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The other day I was talking to a psychologist about [difficult personal situation which I am unable to discuss publicly] and she said to me “This must be really

The other day I was talking to a psychologist about [difficult personal situation which I am unable to discuss publicly] and she said to me “This must be really damaging to your self-worth.” And, my honest internal reaction to her statement (although I didn’t say it out loud to her) was “Self-worth, what is that?” Because I’m not sure if I have any? I don’t mean that in the negative sense that I think I am worthless or anything. It is just that in my mind “self” and “worth” are concepts which do not intersect. Maybe that’s an autistic trait.

daymanstep 2y ago
I think the idea is that "people" tend to be attracted towards things that they think will increase their self worth and avoid things that decreases their self worth. Though from a stoic perspective the only thing that can affect your self worth are your own actions, not external events which you have no control over.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  I think most people use other people as a kind of mirror, to try to see who they are and how they fit. (Autists may do it less than others, or even none at all.) If everybody thinks well of me, then I should probably think well of myself. If everyone thinks badly of me, then I'm probably not worth very much. So goes the logic. So social media is tearing up peoples' self image, not just because of put-downs and deliberate trolling, but mostly because everyone is putting forward the best version of themself that they can, and we compare that, not to the version of ourselves that we put forward, but to the reality of ourselves, and we lose in comparison. And that's the problem with self-worth-by-comparison. There's always someone against whom you lose, in some aspects. Richest man in the world? Yeah, but that other guy has a bigger yacht, and we use yachts as measuring sticks. That's true of all of life, but social media amplifies it. We can see more people faster to compare ourselves to, and they can present a fake image more convincingly.
  - hermitcrab 2y ago
    And marketers play on this status anxiety. Just look at pretty much any car ad. The best way to innoculate yourself against this (to an extent anyway) is to learn a bit about marketing and do some marketing. Once you have seen how the sausage is made, it has less power.
  - detourdog 2y ago
    I think social media broke my partner’s self-worth. I’m not on social media beyond HN and found no way to communicate with someone so engaged in remote relationships.
- passion__desire 2y ago
  I think stoic ideas are from an era where their circumstances made them have those principles. We don't live in that era. It is possible to affect others and the associated cascading effect that can bring about a change in others action which were affecting you negatively. If Naval's idea of "individuals having leverage holds water" directly implies that you can change others, albiet slowly. If your reach becomes big enough that it becomes a threat that "other actors" need to curtail that reach through "algorithms" is another evidence that you were indeed having effects that they didn't like.
  - HPsquared 2y ago
    You think Marcus Aurelius was unable to affect other peoples' actions? That's not the idea. The point is that you can't directly make someone else think or feel a certain way, only act on them externally.
    - passion__desire 2y ago
      If causality holds, acting externally will have changes to internal assessments assuming good faith dialogue. Plus Marcus Aurelius was helpless in that it would take him lot of time and energy to give personal attention to each individual and clarify their doubts. He didn't have the technology to record his thoughts on a topic and refer people to it.
      - chuckadams 2y ago
        > He didn't have the technology to record his thoughts on a topic and refer people to it. He did and we’re still reading them to this day.
        passion__desire 2y ago
        I could be wrong in this. But wasn't his writings only for himself and was published only later. How many people really referred to his writings? When was printing press invented? How popular was it compared to Bible? Was it possible for people to consume his writings in multimedia formats like video, audio? Were there meme-pages on tiktoks which contextualized his writings in different day-to-day scenarios so that the importance of his general ideas were imprinted on their minds? Did he have debate with others to defend his ideas watched by many, how would he respond to those counter-arguments? Would your mind change considering if his responses weren't that strong or on filmsy grounds?
- maroonblazer 2y ago
  And of course from a Buddhist perspective the self is an illusion, making all this 'self-worth' chasing akin to tilting at windmills.
  - svaha1728 2y ago
    True, but it’s harder to run around with a begging bowl in Western cultures. Even though self worth is an illusion, right livelihood is part of the Noble Eightfold Path.
    - detourdog 2y ago
      I was very unBuddha while pursuing what currently enables my lack of expectations. I’m just discovering acting on the world with no expectations of what is next.
  - detourdog 2y ago
    I don’t think the notion of self-worth is rejected by Buddha. I think the expectation of achieving it through actions is rejected. The expected results are the problem not self-worth or actions.
graeme 2y ago
One way of looking at it is how you assess yourself in things and take pride in or feel regret about that. For example, you wrote this comment. It is a well written comment. You likely have some belief roughly along the lines of "I write reasonably well". You have probably received feedback along those lines throughout life, and that reinforces that belief. This is perhaps mildly pleasing or at least seems correct. Now suppose instead that whenever you wrote things people replied: "Huh?" "What? This makes no sense" "Good god what led you to think that? That's so stupid!" And so on. And you even reread some of your own writings that you thought were good and they seem to strike you as not good. The view that your writing is not good comes to strike you as correct. You aim to improve but continue to receive negative feedback. The view that you are genuinely not good at writing seems to be correct and you come to believe you cannot ever be good at writing. That would be negative self worth. Does this example line up at all with any internal thought processed you have? Are you pleased by praise or hurt by criticism? Even to the level of thinking the judgements are correct or incorrect. (To be clear you are good at writing)
- card_zero 2y ago
