Humility and self-esteem

[petite_foireuse]

Hi,

I’m severely depressed (have been for 7 years now, although I feel ok just now), doing the therapy thing and taking medication,…

One issue that seems to constantly crop up is that of a very low self-esteem, possibly due to emotional neglect as a child (my parents fed me, clothed me, … but my mother was distant for her own reasons and my father plain and simply absent, plus we kept on moving every second year or so, so I never really built any relationship to other adults in my environment).

I converted in 1995 and was baptized in 1996, so obviously I don’t have the background of a cradle Catholic and this is could be the reason why I don’t understand things.

My problem is with the importance of humility in Catholic teaching. I’m afraid of trying to build up my self-esteem because it feels wrong as a Catholic. I understand that when I do good, it is basically God acting through me and there is really very little merit.

It seems to me humility and self-esteem are opposed to each other. Or are they not? Can someone explain how I can achieve a healthy self-esteem and not stray from the path?

I wish I could ask my therapist, but I haven’t found one who is Catholic. I think my current therapist is probably atheist, but I feel she is helping me along other lines, so I’m sticking with that at the moment…

(Oh, and please don’t get annoyed with me if I don’t post terribly often. I promise I will read all your answers but it may take me a while to digest them, think about them, see where I stand with respect to some of them,…)

 

[jmjconder]

**I understand how you may think humility and self-esteem are in opposition. Actually they are not.

Was the Blessed Virgin May a proud person? I think you would agree - no. However she is one of our best examples of a humble person.

Humility does not come from pride - however is comes from a deep understanding of who we are…a human who needs to be 100% dependent on God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

Buidling your self-esteem is not about ignoring humility - it is embracing it.

Often we say were are “just” human…when in fact we are not human enough…made in the image and likeness of Him who created us to be 100% human.

Pray for humility - you will be given opportunities to be humbled and humiliated…and be thankful for these moments.**

 

[tskrobacz]

In many ways self esteem as a valuation of your personal worth melts away as you embrace your faith life. God doesn’t love you because you are good, God loves you because God is good. When you deny “self” and focus on God’s will alone you are free from the self judgement that self esteem implies. It no longer matters to “feel good” about yourself as everything you do is routed in Love for, from, in and through God to serve others. In service you grow in wisdom and understanding…there you find peace and are liberated, truly, from self.

 

[PerfectTiming]

I think part of healthy self-esteem, and also humility, is being realistic. Too much self-esteem can be just as unhealthy as too little. You can acknowledge your strengths and achievements but still be humble by recognising your failures and limitations. Humility isn’t about putting yourself down or thinking poorly of yourself, it is about having a realistic view of yourself. Pride and obsequiousness and the effects of too high or too low self-esteem - humility and a healthy self-esteem are what balance together.

Personally I like St. Thomas’ words. “The virtue of humility consists in keeping oneself within one’s own bounds, not reaching out to things above one, but submitting to one’s superior.”

 

[puzzleannie]

Hi,

It seems to me humility and self-esteem are opposed to each other. Or are they not? Can someone explain how I can achieve a healthy self-esteem and not stray from the path?
,…)

you are quite right
self-esteem is one’s inward, often emotion-based, estimation of one’s worth as measured against other people in your realm.

Humility is the true assessment of one’s worth in God’s eyes, in relation to Him. Since that worth to great to measure, and at the same time God is so far above me that I have no importance other than that I have naturally as his child and recipient of his love, that should in turn keep me grounded in relation to other humans.

Self-esteem is reactive, a product of my conditioning and experience with my parents, family, others who influenced my growing up, and those I live and work with now.

Humility is a God-given virtue of self-knowledge, a gift of the Holy Spirit and develops as my relationship with God grows. And yes a previous poster is correct that developing the virtue of humility leads to a healthy self-esteem.

 

[FidesSpesCarita]

I haved dealt with this from time to time as well, so I know that very little anyone says will truly impact this issue in someone else.

