Introduction: Curse of Self Esteem

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It seems everyone wants to improve the quality of his or her life. Unfortunately there are those who invest time, effort, and money on self-improvement and fail. Dieters regain the weight they lose—plus a few new pounds. Worriers try positive thinking—until panic strikes again and again. Thousands more join health clubs and then quit. Others buy expensive exercise machines, eventually hiding them away in closets—out of sight, out of mind. Most of these people think they have “low self-esteem.”

Fixing self-esteem (feeling good about ourselves) is a national obsession and multi-million dollar industry. Talk shows extol the virtues of self-esteem, and dozens of self-esteem books and tapes are published each year. Schools invest hundreds of hours and millions of dollars indoctrinating children to feel good about themselves.

The modern system of self-esteem has its dark side. Falling SAT scores and dependent, over-socialized students who afraid to approach a person of the opposite sex because they fear charges of sexual harassment are only a few of the side-effects of a misguided application of the system of self-esteem. Influenced by self-esteem rhetoric, educators reject marks and grades contending poor grades make students feel “bad about themselves.” Eliminating test scores robs students of important points of progress. As every young student knows (and will tell you, if asked) keeping track of your batting average is essential in baseball. What is wrong with keeping score in academic endeavors?

When I was a student, my father taught me to look up the answers to questions I had missed. He said I’d remember them long after I forgot what I studied in cram sessions. Most of today’s students seem unaware of this strategy. When I asked a young woman who got seven out of ten on a test, “Did you look up the answers to other questions?” she answered“What for? I got my mark.”

Fortunately, not all teaching professionals align with the self-esteem movement. Leslie Katz, president of the National Association for the Education of Young People, is quoted in Newsweek as saying: “I’m getting sick of the empty slogans.”

Today’s early self-esteem “training” tends towards symbolism over substance with banners, awards, recognition, gold stars, and happy face stickers. This obsession with self-esteem is difficult to challenge since it all seems so harmless. What could be wrong with helping people feel good about themselves? Plenty! If students take their self-esteem “training” too seriously, it leaves them ill prepared for a competitive business environment. Discouraged new employees blame the system, job pressures, or management for their distress. After years of handing in test papers and waiting for their marks, students expect similar feedback from their manager. In the workplace feedback is inconsistent at best—except during uncomfortable performance appraisals. When given feedback about job performance, many young employees react as if it were a personal attack. This renders them helpless when attempting to significantly improve their performance. Their negative reaction to this new environment create unnecessary stress and feelings of hurt, anger, and/or depression.

The Self-esteem Scam was the working title for this book. A scam is a con—a trick. However, all scams are not perpetrated on unsuspecting or helpless victims. Weekend tennis, hockey, baseball, football, squash and soccer players buy expensive equipment in the mistaken belief that wearing the best equipment will somehow improve their performance. Celebrity endorsements capitalize on this human frailty. Advertising, no matter how clever, cannot fool an enlightened audience. If there is a scam, it’s the one individuals perpetrate on themselves. Deep down, they know Michael Jordan shoes or Wayne Gretsky hockey sticks don’t guarantee improved performance—but, somehow, they wish they would.

Babies eat tasteless, mushy food, and youngsters have training wheels on their bicycles, but eventually they grow out of them. It’s equally important we grow out of our need for self-esteem.

Today’s system of self-esteem panders to intellectual laziness and narcissism. Feeling like a winner is not the same as being one. Creating the life you choose means emphasizing actions over rhetoric and leaving self-esteem’s stars, ribbons, banners, and slogans behind.

After exposure to the principles in this book, one person’s reaction was: “You are disputing something I have tried to live for twenty years. It’s part of our culture. It’s hard to accept that it may be flawed. If you’re right—that’s scary.”

As frightening as a different way of thinking seems, perhaps I have stimulated your curiosity with bold challenges to conventional “wisdom.” That’s my expectation—to shine the light of truth on the system of self-esteem, exposing its weaknesses and offering constructive strategies to counteract its negative impact.

Consider this perspective. If you hold something in high esteem, you place it above something else. The goal of self-esteem is to determine how worthwhile you are. Ask yourself: “How worthwhile am I? What is my level of self-esteem? How did I arrive at my decision?” Individuals are unique; therefore, all comparisons are flawed. However, today’s system of self-esteem suggests (incorrectly) that in order to determine your level of self-esteem, you must compare yourself to others or, worse still, compare yourself to an unrealistic idea of what you should be. The self-esteem movement denies this, but to esteem something means placing it above something else. This gives self-esteem its sting and accounts for plenty of emotional pain and suffering.

Some people arrive at their opinion of themselves by comparing accomplishments; others work hard at getting people to like them. Feelings of inadequacy, hurt, anger, and depression immobilize them creating unnecessary pain and suffering—all based on lies!

