“How do you expect anyone to respect you when you don’t respect yourself?” is akin to the platitude that you can’t love others until you love yourself first. While it’s true that you can’t accept love until you believe you can be loved and that you can only believe another respects you after you locate your dignity, each says little to nothing about perceptions in and of relationships. Arguably, both platitudes aren’t just wrong; they’re also harmful.
Too often, we place the onus on people struggling to find ways not to struggle. Economically and politically, we find ways to blame people for being poor or unemployed; it’s much easier than challenging a structure that helps support us, one we managed to adapt to fairly well. And, much as we do with broader social issues, we also tend to place the responsibility of self-respect onto individuals. The idea being that if others don’t respect us, it must be because we haven’t done enough to earn it (a simple system that says being worthy of respect, acting right, should easily engender self-respect). Implied is a rigid foundation for becoming worthy, only by which can we come to love ourselves. These rules not only make individualism difficult, which is paradoxical since the individual is at their core, but they also preclude any attempt at understanding the individual.
While you may argue from an evolutionary perspective that self-respect is a marker of actual value, it’s still little more than a mental shortcut, necessitating a more thorough assessment. Everyday, people who struggle with mental illness are implored to become more confident, as though it were solely their responsibility to sell themselves to us. Lack of confidence may decrease your ability to find employment, have stable relationships, and find fulfillment. And it may become the foundation of perfectionism, a self-obsessed strategy aimed at cultivating a completely lovable self, free of the shackles of self-doubt. The individual struggling with self-esteem, or chronic self-doubt to be specific, comes to erroneously believe two falsehoods: 1. You aren’t liked or respected because you view yourself so unfavorably (and behave in a way that elicits what you fear most).. 2. You can win approval as long as you’re able and willing to follow a script, along with meeting a bunch of other individual standards.
So, you may resolve to “fake it ’til you make it” while obsessing over self-improvement. Again, the onus is on you to elicit approval. While this makes sense from a systemic approach, if we wish to keep some system in place, it does little for the people struggling with self-doubt, if we care to look. The only thing the initial platitude achieves is behavior modifiaiton; for an individual can easily adopt a mental map of propriety, but it’s hardly unlikely that they’ll feel like a fraud, or imposter, with that role.
If we want others to address their interpersonal anxieties and self-loathing meaningfully, we should reconsider how much pressure we place on them to like themselves, especially by reconsidering the consequences of lacking confidence. Just as we can love others without loving ourselves, others can respect us even when we don’t follow. We may begin by trying to empathize with their perspectives, learning why self-respect is such a challenge for them. Some are perfectionists; others are negativistic. Some desperately need approval to feel ok but continue to struggle with accepting it. Some have histories of trauma and others exaggerate their guilt and shame. Some believe others demand perfection of them and others believe themselves to be fatally flawed. Some are able to see the innate goodness in others but chronically conceive of their own essences as bad.
As a culture, there’s no shortage of ways and reasons for making people dislike themselves. Envy, differences, race, gender, social status, economic status, etc… are bases for how and why people come to dislike themselves. So, maybe we can try a bit harder to give them reasons not to. To be clear, I’m not saying there’s any surefire method to help increase self-esteem; I think the ‘80s proved that to be nonexistent. I’m saying that we should discontinue overvaluing confidence, just as we should discontinue looking to another’s self-confidence to assess their value.
And, we can acknowledge how little lecturing and, worse, shaming help. Cognitive Behavior Therapy teaches us about the power of core beliefs, perspectives of ourselves and others, which influence almost every aspect of our lives. We know those beliefs take time to change, if they do, as they help the individual navigate life, to essentially protect themself and survive. If we decide to try empathy, new insights may instill a sense of compassion, which may be just what that individual needs to begin to see the world anew. Blame is futile. Perhaps, as a community, we owe it to ourselves and each other to help others see apparently inaccessible parts of themselves.
Leon's Existential Cafe 