My suggestion is to find a good spiritual director and follow their advice even when it seems somewhat ridiculous, especially if it feels ridiculous. Make very sure you choose a good director though and don’t feel bad if you switch a few times since this is a relationship that MUST involve mutual trust even if it may not involve affection.

I would also tell you to read St Frances de Sales “introduction to the devout life”. It will help you to grow in devotion to God, help you to understand what true humility is and help guide you to a better understanding of who you truly are in God’s eyes. True humility consists in accepting what you are and, to a certain extent, taking pride in what God has given you. If you are a good mechanic, IT guy, or whatever else humility consists in accepting that fact and not falsely trying to say that you are bad at things you truly are good at to try to show humility. Also a proper understanding of your worthlessness before God helps since it helps you to understand just how incredible it is that God loves you so much! Despite our absolute worthlessness God loves us so much that He was willing to suffer more than any mere human ever could, has, or will and to die for us. He loves you more than you can even imagine! If God loves you and sees your worth in His eyes then who are you to say otherwise

Also, start reading some of the saints. I recommend the Carmelite saints since they and their spirituality is personally attractive to me. Especially start with the “story of a soul”, and St John’s “dark night”, and anything from St Theresa of Avila.

But that is just one mans opinion.

 

[chevalier]

Self-esteem is not opposed to humility as long as you (or I etc.) don’t view yourself as “my esteemed self”.

 

[Ohana]

Then again, humility can lead to self-esteem if we realize that humility is our acknowledgement that our whole dependence is upon God, and that he has deigned to love us completely. Self-esteem, respect for ourselves, can be based upon the fact that we are and are meant to be temples of the Holy Spirit. If we are in to acknowledging our basic truths, maybe we have to see both sides of this. Greater humility will lead us to greater gratitude and greater care for ourselves in preserving this relationship.

Happy days!

 

[ThereWasADream]

If you’re still confused, here’s a simple answer:

Humility is little more than another form of honesty. If I am darn good at bowling, and someone asks me “Hey, are you good at bowling?” I say “Yes, I am.” And nothing more. That’s humility. If I were to say “Yeah! I’m really really good at it, and I bet I could beat anyone!” That would be prideful, even it it’s true, because I said more than I needed to.

Self-esteem is not opposed to humility. Self-esteem is simply having a sense of self-worth (I am worth something) while humility is knowing where your worth comes from (I am worth something, Jesus died for me).

 

[Robert_Sock]

I believe that you can be perfectly healthy without self-esteem. In addition to humility, it’s esteem towards God and others that counts. Self-esteem is based on reflective consciousness; disrupt the process of reflective consciousness and you have successfully disrupted self-esteem.

Self esteem used to be the quick fix in psychology; whenever a neurotic person came into therapy, the therapist would try to increase the patient’s self esteem. It was just a short term fix and the patient would soon become neurotic in a short time.

As a Catholic psychologist, I personally believe that the “self” is an evil construct. It’s the development of the the “person” that makes a patient truly healed.

Think about it: Self esteem is really a form of “introversion,” while esteem towards God and others is “extroversion.” A true extrovert is someone who denies self-esteem and instead focuses on esteem.

 

[twoangels]

Oh, you are definitely not alone. I was raised Catholic and have had major self esteem issues. I’ve gone to Christian councilors and frustrated them to death because of my insistance on humility. I’d have people tell me that there was good pride and bad pride. But to me it didn’t seem that the Church taught that there was good pride. It seemed rather that psychology came from a completely different prospective and that certain elements of the faith were being rejected and revised to fit in with pscyhology.

Its only been in being presented the difference between humility and masochism that I’ve come to understand that what I take to be humility is not humility. It is in fact a form of pride.

To live in humility is to live always in total confidence of God’s love, protection, and guidance and therefore to have no concern for yourself when others insult you—or praise you. Secure in God’s love, you don’t have to base your identity on whether or not others acknowledge you.

In masochism, on the other hand, you invite others to insult you because, as a psychological defense against the pain of deep emotional wounds, you take unconscious pleasure in being demeaned in the secret hope that you will somehow, someday, earn someone’s admiration for your willingness to endure painful abuse.

