Self esteem

Self Esteem – A Somatic (Body) Perspective
Homayoun Shahri, Ph.D., M.A., LMFT
Homayoun.shahri@ravonkavi.com
http://www.ravonkavi.com

What is Self Esteem?
● Self Esteem reflects a person's overall subjective
emotional evaluation of his or her own worth. It is a
judgment of oneself as well as an attitude toward the self

Self Esteem is not Narcissism
● Narcissism
– Denial of True Self
– Identification with an Image
– Grandiosity
● Self Esteem
– Acceptance of True Self
– Identification with the Self
– Humility

Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale
1. On the whole, I am satisfied with myself.
Strongly Agree (4) Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree (1)
2. At times I think I am no good at all.
3. I feel that I have a number of good qualities.
4. I am able to do things as well as most other people.
5. I feel I do not have much to be proud of.

Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale (Continued)
6.I certainly feel useless at times.
7.I feel that I'm a person of worth, at least on an equal plane with others.
8.I wish I could have more respect for myself.
9.All in all, I am inclined to feel that I am a failure.
10.I take a positive attitude toward myself.

R. D. Laing (Knots)
My mother loves me.
I feel good.
I feel good because she loves me.
I am good because I feel good
I feel good because I am good
My mother loves me because I am good.

R. D. Laing (Knots - Continued)
My mother does not love me.
I feel bad.
I feel bad because she does not love me
I am bad because I feel bad
I feel bad because I am bad
I am bad because she does not love me
She does not love me because I am bad.

Exercise - 1
● Find a partner (preferably someone you are not close with)
● Decide who is 1 and who is 2
● Form two groups
● Group 1 members stay in the room
● Group 2 members follow presenter

Exercise – 1 (Continued)
● Group 1 members
– How did you feel?
● Group 2 members
– How did you feel?

Still Face Experiment (Dr Edward Tronick)

Wild Geese (Mary Oliver)
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your
knees
for a hundred miles through the desert
repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of
your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will
tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear
pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the
clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how
lonely,
the world offers itself to your
imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh
and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

An Object Relational View
● Object Permanency
– Child (Infant) must experience predictable presence of
primary care taker to feel safe and protected
● Object Constancy (Ability to integrate good and bad aspects of
object)
– Child (Infant) must experience unconditional love,
acceptance, empathy, and nonjudgmental presence of
primary care taker to feel that he is worthy of love, he is
worth it, he is good, and he is OK
– He then believes there is benevolence (goodness) in the
world, and people are generally good

Developmental Trauma – an object relational
view
● Drive, repression, and identification

view (Continued)
● Acting out

view (Continued)
● Mother, father, child interactions

Self Portrait (David Whyte)
It doesn't interest me if there is one God or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know if you are prepared to live in the world with its harsh need to change you.
If you can look back with firm eyes saying this is where I stand.
I want to know if you know how to melt into that fierce heat of living falling toward the
center of your longing.
I want to know if you are willing to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter unwanted passion of your sure defeat.
I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even the gods speak of God.

Exercise – 2
● Find a partner (preferably a different partner)
● Decide who is number 1, and who is number 2
● Partner 1 gives compliments to partner 2, while s/he is
listening and is taking it in
● At the end partner 1 says to partner 2: this is for you, and I
really want you to have it
● Reverse roles.
● How did you both feel?

Posture Corrections
● Bring your chest out (and straighten your back)
● Please don't hold your breath and breathe!
● Feel your neck, lower back, and hips
● Initiate movements (walking) from your hips, and feel your
feet on the ground
● How do you feel?

Journey (Mary Oliver)
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you kept shouting
their bad advice—though the whole house
began to tremble and you felt the old tug
at your ankles. "Mend my life!"
each voice cried. But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers at the very foundations,
though their melancholy was terrible.

Journey (Mary Oliver – Continued)
It was already late enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen branches and stones.
But little by little, as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice which you slowly
recognized as your own, that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper into the world
determined to do the only thing you could do—
determined to save the only life you could save.

Exercise – 4 (Sensory Awareness)
● Find a partner
● Follow presenter's instructions
● Switch roles
● How did you feel?

Conclusion
D. W. Winnicott
“The mother gazes at the baby in her arms, and the baby gazes
at his mother’s face and finds himself therein . . . provided that
the mother is really looking at the unique, small, helpless being
and not projecting her own expectations, fears and plans for the
child. [Otherwise] In that case, the child would find not himself in
his mother’s face, but rather the mother’s own projections. This
child would remain without a mirror, and for the rest of his life
would be seeking this mirror in vain.”

Self esteem

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