The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

by Branden, Nathaniel

  I have a right to express myself in appropriate ways in appropriate contexts.

  I have a right to stand up for my convictions.

  I have a right to treat my values and feelings as important.

  It serves my interests for others to see and know who I am.

  Living Purposefully

  Only I properly can choose the goals and purposes for which I live. No one else can appropriately design my existence.

  If I am to succeed, I need to learn how to achieve my goals and purposes. I need to develop and then implement a plan of action.

  If I am to succeed, I need to pay attention to the outcome of my actions.

  I serve my interests by a high degree of reality checking—that is, looking for information and feedback that bears on my beliefs, actions, and purposes.

  I must practice self-discipline not as a “sacrifice” but as a natural precondition of being able to achieve my desires.

  Personal Integrity

  I should practice what I preach.

  I should keep my promises.

  I should honor my commitments.

  I should deal with other human beings fairly, justly, benevolently, and compassionately.

  I should strive for moral consistency.

  * * *

  My self-esteem is more valuable than any short-term rewards for its betrayal.

  * * *

  I should strive to make my life a reflection of my inner vision of the good.

  My self-esteem is more valuable than any short-term rewards for its betrayal.

  Beliefs About Reality That Support Self-Esteem

  That which is, is; a fact is a fact.

  Self-chosen blindness does not make the unreal real or the real unreal.

  Respect for the facts of reality (as best I understand them) yields more satisfying results than defiance of the facts of reality.

  Survival and well-being depend on the appropriate exercise of consciousness. Avoidance of the responsibility of awareness is not adaptive.

  In principle, consciousness is reliable; knowledge is attainable; reality is knowable.

  Values that nurture and support the individual’s life and fulfillment on earth are superior to values that endanger or threaten them.

  Human beings are ends in themselves, not means to the ends of others, and ought to be treated as such. An individual human being belongs neither to family nor community nor church nor state nor society nor the world. A human being is not property.

  All adult human associations should be chosen and voluntary.

  We should not sacrifice self to others nor others to self; we should discard the idea of human sacrifice as a moral ideal.

  Relationships based on an exchange of values are superior to those based on the sacrifice of anyone to anyone.

  A world in which we regard ourselves and one another as accountable for our choices and actions works better than a world in which we deny such accountability.

  A denial of personal accountability does not serve anyone’s self-esteem, least of all the person doing the denying.

  The moral, rationally understood, is the practical.

  Commentary

  To say of any of these ideas, “I agree with that,” does not yet indicate that it is integral to the speaker’s belief system. As I stated above, the ideas qualify as beliefs in the sense meant here only if they are experienced as true at a fairly deep level and are manifest in behavior.

  This list of beliefs is not offered as exhaustive. Probably there are others that bear equally on the health of self-esteem. What I have named are those I am aware of that most clearly support the six practices. To the extent that they are genuinely experienced, they tend to inspire consciousness, self-acceptance, self-responsibility, self-assertiveness, purposefulness, and integrity.

  I trust it is obvious that I regard these beliefs as rationally warranted. They are not mere arbitrary “postulates.” But since I am not prepared in this context to offer a rigorous defense of each of them, I will simply observe that they are powerful motivators for the kind of actions that support psychological well-being. Looked at from the perspective of the six pillars, they clearly have functional utility. They are adaptive; they are the fuel of self-esteem.

  A Standard of Value

  Just as the six pillars provides a frame of reference from which to consider beliefs, so they provide a standard by which to consider child-rearing practices, educational practices, the policies of organizations, the value systems of different cultures, and the activities of psychotherapists. In each context we can ask: Is this practice, policy, value, or teaching one that supports and encourages the six pillars or one that discourages and undermines them? Is it more likely to lead toward increased self-esteem or away from it?

  I do not wish to imply that self-esteem is the only criterion by which issues should be judged. But if the nurturing of self-esteem is our purpose, then it is appropriate to know how self-esteem is likely to be affected by different policies and teachings.

  The practices and beliefs we have discussed pertain to “internal” factors that bear on self-esteem; that is, they exist or are generated from within the individual. We will turn now to an examination of “external” factors, that is, factors originating in the environment.

  What is the role and contribution of other people? What is the potential impact of parents, teachers, managers, psychotherapists—and the culture in which one lives? These are the questions I will address in Part III.

  PART III

  External Influences: Self and Others

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  Nurturing a Child’s Self-Esteem

  The proper aim of parental nurturing is to prepare a child for independent survival as an adult. An infant begins in a condition of total dependency. If his or her upbringing is successful, the young man or woman will have evolved out of that dependency into a self-respecting and self-responsible human being who is able to respond to the challenges of life competently and enthusiastically. He or she will be “self-supporting”—not merely financially, but intellectually and psychologically.