Therefore, we can define false humility as pride in your own masochism. Consequently, whereas false humility burdens the soul, genuine humility brings enlightenment to the soul and frees it from all that would obstruct its service to God.

Even as I’ve come to more fully understand my own temptations toward depression, lately a lot my old habits have been coming out again. I’ve been trying to look for help as I still have my old resistances and want some sort of guide to navigate this inner healing better. What I’ve found so far is this. You might find it helpful as well:

guidetopsychology.com/depresn.htm

 

[eddadonkey]

Dear petite_foireuse,

I do not know about you, but I did notice that most of the posters here used the term “human”. The significance? Look at the two words: humility and human. Yep, they have the same root word. They came from the Latin word for “earth,” humus.

Therefore, humility is just the acknowledgement that we are human, we came from the earth and someday we will return to the earth, we make mistakes, we are not perfect, and yet…**and yet…**humility also reminds us that since we are human, we are the pinnacle of God’s creation, and not only that, but God loves us enough that He died for us, and gives us so many things that are too wondrous to be seen by the naked eye. Therefore, we are worth very highly in God’s eyes…and isn’t that self-esteem, to know what we are worth?

In fact, St. Paul said it best when he said that we are earthen vessels with treasures in us, but the treasures come from God (2 Corinthians 4:7ff). Go and read it, then memorize it, then believe it, then live it.

God love you.

 

[petite_foireuse]

Hi,
I realized I never got back to this thread after starting it. That doesn’t mean I didn’t read your comments, only that I’m still working on making sense of this for myself. Your answers were useful - it felt like every one contributed a piece of the puzzle I just wanted to say thanks to everyone. I think I’m beginning to get somewhere on the issue… Yesterday I googled “pride self-esteem”. That turned up a number of results (more than “humilty self-esteem”) and I’m currently reading what I found…

@FidesSpesCarita: I do wish I could find a stable spiritual director but it’s very difficult given that most parishes here can’t even offer Sunday Mass regularly due to shortage of priests. On Christmas Eve in the place where I was, most people had to be content with a liturgy of the Word… In the past, when I have asked a priest, he could only offer a short word of advice after a bi-weekly confession. And even then, the turnover is so fast… Basically I’ve never had a stable confessor for more than one year in a row because they were then assigned somewhere else and moved away…
In any case, I will dig up my copy of the “Introduction to the Devout Life”. For some reason, I don’t remember getting beyond the first chapters, but that was years ago… And although I have read the “Story of a Soul” several times, I didn’t know St John of the Cross and St Teresa of Avila were approachable - I always assumed they would be too difficult to read for me…

@Robert Sock: Those are very interesting remarks from someone with enough psychology background to say something sensible about it from a Catholic perspective. By any chance, do you happen to know the website TwoAngels mentions, guidetopsychology.com/depresn.htm? What is your take on what the author writes? I’ve been wondering whether to get “Anger and Forgiveness”, but the shipping costs are expensive in my case and I have been looking into other books on the topic, especially as I have the author’s relaxation CD and it didn’t quite “work” for me (it didn’t feel natural, somehow…)

@TwoAngels:

I’ve gone to Christian councilors and frustrated them to death because of my insistence on humility. I’d have people tell me that there was good pride and bad pride. But to me it didn’t seem that the Church taught that there was good pride.

That certainly resonates with me… We seem to be made of the same kind of stuff… Oh well… I haven’t given up yet, I’m still searching… And it is always nice to know you are not alone with your questions/problems!

 

[AlanFromWichita]

In many ways self esteem as a valuation of your personal worth melts away as you embrace your faith life. God doesn’t love you because you are good, God loves you because God is good. When you deny “self” and focus on God’s will alone you are free from the self judgement that self esteem implies. It no longer matters to “feel good” about yourself as everything you do is routed in Love for, from, in and through God to serve others. In service you grow in wisdom and understanding…there you find peace and are liberated, truly, from self.

Excellent post!