  This begs the question because it starts with "how you assess yourself". Why assess yourself, the self, the whole person, at all? So, you're not good at writing. Perhaps you're not good at anything. In that case, you probably shouldn't attempt things except as practice. But why give yourself an overall score as a person, what are you even supposed to do with that information? You can't be anybody else, so it's useless. Work with what you've got, fuck 'em.
  - tgdude 2y ago
    My theory based on nothing but internal reflections A lot of people's minds are raised from a young age to make judgements and comparisons with others. Their minds are told that one must be useful to be valuable, and that simply _being_ isn't enough. Over time those bad habits of the mind are so ingrained and automatic that we assume them to be part of "me". "My" thoughts, "my" ideas and so we don't question their assumptions or where they came from. It takes conscious effort to be able to change those habits into something more positive, or to be able to center your mind to a point where those habits seen as just other thoughts and don't have the same "weight" behind them. We're an ever changing process and being able to judge and adjust is a useful skill. It's just that doing that doesn't require all of the crap we put ourselves through due to unchecked assumptions.
delusional 2y ago
That sounds like a question for your psychologist, not randoms on the internet. To interact a little more with the substance. I don't think I understand what you're saying. You're clearly using the concept when you write >I don’t mean that in the negative sense that I think I am worthless or anything That's what negative self-worth is. You seem to understand it fine. self-worth is your subjective assessment of how much you are worth. The self's assessment of the "worth" (whatever you choose to load into that term) of the self.
- add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
  You missed the distinction between "I don't feel I have any worth" and "I don't see the world in terms of quantifying worth."
wslh 2y ago
Completely agree with your point, and it feels like a personal preference/trait. Do you think this tendency is related to an autistic trait because of a focus on facts over social norms?
herpdyderp 2y ago
I feel this. As to why, my answer is simply that it’s a waste of time to worry about it, so why bother?
elorant 2y ago
How about integrity? Do you find that relevant? Usually people with integrity have high self-esteem because they adhere to a certain set of ethics. I'm not trying in any way to pass judgement, just to give you a different perspective.
- herval 2y ago
  my understanding of integrity means that you do things that are guided by a shared moral compass - keep your word, avoid cheating, etc. Those signals seem to be all external (you do them because you don't want to violate your contract with another person, etc). I don't think that's in any way related to self-worth (which is a measurement of value to yourself, independent of others)?
  - oliv__ 2y ago
    It is definitely related to self-worth, because the contract you make is not with another person, it's with yourself. And when you respect it, it increases your self respect and worth.
    - herval 2y ago
      I don't see how that's the case at all. A sense of obligation (how much you value someone else) has nothing to do with self worth (how much you value yourself). If this was the case at all, a great treatment for low self esteem would be to commit to stuff for others, since that'd automatically make you valuate your own self more
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - fixedpointsnake 2y ago
        >If this was the case at all, a great treatment for low self esteem would be to commit to stuff for others, since that'd automatically make you valuate your own self more How do you know this is not true? If your sense of obligation is seen as a value function for people, it follows that your self-worth is the value when you plug-in "self". Helping others and volunteering is indeed something that brings satisfaction and could help heal your sense of self-worth. If you value another person higher than yourself, by helping them you would establish a connection between their worth and your own. You potentially went from lacking any evidence of positive self-worth to having concrete first-hand evidence that you are worth something to someone.
__turbobrew__ 2y ago
I feel the same. One thing that I have struggled with in relationships is that others need to feel validated, that their decisions are rational and that other people believe that they are rational. Stimulus from the outside to satisfy the inside. What makes this difficult for me is that I don’t need to feel validated, I am comfortable with my own decisions in life and do not need someone else to approve. I think this ties into self worth which seems to be related to people’s perception of their actions and the approval they see from others. If you do not need external validation then you are not concerned about peoples perception of you and therefore self worth is a foreign concept.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  You may not need anyone else to approve, but doesn’t it still cause issues when they don’t?
  - TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
    Yes, but that's a different problem. Although it's also tangential to the essay, which is about the mechanisation of self-image - not just sell-worth, but identity in general. Which has always been socially imposed (even on those who are sure they're different). But now it can be directed algorithmically by a very small number of actors, who have the power to apply behaviour and value modification tools that can be individually tailored for everyone in a demographic - in ways which most people aren't even aware of. "Low self-esteem" is just one the effects.
  - __turbobrew__ 2y ago
    Sure, those issues come just as a storm comes for a sailor. You cannot control what comes your way but only how you react. I’m not a psychopath, I understand social norms and I do take into consideration how my actions will affect others, but I try my best to live a fair life and deal with whatever comes my way instead of focusing on what-if’s or how people perceive me.
- Aerbil313 2y ago
  Is the total lack of care about what others think of me a sign or symptom of autism? I had it from childhood to a much larger extent than any of my peers, even though it diminished as I grew older.
phkahler 2y ago
>> "Self-worth, what is that?” Because I’m not sure if I have any? This almost made me laugh. I know where you're at. You got a long road ahead so get started! Tell your psychologist when these things pop in your head. Have a laugh, but then reflect on it or whatever. Let me offer some alternatives to "autistic": Anhedonia, schizoid personality disorder, avoidant (attachment OR personality disorder). There are many things, but it's not super important to define it, lest you let it define you.
- skissane 2y ago
