"Self-Esteem"

Brian Lynch

What is “self-esteem?” Over the last twenty or more years it has been a buzz phrase that has garnered much attention, especially in the school environment. 

At first blush, it would seem that no one could argue the worth of someone enhancing his or her self-esteem.

This has led to many, many good and not-so-good innovations. Many places have de-emphasized competition. Probably the best outward sign of this is in athletics where, especially in the younger years, everyone leaves the “competition” with a trophy or ribbon. On the other hand, for the most part, there has been lip service to these ideas. Competition is more than alive and well.

But what of “self-esteem?” The downside has been a curious unintended consequence of children in effect, and putting it in plain language, “thinking too much of themselves.”  The emphasis switches to “I” should feel well or have a right to feel well at all costs or I  “deserve” to feel good and any pain and suffering is now a new defeat.

It is a vicious circle as the whole point of “self-esteem” programs is to make you feel good about yourself but if this threshold is crossed and I get the screwy idea that I am now entitled to no problems, well, as someone said, “When desire outruns reality shame ensues.” When we want too much, care too much, reach too high we fall on our faces. “Self-esteem” in short is a weak concept. It is important, but falling on your face is inevitable too.

I see it as a need to teach young people from the earliest ages to be aware of emotional problem-solving.  This simply translates to “problem-solving” in general.  The core of this teaching is that one is always going to feel the pangs of defeat and that the way to feel good about oneself is to “Solve the problem!”  We then learn to combine our suffering with “self-esteem.” I get interested in the problem and thus do “work.” Get interested in the pain and it will go away. Interest plus work = JOY! “I” did something. “I” participated. I either succeeded or I did not, but put the emphasis on trying, nothing better than “A” for effort if we are going to have such judgments. “Self-esteem” is one of those many slights of hand that we have come up with to make us think there is a “Royal Road”, an easy way, to “Happiness.”  

 A central part in teaching “doing it right” is to emphasize not only interest in self but also in how others feel.  Feeling good is a joint enterprise.  We want to have “mutual interests.”

Again “self-esteem” can be a very dangerous concept that can lead me to believe that I should always end up “smelling like a rose.” Then, on the other hand, I am not telling anyone to tell anyone to “toughen up.” I would rather not use the concept at all. I think the whole thing is solved by understanding that we all need our interests, our “joys” and hopefully we will have our interests that we will have with others. These will be tasks that we can complete with others and this will lead to moments of pride and joy. We may fail, but we will have been taught that that is part of the process, part of the learning process.

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"But where does worry get you?"

Brian Lynch

One day a patient said that she was "worried" about her son. At that moment, it occurred to me to stop her and ask her if it was not more the case that she was "interested" in her son.

I work with the belief that we have inherent "basic" feelings. Among them is "interest." We are never explicitly taught about interest as a fundamental emotion. Most people assume that we merely "think" about the things we do. For instance, we think, "I need to buy some milk" or "I'm going to purchase a car." We often overlook the emotional aspects associated with such tasks. However, our actions are accompanied by numerous emotional dimensions, and "worry" is undoubtedly an emotional word.

So I ask this, doesn't it sound a lot better to say I am "interested" in my son? "Worry" is nowhere considered a basic biological feeling. It occurred to me that "worry," for one, was not on my list of basic feelings. In this encounter with the patient, I began to refer to worry as "contaminated interest." It is interest bogged down with fear and distress or anger and maybe even shame. With those emotions dragging down my interest in my son, it might get in the way of helping him.

We might often say that we are "worried" about the rent money. But where does that get us? Are we not better served by saying we are "interested" in paying our rent? In finding the rent money, no matter how bad the situation is? If it is not available, magic will not produce it. As we all have heard, "Worrying is not going to solve the problem." How true. But being interested in the problem just might!

In the therapy called "cognitive therapy," this is what is taught. In short, "negative thoughts" are not productive. Thinking about "worrying", about all your unpaid bills does not get them paid. Getting interested in making money in whatever way you can (legally) gets the money to pay the bills.

I am not ignoring the overwhelming pain that ensues if indeed the money is not forthcoming. If that happens, there is a new problem to be solved and the only real option is to take the next step. It is the only solution to alleviate the hurt and the state of confusion you are in.

"Sex"

 

Brian Lynch

Revised

"The propagation of the human race is not left to mere accident or caprices of the individual, but is guaranteed by the hidden laws of nature which are enforced by a mighty, irresistible impulse." (Baron Richard von Krafft-Ebing, 1840-1902, Psychopathia Sexualis, 1866.)

Why after millennia do we not know how to deal with human sexuality and thus, for the most part, not have the foggiest idea of what to tell our children about sexuality?

I think we now know or at least the information is there for those that will consider it.

For so long it would seem it did not matter. Throughout the majority of human kinds existence “childhood” barely existed. Life expectancy only slowly crept up to 40 years within the last two hundred years. High percentages of women died young in childbirth.

 

These are some reasons. The problems we have now have not always been around. They are a product of huge social change over only several hundred years where a “childhood” has been carved out and the idea,  that  “protection” is needed is  recent.

 

Let me restate. Would that humans would have always cared better for their offspring, but the idea, the thought was not there. Childhood had to be invented first. Now that we have invented it, we have to now figure out the rules and after a very long time, we have not done that.

Yet, in short, we fairly universally feel that “children” having children is not a good idea. Yet in some sense, we are finding out what will, in some sense, always be the case. We are finding out that “maturity” is a moving target and that the brain is not fully integrated, on average, until age 25 by which time many people have started large families. To add to this young people are maturing at a younger and younger age. It is estimated that for several decades, young women have started menstruating a month earlier as every decade passes in the northern hemisphere. We are reminded:

"The propagation of the human race is not left to mere accident or caprices of the individual, but is guaranteed by the hidden laws of nature which are enforced by a mighty, irresistible impulse." (Baron Richard von Krafft-Ebing, 1840-1902, Psychopathia Sexualis, 1866.)

