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发信人: pipiw (皮皮), 信区: PsychoAnalysis
标 题: Chapter 10 Building Self-Confidence and
发信站: Unknown Space – 未名空间 (Wed Feb 2 21:59:21 2005) WWW-POST
Chapter 10 Building Self-Confidence and Self-Esteem
Lacking Self-Confidence
Rachel believed she could never be confident. She was convinced that confident
people had something that she just did not have, like blond hair or long legs.
She was not sure how the differences between her and them allowed their
confidence to remain strong in the face of adversity while hers remained
fragile and elusive, even in good times. She suspected that confidence was
unchangeable because it was written in the stars, or determined by chance.
Confidence to her meant having a strong personality, which was either built in
from the start or built up from encouragement at home and at school. Now that
she was an adult of 32, it seemed to her that opportunities for becoming
confident had gone for good. Lacking self-confidence was a cross she had to
bear-whatever she did it was likely to remain with her and to let her down, in
the same way as her unmanageably frizzy hair. She could wait for the lucky
break(the perfect hair lotion, or a fashion for corkscrew curls), but in her
heart of hearts she believed she had no other option but to remain forever
unconfident.
In the box on the following page, you can see how low welf-confidence can
affect the four aspects of like. Your thinking, your feelings, your behavior,
and your body. Being unconfident has surprisingly pervasive effects-it steaks
its way into hidden books and crannies and interferes with the things you want
to do even when you least expect it. Look at the box and t hink about your own
level of confidence. Adapt the list, if necessary, to fit your own experience.
BOX Begin
Some of the effects of low self-confidence
Thinking
I cant
That’s too difficult
I don’t know how
maybe I won’t be able to handle this.
I won’t be good enough, someone else would do better.
I just can’t decide what to do
Feelings
Apprehension
Anticipatory anxiety
Worry, especially about forthcoming difficulties
Frustration and anger with yourself
Fear of the unknown, or of new situations
Resentment-it seems so easy for others
Discouragement and feeling demoralized
Behavior
More passive than active, keeping yourself in the background
Finding it hard to make suggestions, or put yourself forward
Prevaricating, being a slow starter
Avoiding taking on anything new or making changes in your life
Seeking help and advice even when you know the answer
Hesitating-and repeatedly needing encouragement
Taking a back seat
Asking for reassurance
Bodily signs of low confidence
Posture tending to stoop, or repeating into yourself
Not looking people in the eye
Humbling or fidgeting
Feelings of tension and nervousness
Sluggishness and lethargy
BOX END
Becoming More Confident: Four Basic Insights
Rachel started to work on her confidence from the moment we first met her.
Since confidence comes from inside, there war little point in giving her
ansers she might not believe, or could easily discount. She was ready with her
favorite objection:” it’s easy for you , but I am just not like that”.
Instead, she took on the following assignment: to find out more about
confidence from the point of view of others, this assignment made sense to
Rechel because it could tell her more about the nature of this elusive
concept, and carrying it out involved nothing more difficult than talking to
people she already knew. She spoke to her brother, to someone who was starting
her training as a nurse; to an aunt; to a colleague; and to various friends.
She was surprised, once she developed ways of dropping the topic into the
conversation, how many people had something to say about it, and how easy it
was for her to sit and listen. Here are some of the things she asked:”what do
you think confidence is?” “where does confidence come from?””can you think
of someone who is completely confident?” “how can you tell if someone is
confident or not?” “how do you feel when you are talking to someone who is
not at all confident?” “does a confident person always feel confident?”
Rachel made both mental and written notes about her findings so that we could
talk about them later. She found the following four pints the most helpful-
and they fit with what we know about confidence.