  > Let me offer some alternatives to "autistic": Anhedonia, schizoid personality disorder, avoidant (attachment OR personality disorder). You are right, except in my case I’m pretty sure it is more autistic than any of those - our children do X/Y/Z and professionals tell us “those are signs of autism” (one child diagnosed, the other not yet formally but the paediatrician is convinced she has it and on the waiting list for an assessment) and (for many but not all of them) I’m thinking “what do you mean that’s a sign of autism? I was like that when I was a kid too, some of them I am even still like that”
wpietri 2y ago
I think there are two ways you can look at it. One is what I think of as the neurotypical way. They spend a lot of energy on social modeling, on fitting people into hierarchies of privilege. (E.g., "respecting your elders", older sibling vs younger, teachers vs students, the popular kids, and so many other things.) Then in the same way they're judging the worth of others, they fit themselves into the same primate status model. I think that's what the psychologist is talking about. Personally, I find that way not super useful. But another way is sort of reverse engineering. From how person X treats themself, what can we learn about how much they value their own self? Like you, I didn't have much of a concept of self-worth in the sense of "where do I place myself in the many hierarchies most people around me are constantly aware of." But a therapist eventually got me to see that I did not treat myself as worth the same as the people around me. Paying attention to that has improved my life a lot. The big question for me is to what extent the latter thing is influenced by the former. For neurotypical people I gather the link is pretty strong. For me it's definitely a weaker link, but it's hard to tell the difference between "there is no link" and "I don't notice the link".
- BadHumans 2y ago
  Not a psychologist but I am friends with more than a few. I don't know why you assume the psychologist meant the first because they did not. Self-worth has nothing to do with social hierarchy. It is how you treat yourself and a core thing therapist work on is helping you treat yourself the way you would treat others, with compassion and respect.
  - wpietri 2y ago
    I thought maybe I was using the phrase wrong, but the first two definitions I find are "the internal sense of being good enough and worthy of love and belonging from others" and "a feeling that you are a good person who deserves to be treated with respect". You'll note that those are both inherently social. And both "good enough" and "with respect" are about one's position in the caste/hierarchy structure. The reason I assume what the psychologist meant is that most of them are neurotypical, and neurotypical people are deeply invested in social primate dynamics. I understand that this is hard for neurotypical people to see, but you might read things like DeWaal's "Chimpanzee Politics" or Johnson's "Impro" [1]. Plus there's my personal experience, where psychologists are very inclined to talk about self-worth in the social sense. And I think that's fine; I'm sure it works well for their neurotypical patients. [1] particularly the section on status transactions, which are vital for authentic theater performances, but are rarely articulated because it's so natural to neurotypical people
orbisvicis 2y ago
The flip side of detaching self-esteem from technical competency is that you can make very strong assertions without being arrogant. People of integrity with utilitarian leaning are often labeled amoral or unemotional. People with a strong drive not attached to financial gain are often termed unambitious. Your perceived worth really depends on values of society, so if you remove yourself from the equation, you only have no worth to others, not to yourself. Sequestered from others the sense of self has no meaning, so naturally you have no self-worth. Not because you are worthless, but because you have no self and place no importance on your perceived worth. Or more strongly phrased, what's the point of self-worth if you can do everything you put your mind to? I'd you can't but think you can, then that's a harmful psychological schism. Since no one person can achieve everything, self-worth is only meaningful in areas for which you lack competency For example - and this deals not with self-worth but with stress - I'm pretty inflexible in my goals. When I can't meet my goals I tend to shut down. I'm often asked if I'm stressed, to which I can only respond, "Stress - what's that?". And yet clearly I've suffered a harmful schism between my perception of self and reality, as indicated by my lack of stress response.
- detourdog 2y ago
  My partner considers my deliberateness as lazy. They won’t discuss things with me because they already know all about me. My willingness to share their perception of me being ineffective was quite damaging to my self esteem. I never felt successful due to lack of acknowledgment of my achievements. They asked me to leave the house about a year ago. Once I met new people and they saw me as successful and fun my self worth improved.
  - orbisvicis 2y ago
    Yes, that's why I qualified self-worth by field of competency. I really try to view the world objectively, ignoring the opinions of others, but after N fizzled relationships... is it me or is it you? But just because you are detached from societal values doesn't imply you should be detached from people. I can't enumerate the intangibles I get by surrounding myself with others. I perform better, I have better ideas, I feel more alert. I've never been able to understand why as I never gain any objective aid. Does unexpected input promote flexible thinking? Am I inspired by differing worldviews to think outside the box. Or is it simple happiness? No idea.
bbor 2y ago
Interesting! If I said you were bad at your job and an ugly, inattentive partner, would your primary reaction be one of hurt or just one of calculating self-preservation? I would personally feel very emotional if I heard those things from someone in real life, so it’s an honest question. What emotionally drives you, if not the assessments of your peers? Why excel at work, why find a partner, why do your best to be better everyday? I wish I could say I was driven by rational assessments of my needs as a Homo Sapiens and my moral responsibilities therein, but I think I’d be lying to myself. Or, at least, it’s an eternal struggle to minimize the importance of self-worth.
- tgdude 2y ago
  Not the person you're replying to but "What emotionally drives you, if not the assessments of your peers? Why excel at work, why find a partner, why do your best to be better everyday?" It's fun and it makes me happy. People in my life are smart people but they're just as flawed as I am, what they think of me also changes over time. Why would I build the foundation of my life and career on such shaky ground?
- skissane 2y ago