  A newborn infant does not yet have a sense of personal identity; there is no awareness of separateness, not, at any rate, as we who are adults experience such awareness. To evolve into selfhood is the primary human task. It is also the primary human challenge, because success is not guaranteed. At any step of the way, the process can be interrupted, frustrated, blocked, or sidetracked, so that the human individual is fragmented, split, alienated, stuck at one level or another of mental or emotional maturity. It is not difficult to observe that most people are stranded somewhere along this path of development. Nonetheless, as I discuss in Honoring the Self, the central goal of the maturational process is evolution toward autonomy.

  It is an old and excellent adage that effective parenting consists first of giving a child roots (to grow) and then wings (to fly). The security of a firm base—and the self-confidence one day to leave it. Children do not grow up in a vacuum. They grow up in a social context. Indeed, much of the drama of unfolding individuation and autonomy occurs and can only occur in and through encounters with other human beings. In the first encounters of childhood, a child can experience the safety and security that allows a self to emerge—or the terror and instability that fractures the self before it is fully formed. In subsequent encounters, a child can experience being accepted and respected or rejected and demeaned. A child can experience the appropriate balance of protection and freedom or (1) the overprotectiveness that infantilizes or (2) the underprotectiveness that demands of the child resources that may not yet exist. Such experiences, as well as others we will discuss, contribute to the kind of self and self-esteem that develops over time.

  * * *

  To evolve into selfhood is the primary human task. It is also the primary human challenge, because success is not guaranteed.

  * * *

  The Antecedents of Self-Esteem

  Some of the best work that psychologists
have done concerning self-esteem has been in the area of child-parent relations. An example is Stanley Coopersmith’s landmark study, The Antecedents of Self-Esteem. Coopersmith’s goal was to identify the parental behaviors most often found where children grew up manifesting healthy self-esteem. I want to distill the essence of his report, as a prologue to the discussion that follows.

  Coopersmith discovered no significant correlations with such factors as family wealth, education, geographic living area, social class, Father’s occupation, or always having Mother at home. What he did find to be significant was the quality of the relationship between the child and the important adults in his or her life.

  Specifically, he found five conditions associated with high self-esteem in children:

  1. The child experiences total acceptance of thoughts, feelings, and the value of his or her person.

  2. The child operates in a context of clearly defined and enforced limits that are fair, nonoppressive, and negotiable. The child is not given unrestricted “freedom.” Consequently, the child experiences a sense of security; there is a clear basis for evaluating his or her behavior. Further, the limits generally entail high standards, as well as confidence that the child will be able to meet them. Consequently, the child usually does.

  3. The child experiences respect for his or her dignity as a human being. The parents do not use violence or humiliation or ridicule to control and manipulate. The parents take the child’s needs and wishes seriously, whether or not they can accede to them in a particular instance. The parents are willing to negotiate family rules within carefully drawn limits. In other words, authority, but not authoritarianism, is operating.

  As an expression of this overall attitude, parents are less inclined to punitive discipline (and there tends to be less need for punitive discipline), and more inclined to put the emphasis on rewarding and reinforcing positive behavior. They focus on what they do want rather than on what they do not want—on the positive rather than the negative.

  The parents show an interest in the child, in his or her social and academic life, and they are generally available for discussion when and as the child wants it.

  4. The parents uphold high standards and high expectations in terms of behavior and performance. Their attitude is not “anything goes.” They have both moral and performance expectations that they convey in a respectful, benevolent, and nonoppressive manner; the child is challenged to be the best he or she can be.

  5. The parents themselves tend to enjoy a high level of self-esteem. They model (what I call) self-efficacy and self-respect. The child sees living examples of that which he or she needs to learn. After carefully explaining such antecedents of self-esteem as his research could reveal, Coopersmith goes on to observe: “We should note that there are virtually no parental patterns of behavior or parental attitudes that are common to all parents of children with high self-esteem.”

  This last observation underscores our awareness that parental behavior alone does not decide the course of a child’s psychological development. Apart from the fact that sometimes the most important influence in a child’s life is a teacher, or a grandparent, or a neighbor, external factors are only part of the story, never the whole, as I have stressed repeatedly. We are causes, not merely effects. As beings whose consciousness is volitional, beginning in childhood and continuing throughout our life we make choices that have consequences for the kind of person we become and the level of self-esteem we attain.

  To say that parents can make it easier or harder for a child to develop healthy self-esteem is to say that parents can make it easier or harder for a young person to learn the six practices and make them a natural and integral part of his or her life. The six practices provide a standard for assessing parental policies: Do these policies encourage or discourage consciousness, self-acceptance, self-responsibility, self-assertiveness, purposefulness, and integrity? Do they raise or lower the probability that a child will learn self-esteem-supporting behaviors?