1. CONFIDENCE IS NOT JUST ONE THING
Confidence is not just one thing, it ismany. Rachel was not confident when
discussing a video she had watched with some friends, but she had no problem
finding her way across country to visit her aunt. She had stopped to ask the
way when she got lost, and did not berate herself for getting lost along the
way. Most of the people she spoke to said similar thins. One of them thought
she would never be able to make sense of her tax form, and had found learning
to spell so difficult that she treated it as a lost cause, but she still led
her daily exercise classes with energy and enthusiasm. The most confident
person Rachel spoke to was her sousin, a buyer for a clothes store- but even
he admitted that he lacked self-confidence from time to time, especially when
training his junior staff, despite his acknowledged succesis. He knew he was
good at his job, but he had learned it the hard way, by being thrown in at the
deep end and having to get on with it. Now recruits to his department now
arrived with college-polished theories, talking a language that he told
himself was “jargon,” but that he feared, deep down, was too clever for him.
He felt particularly at sea when the “common sense” he hardly needed to put
into words was given textbook names that distanced him from the reality he
knew. Rachel condlued that whether or not you feel confident depends on what
you are doing. Labeling yourself as irredeemably unconfident is like failing
to distinguish between all the different ways in which you can be confident or
unconfident.
2. APPEARANCES CAN BE MISLEADING
Many people appear confident even when they are not. It is as if they know
they might make a mistake, get things wrong, or put their foot in their mouth,
but still behave as if everything will be all right in the end. When learning
to give injections for the first time, rachel’s friend, the trainee nurse,
said she thought about what she ahd been taught and about the more experienced
people to whom she could trun in a crisis. She hid her uncertainties for the
sake of her patients. When she concentrated fully on what she was doing, she
found there was little room left for doubts to creep in. everyone Rachel spoke
to could think of something that made them feel doubtful or shaky. Rachel
learned that most people felt less confident than they looked.
3. CONFIDENC COMES FROM DOING THINS
Everyone Rachel spoke to agreed that confidence comes from doing things.
Before you can ride a bicycle or drive a car, you have to learn how-
confidence comes with practice, which makes it easier to recognize and accept
that you really can do those things. Mistakes are inevitable when you are a
novice. In fact, they are an important part of the learning process. Everyone
makes mistakes, and they only get in the way if you let them undermine your
confidence. Learn to shrug them off, or laugh about them with others who have
found themselves in the same tangle(the video recorder that always misses the
start of the program, the pasta that turns into a glutinous blob of sticky
seaweed). If you try to avoid all mistakes, you run the risk of ceasing to
learn.
4. PEOPLE TAKE YOU AT YOUR OWN ESTIMATION
When Rachel was using a friend’s lownmower, something went wrong. She was
mortified. “I am so sorry,” she said, “I can’t think what I could have
done to it.” She assumed the breakdown was her fault, and her friend went
along with the assumption, hardly noticing that he had done so. Later it
turned out that the clutch cable had snapped, and might have done so at any
time. Her apologies, and her instant estimet of her own incompetence, led both
of them astray: she convicted herself efore she had committed a crime. He
assumed a crime had been committed without even thingk about the cause of the
breakdown. Rachel started to think abain about her habit of apologizing- of
assuming she was responsible for every mess she came across.
These four insights, coupled with the six guiding strategies which follow,
proved the basis on which to start to build self-confidence.
Six Strategies for Building Confidence
1.PRACTICE
the first time you toss the pancakes they may fall apart- or onto the floor.
But in the end, you will flip them over easily. Make building your confidence
a habit- and that means practicing the other five strategies whenever you can.
Do not think about building your confidence only when you are particularly
vulnerable. Think about it when your are feeling buoyant, too. The more it
becomes a habit, a practiced skill, the more secure your inner confidence will
be when you really need it.
2.BEHAVE “AS IF”
When Cathy was sixteen years old, she flew with her family to Kuala Lumpur. A
few minutes before landing they became engulfed in a severe tropical strom.