  Absolutely I can have negative emotional reactions to criticism-although it all depends on what the criticism is, who is making it, whether I agree with it. But I don’t mentally link those feelings to a concept called “self-worth”. To the extent I have a “self”, it is a bucket whose contents varies over time, and varying thoughts and feelings go in that bucket-sometimes those feelings can get quite dark, but even then I still don’t think of myself as having a “worth” What motivates me? Certainly part of me likes it when people say I’ve done a good job. Again I don’t mentally link that feeling with a concept called “self-worth”. But often also I get motivated by the pleasure of the work in itself - when I really get hooked on a program, I find improving it is something I enjoy as an end-in-itself
add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
I'm the same way. I could dispassionately talk about either my strengths or my weaknesses. But I don't see the world as measuring myself in an overall way, nor other people. We all have so many dimensions that are always in so much flux, how could you ever reduce that to something meaningfully quantifiable?
detourdog 2y ago
I spent 56 years with that thought. Looking back for me it was family identity and trying to achieve standards of someone that died a decade before I was born. I now understand self-worth in a new way. I had to realize that there was plenty of time to slow down and be deliberate. I had to get to point where I could take the time I needed to do a task. I have no idea how others can find self worth but for me I describe it as being comfortable.
tejohnso 2y ago
I was confused by this part of the article: For Marx, the poet of economics, when a person’s innate value is replaced with exchange value, it is as if we’ve been reduced to “a mere jelly.” What's wrong with basing your worth on something like value provided professionally plus value provided personally, to myself and others? Are we supposed to think that we are valuable (worth something) just because we exist?
- pram 2y ago
  It might be fine if you’re a successful professional or entrepreneur and have a good salary or business. Of course if you’re an Amazon warehouse worker or a burger flipper, and your labor is completely fungible and provides low monetary remuneration, then you would judge yourself as low(er) value in comparison. So determining your self-worth via other properties makes a lot more sense huh? We can create value through more things than what we do for a job. It’s true!
lordleft 2y ago
I am a Christian. Something I have found within my faith tradition (and something I find is lacking in the culture around me) is a sense that I am in possession of an infinitely durable source of dignity and worthiness that is not tethered to who I am or what I have done. I have found this conceit enormously consoling.
- squidgedcricket 2y ago
  I'm envious of that intrinsic sense of self worth, but I don't follow how that's a consequence of being Christian. I carry guilt and shame from sins that can't be rectified, knowing that Jesus loves me doesn't help me love myself.
  - MisterBastahrd 2y ago
    It's pretty funny when you consider that a huge part of Christian evangelism is the attempt to convince normal people that they aren't worth dirt and are condemned to eternal torture unless they believe in somebody that the religious can't prove exists for a feat that they can't prove ever happened.
    - norir 2y ago
      Yes, that is one manifestation of Christian evangelism. Modern Christianity is plagued by literalism and ignorance. Most self identifying Christians (and I would posit most skeptical rationalists) have not deeply engaged with the texts and often when they do get hung up on an overly literal interpretation. If one looks beyond the surface, there is tremendous wisdom that helps everyone live better today -- not just in some hypothetical afterlife. Indeed, I believe that if you try to follow the teachings of Jesus, your interactions with others and your life writ large will be better. That has been my personal experience and I had to be called back kicking and screaming as a committed non-believer. Of course, having said all that, I am personally dismayed by the state of Christianity in our world. Institutional Christianity has done and continues to do tremendous harm in the world so I am sympathetic to your perspective. Indeed, I am most upset because I find the way that many nominally Christian institutions behave to be directly contrary to the their own sacred texts. The hypocrisy is almost unbearable. But I would encourage everyone reading this to withhold judgment of other's faith practices and/or self-identification until you understand where they are coming from rather than lumping them in with the worst exemplars of their nominal affiliates.
nostrademons 2y ago
A related observation I've gotten from interacting with normies including my wife: Most people assume there is such thing as a "self" and that it is okay, natural, and desirable to preference yourself when interacting with other people. Indeed, for most normies, there is only various people and their selves interacting. My autistic perspective is that there is only a system of the world, various roles that people happen to occupy, and here are my options for where I can slot into it, might as well choose the best one, but it never occurred to me that the other people in the system could be individually influenced or that you could preference your self over others. At least, until I interacted with others enough to realize that that was all they were doing. Relatedly, most normies project this self-interest onto aspies and assume that when they are saying how the world is, they are pushing their own agenda, because in their worldview everybody has an agenda. As a result, the aspie tendency to make observations about broad sweeping systems comes off as arrogance, as preferencing themselves and their worldview over everybody else. But to an aspie, there is no such thing as arrogance, because arrogance implies that one preferences their self-worth over others, and there is no such thing as "self" or "worth", and it is nonsensical to talk about self-importance.
- ajb 2y ago
  Well that's an interesting theory. However, on reading it, my leading hypotheses are that people who express such disbelief in the possibility of their being selfish, either lack self-insight, or are lying. Your theory I would give a subjective probability rather lower than these. Of course, this might be my lack of insight into the aspie mind. But self-interest is highly evolutionarily favourable, and is built into our brains from very early in our evolutionary history - from the first organisms that had brains.
  - ttpphd 2y ago
    Yeah it's your lack of insight and your projection of your own psychology onto others
    - ajb 2y ago
      The problem with that is: while it's true that one can't treat neurodivergent people fairly without taking heed of their testimony of how their mind works, selfishness is a behavior that has to be evaluated from an external perspective - for everyone, not just the neurodivergent. Because everyone who is ever selfish denies it, and has a story about why they're not being selfish. So it's always evaluated by POSIWID.

