What affects self-esteem can be determined by asking yourself a few questions. Do you have low self-esteem? Are you scared to talk to someone new because you feel they will not understand you? Do you feel incompetent at work?
Self-esteem is influenced by your early childhood experiences. How we learn to self-talk, how we learn to control our emotions and how we build up or break down trust with others come from our childhood experiences. We are social beings by nature, and one of the first lessons we must learn is to develop our sense of self-worth and self-confidence. This can be achieved through positive experiences in childhood.
Recent studies have shown that the effects of your childhood experiences on your self-esteem can last you a lifetime. In a recent study conducted at the University of Memphis, researchers examined how the effects of childhood abuse could influence the development of general self-esteem as an adult. The study looked at a group of women who were married and involved in a long-term relationship. The women were recruited specifically to participate in a study which examined how their general self-esteem and social skill changed as they got older. The study found that those women who had been abused physically during childhood had low self-esteem as adults.
But the study also showed that this low self-esteem was not due to some kind of emotional problem. The women who had been abused showed no difference in their levels of self-esteem as they became adults. What affected them was what happened during childhood. What affects self-esteem refers to the circumstances that surround us as we grow up. A good self-esteem refers to the way we see ourselves and how we judge others.
The maturity principle is the basis of our sense of self worth. If you were to ask people their opinion of how mature they consider themselves, you would find that everyone would have a different opinion. However, when you look at the situation in a more literal manner, people who are more mature to have a better self-image and high self-esteem and do not worry about having a bad physical appearance.
So it stands to reason that general self-esteem and physical appearance self-esteem can be affected by one’s environment and experiences as they get older. It is possible for someone to be very content with their physical appearance and still have a low self-image because of the constraints that society places on its members. On the other hand, they may be unhappy with their physical appearance but also have a great degree of self-esteem and positive expectations about their life. This could be due to a particular aspect of their life or their occupation that they are passionate about. In the past, there was no real way to measure how much you liked or appreciated what you had. Therefore, your responses to these situations were more based on feelings and emotions and not on logic or rationality.
Now that we have established that general self-esteem and physical appearance self-esteem can indeed be affected by the circumstances that we face in our lives, it makes sense to examine what those specific domains are. The domains that affect self-esteem are determined by how we perceive ourselves in specific domains. For example, if you feel that you are worthless because you do not have a college degree, your self-image will be related to your lack of education rather than your actual ability. Similarly, if you feel that you are worthless because you have a physically unattractive body, your response to the world around you will be primarily related to your physical appearance and not to your overall self-image.
What affects self-esteem in these situations is the way that we perceive our overall worth in the world. As the domains that we perceive ourselves to begin to change, so too do the self-perception domains. This means that the domains that we perceive ourselves in change over time, and the more we change the perception of ourselves, the more our self-esteem is affected. Therefore, the question becomes, what affects self-esteem in the situations that we face in our lives?