There was insufficient fuel to fly to another airport. The pilot was forced to
land after the runway had been flooded and closed to other aircraft. Sheet
lightening surrounded the plane and fire trucks lined the aire strip. The
lights went out. Someone screamed as the plance suddenly lost height. Cathy
grabbed the arms of her sear. Her father, meanwhile, sat calmly reading his
book. He turned the pages when he could see to do so; he kept his eyes on the
print. The aura of confidence which exuded from him was almost palpable. It
spread to those around and helped others besides his family to cope with the
fear of the moment. It also helped him. H, too, was anxious, but by behaving
as if he felt confident, he helped himself, and others, to become confident.
Ask yourself, at an unconfident moment (preparing for an interview or a
presentation to your boss). “how would I behave if I really felt confident?”
“how would so-and-so handle this?” “” where so-and-so is a confident
person that you know. Adopting the behavior of confidence – the posture, the
actions, and the thoughts- starts you on the upward spiral of increasing
self-confidence.
3.TAKE THE ZIG-ZAG PATH
confident behavior, especially when it is a newfound acquisition, can
sometimes go to your head. This happened with Maggie who had read about
assertiveness and confidence building. She spent three weeks pushing herself
to make nre strides, making sure that others noticed her. In three weeks,
however, she had become insensitive to how others felt. Concentrating
exclusively on herself, she ahd no attention left over for them. Her
colleagues withdrew from her- when they saw her coming , they thought:”Oh no,
Maggie again!” and Maggie knew that this was how they felt. Not surprisingly,
she was upset and confused about what to do next. She felt at risk of doing
herself more harm than good.
It is important, therefore, to pay attention to what works, and watch out for
the clues that come from others. Flexibility and confidence go hand in hand.
Rigidity, even if it feels safer, gets in the way as no two situations are
exactly the same. Don’t worry if you need to take a zig-zag path to your
goal. People lacking in self-confidence often feel as if they have to steer a
careful, well-planned travel rout, to avoid alarming pitfalls. But the
pitfalls are largely imaginary, and the fear of taking a wrong step is
inhibiting and becomes counterproductive.
4.MAKE THE MOST OF OUR MISTAKES AND THEN IGNORE THEM
The mistake made by unconfident people is to think that mistakes matter. If
you tried every day for the next year to make a mistake that nobody had ever
made before, you would most probably fail. What matters is not doing something
“wrong” nor doing something “badly”, but whether you can recognize the
mistake and use it to try to set yourself on a better path next time. Samuel
Beckett said it for us:”No matter, Try again, Fail again, fail better/”
Errors are for learning. Only those who have ceased to develop never take a
wrong step. Mistakes are a source of information. The newspapers were only too
ready to tell us all about it when a U.S. President confused the Balkans with
the Baltic. They made hay with the political implications of the error. But
the furor blew over within a couple of days and handly seemed to interrupt the
President’s flow of normally confident speeches, decisions, and actions. He
learned from his mistake and then ignored it, getting on with the business at
hand. Would any mistake you might make be more embarrassing?
5.LIMIT THE SELF-BLAME
apply the “water-under-the-bridge” rule, and operate a statute of
limitations, kicking yourself for past inadequacies, confusions, or failures
gives fuel to your internal wavering voice- cut off its supply of oxygen and
use an encouraging voice instead. Imagine you had a champion whose job it was
to bring out the best in you. What encouraging things would this person be
whispering in your ear? Amplify those messages, so you can hear them loud and
clear.
6.BE KIND TO YOURSELF
being kind to yourself is such an important strategy, and in our society such
and underrated one that we have devoted a whole chapter to it(chapter 7). It
is a key stratey for building self-confidence. Problems with self-confidence
are often rootedin a bad habit of punishing ourselver and of failing to seek
out rewards and pleasures. If the habit of self-punishment is reversed, and
you learn to treat yourself right, your confidence will be able to grow.
Self-Confidence and Self-Esteem
Rachel knew her self-confidence had taken a turn for the better when she
booked a water-sports holiday with her friends. She was not a good swimmer,
and only learned to put her head under water when she was 14, shamed into it
at the time by school friends. But she was prepared to give it a try. She was
even prepared to do only what she could manage and watch the rest. She no
longer felt as if it mattered much how good or bad she turned out to be at the
new venture. She had begun to believe in her ability to cope with success or
failure as each came her way.