daymanstep 2y ago

I think the idea is that "people" tend to be attracted towards things that they think will increase their self worth and avoid things that decreases their self worth. Though from a stoic perspective the only thing that can affect your self worth are your own actions, not external events which you have no control over.

AnimalMuppet 2y ago
I think most people use other people as a kind of mirror, to try to see who they are and how they fit. (Autists may do it less than others, or even none at all.) If everybody thinks well of me, then I should probably think well of myself. If everyone thinks badly of me, then I'm probably not worth very much. So goes the logic. So social media is tearing up peoples' self image, not just because of put-downs and deliberate trolling, but mostly because everyone is putting forward the best version of themself that they can, and we compare that, not to the version of ourselves that we put forward, but to the reality of ourselves, and we lose in comparison. And that's the problem with self-worth-by-comparison. There's always someone against whom you lose, in some aspects. Richest man in the world? Yeah, but that other guy has a bigger yacht, and we use yachts as measuring sticks. That's true of all of life, but social media amplifies it. We can see more people faster to compare ourselves to, and they can present a fake image more convincingly.
- hermitcrab 2y ago
  And marketers play on this status anxiety. Just look at pretty much any car ad. The best way to innoculate yourself against this (to an extent anyway) is to learn a bit about marketing and do some marketing. Once you have seen how the sausage is made, it has less power.
- detourdog 2y ago
  I think social media broke my partner’s self-worth. I’m not on social media beyond HN and found no way to communicate with someone so engaged in remote relationships.
passion__desire 2y ago
I think stoic ideas are from an era where their circumstances made them have those principles. We don't live in that era. It is possible to affect others and the associated cascading effect that can bring about a change in others action which were affecting you negatively. If Naval's idea of "individuals having leverage holds water" directly implies that you can change others, albiet slowly. If your reach becomes big enough that it becomes a threat that "other actors" need to curtail that reach through "algorithms" is another evidence that you were indeed having effects that they didn't like.
- HPsquared 2y ago
  You think Marcus Aurelius was unable to affect other peoples' actions? That's not the idea. The point is that you can't directly make someone else think or feel a certain way, only act on them externally.
  - passion__desire 2y ago
    If causality holds, acting externally will have changes to internal assessments assuming good faith dialogue. Plus Marcus Aurelius was helpless in that it would take him lot of time and energy to give personal attention to each individual and clarify their doubts. He didn't have the technology to record his thoughts on a topic and refer people to it.
    - chuckadams 2y ago
      > He didn't have the technology to record his thoughts on a topic and refer people to it. He did and we’re still reading them to this day.
      - passion__desire 2y ago
        I could be wrong in this. But wasn't his writings only for himself and was published only later. How many people really referred to his writings? When was printing press invented? How popular was it compared to Bible? Was it possible for people to consume his writings in multimedia formats like video, audio? Were there meme-pages on tiktoks which contextualized his writings in different day-to-day scenarios so that the importance of his general ideas were imprinted on their minds? Did he have debate with others to defend his ideas watched by many, how would he respond to those counter-arguments? Would your mind change considering if his responses weren't that strong or on filmsy grounds?
maroonblazer 2y ago
And of course from a Buddhist perspective the self is an illusion, making all this 'self-worth' chasing akin to tilting at windmills.
- svaha1728 2y ago
  True, but it’s harder to run around with a begging bowl in Western cultures. Even though self worth is an illusion, right livelihood is part of the Noble Eightfold Path.
  - detourdog 2y ago
    I was very unBuddha while pursuing what currently enables my lack of expectations. I’m just discovering acting on the world with no expectations of what is next.
- detourdog 2y ago
  I don’t think the notion of self-worth is rejected by Buddha. I think the expectation of achieving it through actions is rejected. The expected results are the problem not self-worth or actions.

graeme 2y ago

One way of looking at it is how you assess yourself in things and take pride in or feel regret about that. For example, you wrote this comment. It is a well written comment. You likely have some belief roughly along the lines of "I write reasonably well". You have probably received feedback along those lines throughout life, and that reinforces that belief. This is perhaps mildly pleasing or at least seems correct. Now suppose instead that whenever you wrote things people replied: "Huh?" "What? This makes no sense" "Good god what led you to think that? That's so stupid!" And so on. And you even reread some of your own writings that you thought were good and they seem to strike you as not good. The view that your writing is not good comes to strike you as correct. You aim to improve but continue to receive negative feedback. The view that you are genuinely not good at writing seems to be correct and you come to believe you cannot ever be good at writing. That would be negative self worth. Does this example line up at all with any internal thought processed you have? Are you pleased by praise or hurt by criticism? Even to the level of thinking the judgements are correct or incorrect. (To be clear you are good at writing)

card_zero 2y ago
This begs the question because it starts with "how you assess yourself". Why assess yourself, the self, the whole person, at all? So, you're not good at writing. Perhaps you're not good at anything. In that case, you probably shouldn't attempt things except as practice. But why give yourself an overall score as a person, what are you even supposed to do with that information? You can't be anybody else, so it's useless. Work with what you've got, fuck 'em.
- tgdude 2y ago
  My theory based on nothing but internal reflections A lot of people's minds are raised from a young age to make judgements and comparisons with others. Their minds are told that one must be useful to be valuable, and that simply _being_ isn't enough. Over time those bad habits of the mind are so ingrained and automatic that we assume them to be part of "me". "My" thoughts, "my" ideas and so we don't question their assumptions or where they came from. It takes conscious effort to be able to change those habits into something more positive, or to be able to center your mind to a point where those habits seen as just other thoughts and don't have the same "weight" behind them. We're an ever changing process and being able to judge and adjust is a useful skill. It's just that doing that doesn't require all of the crap we put ourselves through due to unchecked assumptions.