 

What does culture have to do with anything?

We do not seem to have the slightest idea how to deal with this situation.

I first want to say that I am not pointing any fingers at young people. And given the biological facts, how can we? And they are often doing a wonderful job of managing their lives with and without children even despite the biological facts. On the whole, statistics show that for the most part, they have much more “sense” than we give them credit for. And by the way, if they don’t have that “sense” it is not a reason to admonish or punish them.

How do we make things better? I think it is by helping children understand very basic, now known, concepts about their emotional lives.

One of these is that we not only have “drives;” The sex drive, the drive to eat and sleep and breath, but we also feel something about those drives. 

Psychology is slowly coming out of a fixation with “drive” and realizing that we feel something about the way we experience a drive. I can get hungry and be irritated by that feeling or I can feel happy or interested. I can feel distressed. Obviously with sex, if I have a sexual urge I can feel interested in fulfilling it or I might feel disgusted or shame about it based on previous experiences.

With this basis, we should naturally move to a new maturity. “Sex” is and is not simply a drive that everyone takes for granted that is going to and needs to be satiated. It is a localized neurological hormonal complex of activity in our body that produces feelings in that body. This is the “simple” part. It then becomes much more “complex” in that it becomes generalized, and we feel many things about it.

So many parents think it is inevitable that their child is going to engage in early sexual activity and I say this is because we simply think of it as a wild erg, drive, that is going to be completed no matter what. Or that children by their nature are morally bad and need to be set right.

 

But might not we have another view of things, my goodness, if we realized the power of being interested in another human? Indeed, some of my patients (parents) have been surprised by their children.

Once one recognizes this feeling, this emotional feeling of “interest” can be and is  powerful. “I am interested in you.” If I am interested in you would I want to hurt you? Would I want to emotionally damage you, impregnate you/us, change your life course irrevocably? Some people call it respecting others.

Make no mistake about it, I am not in any way saying “just say no” or anything like that. I am looking at a problem that tears families apart daily and ruins lives. Such problems need deep solutions. It is not easy to create a revolution in thought but it happens. Are you interested?

“Tipping Point.”

“Tipping Point.”

Brian Lynch

In his first best-seller “The Tipping Point” Malcolm Gladwell makes an interesting and powerful argument that our general environment often creates radical change in individuals and not particularly individual work. As proof, he runs us through the deplorable state of New Your City not so many years ago when murder rates soared to, at times over 2000, a year and felonies were through the roof while the subway was wall-to-wall graffiti. Then, within a very short time, everything reversed spearheaded, according to Gladwell, by a drive to clean up the subway. The drive was an all-out attack; no train was to be let out of the barn with graffiti on it once clean. The point is, and the argument is, that all the criminals did not move out of New York. So why did they quit doing crime?

Environment matters. 

We tend to have an either-or perspective and look to the individual or the community for solutions. And on the level of, say, criminality we certainly do not think that a simple change of venue, or cleaning service, might be enough to change a life, but if we consider what often is so often given as the proximal cause of harmful actions maybe it is not such a stretch. 

What is hard to explain is the force that makes the difference, indeed the “tipping point.” I talk a great deal about our day-to-day battle against confusion and being hurt. No one likes to be hurt or confused. Each of us has various capacities to handle incoming messages and it is not a difficult thought to think that a pleasant beach would be more attractive than a war zone and that people have different capacities to handle those environments. And that is about the extent of it. But Beirut, Lebanon, once a “Paris” with beaches is something quite different now, and of course, Paris has often been something quite different from her ideal. So it is more than just “place.”

But all this said another way to say this is that people want a certain quality of life and simply do not get it. They desire things. And we often are wrong in thinking that what they/we need is all that much. Small changes can indeed result in large changes.

We see people floundering and we want to “shake them” and say my god stand up and straighten yourself out.” Yet there has to be a “place” in which to do that. Is there?

In memoriam

 Father Michael van der Peet, S.C.J. 

Yesterday, I attended the funeral and burial of my friend Farther Michael van der Peet S.C.J. in Milwaukee Wisconsin. Of course each is in relation to other with a personal history and biography.  Many people have rich lives growing up with large families and a number of friends they will have throughout their lives. It is too noted that your siblings are those you will probably know longer than anyone else in your life. Now with his passing I note with  great sadness that  it so happens in my life that here is one of the few people that I knew from my early life that has followed me into my adulthood and one that cared about and for me, truly cared about me that is no longer with me.

Way leads on to way and as we say in my business  we "repress" our better instincts and so I did until yesterday and until now realize his importance as a family friend and personal friend who I should have paid more attention too.

I had met him as a child through my sister who for a while was a nun . My most extended contact with him was on a road trip to Mexico with the family and him to visit her. On the way back I remember there was some promise to visit "The Alamo" but time was short and we missed the turn off. He sensed my bitter disappoint and tried to speak to it. I know I had very mixed emotions at the time but  a lasting effect held that he tried to connect with me and recognize my pain. I find this advanced parenting technique even today.

Later, not so long ago, I asked his opinion on some psychological material I had put together and I must say that to this day he is one of only several  people in over a decade that have taken the time to do such a thoughtful critique as he did.

And so I lament not having taken the drive north, to meet if only a couple of more times. 

Our loves and interests should so much be in the doing.

It is  ourselves we weep for.

Brian Lynch April 29th, 2010.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/29221239.html