How to raise self-esteem?

This question is often asked. But why raise it?

Apparently, people think that low self-esteem is some separate bug, accidentally arising in the system, and if it is fixed, everything will immediately get better, insecurity will disappear, contact with people will improve, and many problems will vanish.

It's like with personal boundaries. Many believe that all their life problems stem from not being able to define boundaries for themselves, so they either yield where they shouldn't or, conversely, infringe on others' boundaries for some reason. But if they recognize their boundaries, life will improve.

In reality, both stable self-esteem and good boundaries are the result of having sufficient internal resources. It doesn't necessarily have to be a lot; sometimes a little is enough, especially since everything is relative, but zero is insufficient.

Imagine a person without internal resources, although not everyone fully understands what those are. Such a person has external resources: some job, some money, some relationships, and some housing, but lacks internal ones. Lacking internal resources means they are highly dependent on external resources and constantly rely on them. They fear losing their job and therefore are wary of any wrong steps, some money comes from parents, so they constantly have to listen to moralizing, they cling to their partner in relationships and fear losing them, they also owe something for their housing, and so on. They have nothing of their own or very little. Can such a person have stable self-esteem and good personal boundaries?

Many think that dependent self-esteem and constantly shifting personal boundaries are evil. But no, they are often a good thing; it's an adaptation to the situation of lacking internal resources. If such a person doesn't yield and adapt at work, they will constantly fear being fired and not finding another job. With their parents, they can't set boundaries like an independent person, because they are dependent and always have to defer to them; when they don't, they feel guilt and fear. And all this is stress. And it's crucial to remember (!): stress is something the body will always avoid primarily because a few minutes of acute stress = death. So the body is ready for anything, even gradually destroying itself, just to avoid too much stress and a quick death. Of course, a quick death from arguing with parents won't happen, but the body still avoids stress because a little here and a little there, it adds up. This can happen at every step with a dependent personality. Therefore, the body maintains an acceptable level of anxiety, and if there are no internal resources, it lets the boundaries float freely.

That's why the boundaries of such a person constantly shift back and forth, and their self-esteem depends on others because they depend on others. They don't seem to have internal support; only external ones they can't control (you can't control external ones). They constantly oscillate between being overly submissive and overly assertive because if they only submit, aggression builds up, and if they don't, they become afraid because they can only rely on others. So such a person either excessively humiliates themselves or excessively asserts themselves, and it seems like they have boundary issues and need to work on them.

However, working on boundaries is pointless without sufficient resources inside those boundaries. Working on boundaries will either do nothing or, conversely, lead to a decrease in resources because instead of developing them, a person will experiment with boundaries.

Working on self-esteem is also pointless without internal resources. If you really want to become independent, you'll have to create an illusion because there's no real independence.

Moreover, attempting to make one's self-esteem independent prematurely, that is, before internal resources are developed, often results in the person forming consistently low self-esteem. They're told "You're beautiful," but they think they're ugly. Or they're told "You're smart," but they're convinced they're stupid. This often happens to a person when they lack the internal resources to have independent, adequate self-esteem, and they grow tired of being dependent on others' evaluations, so the person simply fixes low self-esteem. They decide (usually unconsciously) to consider themselves ugly, stupid, etc., to avoid dependency, waiting, and being prepared for the worst. And then, no matter how much they are convinced from the outside that they're beautiful, they will deny it. Many see this as coquetry or even vampirism (soliciting compliments), but it's not. The person really waits for some evidence, but until there are internal support, they don't feel the strength of this evidence and don't trust it. Therefore, it's useless to convince such a person from the outside. They must gain independence from others' evaluations through their own internal support and no other way.

If a resourceless person suddenly loses high self-esteem, the situation is even scarier. Since they lack internal resources, they are also very afraid to hear from the world that they are ugly. So they create an autistic cocoon, stop taking the world's evaluations seriously altogether, devalue the world, and consider it a "circus of freaks" or "a crowd of envious people." But this cocoon works not only regarding evaluations but also regarding everything else. In other words, such a person ends up isolated from the world by such dense defenses that completely deprive them of any exchange with this world. And that means they block the possibility of developing their resources.

Why doesn't this happen with a resourceful (i.e., having internal resources) personality? Why does it calmly accept criticism and negative evaluations, but at the same time not feel worse? What is its stable and independent self-esteem based on? It's based on internal resources. If you are certain about something and someone tells you otherwise, you don't feel pain and self-doubt; at most, you just don't want to engage with someone who doesn't believe you. For example, if you have a car, would you start doubting its existence if someone said you didn't have one? You arrived in it, after all. A material thing either exists or doesn't, and the same goes for internal resources that already exist! They exist so unequivocally that confirmation from the world is not required. If you doubt something, it means you don't have internal resources; there's hope or illusion, but no resources.

And here's the main thing. The opinion of an individual or even a group of people that you're a certain way means nothing and doesn't affect self-esteem when, first, you know exactly who you are, meaning you've already formed, not searching for yourself (not thinking about what to do, what you're good at, how to become better), and, second, you don't depend on that group. If you're still searching for yourself and depend on that group, excessive independence of self-esteem might harm you. In this case, it's better to listen to the opinions of these people and change. In other words, a person who already has everything and is ready to provide for themselves both materially and emotionally can afford to have independent self-esteem (and even then, not entirely independent). But if they can't provide for themselves yet but want independent self-esteem, as seen above, nothing good will come of it.

Therefore, don't blame self-esteem. Most likely, it's adequate, and if not, it's forced to be that way for now.