delusional 2y ago

That sounds like a question for your psychologist, not randoms on the internet. To interact a little more with the substance. I don't think I understand what you're saying. You're clearly using the concept when you write >I don’t mean that in the negative sense that I think I am worthless or anything That's what negative self-worth is. You seem to understand it fine. self-worth is your subjective assessment of how much you are worth. The self's assessment of the "worth" (whatever you choose to load into that term) of the self.

add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
You missed the distinction between "I don't feel I have any worth" and "I don't see the world in terms of quantifying worth."

wslh 2y ago

Completely agree with your point, and it feels like a personal preference/trait. Do you think this tendency is related to an autistic trait because of a focus on facts over social norms?

herpdyderp 2y ago

I feel this. As to why, my answer is simply that it’s a waste of time to worry about it, so why bother?

elorant 2y ago

How about integrity? Do you find that relevant? Usually people with integrity have high self-esteem because they adhere to a certain set of ethics. I'm not trying in any way to pass judgement, just to give you a different perspective.

herval 2y ago
my understanding of integrity means that you do things that are guided by a shared moral compass - keep your word, avoid cheating, etc. Those signals seem to be all external (you do them because you don't want to violate your contract with another person, etc). I don't think that's in any way related to self-worth (which is a measurement of value to yourself, independent of others)?
- oliv__ 2y ago
  It is definitely related to self-worth, because the contract you make is not with another person, it's with yourself. And when you respect it, it increases your self respect and worth.
  - herval 2y ago
    I don't see how that's the case at all. A sense of obligation (how much you value someone else) has nothing to do with self worth (how much you value yourself). If this was the case at all, a great treatment for low self esteem would be to commit to stuff for others, since that'd automatically make you valuate your own self more
    - deleted 2y ago
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    - fixedpointsnake 2y ago
      >If this was the case at all, a great treatment for low self esteem would be to commit to stuff for others, since that'd automatically make you valuate your own self more How do you know this is not true? If your sense of obligation is seen as a value function for people, it follows that your self-worth is the value when you plug-in "self". Helping others and volunteering is indeed something that brings satisfaction and could help heal your sense of self-worth. If you value another person higher than yourself, by helping them you would establish a connection between their worth and your own. You potentially went from lacking any evidence of positive self-worth to having concrete first-hand evidence that you are worth something to someone.

__turbobrew__ 2y ago

I feel the same. One thing that I have struggled with in relationships is that others need to feel validated, that their decisions are rational and that other people believe that they are rational. Stimulus from the outside to satisfy the inside. What makes this difficult for me is that I don’t need to feel validated, I am comfortable with my own decisions in life and do not need someone else to approve. I think this ties into self worth which seems to be related to people’s perception of their actions and the approval they see from others. If you do not need external validation then you are not concerned about peoples perception of you and therefore self worth is a foreign concept.

Aeolun 2y ago
You may not need anyone else to approve, but doesn’t it still cause issues when they don’t?
- TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
  Yes, but that's a different problem. Although it's also tangential to the essay, which is about the mechanisation of self-image - not just sell-worth, but identity in general. Which has always been socially imposed (even on those who are sure they're different). But now it can be directed algorithmically by a very small number of actors, who have the power to apply behaviour and value modification tools that can be individually tailored for everyone in a demographic - in ways which most people aren't even aware of. "Low self-esteem" is just one the effects.
- __turbobrew__ 2y ago
  Sure, those issues come just as a storm comes for a sailor. You cannot control what comes your way but only how you react. I’m not a psychopath, I understand social norms and I do take into consideration how my actions will affect others, but I try my best to live a fair life and deal with whatever comes my way instead of focusing on what-if’s or how people perceive me.
Aerbil313 2y ago
Is the total lack of care about what others think of me a sign or symptom of autism? I had it from childhood to a much larger extent than any of my peers, even though it diminished as I grew older.

phkahler 2y ago

>> "Self-worth, what is that?” Because I’m not sure if I have any? This almost made me laugh. I know where you're at. You got a long road ahead so get started! Tell your psychologist when these things pop in your head. Have a laugh, but then reflect on it or whatever. Let me offer some alternatives to "autistic": Anhedonia, schizoid personality disorder, avoidant (attachment OR personality disorder). There are many things, but it's not super important to define it, lest you let it define you.

