Stop Basing Your Self-Worth on Other People's Opinions | Hacker News Reader

Stop Basing Your Self-Worth on Other People's Opinions

hbr.org

77 pointskiyanwang59 comments

I'm not a psychiatrist, but this bit stroke me as funny:

> Solving the problem of conditional self-worth is less complicated than you might think. You don’t have to go through regression therapy and get a better understanding of how your early-life caretakers gave you implied messages of contingent worth, neither do you have to sift through the wreckage of emotional or physical suffering you endured growing up.

> You simply need to recognize that you are worthy exactly as you.

How's that different from telling a depressed person to 'simply stop being sad', or a disabled person 'simply stand up and walk'? I'm sure the point of regression therapy is to get to that point, and this 'realization' is not a shortcut to it (caveat: I don't actually know what regression therapy is).

Depression is an actual medical condition. Disabled is a actual medical condition.

Giving a fuck about other peoples opinions is a choice.

Low self-esteem is a medical condition ICD10 R45.81

https://www.cdek.liu.edu/icd10/R45.81/

That link says low self esteem is an unclassified symptom.

No, it is in the category of "Symptoms, signs and abnormal clinical and laboratory findings, not elsewhere classified" which does not mean that it is unclassified..

Indeed the link shows the classification itself

It is classified as a symptom, not a condition. Those are different things. Only a subset of ICD-10 concept codes are considered conditions. But in certain areas of mental health that distinction is rather arbitrary.

All DSM disorders are just clusters of symptoms that a board of psychiatrists decided were disorders. They are no more or less real than any other mental phenomena that the APA board decided weren’t “disorders”.

And if what you say is simply a choice, why do some people struggle with it? Maybe for person A it’s easy, but for person B it’s exceedingly difficult. It could be because of inborn traits or their upbringing or any number of other things, but for some people, making the “choice” doesn’t stick. The mind keeps going back to its old processes, regardless of the conscious choice that was made.

People need to stop assuming that everyone else’s brain works the same as their own. Everyone is different. Neurodiversity is a thing.

> Giving a fuck about other peoples opinions is a choice.

When you grow up in an environment where other people's opinions mean the difference between receiving care and not, or of getting hit with a stick and not, or of being told you're going to hell or not, it deeply ingrains the belief that other people's opinions are a matter of life and death.

It trains the developing brain to automatically become hyper-vigilant of the emotions and opinions of others, and these bedrocks of thinking carry forward into adult life where they either lead to a life of anxiety and worry about what others think, or a life of unwinding and replacing it with better ways of thinking.

When that kind of thinking gets embedded at an early age, at a time when the victim has no choice in the matter, it's absolutely not correct to say that this is a choice.

Not to mention, for the vast majority of human existence, one’s survival depended on not being ostracized from the group.

It’s very much hard-wired into us.

I don't think this was the intent of the GF comment.

Of course that if you've been conditioned for something that is no longer a choice.

If you have a broken leg and someone tells you to walk it off you're going to think they are clueless. If you literally have a [chemical] imbalance and someone tells you that you should be happy instead of being sad it's not as clear cut observing it, but it's also as infeasible as walking off a broken leg. Btw: being conditioned for something literally alters the chemical your brain/body releases.

As with the broken leg, you need help to figure out how to walk until it heals. Realizing that you need help and seeking and accepting the help is critical. Part of that help can be reframing how you view your interactions to transform what used to be implied and automatic to now being a choice.

If you're the kind of person who cares about what someone else thinks, you are by definition conditioned to be in that state. Some people are more deeply conditioned than others, and to their psyches, the stakes are much higher than average (i.e. the trauma example). The broader point is that framing this as a "choice" doesn't make sense.

I agree that a person can make a choice to counteract their conditioning (if they even realize it's something they need to counteract). But this is quite a different thing than having a choice over the kinds of automatic modes of thought that need to be addressed.

A person who is anxious about what other people think chooses to be so the same way a depressed person chooses to be depressed. By which I mean to say that it's not the kind of choice that it's made out to be.

We all care about what others think. We are social creatures with that experience real consequences for anti-social behavior. You still have to filter things and pick your battlea.

I can actually answer this. It is a decision you can make, but that phrasing trivializes it.

Getting to that point and internalizing it is not an easy process and may require medication or therapy to gain the necessary perspective to see this as a choice.

I had to unlearn a lot of things and spend years putting the past in perspective to get there.

For me it came after smoking too much pen and getting crippling depression for which I had to crawl out of. Emerging from it was like a bitch slap of regression therapy.

Possibility seeking religion might help with this. Measuring self worth in relation to human dignity as the beloved creation of a diety might help distance us from more materialistic measures of self worth that society proposes.

Yes, and Stephen Covey's idea of being principle centered is a good step into it with the same underlying tenants but less dogma.

Or for those less enthused by organized religion, picking up any variety of philosophies that encourage making the most of your existence.

Religion was quite devastating to my mental health. Buyer beware.

