Often times, our worst enemy is one who is with us ceaselessly. They look at us in our reflections and have conversations about our flaws as we try to get some sleep. I speak, of course, of the self. This apparent adversary is powerful in its abilities. It knows all of our buttons and just when to push them in order to elicit the most damaging response. In this piece, I will demonstrate that our self conceptions are not always correct and often serve to perpetuate a positive feedback loop, which leads to extensive sadness and emotional pain. I am only speaking to suffering, which results as a product of negative self image and no other issue. I will then make the claim that these negative perceptions are a product of an inaccurate perception of how the world is.
For this complex endeavour, we will have to try to unravel a small piece of the polymorphic structure which constitutes the self. For the most part, I will defer to Cooley’s model of self conceptualization and the concepts it entails. To oversimplify the polymorphic structure of self and various perceptions of self, the key factors which are particularly relevant to what we are discussing are the following: self-esteem, self-efficacy, and locus of control. Self-esteem, in short, is how it is that we value and respect ourselves. Self-efficacy is defined as the degree to which we trust ourselves to be competent in performing different tasks. The final term, locus of control, is in reference to who or what we hold responsible for the various consequences we face throughout life. This is registered on a spectrum from an internal to external locus. An example of an internal locus would be a situation wherein a person who performs poorly in a running race blames themselves for their failure, whereas a person who blames some external circumstance would have an external locus. From these ideas, one can pull together the concepts of what it is to think and feel from an abstract perspective, which can be a helpful tool for reflection. In order to simplify things a bit, the term “self-concept” will be used to describe aspects of all three ideas, as they are all intimately related.
Our self-concepts, then, can be either positive or negative, accurate or skewed. Often times, we cannot tell the difference; however, in times of profound sadness, it is often the case. Well-intentioned friends may attempt to refute our negative views, but ultimately, we find ourselves confronted with the same darkness that they attempt to illuminate when we are again alone. Is it that our friends are wrong to attempt to convince us that our problems with ourselves are not worth our sadness or not even in existence? Are we to just disregard the input of people who know and care for us? This seems to me an ill-advised course of action, but rather, one must consider that those views which bring us sadness are a fabrication. They certainly feel real in an extremely visceral way, but this is because they are not just made up but instead constructed by experience. They serve as an explanation for why the world has treated us so poorly when, in reality, such bad treatment does not necessitate the negative qualities we integrate into our self-concepts. It is then necessary for us to take care when engaging in critiquing the self while also allowing for the input of credible advisors in determining what is and is not true about ourselves.