The Catch-22 of Self-Esteem

We read a list of negative action with negative results from the Refuge Recovery book the other night, and one of them that stands out to people sometimes is Self-Esteem. After all most people think it's a good thing to have Self-Esteem, but I would say it's not a matter of having high or low SE but that it's a problematic way of framing things in the first place.

Actually the item on the list was Conceit/Self-Esteem. The Online Etymology Dictionary entry for conceit says:

late 14c., "something formed in the mind, thought, notion," from conceiven (see conceive) based on analogy of deceit and receipt.​

So what I get from this is it's this mind game. In a more general sense it's not just a matter of someone super conceited as in having an inflated ego, it's to conceive of this yard stick of measurement in the first place. Nobody ever seems to question HOW SE is measured, but when it gets super low or super high then there is a reaction - but it doesn't have to be measured in that particular way in the first place. (for example, looks as measured in terms of body type, hair and skin color maybe and the like)

To examine it from another angle, this kind of measurement is a kind of judgement. You judge yourself on some kind of inner psychological scale (probably unconsciously) and have this automatic response of feeling rotten or inflated depending on whether the SE is low or high. Again, "something formed in the mind".

It is possible to not judge and just accept ourselves and people as how they are. Or if there is some kind of judgement, it may be a matter of qualitative differences rather than some value scale of high or low. You wouldn't call an accountant to do construction work or have a contractor manage the numbers, but they are valuable in their own ways. To have one measurement as if it's the only measure of being a human being is to reduce ourselves to this flattened caricature and make ourselves less than human - which is of course very relevant with porn.

If a persons mind believes real people do not "measure up" to porn, that's a matter of distorted thinking. The answer is not for real people to try to measure up by that cheesy standard, to also kind of buy into it on some level, it's for the PA to wake up out of that kind of virtual reality illusion. To think real people need to live up to fake stuff is of course totally backwards.

 

It sounds like you are using the word(s) in your own way, inflation is a condition of ego, ego as a word in formal psychlogical usage is just sense of self so I am not sure of your overall understanding if you don't define it first, which again sounds rather personal or proprietary. Also superego doesn't mean a big ego, it has a specific meaning in the original Freudian source.

 

High SE was a very small part of the OP and not the main point so without a quote I really don't see what the part you're interpreting is.

 

One simple and direct question is on what basis is the self esteem dependent on? It doesn't happen in a vacuum. If it is based on a way of thinking then without examining what the thinking around it is it perpetuates an oversimplified and absolute yardstick of measure. If anyone's view is different from this short post it should be extremely easy to point out the specific part.