Religion is one of the central reasons that I felt I had no self-worth growing up. It literally taught me that I was inherently bad, and it was one of the core justifications for years of physical abuse.

I recognize that not all practitioners of religion engage in the toxic kind, but I think it's more helpful to look at the ways that some religions help people, and seek that out vs. adopting a belief in some deity.

Seeking forms of self exploration and contemplation that lead to realizations about self and the inherent value of all beings can be useful. Contemplating the vastness of the universe, the improbability of existence, and the fact that we're all made of the same stuff can help chip away at negative self beliefs.

But relying purely on religion can be a form of "spiritual bypass", and has so many pitfalls that it's hard not to push back against it when I see it recommended. I'm not saying there is never value, but there are less risky ways of finding the same kinds of benefits.

Spirituality, not religion.

It's not, and using the term "regression therapy" shows how little Gervais actually understands about modern integration and trauma informed therapies.

Gervais is a leading toxic-positivity guy and former coach turned pop-therapist focused around "maximizing potential," so you can safely ignore anything that he says

Some people need to unpack an entire lifetime of learned behaviors and biases that impede them from trusting yourself

Edit: And as far as I can tell this whole article is a submarine for his leadership business. Makes sense, as that’s what HBR is all about at this point

It isn't different. If you want insights into psychology from people who aren't psychopaths, HBR is not for you.

> How's that different from telling a depressed person to 'simply stop being sad', or a disabled person 'simply stand up and walk'?

I've been in therapy for a bit over 5 years to deal with issues of past abuse and the residual Complex PTSD the experience left behind.

I agree with the sibling comment that points out the article is trivializing the process.

When I started therapy, I thought that digging through the past is what it would be all about. But looking back, the function that it served was to help prepare me for the realization that the article points to.

There was a very clear inflection point where I rather suddenly realized that the trauma of my past and the harmful modes of thinking that it caused were causing me to continuously modulate my experience in a negative way by getting caught up in thoughts about it. And that moving past it had less to do with slogging through the shit, and more to do with re-training myself to think in more helpful ways.

To simplify this a bit, the realization was essentially that I had the power to change how I think, and that changing how I think was the real path forward.

Had I been told going in that "you need to change how you think", it would have bounced off of me. I would have told the person telling me that to go to hell, and it would have been like telling me to simply "stop being sad", to your point.

It took me some years to be ready to realize that this was really the solution. And when I did realize it, it completely changed the trajectory of my progress and the nature of my weekly sessions. Instead of getting stuck in the muck every week, I could reflect on how the embedded patterns of thought had impacted me that week, and I could practice new ways of thinking. I still think getting stuck in the muck for awhile was a necessary part of the process. To the extent that exploring the past helped explain the present, it was useful to help make the present feel less "crazy".

I agree somewhat with the message that the ultimate solution is a kind of realization about self and the role that I have in changing my own experience. But the path to reaching this realization can still be a hard one, and in my case was facilitated by an excellent therapist who patiently steered me away from my rumination about the past and taught me how to understand what I was feeling in the present.

I think arguing against regression therapy as the article does is doing a disservice to therapy. CBT or ACT seem far more relevant, and still often necessary to reach that critical realization.

You can't change the past but you can change the story you tell yourself about it which will change how you feel about it. Ultimately this will change your memory of the past as well.. so self reinforcing loop.

It's not asking you to change a physiological (can or can't you walk?) or emotional (are or are you not sad?) reality, it's asking you to change your rational self-perception. That's literally just a matter of changing your mind. Of course, if you still don't feel worthy, you have to ask why that is. Usually the issue is a critical environment, which you may or may not be able to change. I suppose there's value in reminding yourself that you have inherent worth and that the world can't take that away, but then you're still dealing with a world that wants to (and will take related action towards that end), for whatever reason.

It’s also difficult if you’re aware that “worth” is not an objective measure but a subjective construct. Any choice of “worth” is neither objectively correct nor incorrect. The only thing you can say is that having a higher self-worth (but maybe not too high) is psychologically healthier.

Depression and self-worth are apples and oranges. One is an ailment, the other is more like a metric that is dependent on variables.

As an individual you control the variables that produce your self-worth. That can’t be said for the factors that create depression, at least not fully.

I agree that one shouldn't base one's self-worth on others, but often enough we rely on others for things that we want or need.

A job, friends, dating, a relationship - all of these are contingent on 'approval' from others in a sense. So being concerned about how employers, potential friends or partners view you is a natural thing. Unless you plan to live entirely separate from society, somehow.

If you find yourself an outlier to what others typically seek out, then it becomes a matter of whether you can find people and situations that accept your own offbeat, unique nature.

Ultimately this title is just another persons opinion of what they think I should be doing.

I wish titles could be phrased less condescendingly such as "Reasons to consider not allowing your self-worth to be defined by others". It better allows for a position in which the reader may actually already be doing this.

HN rules are such that the original title should be preferred over rephrasing or reintrepretation.