So she discovered that confidence spreads-from things you can do to the
general feeling that you can learn to do things. This is why a good school
proveds such a variety of opportunities. The trip to explore and underground
cave system provides important lessons in competence as well as in geography.
Helping to look after new members of the school, to make the stage scenery, or
play the trombone in the school orchestra gives children a chance to make
mistakes with all th rest, and to learn how to correct them. Those who fall
flat on their faces learn two important lessons: first, how to pick themselves
up again; and second, that falling flat is not a real disaster. Protecting
children from making their own mistakes does not help them to build their
self-confidence: providing a safe environment within which they can make
mistakes- and within which they can learn – is far more effective. It is
sometimes harder for people who have sailed through early life with very
little struggle and strife to cope with the difficulties and setbacks that
evertually come their way, since they have had much less practice earlier on.
Self-confidence is concerned with how we feel about our abilities. But even
the most confident people can feel that they are no good or not good enough,
or that they don’t matter. Being good at something, believeing that you
handle most of the problems that come your way, may still not make you feel
worthwhile. So building up confidence is only part of the story. Self-esteem
needs separate consideration. Self-esteem is about your values, and whether
you live up to them; it is about your sense that orhter people value and
accept you irrespective of your achievements; and it is about whether you
value yourself.
Alice Walker, when she wrote the color purple, started the book with a vivid
and moving image of low self-esteem. Celie knew what others though of
her:”she ugly.” “she ain’t smart.” Her feelings counted with nobody. Her
children were taken away. She was abused and forced into a relationship of
subservience and disregard, not even recognized as sufficiently real to count
as a marriage. She is reduced to saying ”I don’t know how to fight. All I
know how to do is stay alive.” “I don’t fight, I stay where I am told.”
The book tells the story of how Celie discovers (or rediscovers) herself and
her ability to value herself. This is what self-esteem is about.
The value of self-esteem
Self-esteem is a difficult concept. If it is high we feel good about
ourselves, and if it is low we feel bad about ourselves. This much is
straightforward. The higher our self-esteem and the more likely we are to
achieve our potential, and the lower our self-esteem the more inhibited we
will be. There is nothing so disabling as a sense of worthlessness. People who
feel they are “worthless’ or “do not count” also feel they have nothing to
contribute. They hold themselves back and the prophecy becomes
self-fulfilling.
Research has shown that children with low self-esteem don’t try as hard and
have lower expectations of success than others. A strong positive self-esteem
in adults is associated with being more assertive, with better physical
health, with more satisfying relationships, and with an increased aboility to
tolerate and accept differences in others. People with lower self-esteem may
denigrate others, including their companions, and thus get stuck in the
“inferiority complex”: “Anybody I like wouldn’t like me; therefore, anyone
who likes me isn’t worth liking.”
Sources of self-esteem. William James, writing in the 1890s, recognized that
self-esteem depends on value-judgments made about the self, and not simply on
a list of qualities or achievements- being a good friend, mathematician, or
swimmer. This was the truth which Marc, the chef, discovered, William James
realized that value judgments about oneself are closely associated with
judgments made about us by others, and value judgments are associated with
corresponding feelings. They make you feel good or bad.
What makes slef-esteem such an elusive idea is that is is so central to our
feelings. It is as though it provides the medium through which everything else
is experienced, like seeing the world through a colored, or self-doubting,
filter. It is perhaps not surprising therefore that the origins of our level
of self-esteem go back to our childhood. Warm, intimate and continuous
attachments during childhood provide the kind of “emotional baggage” that
helps to build self-esteem. This can be proved by adequate( not perfect)
adults, parents as well as others. But it is not only our childhood which is
important. Experiences in adult like, expecially those involving warm
relationships with others, are also important sources of self-esteem. Those
who reach adulthood with low self-esteem are not, therefore, stuck in a
deadend, but can take many steps toward feeling better about themselves- as
did Celie in the color purple.