  Basic Safety and Security

  Beginning life in a condition of total dependency, a child has no more basic requirement—as far as parental behavior is concerned—than that of safety and security. This entails the satisfaction of physiological needs, protection from the elements, and basic caretaking in all its obvious aspects. It entails the creation of an environment in which the child can feel nurtured and safe.

  In this context the process of separation and individuation can unfold. A mind that can later learn to trust itself can begin to emerge. A person with a confident sense of boundaries can develop.

  If the child is to learn to trust other human beings, and, in effect, to find confidence that life is not malevolent, the foundation is laid at this level.

  Of course, the need for safety and security is not limited to the early years. The self is still forming during adolescence, and a home life of chaos and anxiety can place severe obstacles in the path of normal teenage development.

  In my work with adults I often see the long-term effects of one form of trauma associated with the frustration of this need—a child’s repeated experience of terror at the hands of adults. Certain therapy clients convey a quality of fear or anxiety that seems to reach back to the first months of life and to invade the deepest structure of the psyche. Such clients are distinguished not only by the intensity of their anxiety, nor by its pervasiveness, but by the fact that one senses that the person experiencing the anxiety is not the adult but rather a child or even an infant inside that adult’s body—or, more precisely, inside the adult’s psyche. These clients report that they have had feelings of basic terror as far back as they can remember.

  Setting aside the possibility of birth trauma, there are two factors to be considered here. The first is the objective circumstances of their environment and the treatment they received as children. The second is the question of an innate disposition to experience anxiety: some individuals’ threshold is almost certainly lower than others, so that what is not traumatic for one child is for another.

  The terror might be of a physically violent father, a moody, unpredictable, emotionally disturbed mother, a menacing family member whose scowl conjures up images of unimaginable torture—a terror from which there is no escape and that plunges the child into unbearable feelings of helplessness.

  * * *

  The greater a child’s terror, and the earlier it is experienced, the harder the task of building a strong and healthy sense of self.

  * * *

  A nurse of thirty-eight, Sonia would involuntarily flinch if I inadvertently raised my voice slightly, especially while shifting in my chair. She claimed that her earliest memories were of her mother and father screaming at each other while she lay in her crib with her own cries ignored. Her sense that the world is a hostile and dangerous place was almost cellular. She was motivated by fear in almost all of her choices and actions, with negative consequences for her self-esteem. I suspected that she came into this world with a greater-than-average disposition to experience anxiety, made immeasurably worse by two parents under the sway of the irrational within themselves.

  A thirty-four-year-old professor of philosophy, Edgar said his earliest memories were of being forced to stand on the bed while his father—a distinguished and respected physician in his community—beat him violently with a strap. “My cries could never make him stop. It was as if he were insane. He could destroy me and there was nothing I could do. That feeling has never left me. I’m thirty-four years old and I still feel that in the face of any kind of danger I have no means of defending myself. I’m afraid. I’ve always been afraid. I can’t imagine who I would be without my fear.”

  The greater a child’s terror, and the earlier it is experienced, the harder the task of building a strong and healthy sense of self. To learn the six practices on the foundation of an all-consuming sense of powerlessness—traumatic powerlessness—is very difficult. It is against this destructive feeling that good parenting aims to protect a child.
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  Nurturing Through Touch

  Today we know that touch is essential for a child’s healthy development. In its absence, children can die, even when other needs are met.

  Through touch we send sensory stimulation that helps the infant’s brain to develop. Through touch we convey love, caring, comfort, support, nurturing. Through touch we establish contact between one human being and another. Research shows that touch—such as massage—can profoundly affect health. At some level this is often known intuitively because in non-Western parts of the world the massaging of babies is standard practice. In the West it is not, and one reason that has been suggested is the bias against the body found in Christianity.

  One of the most powerful ways parents can convey love is through touch. Long before a child can understand words, he or she understands touch. Declarations of love without touch are unconvincing and hollow. Our bodies cry out for the reality of the physical. We want to experience that our person is loved—valued—embraced—not some disembodied abstraction.

  * * *

  Long before a child can understand words, he or she understands touch.

  * * *

  Children who grow up with little experience of being touched often carry an ache deep within them that never entirely vanishes. There is a hole in their self-regard. “Why could I never sit on my father’s knee?” clients will say. “Why did Mother convey such reticence—even disgust—about physical touch?” The unspoken sentence is, “Why did they not love me enough to want to hold me?” And sometimes, “If my own parents didn’t want to touch me, how can I expect anyone else to want to?”