In this case, the original title is at fault. It does seem to be another self-improvement article.

Where did you get the idea GP was suggesting HN is somehow at fault?

How am I suggesting HN is at fault?

I was explaining the situation, at least that what it seems to me.

He also doesn’t consider for one moment that this cuts both ways.

Others think the world of me - I am almost incessantly praised by friends, strangers, family, and even adversaries. You’re so smart. You’re so handsome. You’re so together.

I disagree with them, profoundly, as I am just this guy, you know? I came to be here through a series of (for me) fortunate accidents.

So I don’t derive my worth from others, and in my view correctly assess myself as a transient sack of mostly water, temporarily imbued with this thing we call consciousness.

I honestly think that the majority of people suffer from delusionally elevated self worth, when they too are little more than interchangeable parts. You’re not precious and unique. You’re not that smart. You’re not special. You’re just another human. You eat, you shit, you fuck, you die. So do we all.

This whole cult of the glorious, unique individual is pathological, in my view.

When you're young, you are very concerned about what other people think of you.

When you're middle-aged, you stop caring about what other people think of you.

When you're old, you realize that nobody is thinking of you.

But not listening to other people's opinions can also mean internalizing justifications for bad or mediocre behavior

True I suppose it's a balance. You want to be open to constructive criticism. But you don't want to follow every critic including the malicious ones. You also don't want to get caught up in negative societal measures like seeking self worth in material possessions, the size of your bank account etc.

So the article doesn’t say not to base your self worth on others, it says to recognise that you are basing your self worth on the opinion of others and to plan accordingly.

> high-performance psychologist Michael Gervais

How does one become a "high-performance" psychologist?

Study things and people that are high performing by societal measures.

You get everyone's opinion, ironically

Probably a psychologist who studies the phenomenon of "high performance" in humans.

As in, they would study literal performers (music, sports, etc.) .. high-level execs, "10x engineers" or whoever.

(Like the guy who came up with the rule for 10,000 hours of practice, that kind of thing)

Often, other people's opinion of you, is more reliable than your own. You should at least consider how likely it is that everyone else is wrong, and you are right. There are of course times when the world is wrong -- in which case you should think highly of yourself regardless of negative feedback. But there is also a chance that you should actually change your own poor behavior, rather than finding a way to accept yourself as-is.

I really don't care if you upvote this comment

Very well played!

Dangit, I felt good when I read your response!

But by not caring, you risk ignoring a valuable and sometimes critical source of information about your actions, as seen through the eyes of others. It’s a slippery slope from there to the “all opinions are equally valid” nonsense.

So you should be mindful of others votes as feedback for the reception of your creative act, but not base your internal sense of self worth on this feedback, rather weighing it as a source of feedback to inform decisions going forward.

(/s)

> The first words out of her mouth to her rescuer were: “Am I going to be okay?”

RFK's last words were "Is everybody OK?"

I really think this is one of those trite sayings that are worth looking at during periodic personal evaluations. This does not mean that I have great worth just because I am breathing. I need to base my worth on metrics that I value. And it just so happens that as my value goes up according to my standards, I will often see this reflected by people who's opinion I value- but not always.

There was a book that touched upon this concept: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43306206-the-courage-to-...

The book is based around Adlerian psychology. One of the key theories is that you cannot be free if you are not disliked by someone.

There’s interesting corollary to this: you don’t get to decide what you are worth to other people.

Before you start firing replies, let me put this in context.

I have plenty of friends who like me for reasons I don’t understand. I’d never consider being friends with anyone like me. I don’t know why anyone puts up my mood swings, occasional bouts of stubborn overconfidence on something I read on Wikipedia once three years ago, and a long list of other bipolar bullshit.

My friends see something in me that I don’t. They aren’t bothered by the same things I am. They get to choose how much I mean to them. And I am forever grateful for that.

What was the purpose of the anecdote about the superwoman in the beginning? Put up this impossibly perfect human on a pedestal and then say "but you should think you have worth as you are", and "that's easy"?

Wait is that 180 he does at the end him suggesting the path one must take to achieve self-worth post-nihilism? Or does he believe we're not basing our self-worth on the opinions of others properly?

There's no 180, you've drawn the wrong conclusion. He saying be aware of where you place your self-worth on others opinions. It might be some areas and not others.

I don’t care about your opinion about what I should base my self worth on.

Typical American seems obsessed with what other people think.

Everyone should have some healthy measures to absorb feedback from others, but better to do that when this feedback really happens.

Instead, american society built a babel tower of preemptive behaviours anticipating imagined perception by others, there is some kind of religion built around that. Wokeism can be viewed as taking this mechanism to the extreme.

Other peoples opinion of you is tied to your income, so I don't think there'll be a shift in this aspect of life.

Why the hell would I base my self worth on other people's opinions? Title is not at all intriguing.

It’s not for you then

This should be an auto-reply to 90% of comments on the Internet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com