Five Strategies for Building Self-Esteem
You cannot change your childhood, but you can tackle those automatic thoughts-
the legacy of your childhood- which work to undermine your self-esteem. Here
are five strategies for counteracting these automatic thoughts. These make use
of the skills of cognitive therapy described in Chapter 9.
1.ATTACK THE PREJUDICE
“most women have no characters at all,” according to Alexander Pope, putting
into words a prejudice against which modern women have fought hard. Like all
prejudices, it reflects the bias of the speaker far more than the qualities of
the people spoken about. Once armed with this prejudice, the world seems to
conform with it just as if the prejudice produced a biased way of seeing
thing, women of character can be explained away as exceptions to the rule or
by suggesting that they must have been provoked by exceptional circumstances.
Or they might just be glossed over altogether- ignored to the point of
invisivility. The information that fits with any other point of view has a
hard time breaking through the barriers put up by a firmly held prejudice:
instead, it is discounted, deflected, or distorted.
Low self-esteem is like a prejudice about oneself-seeing oneself as unworthy,
or unacceptable. The self-perception is biased. Or flawed, but the person with
the prejudice has a hard time seeing it any other way. Learning to fight the
bias involves acknowledging your qualities and talents rather than discounting
them:”I like drawing. I was good at it even at school.””I have always been
a good listener”; accepting compliments and signs of acceptability rather
than deflecting them:”thanks, I am glad you like my work/cooking/friends”;
recognizing that you matter rather than distorting the evidence:”he really
did seem interested in what I said.”
Prejudices can be changed, but they are apt to reemerge at times of stress.
Old habits die hard, but if you know them well and recognize their corrosive
effects on the way you think and feel about yourself, you will have a better
chance of fighting back when they start to reassert themselves.
2.STIFLE THE CRITIC
You were tired and shouted at the children- not just shouted, but yelled.
They were storming about the house when you wanted peace and quiet. Then the
internal critic started getting at you:”Nobody whould treat a child like
that. You’re a hopeless parent. They will never learn to behave. No wonder
their grandparents don’t want to come here much… it’s all my fault.”
The critic within you is remarkably resourceful; so beat it at its own game.
Think about what really happened, and clarify the facts. Accept what went
wrong, but talk back to the critic to keep the “badness” in perspective.
Explain that you were tired. Maybe you had good reason to be so! Ask how
children learn to consider the needs of others. Can they do this withour
knowing what those needs are? Remind the critic of your good moments as a
parent, of the times when you help your children in other ways to learn about
consideraton. Apologize, and put the critic, the exaggerator, back in the box
with the lid shut.
3.BURY THE JUDGE
the judge is the person inside you who says:”I am not wanted,” “I am in the
way,; “I don’t’ matter,” ”compared to everyone else I am a mere crumb-a
grain of sand, a worm,” ”I am not important.” When you bury the judge, you
learn how to replace the judgments with facts.
It may be true that you were always the last to be chosen when children were
dividing each other up for a game or a contest of some sort. That fact has
nothing to do with your chances of being chosen for the job you are going for
now. In the new situation examine the tacts carefully. You may, or you may
not, have a good chance of getting the job. Try to weigh the chances for
yourself. That way you ca learn how to make realistic judgments and how to
trust your own judgment.
The judge is also that part of you which says to a friend “you did really
well getting that job,” but when you get a job says to you “Getting that job
was just lucky. You will have to warch it, or they’ ll get rid of you as soon
as they find out how useless you really are.” The judge is flagrantly unfaire
by applying different standards to different people. Your judge needs to learn
to apply the standard used for others to yourself as well.
