The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

by Branden, Nathaniel

  One can subscribe to the merit of acceptance and respect in the abstract, but its implementation, even among well-intentioned therapists, is not always obvious. I am not thinking primarily of such obvious mistakes as resorting to sarcasm, moral condemnation, or other demeaning behavior. I am thinking of the subtler forms of authoritativeness, one-upmanship, “You’re doomed without my guidance,” and so forth, that put the client in an inferior position and hint at the therapist’s omniscience. Psychoanalysis, which took its model from the traditional physician-patient relationship, may be especially vulnerable to this error, but the error can show up in any school of therapy. The error may have less to do with the theoretical orientation of the therapist than with his or her ability to manage personal needs for appreciation and admiration. I like to tell students, “The goal is not to prove that you are brilliant. The goal is to assist clients to discover that they are brilliant.”

  This is one of the reasons I favor experiential learning over explicit teaching (without denying that sometimes explicit teaching can be appropriate). In experiential learning, which often entails the use of psychological exercises, processes, homework assignments, and the like, the client discovers relevant realities rather than hears about them from an authority. Autonomy is strengthened in the very nature of the learning process.

  Uncovering the “Bright” Side

  Most people who seek psychotherapy have as one of their basic goals self-understanding. They want to feel visible to their therapist and they want to gain clearer visibility to themselves.

  To many people—and here the influence of traditional psychoanalysis is profound—self-understanding is primarily associated with the uncovering of dark secrets. Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, said somewhere that the difference between psychoanalysis and detective work is that, for the detective, the crime is known and the challenge is to discover the identity of the criminal, whereas to the psychoanalyst, the criminal is known and the challenge is to discover the crime. Even if one takes this as a bit of poetry not to be taken literally, it has rather unpleasant implications. Many clinicians who are not necessarily psychoanalysts share this mind-set. Their professional pride is centered on their ability to lead the client to confront “the dark side” (in Jungian terminology, “the Shadow”) and to integrate rather than disown it. This can be a necessary and important project, to be sure. However, a self-esteem-oriented therapy has different priorities—a different emphasis.

  There is no need less recognized in most people than the need to contact their unidentified (and possibly disowned) resources. This is the need to understand the strengths they do not know they possess, the potentials they have never explored, the capacity for self-healing and self-development they have never summoned. A fundamental distinction among therapists, whatever their theoretical orientation, is whether they think of their task primarily in terms of uncovering assets or shortcomings, virtues or flaws, deficits or resources. Self-esteem-oriented psychotherapy focuses on positives—on the uncovering and activating of strengths—as the highest priority. It deals with negatives of necessity but always in the context of the positive focus and emphasis.

  Everyone who has any familiarity with psychology knows about the danger of disowning the murderer within. Far fewer people understand the tragedy of disowning the hero within. In psychotherapy, it is often easy enough to see the part of the individual that is neurotic. The challenge is to see—and mobilize—that part that is healthy.

  * * *

  Everyone who has any familiarity with psychology knows about the danger of disowning the murderer within. Far fewer people understand the tragedy of disowning the hero within.

  * * *

  Sometimes we are simply ignorant of our positive resources. We do not recognize all we are capable of. Sometimes, however, we repress our knowledge. I remember working many years ago with a young woman in a therapy group. She was quite comfortable saying the most outrageously negative (and unjust) things about herself. I asked her, as an experiment, to stand facing the group and say aloud, repeatedly, “The truth is, I’m actually highly intelligent.” Her voice choked and at first she could not do it. Then I helped her to say it—and she began to weep. So I gave her the sentence stem: The bad thing about admitting my intelligence is—. Here were her first endings:

  My family will hate me.

  No one in my family is supposed to have a mind.

  My sisters and brothers will be jealous.

  I won’t belong anywhere.

  I’ll have to take responsibility for my life.

  Then I gave her the stem: If I were to bring my intelligence to bear on my problems—. Her endings included:

  I would know that I’m already responsible for my life whether I admit it or not.

  I would see that I’m living in the past.

  I would know that I’m not a little girl anymore.

  I would see that it’s the little girl who’s scared, not me the adult.

  I would take possession of my life.

  Then I gave her the stem: The frightening thing about admitting my strengths is—. Her endings included:

  No one would feel sorry for me [laughing].

  I’d move into unfamiliar territory.

  I’d have to take a fresh look at my boyfriend.

  I’d know nothing is holding me back but me.

  I might be alone.

  I’d have to learn a new way of living.

  Suppose people put expectations on me.

  I’d have to learn to assert myself.

  It doesn’t feel frightening right now!