In Final Analysis, Jeffrey Masson says: “At a theoretical level, I wasn’t sure I could believe that one could develop “character” by simply having a good model, by imitation, as it were.”

When I read that, I almost cheered out loud! Studying successful people is a good idea, but comparing yourself as a person to a role model crosses the fine line between admiration and unrealistic comparisons. If you engage in such comparisons, you’ll end up feeling bad about yourself. Relationships crumble, ambitions shatter, and the blaming begins. “If only....” (You know the script!)

Traditional psychology offers little help. People live with their frustrations anxiously awaiting enlightenment. Compare psychology to technology. Today we have access to faster and more powerful computers, but where are the breakthroughs in psychology?

In Behavior: The Control of Perception, William T. Powers says: “Psychology in particular has been a disappointment, promising much and producing essentially nothing with the power to change our lives that, say, the transistor has had.”

In Why Some Therapies Don’t Work, with Raymond J. Yeager, Ph.D., Dr. Albert Ellis says: “Rational-emotive therapy (RET) was first introduced in 1955, subsequent to my general dissatisfaction with psychoanalysis and my discovery that my psychotherapy clients were not benefiting from getting ‘in touch’ with unconscious motivations or ‘working through’ transference reactions, as traditional psychoanalysis explanations maintained.”

Because the system of self-esteem is positioned as “psychology,” most people feel less than qualified to judge its validity. As a result, they accept its suffering, hurt, and depression, unaware that these emotions are the result of the system itself. It’s important to challenge the underlying assumptions of today’s self-esteem movement. After all, we are the “customers” of this system, and it’s not working!

Advocates would like us to believe that the system of self-esteem is science. It isn’t. In Beyond Therapy, Beyond Science, Anne Wilson Schaef states: “We were working out of a model (still prevalent) that basically said if we understood a problem (and sometimes could make the client understand it), the problem was solved... I saw that under the guise of scientific objectivity, psychology and psychiatry essentially functioned out of an emotional, judgmental base that often blamed and disrespected the client.”

In PsychoBabble, Dr. Richard Ganz, a trained psychotherapist, wrote: “. . .there are extremely infrequent times when the science of the diagnosis and classification of supposed mental illness is shown to be what it really is—speculation at best, criminal at worst.”

Most of my objections are to self-esteem’s outcomes—not its intent. Defenders rally behind their intentions pronouncing: “We’re just trying to help people feel better about themselves.” This is laudable but dangerous. History is full of good intentions gone awry. Marxism, socialism, communism, and many other over-idealistic and “feel good” philosophies have their roots in good intentions.

One might ask: “If traditional models produce such poor results, why are they so widespread?” Ineffective traditional models further the agenda of the people selling them. I call these concepts made to sell, not to use. Similar to the many slice, dice, and chop machines pitched on television, they do work but using them is not as easy as it looks! Millions of these devices end up in garage sales or tucked away in cupboards. In used book stores, self-help and how-to books outnumber all the rest. Authors tell their readers information cannot change lives—readers must do that for themselves. Many people read no further and put the book out of sight—out of mind. On the other hand, the few who apply what they read would never part with their dog-eared books.

My father regularly threw out my grandfather’s homemade walking stick. When granddad cut a new one, it, too, disappeared. If he became dependant on the cane, his ability to walk would have further deteriorated. He lived to be ninety-two and walked unassisted almost to the day he died. My father’s actions on the surface appear cruel—yet were an act of love. The system of self-esteem is just as crippling. Improperly applied it weakens our resolve and undermines our ability to courageously face life’s many challenges.

Before you get yourself too upset or depressed thinking about this, here’s an alternative approach. Instead of searching for ways to feel good about yourself, why not take away the negative power of self-esteem and work toward creating the life you truly want for yourself? Now that’s something to feel good about!

I did not set out to write an anti self-esteem book, so what follows are conversations about self-reliance, personal responsibility, being the primary creative force in your life, and accessing a gateway to the life you choose—by design.

Some of us put up quite a fight when deeply held beliefs are challenged, so I repeat key concepts in different ways or from different angles. Be careful if you catch yourself saying: “You’ve covered that before—I get it—get on with it.” Until you translate new ideas into actions (habits), you really don’t “get it.” Insight alone cannot enrich your life. It is actions, not intentions that produce new or different results. As one philosopher put it:

“To know and not to do, is not to know at all.”

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“Psychology presents itself as a concerned and caring profession working for the good of its clients. But in its wake lie damaged people, divided families, distorted justice, destroyed companies, and a weakened nation”.

Dr. Tana Dineen
Manufacturing Victims 1996
Robert Davis Publishing

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