LOW SELF-ESTEEM AND ITS
CONNECTION TO COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
by Dr. Daniel A. Bochner
Everyone knows what is meant by low self-esteem, but why is it so hard to
overcome? We know of people who just cannot seem to get beyond the bad
things that have happened to them. They come to believe that the world will
continue to frown upon them - that things will not work out. They feel
people have hurt them and will hurt them again and again. Some people with
low self-esteem will need to be the boss as often as possible. Some will never
think themselves worthy of decent treatment. Some will lack any motivation
to move ahead in life because they just cannot see the possibility of things
going well. Low self-esteem does indeed have many faces, but the one thing
that all sorts of low self-esteem have in common is the belief that things are
the way they are going to be. With low self-esteem, there appears to be an
inability to separate what has happened in the past from what could happen in
the future.
The question is, how does that happen? The belief that things are the way
they will always be, in its essence, is a belief about where a person fits within
the world community. It is also a belief about how the world community
works. A person can grow up in a relatively harsh and critical environment
and thus the pain of the past is transferred into a need to be top-dog within
the dog-eat-dog world where there is little room for kindness lest it be taken
as weakness. Another example: if a person does not think highly enough of
themselves to work toward achievements, it is often because they’ve been
broken down by disparaging comments and have come to believe that they
are not good enough to achieve within a world where everyone else is better
than they are. Yet another example: if life experience leads one to believe
that nothing in life will ever work out, then that person likely will come to
believe that making an effort, no matter how diligent, is meaningless within a
world that only rewards the lucky few.
The important connection to understand here is that the relatively permanent
feeling state a person experiences within the self seeks a permanent
explanation about whom he or she is in the world and how the world works.
This seeking for explanation within ones mind and psyche is an automatic
process that occurs due to cognitive dissonance, a concept that has been well-
studied within the field of psychology. Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort
we develop when we hold two conflicting ideas or beliefs. When we do hold
two conflicting ideas or beliefs, a change in our thinking becomes necessary
to reestablish consistency in our thoughts or integration within our minds.
The stronger the dissonance, the bigger the necessary change in thinking.
Of course, it’s obvious that we tend to look for explanations of our ongoing
experience almost constantly. We tell ourselves someone reacted in a certain
way because of something either we did or because of something they feel.
We look for circumstances within our experience that help explain the
ongoing behaviors of others and outcomes we perceive. Interestingly,
however, it is when things just don’t seem to make sense that we change our
thinking or beliefs the most. The most common examples for how this
change works are in everyday occurrences. People trying to be Vegans
(people who will not eat meat or dairy products) who sometimes eat fish
somehow try to think of fish as lesser animals. When charitable people act in
greedy ways, they typically chalk it up to taking care of their own or even
survival of the fittest.
Cognitive dissonance plays an especially important role, however, when
accidents happen, or more importantly, when we try to understand why we
have experienced some kind of trauma. That is, cognitive dissonance plays
its largest role when the world seems to have gone mad or out of control in
some particularly hurtful way. When accidents happen, we often look for
ways the accident would have been prevented if only we would have done
something differently. Often we blame ourselves for the accident even if it
seems to have little to do with us. In the mind, making sense of the accident
seems to require some understanding of how our actions are part of the
cause. Perhaps the most prominent example typically given is Stockholm
Syndrome. A victim of Stockholm Syndrome is a person who starts to
believe and espouse the very different values of their captors after being held
and tortured. In these cases, only the possibility that the captors’ beliefs are
correct and very important can allow the victim to make sense of how badly
traumatized they have been. It becomes more important in the psyche to feel
there is a good reason for the chaotic abuse that has occurred than it is to
maintain the belief that the captors are criminal or hateful. When we have
been traumatized, the explanation we give ourselves almost always makes it
our own fault because things that are our fault seem to be within our control.
If things are within our control, on their surface they seem to be less
threatening.
Although most childhood experiences are nowhere near as traumatizing as
torture, the fact that we are with our families for so many years, and the fact
that those years are the most formative within our experience, make cognitive
dissonance crucial to our development. To put it simply, we become
convinced that there are very good reasons for how we were treated as kids.
When we are treated consistently well, with only the typical hurdles to jump
and only the typical social storms to navigate, we develop good self-esteem.
We believe the world is a mostly good place where we will usually be treated
fairly. The better our experience was as children, the more we see the world
as a place with endless possibilities that can be enjoyed as long as we do what
is necessary to make those possibilities available to us. If the world is mostly
good, and things will mostly work out, it makes sense to try your best. It
feels good to achieve, and there appears to be a good chance that one can
achieve with the right kind of effort. To the extent that our childhood is
hurtful, however, we develop much less healthy patterns of behavior.
When we have been hurt in childhood, we attempt to solve a particular kind
of cognitive dissonance. A conflict arises between, on one hand, thinking of
oneself as valid and worthy of positive treatment, and on another,
acknowledging that we are being treated badly or that things are not working
out. Our cognitive solution generally leads us to believe either that we are not
worthy or that the world is unfair, or that we are unworthy and the world is
unfair. Only these explanations can make sense of what appears to be
senseless pain and failure. We need there to be order in the world to such an
extent that we find it helpful to believe the worst. We believe it is because of
whom we are in this world that things are so bad. Strangely, because it is our
fault (we are inferior, unlucky, not strong or mean enough), we can feel that
we have some sense of order or control. Although having such beliefs leads
to self-defeat, these negative beliefs are preferable to the real truth.
The truth is that there is extreme chaos in the world, but also that the world
has endless possibilities. Just because a person has the bad luck of being born
into a family or country or epoch in which trauma occurs, does not mean that
trauma will always occur and that the world is mostly traumatizing. In most
psychotherapies (excluding, of course, those where ongoing trauma is
occurring), the client’s situation is such where they really can avail themselves
of endless possibilities. It is the belief of whom they are, and how the world
works, that seems to limit them most. They are shy because others haven’t
liked them. But now, people don’t like them because they’re shy. They are
angry because they have been cheated. Well, now they’re avoided and miss
opportunities because people don’t want to deal with someone who is angry.
If they have to be in control because others won’t handle things to their
standards, now others won’t even listen to their good advice, and won’t
develop their own skills, because they want to be independent or because
they’re afraid to do things wrong.
Low self-esteem is largely maintained because it’s easier to make sense of the
traumas we’ve endured with explanations that fit us legitimizing reasons for
those traumas. It seems the world is less chaotic, and thus more manageable,
if we understand our bad treatment as occurring because of whom we are and
how the world works. But the world really holds endless possibilities and we
limit ourselves and our achievements by limiting our definition of ourselves
and the world. Whether it makes sense or not, the world really does have a
lot of chaos in it. Most of the bad things that happen, happen due to
circumstances and chance. Mostly, bad things that happen are out of our
control, and we only make more bad things happen by believing that they
happen because of whom we are in the world. The antidote to low self-
esteem, although it’s difficult to accomplish, is to unshackle oneself from the
past, and to see the future as one that can be fashioned as we wish. Our
future is only limited by our capabilities and our willingness to work. To view
it any other way is merely to limit oneself into low self-esteem. Do you want
to overcome low self-esteem? ... Then you must recognize that your past is
over, and look to the future as holding limitless potential.