skissane
3 hours ago
The other day I was talking to a psychologist about [difficult personal situation which I am unable to discuss publicly] and she said to me “This must be really damaging to your self-worth.” And, my honest internal reaction to her statement (although I didn’t say it out loud to her) was “Self-worth, what is that?” Because I’m not sure if I have any? I don’t mean that in the negative sense that I think I am worthless or anything. It is just that in my mind “self” and “worth” are concepts which do not intersect. Maybe that’s an autistic trait.
orbisvicis
an hour ago
The flip side of detaching self-esteem from technical competency is that you can make very strong assertions without being arrogant.
People of integrity with utilitarian leaning are often labeled amoral or unemotional.
People with a strong drive not attached to financial gain are often termed unambitious.
Your perceived worth really depends on values of society, so if you remove yourself from the equation, you only have no worth to others, not to yourself. Sequestered from others the sense of self has no meaning, so naturally you have no self-worth. Not because you are worthless, but because you have no self and place no importance on your perceived worth.
Or more strongly phrased, what's the point of self-worth if you can do everything you put your mind to?
I'd you can't but think you can, then that's a harmful psychological schism. Since no one person can achieve everything, self-worth is only meaningful in areas for which you lack competency
For example - and this deals not with self-worth but with stress - I'm pretty inflexible in my goals. When I can't meet my goals I tend to shut down. I'm often asked if I'm stressed, to which I can only respond, "Stress - what's that?". And yet clearly I've suffered a harmful schism between my perception of self and reality, as indicated by my lack of stress response.
detourdog
11 minutes ago
My partner considers my deliberateness as lazy. They won’t discuss things with me because they already know all about me.
My willingness to share their perception of me being ineffective was quite damaging to my self esteem. I never felt successful due to lack of acknowledgment of my achievements.
They asked me to leave the house about a year ago. Once I met new people and they saw me as successful and fun my self worth improved.
__turbobrew__
2 hours ago
I feel the same.
One thing that I have struggled with in relationships is that others need to feel validated, that their decisions are rational and that other people believe that they are rational. Stimulus from the outside to satisfy the inside.
What makes this difficult for me is that I don’t need to feel validated, I am comfortable with my own decisions in life and do not need someone else to approve. I think this ties into self worth which seems to be related to people’s perception of their actions and the approval they see from others. If you do not need external validation then you are not concerned about peoples perception of you and therefore self worth is a foreign concept.
detourdog
17 minutes ago
I spent 56 years with that thought. Looking back for me it was family identity and trying to achieve standards of someone that died a decade before I was born.
I now understand self-worth in a new way. I had to realize that there was plenty of time to slow down and be deliberate. I had to get to point where I could take the time I needed to do a task.
I have no idea how others can find self worth but for me I describe it as being comfortable.
wpietri
an hour ago
I think there are two ways you can look at it.
One is what I think of as the neurotypical way. They spend a lot of energy on social modeling, on fitting people into hierarchies of privilege. (E.g., "respecting your elders", older sibling vs younger, teachers vs students, the popular kids, and so many other things.) Then in the same way they're judging the worth of others, they fit themselves into the same primate status model.
I think that's what the psychologist is talking about. Personally, I find that way not super useful.
But another way is sort of reverse engineering. From how person X treats themself, what can we learn about how much they value their own self? Like you, I didn't have much of a concept of self-worth in the sense of "where do I place myself in the many hierarchies most people around me are constantly aware of." But a therapist eventually got me to see that I did not treat myself as worth the same as the people around me. Paying attention to that has improved my life a lot.
The big question for me is to what extent the latter thing is influenced by the former. For neurotypical people I gather the link is pretty strong. For me it's definitely a weaker link, but it's hard to tell the difference between "there is no link" and "I don't notice the link".
detourdog
6 minutes ago
I take comfort in seeing my experience described by others. I’m waiting on a neurological evaluation to see where on a spectrum I exist. I have been evaluated for a personality disorder of which none was found.
orbisvicis
20 minutes ago
Are you suggesting that self-worth can only be defined as the sum of your perceived worth to others? That makes the 'self' in worth an oxymoron, no?
To you, it seems the best way to achieve self-improvement is to maximize your value to others, i.e. by moving up the social hierarchy. But that doesn't imply that those who don't play the game have no worth, does it?
I think you are conflating a sense of happiness with a sense of worth. They are not necessarily the same.
For example I occasionally find myself in conflict with an acquaintance over a miscommunication. If after explaining the underlying conditions the other individual refuses to adjust their perception of me, I couldn't care less. That's their problem, not mine, even if they continue to spread their (possibly vile) misperceptions.
Now if I had sucked up to them perhaps, yes, I would have improved my life. But what I did not do was reduce my self-worth.
wpietri
11 minutes ago
I just described two different ways of thinking about self-worth, so I am not suggesting it "can only be defined" as anything.