The “self” that needs esteem is the “false self” which is what Jesus tells us we must deny. Then our true self may emerge, the light under the bushel which I liken to the false self – it hides, distorts, weakens if not completely stops, our Light from shining. With no false self in the way, the Holy Spirit can more easily guide you without having to hurt you in so many ways – like how the world will hurt you with its judgement and threats and gifts with strings attached, and “hard times.”

Speaking as a cradle Catholic, much discussion I’ve heard about self-esteem and humility in 50 years is distorted, and can go one way or another. It seems too many devout Catholics somehow end up confusing “humble” with “self-loathing.” It isn’t about groveling and convincing yourself you are Not Worthy. True humility means you have a realistic outlook on your own self-worth – that you see yourself for no more or less than you are.

God does not have a point system. He can do better than Santa; He can forgive those on the naughty list, and enrich those on both lists.

What if you say, “yes, but I fail 5 times every time I succeed once.” I can say, “the most successful people in history failed many times before winning – often many more than 5,” or maybe just say, “how do you feel about it?”

Alan

 

[AlanFromWichita]

I just saw this morning’s email “meditation” and I thought it fit well within this topic. I don’t want to discuss the guy who wrote it, but only the content of it. If you want to know about the guy who wrote it, Google can assist you.

INCARNATION

Have this mind in yourselves, which is in Christ Jesus, who though he
was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be
grasped at, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being
born in the likeness of the human.
~ Philippians 2:5-7
biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Philippians+2:5-7&version=NIV;MSG;KJV

It’s a gift to joyfully recognize and accept our own smallness and
ordinariness. Then you are free with nothing to live up to, nothing to
prove, and nothing to protect. Such freedom is my best description of
Christian maturity, because once you know that your “I” has an
inherent dignity and is objectively one with God, you can ironically be
quite content with a small and ordinary “I.” No grandstanding is
necessary. Any question of your own importance or value has already been
resolved once and for all and forever. That is why “saints” (those
who know!) are naturally humble without even trying to be humble.

Starter Prayer:
And the word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14).

 

[Robert_Sock]

@Robert Sock: Those are very interesting remarks from someone with enough psychology background to say something sensible about it from a Catholic perspective. By any chance, do you happen to know the website TwoAngels mentions, guidetopsychology.com/depresn.htm? What is your take on what the author writes? I’ve been wondering whether to get “Anger and Forgiveness”, but the shipping costs are expensive in my case and I have been looking into other books on the topic, especially as I have the author’s relaxation CD and it didn’t quite “work” for me (it didn’t feel natural, somehow…)

I really removed myself from mainstream psychology in favor of a devout life of poverty and prayer. My general interest in anger and forgiveness is from a religious perspective.

 

[kara123]

Hi there,

I read your post and the responses and I was windering if you are doing better now.

I have similar issues with humbleness and self esteem and I think reading through all those comments I can see that self esteem is more about our feelings. I remember that feelings are many times what causes us to seen and that is why we should deny ourselves and die to ourselves to live for God. I think it is here where humbleness comes into play.

I don’t have to prove to anyone who I am,
I don’t have to try to be like others or compare myself to others.

God made each one of us special! and the devil likes to cause us fear, heatred, recentment. He loves to put us in a spot of loneliness and depression because it is easier to mess with our mind and feelings.

I believe somewhere in the Bible says something like… It is better not to think too much about something that make you sin.

I say this because with “low self steem we think too much about how people sees us, or if we are good enough” if we just don’t care “stop thinking about it” then it is not important.

God cares! and he suffers when sees how confused we get worring about our “self esteem” He already said it! and if you want to hear it over and over again listen to that youtube video “love letter from God”

I wrote all this I guess mostly for myself and shared it with you. I have issues, shame on me when I have a loving God!!

I hope you have overcome your depression. Do not stay in it. Are your serotonin levels trully low for you to be on medication. You have said you suffered depression due to your parents. You need no medication but love to yourself.
I like listening to Joyce Meyer. she went throgh a very bad childhood. her father abused her untill since very young intill she was 18.

Anyway.

I hope you are better now. SMILE and be HAPPY in the name of JESUS!!!

 

[Phil_Marinus]

Hi there,

I read your post and the responses and I was windering if you are doing better now.

