered positive quality essential for a happy and productive life. However, in lately psychologists began to find more and more examples that high levels can do more harm than good. There are many types of high self-esteem, where only some of them can fairly be attributed to positive psychological functioning. High self-esteem can take on a negative connotation when accompanied by verbal defense, i.e. outbursts of anger. This usually occurs in conditions of challenging the opinions, views, statements or value systems of a person.

People with low self-esteem or fragile high self-esteem tend to exhibit verbally defensive behavior. This is partly because those with such self-esteem tend to exaggerate the degree of potential threat compared to those with consistently high self-esteem, so they have to work harder to maintain their sense of self-worth.

On the other hand, people with stable high self-esteem tend to accept themselves with all their flaws and shortcomings. Feeling more secure, they rarely blame others, resorting to verbal defense mechanisms, and do not make excuses about past mistakes or threatening situations.

Increased defensiveness, as a rule, does not indicate healthy psychological perception, but rather insecurity. There is nothing seditious in the fact that people want to think well of themselves. But when this becomes obsessive, a person becomes too sensitive to the criticism of others and is forced to constantly prove his worth. Such self-esteem is rather unstable than stable and deprives a person of all its psychological advantages.