BadHumans
an hour ago
Not a psychologist but I am friends with more than a few. I don't know why you assume the psychologist meant the first because they did not. Self-worth has nothing to do with social hierarchy. It is how you treat yourself and a core thing therapist work on is helping you treat yourself the way you would treat others, with compassion and respect.
wpietri
13 minutes ago
I thought maybe I was using the phrase wrong, but the first two definitions I find are "the internal sense of being good enough and worthy of love and belonging from others" and "a feeling that you are a good person who deserves to be treated with respect". You'll note that those are both inherently social. And both "good enough" and "with respect" are about one's position in the caste/hierarchy structure.
The reason I assume what the psychologist meant is that most of them are neurotypical, and neurotypical people are deeply invested in social primate dynamics. I understand that this is hard for neurotypical people to see, but you might read things like DeWaal's "Chimpanzee Politics" or Johnson's "Impro" [1]. Plus there's my personal experience, where psychologists are very inclined to talk about self-worth in the social sense. And I think that's fine; I'm sure it works well for their neurotypical patients.
[1] particularly the section on status transactions, which are vital for authentic theater performances, but are rarely articulated because it's so natural to neurotypical people
daymanstep
3 hours ago
I think the idea is that "people" tend to be attracted towards things that they think will increase their self worth and avoid things that decreases their self worth.
Though from a stoic perspective the only thing that can affect your self worth are your own actions, not external events which you have no control over.
passion__desire
an hour ago
I think stoic ideas are from an era where their circumstances made them have those principles. We don't live in that era. It is possible to affect others and the associated cascading effect that can bring about a change in others action which were affecting you negatively. If Naval's idea of "individuals having leverage holds water" directly implies that you can change others, albiet slowly. If your reach becomes big enough that it becomes a threat that "other actors" need to curtail that reach through "algorithms" is another evidence that you were indeed having effects that they didn't like.
HPsquared
an hour ago
You think Marcus Aurelius was unable to affect other peoples' actions? That's not the idea. The point is that you can't directly make someone else think or feel a certain way, only act on them externally.
maroonblazer
38 minutes ago
And of course from a Buddhist perspective the self is an illusion, making all this 'self-worth' chasing akin to tilting at windmills.
detourdog
2 minutes ago
I don’t think the notion of self-worth is rejected by Buddha. I think the expectation of achieving it through actions is rejected. The expected results are the problem not self-worth or actions.
svaha1728
23 minutes ago
True, but it’s harder to run around with a begging bowl in Western cultures. Even though self worth is an illusion, right livelihood is part of the Noble Eightfold Path.
AnimalMuppet
2 hours ago
I think most people use other people as a kind of mirror, to try to see who they are and how they fit. (Autists may do it less than others, or even none at all.)
If everybody thinks well of me, then I should probably think well of myself. If everyone thinks badly of me, then I'm probably not worth very much. So goes the logic.
So social media is tearing up peoples' self image, not just because of put-downs and deliberate trolling, but mostly because everyone is putting forward the best version of themself that they can, and we compare that, not to the version of ourselves that we put forward, but to the reality of ourselves, and we lose in comparison.
And that's the problem with self-worth-by-comparison. There's always someone against whom you lose, in some aspects. Richest man in the world? Yeah, but that other guy has a bigger yacht, and we use yachts as measuring sticks.
That's true of all of life, but social media amplifies it. We can see more people faster to compare ourselves to, and they can present a fake image more convincingly.
hermitcrab
39 minutes ago
And marketers play on this status anxiety. Just look at pretty much any car ad. The best way to innoculate yourself against this (to an extent anyway) is to learn a bit about marketing and do some marketing. Once you have seen how the sausage is made, it has less power.
phkahler
an hour ago
>> "Self-worth, what is that?” Because I’m not sure if I have any?
This almost made me laugh. I know where you're at. You got a long road ahead so get started! Tell your psychologist when these things pop in your head. Have a laugh, but then reflect on it or whatever.
Let me offer some alternatives to "autistic": Anhedonia, schizoid personality disorder, avoidant (attachment OR personality disorder). There are many things, but it's not super important to define it, lest you let it define you.
graeme
3 hours ago
One way of looking at it is how you assess yourself in things and take pride in or feel regret about that.
For example, you wrote this comment. It is a well written comment. You likely have some belief roughly along the lines of "I write reasonably well". You have probably received feedback along those lines throughout life, and that reinforces that belief. This is perhaps mildly pleasing or at least seems correct.
Now suppose instead that whenever you wrote things people replied:
"Huh?"
"What? This makes no sense"
"Good god what led you to think that? That's so stupid!"