  There are any number of ways skillful therapists put clients in touch with their positive resources, and it is not necessary to explore them here. What is important here is only the basic issue: Is the therapist primarily oriented to liabilities or assets? (One cannot always take a therapist’s word for it, either, since behavior often differs from professed belief.) One of the secrets of Virginia Satir’s great gifts as a family therapist was her conviction that people possessed all the resources they needed to solve their problems, and her ability to transmit that conviction to the people with whom she worked. In terms of producing results, it is one of the most important abilities a psychotherapist can possess.

  Survival Strategies

  Clients need to understand that humans are, by nature, problem solvers. The solutions we produce, in response to the difficulties and challenges we encounter, aim consciously or subconsciously at filling our needs. Sometimes the means we adopt are impractical and even self-destructive—“neurotic”—but at some level our intention is to take care of ourselves. Even suicide can be understood as a tragic effort at self-care, perhaps escape from intolerable suffering.

  When we are young we may disown and repress feelings and emotions that evoke the disapproval of significant others and shake our own equilibrium, and we pay a price in later years in self-alienation, distorted perceptions, and any number of possible symptoms. Yet seen from the perspective of the child, the repression has functional utility; it has survival value; its intention is to make the child able to live more successfully—or at least to minimize pain. Or again, when we are young we may experience a good deal of hurt and rejection and develop a policy, in “self-protection,” to reject others first. This policy does not make for a happy life. And yet its intention is not to cause suffering but to reduce it. Survival strategies that do not serve our interests but in fact hurt us, but to which we nonetheless cling like life preservers in a stormy sea, are the ones psychologists label “neurotic.” The ones that serve our interests we properly label “good adaptations”—such as learning to walk, speak, think, and earn a living.

  Clients can be deeply ashamed of some of their dysfunctional responses to life’s challenges. They do not look at their behavior from the perspective of its intended functional utility. They are aware of their timidity or overaggressiveness or avoidance of human intimacy or compulsive sexuality, but not of its roots. They are not in
contact with the needs they are blindly trying to address. Their shame and guilt do not make it easier for them to improve their condition, but harder. So one of the ways we can support self-esteem is by educating clients in the idea of survival strategies, helping them see that their worst mistakes can be understood as misguided attempts at self-preservation. Feelings of self-condemnation need to be examined and understood, but after this has been accomplished, their continued existence serves no useful purpose. When they are diminished the client is freer to consider solutions that can better fill their needs. “If it’s your own perception that what you do doesn’t work, are you willing to look at alternatives you might find more satisfying? Are you willing to experiment with trying something else?”

  Integrating Subpersonalities

  On a technical level perhaps the two methods that most distinguish my approach are the use of sentence completions, which I have illustrated throughout this book as well as in several of my previous books, and working with subpersonalities, which I turn to now.*

  In my discussion of the second pillar of self-esteem, the practice of self-acceptance, I talked about accepting “all the parts” of ourselves, and I mentioned thoughts, emotions, actions, and memories. Yet our “parts” include actual subselves with values, perspectives, and feelings distinctively their own. I am not speaking of “multiple personalities,” in the pathological sense. I am speaking of normal constituents of a human psyche, of which most people are unaware. When a psychotherapist wishes to assist in the development of healthy self-esteem, an understanding of the dynamics of subpersonalities is an invaluable tool. This is territory that an individual is not likely to discover on his or her own.

  The idea of subpersonalities is almost as old as psychology itself, and some version of it may be found in any number of writers. It expresses the understanding that a monolithic view of the self, in which each individual has one personality and one personality only, with one set of values, perceptions, and responses, is an oversimplification of human reality. But beyond that generalization, there are great differences in how psychologists understand subpersonalities or work with them in psychotherapy.

  My wife and colleague, Devers Branden, first persuaded me of the importance of subpersonality work to self-esteem and began developing innovative ways of identifying and integrating these parts several years before I became seriously interested in the subject. Our work reflects the observation that unrecognized or disowned and rejected subselves tend to become sources of conflict, unwanted feelings, and inappropriate behavior. Subselves that are recognized, respected, and integrated into the total personality become sources of energy, emotional richness, increased options, and a more fulfilling sense of identity. The subject is a big one and can only be introduced here.

  To begin with the most obvious example: In addition to the adult-self that we all recognize as “who we are,” there is within our psyche a child-self—the living presence of the child we once were. As a potential of our consciousness, a mind-state into which everyone shifts at times, that child’s frame of reference and way of responding is an enduring component of our psyche. But we may have repressed that child long ago, repressed his or her feelings, perceptions, needs, responses, out of the misguided notion that “murder” was necessary to grow into adulthood. This recognition led to the conviction that no one could be completely whole who did not reconnect with and create a conscious and benevolent relationship with the child-self. This task is especially important for the attainment of autonomy. I saw that when the task is neglected, the tendency is to look for healing from the outside, from other people, and this never works: the healing that is needed is not between self and others but between adult-self and child-self. A person walking around with painful and lifelong feelings of rejection is unlikely to be aware that the problem has become internalized and that he or she is engaged in self-rejection, including the rejection of the child-self by the adult-self, which is why no external source of approval ever heals the wound.