I have similar issues with humbleness and self esteem and I think reading through all those comments I can see that self esteem is more about our feelings. I remember that feelings are many times what causes us to seen and that is why we should deny ourselves and die to ourselves to live for God. I think it is here where humbleness comes into play.

I don’t have to prove to anyone who I am,
I don’t have to try to be like others or compare myself to others.

God made each one of us special! and the devil likes to cause us fear, heatred, recentment. He loves to put us in a spot of loneliness and depression because it is easier to mess with our mind and feelings.

I believe somewhere in the Bible says something like… It is better not to think too much about something that make you sin.

I say this because with “low self steem we think too much about how people sees us, or if we are good enough” if we just don’t care “stop thinking about it” then it is not important.

God cares! and he suffers when sees how confused we get worring about our “self esteem” He already said it! and if you want to hear it over and over again listen to that youtube video “love letter from God”

I wrote all this I guess mostly for myself and shared it with you. I have issues, shame on me when I have a loving God!!

I hope you have overcome your depression. Do not stay in it. Are your serotonin levels trully low for you to be on medication. You have said you suffered depression due to your parents. You need no medication but love to yourself.
I like listening to Joyce Meyer. she went throgh a very bad childhood. her father abused her untill since very young intill she was 18.

Anyway.

I hope you are better now. SMILE and be HAPPY in the name of JESUS!!!

you made some good points yourself....

 

[wakka_wakka]

first time poster, I think I’ll like this place. Everyone seems very knowledgeable and good.

What if you feel you have two different views of yourself at the same time? Often times I feel like I can conquer the world but feel worthless at the same time. Grandiose and miniscule. It is very confusing, and I think it drives my psychology and effects my interactions with people. It’s like I live a contradiction at times. I can feel good and bad about myself, good and bad about something, or even have many different contradictory feelings about the same thing. It gets very confusing.

I have also been diagnosed as bipolar. Do you think that’s just part of my condition?

 

[AlanFromWichita]

I think these are paradoxes not unlike the ones Jesus preached, and they have a numbe of purposes.

First of all, note that when you are conflicted between opposites, you are not “lukewarm.” You have to have extreme thoughts to break out of the presumption that you are experiencing reality “the way it is,” when in fact we all have a reality that is colored by our upbringing which builds the false “self” that Jesus said we must lose in order to gain our lives.

Another purpose for these thoughts is to expand your mind by breaking old barriers that have “taped together” your reality thus far. In essence, accepting enough new wine to rupture the old “wine skins” of your thought processes so you can be prepared to allow wine to fit into your new wineskin that you got at Baptism – and quit relying on the old used ones you picked up that everybody else has already used.

Another thing you can do with these thoughts is allow yourself the freedom to imagine what it would be like to actually be in those roles. What sorts of things would you think, for example, if you were in a situation like Job? Like Abraham? Like Judas? Like Peter? Like Mary Magdalene? The more flexible your mind is, the more creatively the Holy Spirit can plant seeds of thought in your mind as you consider these things. I’m not saying this is why you have these thoughts; I’m saying this is one thing you can do. Imagine yourself in extreme situations. Then go on to imagine a world that Jesus calls “the kingdom” that looks exactly like the world you are in now, but you have been made a new spiritual creature in that world – to the extent that you now have accepted the peace of Christ and no longer are you worried by the anxieties that used to plague you, and that plague nearly everybody else.

I was gifted with severe bipolar disorder that was so bad I lost my career over it and raised my kids in poverty. The Lord has used my illness to prepare me to enter the kingdom, and then delivered me from the illness so that I could see and enjoy it. Medicine is very good, and without it I would likely be dead or at least institutionalized, but medicine doesn’t heal mental disorders. The Divine Therapist, aka the Holy Spirit, can and will.

Contemplative prayer also played a huge role by learning to invite and welcome the Holy Spirit into my open mind and heart.

I like that you are able to state your situation very plainly, and mildly. I’m guessing you are capable of extreme thinking, but you have conveyed in in an easily understandable way.

Alan