skissane 2y ago
> Let me offer some alternatives to "autistic": Anhedonia, schizoid personality disorder, avoidant (attachment OR personality disorder). You are right, except in my case I’m pretty sure it is more autistic than any of those - our children do X/Y/Z and professionals tell us “those are signs of autism” (one child diagnosed, the other not yet formally but the paediatrician is convinced she has it and on the waiting list for an assessment) and (for many but not all of them) I’m thinking “what do you mean that’s a sign of autism? I was like that when I was a kid too, some of them I am even still like that”

wpietri 2y ago

I think there are two ways you can look at it. One is what I think of as the neurotypical way. They spend a lot of energy on social modeling, on fitting people into hierarchies of privilege. (E.g., "respecting your elders", older sibling vs younger, teachers vs students, the popular kids, and so many other things.) Then in the same way they're judging the worth of others, they fit themselves into the same primate status model. I think that's what the psychologist is talking about. Personally, I find that way not super useful. But another way is sort of reverse engineering. From how person X treats themself, what can we learn about how much they value their own self? Like you, I didn't have much of a concept of self-worth in the sense of "where do I place myself in the many hierarchies most people around me are constantly aware of." But a therapist eventually got me to see that I did not treat myself as worth the same as the people around me. Paying attention to that has improved my life a lot. The big question for me is to what extent the latter thing is influenced by the former. For neurotypical people I gather the link is pretty strong. For me it's definitely a weaker link, but it's hard to tell the difference between "there is no link" and "I don't notice the link".

BadHumans 2y ago
Not a psychologist but I am friends with more than a few. I don't know why you assume the psychologist meant the first because they did not. Self-worth has nothing to do with social hierarchy. It is how you treat yourself and a core thing therapist work on is helping you treat yourself the way you would treat others, with compassion and respect.
- wpietri 2y ago
  I thought maybe I was using the phrase wrong, but the first two definitions I find are "the internal sense of being good enough and worthy of love and belonging from others" and "a feeling that you are a good person who deserves to be treated with respect". You'll note that those are both inherently social. And both "good enough" and "with respect" are about one's position in the caste/hierarchy structure. The reason I assume what the psychologist meant is that most of them are neurotypical, and neurotypical people are deeply invested in social primate dynamics. I understand that this is hard for neurotypical people to see, but you might read things like DeWaal's "Chimpanzee Politics" or Johnson's "Impro" [1]. Plus there's my personal experience, where psychologists are very inclined to talk about self-worth in the social sense. And I think that's fine; I'm sure it works well for their neurotypical patients. [1] particularly the section on status transactions, which are vital for authentic theater performances, but are rarely articulated because it's so natural to neurotypical people

orbisvicis 2y ago

The flip side of detaching self-esteem from technical competency is that you can make very strong assertions without being arrogant. People of integrity with utilitarian leaning are often labeled amoral or unemotional. People with a strong drive not attached to financial gain are often termed unambitious. Your perceived worth really depends on values of society, so if you remove yourself from the equation, you only have no worth to others, not to yourself. Sequestered from others the sense of self has no meaning, so naturally you have no self-worth. Not because you are worthless, but because you have no self and place no importance on your perceived worth. Or more strongly phrased, what's the point of self-worth if you can do everything you put your mind to? I'd you can't but think you can, then that's a harmful psychological schism. Since no one person can achieve everything, self-worth is only meaningful in areas for which you lack competency For example - and this deals not with self-worth but with stress - I'm pretty inflexible in my goals. When I can't meet my goals I tend to shut down. I'm often asked if I'm stressed, to which I can only respond, "Stress - what's that?". And yet clearly I've suffered a harmful schism between my perception of self and reality, as indicated by my lack of stress response.

detourdog 2y ago
My partner considers my deliberateness as lazy. They won’t discuss things with me because they already know all about me. My willingness to share their perception of me being ineffective was quite damaging to my self esteem. I never felt successful due to lack of acknowledgment of my achievements. They asked me to leave the house about a year ago. Once I met new people and they saw me as successful and fun my self worth improved.
- orbisvicis 2y ago
  Yes, that's why I qualified self-worth by field of competency. I really try to view the world objectively, ignoring the opinions of others, but after N fizzled relationships... is it me or is it you? But just because you are detached from societal values doesn't imply you should be detached from people. I can't enumerate the intangibles I get by surrounding myself with others. I perform better, I have better ideas, I feel more alert. I've never been able to understand why as I never gain any objective aid. Does unexpected input promote flexible thinking? Am I inspired by differing worldviews to think outside the box. Or is it simple happiness? No idea.

bbor 2y ago

Interesting! If I said you were bad at your job and an ugly, inattentive partner, would your primary reaction be one of hurt or just one of calculating self-preservation? I would personally feel very emotional if I heard those things from someone in real life, so it’s an honest question. What emotionally drives you, if not the assessments of your peers? Why excel at work, why find a partner, why do your best to be better everyday? I wish I could say I was driven by rational assessments of my needs as a Homo Sapiens and my moral responsibilities therein, but I think I’d be lying to myself. Or, at least, it’s an eternal struggle to minimize the importance of self-worth.