  First, what do I mean by a “subself” or a “subpersonality”? (The two terms are used synonymously.)

  A subself or subpersonality is a dynamic component of an individual’s psyche, having a distinctive perspective, value orientation, and “personality” of its own; that may be more or less dominant in the individual’s responses at any particular time; that the individual may be more or less conscious of, more or less accepting and benevolent toward; that may be more or less integrated into the individual’s total psychological system; and that is capable of growth and change over time. (I call a subself “dynamic” because it actively interacts with other components of the psyche and is not merely a passive repository of attitudes.)

  The child-self is the component of the psyche containing the “personality” of the child one once was, with that child’s range of values, emotions, needs, and responses; not a generic child or universal archetype, but a specific, historical child, unique to an individual’s history and development. (This is very different from “the child ego-state” in Transactional Analysis; TA uses a generic model.)

  Nearly two decades ago I gave a self-esteem seminar in which I guided the class through an exercise that involved an imaginary encounter with the child one once was. Afterward, during the break, a woman walked over to me and said, “Do you want to know what I did when I realized that the child sitting under the tree, waiting for me, was my five-year-old self? I created a stream behind the tree, threw the child into it, and drowned her.” This was said with a bitter, brittle smile.

  What the incident dramatizes is not only that we may be unconscious of any particular subself but that awareness may be instantly accompanied by hostility and rejection. Does it need to be argued that we cannot have healthy self-esteem while despising part of who we are? I have never worked with a depressed personality whose child-self did not feel hated (not merely ignored or rejected) by an older part. In How to Raise Your Self-Esteem I offer a number of exercises for identifying and integrating the child-self and the teenage-self (in addition to the work offered in the self-esteem program above).

  The teenage-self is the component of the psyche containing the “personality” of the adolescent one once was, with that teenager’s range of values, emotions, needs, and responses; not a generic teenager or universal archetype, but a specific, historical one, unique to an individual’s history and development.

  * * *

  I have never worked with a depressed personality whose child-self did not feel hated (not merely ignored or rejected) by an older part.

  * * *

  Often, when working with couples on relationship problems, an exploration of the teenage-self is especially useful. This is the subself that often plays an important role in selecting a partner. And this is the mind-state to which we often revert unconsciously during times of relationship difficulty or crisis, as manifested in such withdrawal behaviors as “I don’t care!” or “No one’s going to get to me!” or “Don’t tell me what to do!”

  I recall once treating a couple, both psychotherapists, who came into my office furious at each other. He was forty-one and she was thirty-nine, but they looked like teenagers in their angry defiance of each other. On the way to my office she had said to him that when they arrived he should tell me some particular piece of information; to give her suggestion “authority,” she had evidently dropped into an “older” voice, which he heard as the voice of his mother. “Don’t tell me what to do!” he snapped. As an adolescent she had experienced “constant” reproaches from her parents, and, dropping into an adolescent mind-state in response to his rebuke, she slammed her fist against his shoulder and shouted, “Don’t talk to me that way!” Later, when they were back in their normal adult consciousness, they were mortified at their behavior—“as if we were possessed by demons,” one of them said. This is what it can feel like when a subpersonality takes over and we do not understand what is happening. I had helped them pull out of their teenage mind-state by asking them o
ne question: “How old do you feel right now and is that the age you need to be to solve this problem?”

  The opposite-gender-self is the component of the psyche containing the feminine subpersonality of the male and the masculine subpersonality of the female; not a generic “feminine” or “masculine” or universal archetype, but individual for each man or woman, reflecting aspects of his or her personal development, learning, acculturation, and overall development.

  There tends to be a fairly strong correlation between how we relate to the opposite gender in the world and how we relate to the opposite gender within. The man who professes to find women an incomprehensible mystery is almost certainly completely out of touch with the feminine within—just as a woman who professes to find men incomprehensible is out of touch with her masculine side. In therapy I have found that one of the most powerful ways to help men and women become more effective in love relationships is to work with them on their relationship to their opposite-gender-self—making the relationship more conscious, accepting, benevolent, and therefore more integrated into the total personality. Not surprisingly, women are often far more comfortable with the idea that they have an internal masculine side than men are with the idea of an internal feminine side; but neither subself is difficult to demonstrate. (I might mention that none of this has anything to do with homosexuality or bisexuality.)

  The mother-self is the component of the psyche containing an internalization of aspects of the personality, perspective, and values of an individual’s mother (or other older female “mother figures” who had an influence and impact during childhood). Again, we deal with the individual and the historical, not the generic or universal “Mother.” (And again this is very different from TA’s generic “parent ego-state.” Mother and Father are both parents, but they are very different and should not be treated as a psychological unit; they often send very different messages and have very different attitudes and values.)