The judge is unfaire in other ways. It make negative predictions, it biases
your expectations, it makes snap judgments on the basis of superficial
information. Your judge may lead you to expect to fail. It stops you trying
and casts you down. It makes you impervious to success, which is attributed to
chance, and susceptible to failure which is only to be expected. It is always
finding “more successful” people with whom to compare you. Think of the
child who rushes proudly home from school: “I came in second in class.” “”
who came first?” asks the parent. And the child retires crushed. The “judge
of low self-esteem” is like that parent. Such judges could live happilyin the
same box as the critic, provided the lid was kept tight shut on them both.
4.DO THE BEST YOU CAN
Ray used to say that he “had to do his best in every possible way.” Then his
therapist asked him what his aim was when he made that rule. He answered that
I twas to do his best. To do as well as he could. To get the best out of
himself. Together they examined his rule to find out whether it did, in fact,
help him to achieve his goal- which seems reasonable enough. The disadvantage
was that it put him constantly under pressure. He set his goals so high that
he almost always failed to reach them. It felt good when he did, but those
moments were rare. The bottom line was that he knew he was no good. He just
could not live up to his rule.
There is an important difference between having an ideal and making a rule to
live by. The ideal may be perfect, unflawed, without blemish, a standard one
would be proud to attain. Such an ideal provides you with a guide, but it s
hould not be a daily standard. Making the ideal into a rule is digging oneself
an elephant trap. If you constantly fall into the trap, you feel so bad about
yourself that it becomes increasingly hard to keep going. The rule needs to be
clear, and to direct you toward the ideal if that is what you want, but it
also needs to be realistic, if it is not to undermine your self-esteem. That
is why it makes more sense to do the best you can-rather than aim for
perfection. Aiming for perfection in this life is a recipe for disaster.
Aiming for better self-esteem helps you to do better, and also to feel
better.
Some of the rules often adopted (half unawares) by people with low-self-esteem
are shown in the box opposite. You can see how they might be
counterproductive. Revise or reject such rules so that they work for you
rather than against you.
5.DEVELOP FRIENDSHIPS THAT MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD
Other people play an important part in one’s feelings about oneself. If low
self-esteem is a problem for you, think about your current relationships. Who
helps you to feel good about yourself? Who undermines your self-confidence?
Make a list and estimate how much time you spend with people in each group.
What ways are there of increasing the time you spend with those who make you
feel good; and of decreasing the time with those who make you feel bad? Making
changes in your relationships may be one of the most effective ways of
increasing your self-esteem-but making changes in relationships is rarely
straightforward. In part three we describe a number of skills to help you to
develop fruitful relatioinships.
BOX BEGIN
The Rules that Perpetuate Low Self-Esteem
A human being must be perfect.
People should always help each other.
Others are always right.
I am not good enough (or skilled enough, or wise enough… and so on)
A woman should be helpful
Men should never cry.
If I don’t do excellently well, I am no good at all.
If I make a mistake, I shall never forgive myself.
When they see how bad I am , they will only reject me.
One should never burden others with one’s problems.
BOX END
A Logical Fallacy, or a Legacy form the Past
Self-esteem is not a constant. It is not something that is impervious to
knowcks and never varies. Even people with the toughest systems feel better
about themselves some days than others. But there is one particular fallacy
that is especially hard to uproot. For most people, when they were young they
were sometimes punished in one way or another, at home or at school, and they
learned the lesson well. If you do something wrong, you deserve to be
punished. If you do something wrong, it means you have been bad, or that you
are bad.
For some people, especially for those with memories of painful experiences in
the past, for people who suffer from depression, and for those whose concerns
about their weight and shape have led to disordered patterns of eating, it can
be hard to break the link between being treated badly and believeing that you
are bad. If life is bad to you, you may be tempted to think that you are
bad-that you have deserved ”punishment.” This is not so. Life is not a
courtroom. Our experiences are not the just deserts for our characters. If you
have been badly treated by others, or have suffered from bad luck, do not
compound your problems by taking the blame-by seeing your suffering as a proof
of your unworthiness. Value yourself, and this will give you the strength to
face your suffering.
END
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