tgdude 2y ago
Not the person you're replying to but "What emotionally drives you, if not the assessments of your peers? Why excel at work, why find a partner, why do your best to be better everyday?" It's fun and it makes me happy. People in my life are smart people but they're just as flawed as I am, what they think of me also changes over time. Why would I build the foundation of my life and career on such shaky ground?
skissane 2y ago
Absolutely I can have negative emotional reactions to criticism-although it all depends on what the criticism is, who is making it, whether I agree with it. But I don’t mentally link those feelings to a concept called “self-worth”. To the extent I have a “self”, it is a bucket whose contents varies over time, and varying thoughts and feelings go in that bucket-sometimes those feelings can get quite dark, but even then I still don’t think of myself as having a “worth” What motivates me? Certainly part of me likes it when people say I’ve done a good job. Again I don’t mentally link that feeling with a concept called “self-worth”. But often also I get motivated by the pleasure of the work in itself - when I really get hooked on a program, I find improving it is something I enjoy as an end-in-itself

add-sub-mul-div 2y ago

I'm the same way. I could dispassionately talk about either my strengths or my weaknesses. But I don't see the world as measuring myself in an overall way, nor other people. We all have so many dimensions that are always in so much flux, how could you ever reduce that to something meaningfully quantifiable?

detourdog 2y ago

I spent 56 years with that thought. Looking back for me it was family identity and trying to achieve standards of someone that died a decade before I was born. I now understand self-worth in a new way. I had to realize that there was plenty of time to slow down and be deliberate. I had to get to point where I could take the time I needed to do a task. I have no idea how others can find self worth but for me I describe it as being comfortable.

tejohnso 2y ago

I was confused by this part of the article: For Marx, the poet of economics, when a person’s innate value is replaced with exchange value, it is as if we’ve been reduced to “a mere jelly.” What's wrong with basing your worth on something like value provided professionally plus value provided personally, to myself and others? Are we supposed to think that we are valuable (worth something) just because we exist?

pram 2y ago
It might be fine if you’re a successful professional or entrepreneur and have a good salary or business. Of course if you’re an Amazon warehouse worker or a burger flipper, and your labor is completely fungible and provides low monetary remuneration, then you would judge yourself as low(er) value in comparison. So determining your self-worth via other properties makes a lot more sense huh? We can create value through more things than what we do for a job. It’s true!

lordleft 2y ago

I am a Christian. Something I have found within my faith tradition (and something I find is lacking in the culture around me) is a sense that I am in possession of an infinitely durable source of dignity and worthiness that is not tethered to who I am or what I have done. I have found this conceit enormously consoling.

squidgedcricket 2y ago
I'm envious of that intrinsic sense of self worth, but I don't follow how that's a consequence of being Christian. I carry guilt and shame from sins that can't be rectified, knowing that Jesus loves me doesn't help me love myself.
- MisterBastahrd 2y ago
  It's pretty funny when you consider that a huge part of Christian evangelism is the attempt to convince normal people that they aren't worth dirt and are condemned to eternal torture unless they believe in somebody that the religious can't prove exists for a feat that they can't prove ever happened.
  - norir 2y ago
    Yes, that is one manifestation of Christian evangelism. Modern Christianity is plagued by literalism and ignorance. Most self identifying Christians (and I would posit most skeptical rationalists) have not deeply engaged with the texts and often when they do get hung up on an overly literal interpretation. If one looks beyond the surface, there is tremendous wisdom that helps everyone live better today -- not just in some hypothetical afterlife. Indeed, I believe that if you try to follow the teachings of Jesus, your interactions with others and your life writ large will be better. That has been my personal experience and I had to be called back kicking and screaming as a committed non-believer. Of course, having said all that, I am personally dismayed by the state of Christianity in our world. Institutional Christianity has done and continues to do tremendous harm in the world so I am sympathetic to your perspective. Indeed, I am most upset because I find the way that many nominally Christian institutions behave to be directly contrary to the their own sacred texts. The hypocrisy is almost unbearable. But I would encourage everyone reading this to withhold judgment of other's faith practices and/or self-identification until you understand where they are coming from rather than lumping them in with the worst exemplars of their nominal affiliates.

nostrademons 2y ago

A related observation I've gotten from interacting with normies including my wife: Most people assume there is such thing as a "self" and that it is okay, natural, and desirable to preference yourself when interacting with other people. Indeed, for most normies, there is only various people and their selves interacting. My autistic perspective is that there is only a system of the world, various roles that people happen to occupy, and here are my options for where I can slot into it, might as well choose the best one, but it never occurred to me that the other people in the system could be individually influenced or that you could preference your self over others. At least, until I interacted with others enough to realize that that was all they were doing. Relatedly, most normies project this self-interest onto aspies and assume that when they are saying how the world is, they are pushing their own agenda, because in their worldview everybody has an agenda. As a result, the aspie tendency to make observations about broad sweeping systems comes off as arrogance, as preferencing themselves and their worldview over everybody else. But to an aspie, there is no such thing as arrogance, because arrogance implies that one preferences their self-worth over others, and there is no such thing as "self" or "worth", and it is nonsensical to talk about self-importance.

ajb 2y ago
Well that's an interesting theory. However, on reading it, my leading hypotheses are that people who express such disbelief in the possibility of their being selfish, either lack self-insight, or are lying. Your theory I would give a subjective probability rather lower than these. Of course, this might be my lack of insight into the aspie mind. But self-interest is highly evolutionarily favourable, and is built into our brains from very early in our evolutionary history - from the first organisms that had brains.
- ttpphd 2y ago
  Yeah it's your lack of insight and your projection of your own psychology onto others
  - ajb 2y ago
    The problem with that is: while it's true that one can't treat neurodivergent people fairly without taking heed of their testimony of how their mind works, selfishness is a behavior that has to be evaluated from an external perspective - for everyone, not just the neurodivergent. Because everyone who is ever selfish denies it, and has a story about why they're not being selfish. So it's always evaluated by POSIWID.