How does Self-esteem influence by Social Anxiety?

Life and struggles of a person who has low self-esteem and is experiencing symptoms of social anxiety disorder.

An individual starts to accepting failures, underestimating self, self-sabotaging, self-degrading becoming vulnerable to bullying, mocking, criticism, humiliation, is when one doesn’t feel think and perceive confident about self and their capacities and when they lack self-respect and self-compassion

Self-esteem is the confidence a person has about one’s own abilities and worth, it depends on how an individual treat and perceive about themselves.

“What You Think You Create, What You Feel You Attract, What You Imagine You Become. – Buddha”

William James (1892) identified multiple dimensions of the self, with two levels of hierarchy:

• The process of knowing self (which is called I-Self).
• The resulting Knowledge about self ( which is called  My-Self)

The “I-self” creates 3 types of knowledge based on the observation of “My-Self” which is collectively called “Me-self”. Those 3 collective Self forms the attitude of an individual towards self.

• Material self (representations of the body and possession)
• Social self (characteristics recognized by others) is very closest to Self-esteem
• Spiritual self (representations and evaluative dispositions about self).

Abraham Maslow included self-esteem in the hierarchy of human needs as it plays a central and key role in attaining self-actualization.

Carl Rogers described origin many people’s problems as they despise themselves and consider themselves worthless and incapable of being loved. Hence he put forth the unconditional positive regards and acceptance of self improves the self-esteem.

Researches says on an average 1 out of 8 individuals feels Low self-esteem. Every individual regardless of the gender at one or other point doubt about their abilities and worth that questions their confidence levels about themselves. While most of the people bounce back from their failures from past some people will cling around their past mistakes and imposing negativity on self.

 

When does a person feel low self-esteem?

Self-esteem is very closest to social self, which is the part that influences how an individual feels depending on what others think and feel about them. When an individual has low self-esteem it directly affects their social connectedness and interactions with surrounding situations because of the preconceived fear of rejection, failure, loneliness, negative image of self, embarrassment, vicious perfectionist cycle and negative self-talk.

Individuals with low self-esteem are heavy critics of themselves. While some people depend on the appreciation, approval and praise of others when evaluating self-worth. Others may see their likability in terms of how successful they are, some people will only accept themselves if they succeed but not when they fail. They eventually feel threatened and fear of interacting with others with preconceived fears.

 

How does a person feel when they have Low Self-esteem?

A person who feels low self-esteem experiences the following core beliefs and signs see in themselves are:

Cognitive and Behavioral Signs that are experienced by a person with Low self-esteem:

• “I do not have adequate skills to cope with social and performance situations.”
• “I cannot control my anxiety around people”
• “I’m not enough or this is not good or I won’t be able to cope”
• “What if they don’t like me?”
• “What if they laugh at me?”
• “Hypersensitivity to criticism, and heavy self-criticism”
• “Sees temporary setbacks as failure and intolerable of the failures”
•  “Excessive fear and anxiety while interacting with others or during important interactions with groups”
• “Fear of getting blamed for the mistakes and reliving the past failures”
• “I’m Weird, I’m boring, I’m different from others”
• “I won’t be able to think of anything to say,”
• “I’ll make a fool of myself,” and “People will see I’m anxious.”
• “I should never be anxious.”
• “I have to be beautiful and smart to be liked.”
•  “It’s absolutely essential that I get everyone’s approval.”

Physical Signs that are experienced by a person with low self-esteem during social interactions and during Performance situations:

• Profuse Sweating.
• Light Headedness.
• Shivering.
• Panic Attacks.
• Increase Heart rate.
• Rapid Breathings.

Social Signs that are experienced by a person with low self-esteem:

• Avoiding Social gatherings and important discussions.
• Staying alone or isolating self.
• Shyness and staying quiet and lacking of the ability to voice their feelings and opinions.
• Postponing the Work or Opportunity which requires social interactions.
• Hesitant in asking and taking help from others.
• Giving up easily.
• Accepting negativity and toxicity.
• Not performing even though it’s their turn.

What are the Origins of Low Self-Esteem and does the society has influence on making a person feel as such?

Have you ever wondered how someone develop Low Self-esteem? Well it is found that most of the people develop it from their childhood experiences and events and parenting style, which affects the later life of the individual. Poor self-esteem can result in people thinking them unlikable or unable to perform well in social situations.

Childhood experiences can also include peer pressure, Bullying and teasing in the early years which leaves impact on their later on perception about self.

When parents criticize their children and compares not addressing their their physical and emotional needs putting forth Unrealistic Expectations from the child tend to develop self-doubt, feeling of worthlessness and poor self-confidence resulting in Low Self-Esteem.

Also in some cases when an individual have gone through physical, sexual and emotional abuse develops fears and treats themselves low and vulnerable accepting their failures and Not voicing their emotions and opinions.

While on the other hand the children who were heard, respected, loved, celebrated, and accepted are less likely to develop Low Self-Esteem. In Some cases children grew in challenging environment learned from experience has good self-esteem while the others with good parenting and good peer experience also developed low self-esteem.

 

The Vicious Cycle of Low Self-Esteem in relation with social anxiety:

The people with Low Self-Esteem are more prone to Social Anxiety Disorder and General Anxiety Disorder where they have apprehension about the future and repeating the past.

People with Low Self-Esteem avoid social interactions on order to feel safe and less anxious and also prevent themselves from embarrassment caused by social interactions. Over a period of time they develop lot of limitations and barriers in order to protect themselves from getting hurt. They fear shame and assume this behavior of them to be shyness and there comes lot of misconception about self which affects their self-concept and these behavior of them only serves to strengthen their negative beliefs.

When a person with Low Self-esteem finds a social and challenging situation they are likely to shift their attention towards cognitive and physical signs that are negative and fears the happening of worst which leads to making of the mistake which he doesn’t want to happen.

At that time to avoid it individual looks for the safety behaviors that helped him to avoid such situations repeating the cycle over and over again in a chain.

How to cope with Low Self-Esteem and Social Anxiety?

Start making small changes the way you look at yourself to change the outlook of yourself which starts from self-acceptance and changing the way you talk to yourself replace the negative self-talk with positive self-talk.

“Careful with the words because they are the casting spells and hence in other way we call words as Spellings. –Unknown”

Challenge your Inner voice:

“Talk to yourself like you would to someone you love. – Brene Brown”

Try to listen what your inner voice tells or how it talks to you, observe the patterns, acknowledge good things about you and the abilities you have instead of constantly worrying about what you don’t have. Appreciate the things you did right instead of blaming self for what has went wrong. Practice positive self-love affirmations.

Be Compassionate: 

“The way you treat yourself sets the standards of others.”

Develop a habit of asking self what you need, how you want to be, what can be done to make yourself happy. Think, analyse and work on fulfilling your necessities and wishes, which improves your self-love and feeling of self-respected.

Be Optimistic and stay in present:

“When things change inside you things change around you.”

Don’t cling to the past failures and fixate your mind to failures where you no more live. One mistake or a failure can never decide the whole live of you. Don’t overthink about future expecting negative would happen. Think about the best outcome and work with your full potentials and think of positive and good things which increase hope and confidence.

Forgive Yourself:

“In order to love who you are, you cannot hate the experiences that shaped you. Life is too short to spend it at war with yourself.”

Accept yourself for who you are and work on the things for the betterment instead of self-sabotaging. Understand that we are Humans and all humans have a tendency of making a mistakes and that’s where they learn from. Accept the bad and good emotions equally yet don’t let the bad emotions to sweep out your happiness and self-love. 

 

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