Should we be increasing Self Esteem? 21 march 09

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Should we be increasing Self Esteem? 21 march 09

Ok so now that Sunnyside & Rozcareer and myself are famous after appearing in the ICG Career Guidance Today Magazine, I thought it would be good to share some points of the presentation given by Brian Waddell.

The discussion was based around the work being carried out by the Centre for Confidence and Well-being (www.centreforconfidence.co.uk) creating confidence in young people and Brian has been working with the centre specifically on “Confident Career Planning”.

But what is confidence? Well Brian gave the following formula:

CONFIDENCE = SELF EFFICACY (the I can/I cannot “belief”) + OPTIMISM

The government has stated that they want to create confident beings but how can they measure whether they have been successful?

Is age related to optimism or confidence? After all statistics show than children aged between 0-7 yrs have a suicide rate of 0%. Children are born hopeful and optimistic it’s society that erodes this.

The world is currently suffering from an epidemic of depression; more young people are being prescribed drugs to enable them to “function” in today’s world

Confidence starts to dip around the ages of 11-12 so maybe this would be the best time to work on skills for increasing self efficacy and optimism as both can be changed, they are not fixed traits. Maybe this would decrease the number of young people dependent on artificial stimulants.

Surely it’s common sense to believe that knowing who you are as a person, what strengths you have and that you can add to this by learning new skills is a much better way for young people to gain confidence in themselves? It seems that as a society we are all too quick to “cover up the wound with a plaster” rather than actually take the time to “cure” the causes.

The main area I wanted to focus on though was that of the increasing determination to tackle young people with low self esteem. Just looking at the Learning and teaching Scotland website there are numerous mentions on how to address issues of pupil’s with low self esteem, guidelines for guidance teachers to assess self esteem and goes so far as to state “ Changes in self-esteem can take a long time but they can be changed” . Now previous to attending Brian Waddell’s presentation I have never thought there was anything wrong with looking at this as surely it is a good thing to improve in an individual, as it has been shown that low self esteem can lead to a vulnerability to depression, eating disorders and suicide, however there has been research carried out by RF Baumeister looking at the detrimental effects of having high self esteem or “The Dark Side of High Self Esteem”.

The research showed that those with low self-esteem are more likely to damage themselves and those with high self-esteem are more likely to do damage to society!

So if we unrealistically encourage young people to inflate their own views of themselves that are actually unstable views and they consequently receive negative evaluation from another, there will be a tendency to show anger in order to protect themselves.

It is natural for all human beings to have periods in their life where they will have high self esteem and low self esteem; it is not a bad thing as long as it isn’t constant or artificially obtained.

So now we have the situation where parents & teachers increasingly praise young people (where it may not be deserved) being less critical of young people (where criticism is necessary) in order to protect them from having low self-esteem. But however well meaning this approach it can have a negative effect on the young people they are trying to protect.

So my question is, with all the evidence out there why are we still so focussed on increasing self esteem and not focussing on building confidence more?

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4 Comments»

Canisp wrote @ March 23, 2009 at 3:44 pm

I think evidence may be mounting but people just don’t know about it yet and are still constantly praising young people almost to try and compensate for the lack of praise we probably got as youngsters. Its made me think a lot, I actually think that deep down even young children know when they are being praised almost artificially. Its far better to help them find what they really are good at, and build on those things.
At the Centigrade interviews one of the girls I saw seemed to have no idea at all about what her strengths are which seemed quite sad and wasn’t helping her make the right career choice for herself.

cloudy1 wrote @ March 28, 2009 at 11:18 am

I totally agree Canisp! Children are very perceptive, and when people are not being totally truthful they lose all respect for that individual, which could be to the detriment of a career guidance adviser as their relatioship is built on trust (and in a short space of time). it’s funny you mention Cantigrade as I feel that although we were told that all students who participated were keen to go to HE my student was really keen on following a painting and decorating career path but it seemed he was being pushed towards academia. I think he was relieved to actually be able to talk about this occupation with someone and not to talk for 40 mins about University! Forcing people to be who they don’t want to be will eventually be to the detriment of the career service, school and the country as a whole!

waterbaby13 wrote @ April 20, 2009 at 9:53 am

I meet with Brain Waddell just before finishing working for CS last year. He heard about a confidence course I ran for key worker clients last summer and that it was a huge success!!

We had a very interesting discussion about why I ran the course (because I highlighted a massive barrier these young people had that was stopping them moving on), what support I got (very little – I was allowed to run the course but it wasn’t greatly supported by staff and management) and how did I do it (badly, probably but I was just learning and unsure of how to tackle and try to deal with some massive issues these young people had with low confidence in themselves and others)!

Brian was really supportive of my programme, he had a look at some of the sessions and highlighted areas I needed to work on. What’s really interesting is the work he is currently involved with (Centre for confidence) and the massive issues young people are dealing with, that are being highlighted by him and others and no one is doing anything about it!!

From as young as 10yrs children can start to suffer from low self esteem, low confidence in self and others and what are schools, government agencies and other providers of support doing about this issue……………..Nothing!!!!

My confidence building crusade will continue, just a soon as I get a job!!!!

cloudy1 wrote @ April 23, 2009 at 10:14 am

That sounds really interesting Waterbaby. Maybe you could run the confidence course for us?
It’s strange how people will let others try to help overcome problems but don’t want to stick their neck out above the parapet for fear of being told off! We’ll never get anything done if no one is willing to take a stand – good for you and good for Brian Waddell!

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