There is a great line in the James L. Brooks movie, “Spanglish” (starring Adam Sandler, Tea Leoni and Cloris Leachman) about personal responsibility and self esteem. Deborah Clasky (Tea Leoni), is having an affair. Deborah’s mother, Evelyn (Cloris Leachman), knows about the affair and warns Deborah that she is going to lose her husband and that she will never find anybody else who is as good. Deborah replies with exasperation and accusation:
“Well, you’ve done it again mother, made me hate myself!”
Evelyn replies: “Lately your low self esteem is just good common sense.”
Unfortunately, this sort of denial and blaming others for well-deserved feelings of guilt and low self-esteem is not just limited to movie plots. It is all too common in our families, at our jobs, and in our society as a whole. The prevailing sentiment seems to be that we should be able to live our lives as irresponsibly as we choose to, and when the inevitable consequences of our actions roll around, we should be totally free to find someone else on which to blame the inevitable feelings of guilt, remorse and low self-esteem. And under absolutely no circumstances should anyone ever suggest that we may be responsible ourselves for, and perhaps even deserve the negative feelings and self recriminations.
This type of denial also plays out in another way. Recently I was part of a group discussion regarding feelings of inadequacy. Some of the people were complaining that in a certain group dynamic, that they felt “inadequate” and felt as if “nothing they ever did was good enough”. They blamed their feelings of inadequacy on the people who were voicing irritation at them about the low level of performance. During the conversation though, it became clear that the people who were complaining were in fact, not giving a substandard performance, they were giving a substandard effort.
What became very clear is that these people had fallen into a vicious, self-perpetuating circle of:
- Not doing the simple things that they should do.
- Getting harassed by others for not doing what they should have done.
- Experiencing feelings of guilt.
- Becoming defensive as a way of not owing the deserved feelings of guilt.
- Denial of their responsibility in the situation.
- Experiencing increased harassment from others who want the guilty party to take responsibility for their action/lack of action.
- Focusing on their “feelings” instead of what they should do to correct their insufficiencies.
- Failing to learn anything constructive from the experience, and instead manufacturing a false sense of being persecuted.
- And finally, not having not learned anything constructive, they exit the experience worse off than before: With an attitude that is further away from being able to learn from and benefit from such experiences, and doomed to repeat the experience again. And every time that this circle repeats, the mis-comprehended sense of inadequacy is reinforced, which further inhibits them from just doing the simple things that they should.
What is the answer? It is simple. Whenever challenged to do something that is obviously and simply a good thing to do, just do it. This could be anything from a child taking out the trash promptly when asked to, all the way up to an adult on the job being asked to get their weekly reports in on time. Just do it. The negative reinforcement will cease, and you will genuinely feel good about yourself.
Eleanor Roosevelt is credited with saying “Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission.” If you set yourself up for deserved criticism by not doing the simple things that you should, you are, in a very real way, giving others the permission to make you feel inferior and inadequate. But you don’t have to give them that permission. Do what you know you should do. And then if someone starts barraging you with criticism, you will have the quiet confidence to withstand their negativism, because you will have earned the right to feel confident and assured, regardless of what someone else says. You will know your worth. You will have earned it, and no one will be able to take away from you the knowledge that you carry inside yourself.
Next time: Scrutinizing Your Feelings for Validity.