And so on. And you even reread some of your own writings that you thought were good and they seem to strike you as not good. The view that your writing is not good comes to strike you as correct. You aim to improve but continue to receive negative feedback. The view that you are genuinely not good at writing seems to be correct and you come to believe you cannot ever be good at writing.
That would be negative self worth. Does this example line up at all with any internal thought processed you have? Are you pleased by praise or hurt by criticism? Even to the level of thinking the judgements are correct or incorrect.
(To be clear you are good at writing)
card_zero
2 hours ago
This begs the question because it starts with "how you assess yourself". Why assess yourself, the self, the whole person, at all? So, you're not good at writing. Perhaps you're not good at anything. In that case, you probably shouldn't attempt things except as practice. But why give yourself an overall score as a person, what are you even supposed to do with that information? You can't be anybody else, so it's useless. Work with what you've got, fuck 'em.
elorant
2 hours ago
How about integrity? Do you find that relevant? Usually people with integrity have high self-esteem because they adhere to a certain set of ethics. I'm not trying in any way to pass judgement, just to give you a different perspective.
herval
an hour ago
my understanding of integrity means that you do things that are guided by a shared moral compass - keep your word, avoid cheating, etc. Those signals seem to be all external (you do them because you don't want to violate your contract with another person, etc). I don't think that's in any way related to self-worth (which is a measurement of value to yourself, independent of others)?
s1artibartfast
10 minutes ago
It doesnt have to be a shared moral compass, but simply your own. That is to say, you can practice integrity in isolation from other people.
A simple mundane example would being going to the gym if you tell yourself you will.
A more complex example would be acting in accordance with the values you believe in or not. If you think people that kick dogs are terrible, but you yourself go around kicking dogs, this creates a lot of cognitive dissonance and low self worth. If you promise yourself to stop, but keep breaking that promise, you realize you cant be trusted, which also impacts self worth.
oliv__
an hour ago
It is definitely related to self-worth, because the contract you make is not with another person, it's with yourself. And when you respect it, it increases your self respect and worth.
herval
an hour ago
I don't see how that's the case at all. A sense of obligation (how much you value someone else) has nothing to do with self worth (how much you value yourself). If this was the case at all, a great treatment for low self esteem would be to commit to stuff for others, since that'd automatically make you valuate your own self more
fixedpointsnake
5 minutes ago
>If this was the case at all, a great treatment for low self esteem would be to commit to stuff for others, since that'd automatically make you valuate your own self more
How do you know this is not true?
If your sense of obligation is seen as a value function for people, it follows that your self-worth is the value when you plug-in "self". Helping others and volunteering is indeed something that brings satisfaction and could help heal your sense of self-worth. If you value another person higher than yourself, by helping them you would establish a connection between their worth and your own. You potentially went from lacking any evidence of positive self-worth to having concrete first-hand evidence that you are worth something to someone.
herval
a minute ago
> How do you know this is not true?
years of therapy :-)
the opposite is also demonstrably false - there's people with huge self-esteem who are known for their complete disdain for others or their opinions.
user
29 minutes ago
herpdyderp
2 hours ago
I feel this. As to why, my answer is simply that it’s a waste of time to worry about it, so why bother?
add-sub-mul-div
24 minutes ago
I'm the same way. I could dispassionately talk about either my strengths or my weaknesses. But I don't see the world as measuring myself in an overall way, nor other people. We all have so many dimensions that are always in so much flux, how could you ever reduce that to something meaningfully quantifiable?
bbor
an hour ago
Interesting! If I said you were bad at your job and an ugly, inattentive partner, would your primary reaction be one of hurt or just one of calculating self-preservation? I would personally feel very emotional if I heard those things from someone in real life, so it’s an honest question.
What emotionally drives you, if not the assessments of your peers? Why excel at work, why find a partner, why do your best to be better everyday? I wish I could say I was driven by rational assessments of my needs as a Homo Sapiens and my moral responsibilities therein, but I think I’d be lying to myself. Or, at least, it’s an eternal struggle to minimize the importance of self-worth.
wslh
2 hours ago
Completely agree with your point, and it feels like a personal preference/trait. Do you think this tendency is related to an autistic trait because of a focus on facts over social norms?
delusional
3 hours ago
That sounds like a question for your psychologist, not randoms on the internet.
To interact a little more with the substance. I don't think I understand what you're saying. You're clearly using the concept when you write
>I don’t mean that in the negative sense that I think I am worthless or anything
That's what negative self-worth is. You seem to understand it fine. self-worth is your subjective assessment of how much you are worth. The self's assessment of the "worth" (whatever you choose to load into that term) of the self.
add-sub-mul-div
4 minutes ago
You missed the distinction between "I don't feel I have any worth" and "I don't see the world in terms of quantifying worth."