Self-Esteem Gone Wrong

            In 1985, I wrote a book titled: Is Anyone Out There Building Mother’s Self-Esteem? The thesis is that if anyone is building mother’s self-esteem, she is doing it herself. I am walking back my connection to the self-esteem theory that was so popular in the Seventies, Eighties, and Nineties. I know mothers need to take care of themselves and symbolically put on their own oxygen masks before their children’s, but I do not believe self-esteem is the solution I did when I wrote the book.

Today I think of self-esteem as a worldly philosophy rooted in the great and spacious building. The theory purported that children would have high self-esteem if their parents and teachers 1) showered them with enthusiastic and unconditional praise and 2) protected them from criticism and negative consequences of their behavior. The expected outcome was that children would internalize these positive affirmations and build successful lives. Well, it didn’t work very well. Effusivepraise denied the reality that praise should be earned. Shielding children from negative consequences denied the reality that wisdom is gained by experiencing the outcome of choice.

Self-esteem grew in popularity in themid Sixties when social psychologist Morris Rosenberg developed a ten-question self-evaluation to measure self-esteem. The test was translated into fifty-three languagesand used worldwide. Today’s grandparents who climbed aboard the self-esteem bandwagon raised the parents of today’s children with too much praise and too little responsibility, which means that many of today’s parents parent as they were parented with self-esteem as the go-to technique. 

When I wrote the book, Richard and I had eight children, ages six, nine, eleven, thirteen, fifteen, sixteen, eighteen, and nineteen. Five teenagers. Needs were everywhere twenty-four/seven. I mostly felt overwhelmed, under qualified, and weary. I wrote the book for self-preservation, which is a good coping mechanism, but in doing so I endorsed self-esteem as truth. 

Then I began to see fallacies in the self-esteem theory. For example, a popular self-esteem booster of the time was to give every child who participated on a team or in a program the same trophy or certificate. Often, not long after one of our children received such an award, I would see it in the garbage. In my opinion, awarding everyone the same takes excellence and failure and homogenizes it into ordinariness. Syndrome, the bad guy in The Incredibles, said:“If everyone is super, no one is super.” 

You will also remember in The Incredibles when Dash gets in trouble at school, he excuses his actions with the words, “Our powers make us special.” His mother, Mrs. Incredible, aka Elastigirl, says, “Everyone is special.” Dash responds, “Which is another way of sayings that no one is.” Mr. Incredible weighs in when he mocks a fourth grade graduation with the words, “They keep finding new ways to celebrate mediocrity, but if someone is genuinely exceptional, they shut him down because they don’t want everyone else to feel bad.” 

Anticipating that everyonewill feel badwhen someone achieves is another false philosophy. Envy and jealousy, Satan’s tools that started the war in heaven, do not have to be. The Lord’s way is to help others achieve and rejoice with them when they do. “So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another….  Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep” (Romans 12:5, 15). 

Affirmation billboards that popped up on streets and freeways are another example of an unsuccessful technique used to build self-esteem. Dr. Rene Endgeln in her book Beauty Sick wrote: “Social psychologists have amassed decades of research demonstrating that when a message is inconsistent with what you believe, you tend to generate counter arguments in response to it and what you believe.” She uses the example of an affirmation billboard that read: “You are beautiful.” When a woman who does not feel beautiful, which is pretty much everyone, reads the billboard, she immediately “disputes the message in her mind and brings up counter arguments,” which actually makes her feel less beautiful than she did before she read the billboard. 

I wonder how many or today’s socially accepted practices are outgrowths of self-esteem gone wrong. I am thinking of the fad to take and post endless selfies. I wonder about “the 4.3 million men and 2.8 million women ages 25 to 34 living with their parents.” Could the extreme bucket-list compulsion to experience leisure, pleasure, prestige, and exotic adventure be connected to misunderstood notions of self worth?

In 1989, President Ezra Taft Benson connected the quest of selfwith pride: “Selfishness is one of the more common faces of pride. ‘How everything affects me’ is the center of all that matters—self-conceit, self-pity, worldly self-fulfillment, self-gratification, and self-seeking.” At what point does building your own self-esteem become self-indulgence? Is the pursuit of self-esteem an empty vessel that can never be filled? In what ways does the relentless chase of selfviolate God’s laws of humility, service, and gratitude?

In my experience, children don’t learn enough by example and very little by osmosis. They need overt teaching and opportunities to practice skills such as responding to others’ needs, sacrificing for others, completing work before pleasure, hoeing to the end of the row, going the extra mile, and holding to values of personal integrity despite opposition. As they practice and incorporate humility, service, and gratitude into their characters they learn that hard work is its own reward, that success often comes after disappointment, and that whatever you keep trying to do you get better at. 

I feel focusing on self-esteem has done much more harm than good. Exaggerated praise doesn’t build confidence but rather feelings of entitlement. Not being required to take responsibility for attitudes and behaviors increases feelings of entitlement. The entitled expect privileges whether they deserve them or not. Donny Osmond said: “A lot of people feel entitled, and nobody is entitled to anything.” 

In 1986, then Elder Russell M. Nelson used the phrase “proper self-esteem.”  In 2000, he said, “Self-esteem is… earned by obedience to God’s commandments.” In 2015, General Primary President, Rosemary Wixom, said: “Our divine nature has nothing to do with our personal accomplishments, the status we achieve, the number of marathons we run, or our popularity and self-esteem. Our divine nature comes from God.” 

Honest, open, loving communication with no hyperbole helps children, teens, and adults know who they are. This can be accomplished by rerouting our thinking from the worldly self-esteem to the gospel-centered principle of individual worth. The difference in the two ways is that one is theory and one is truth. One leans on the arm of flesh: “Cursed is he that putteth his trust in man or maketh flesh his arm”; the other trusts God: “O Lord, I have trusted in thee, and I will trust in thee forever” (2 Nephi 4:34).

Individual worth is one of the Young Women values. Every Sunday, worldwide, in many, many languages, these lovely teens repeat in unison: “We are daughters of our Heavenly Father, who loves us, and we love Him.” Individual worth is built on the foundation that happiness and success in life come by: 1) loving God enough to do His will and 2) by helping others become their best selves. If this sounds familiar, the Savior said: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matthew 22:37-40).

Believing you have a Heavenly Father who loves you builds confidence and maturity to take the blame for your poor choices and to accept approval for your good choices. We regularly teach the necessity of owning up to mistakes and sins by repenting. We infrequently teach the importance of acknowledging our achievements. It is emotionally healthy to thank God, rejoice, and let others rejoice with us when effort and hard work pay off, a goal is reached, a success obtained.

When you feel valued as a daughter or son of God, you can think of others’ needs and treat others with respect. You can give without needing to receive. You will not be arrogant, egotistical, snobbish, or boastful. As a child of God you will place more importance on being good than on looking good.As God’s child you will find joy in keeping His commandments and your covenants. Your desire will be to understand Heavenly Father’s attributes and “seek ratification that the course you are pursuing in life is pleasing to Him” (Joseph Smith, Lectures on Faith, 3:2-5). 

             “For whosoever will save his life (by pursuing his or her own self-esteem) shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life (by serving God and his/her fellow human beings) for my sake, the same shall save it” (Luke 9:24). When you credit God and strive to live according to His purpose and plan, it is not your selfyou esteem but your Father in Heaven.