The Psychology of Self Esteem Flashcards
Definition of Psychology
Psychology is the science that studies the attributes and characteristics which certain living organisms possess by virtue of being conscious (Animals and humans. Plants are alive but they are not conscious). The more complex the central nervous system of the entity, the more aware and conscious a being is.
Man must Actively use his Mind and Face Reality throughout his lifetime
Conceptual formation is voluntary and the sole possession of Man. For all living organisms, Action, is a requirement for life. Inaction is Death. While in a state of passive awareness, a man can apprehend the need to be in full mental focus. Man must think on a regular basis, which means focusing his mind on certain things and choosing to be aware of things. Thinking, at every given moment, is a choice, it is active, you are present. You have to make the choice to perform any mental activity such as, focusing, increasing awareness, being aware, increase understanding, etc. We MUST make the choice to think and perform various mental activities. Mental passivity is not good. You can abandon the responsibility of thinking at any given moment but you suffer each time. Even though you are not repressed anymore, you can still run the risk of avoiding things with your mind just like everyone else, so you still have the responsibility of actively choosing to think and to be aware (You must exert the effort. Reminder: It does feel good otherwise! And, there is positive reinforcement and incentive to be aware and to think. One is, you WIN. Another is, **you feel and look GREAT). **You SHOULD think and be aware. You HAVE to think and be aware. They are obligations that cannot be escaped. To focus is to set the integrative process in purposeful motion.To evade a fact is to attempt to make it unreal to oneself, on the implicit premise that if one does not perceive the fact, it does not exist or that if you evade it, and that “you can make it go away.” Or, even further, you are lying to yourself and saying that there will be no consequences. If a man chooses to deny to think or to be aware, even though it is unpleasant to him, he will set in motion a complex chain of destructive psychological consequences, one of which is a PROFOUND loss of self esteem. You can NEVER get away with the choice of not thinking or choosing to be aware. This is a matter of DEMONSTRABLE psychological law.It is the job of the human to think and maintain healthy cognition and optimal awareness at all times, even when you are or become wildly successful and healthy. If you do not, you will fall to waste because applying conscious effort toward life is a never ending demand. Growth is continual over a lifetime. You cannot remain stagnant or still, and have self esteem.
Man’s survival depends on his Mind
Man’s survival (unlike any other being) depends on his mind. He has to think. His survival depends on his choice to think and to be aware. All that separates Man from other beings is the fact that he can think, his ability to reason. Everything else you can find in a pig or a horse. Man’s ability to think explains the greatest number of his other attributes.
Environment does not make you who you are, it is a conscious choice made by you
Environment does not MAKE you who you are. It does play an IMPORTANT ROLE, of course, and it can do WONDERS to be in an environment that is promoting for you, however, you are an autonomous being and you ARE making the final decisions about everything, whether you are aware or not. You choose your own paradigm, values, etc. Man has the power of choice. For example, If you find your emotions distasteful, you can alter them by changing the thinking or values that evoke such emotions.
Facts of reality are always on your side
If you do make an error in judgment or value or opinion, the facts of reality will always offer you many opportunities to perceive that you are wrong so you can fix the mistake.
Man must consciously choose his life
Since man has so many possible courses of action, he cannot escape the necessity of selecting values and making value judgments. Values, are conducive to one’s welfare. If a Man regards something as insignificant to him, he sees it as neither beneficial nor harmful, and is indifferent toward it and takes no action in regard to it. Man MUST choose values, and he MUST choose values that are good for him, consonant with his nature and needs, conducive to his happiness and functioning, etc. He must ask, is this “for me” or “against me.”
Pleasure is life enhancing (The reward-punishment system)
Pleasure is an axiomatic value- it is life enhancing. Anything negative or bad for you always has negative reinforcement consequences to it. You CAN make errors, and, for example, choose values that can only induce pain (this is often done unconsciously because pain is undesirable), however, you can alter anything at any time. Everything in your paradigm is the result of the thinking that you have done. Pleasure, is a concomitant of life- a concomitant of normal/customary, efficacious living. It also incentivizes you to continue living effectively a.k.a. doing the healthy and right things. Pain is a sign of danger- a concomitant of inefficacious living. Happiness or joy is the emotional state that proceeded from achievement of one’s values (something you value). Suffering is what follows the negation or destruction of one’s values. This is a system of reward and punishment, an incentive system, built into man by nature to FURTHER and protect Man’s life (and to promote his well living while he is alive (Man has to live well, too. Not just stay alive physically). Just as physical pain warms Man of danger to his body and enables him to thusly take corrective appropriate action, PSYCHOLOGICAL PAIN – anxiety, guilt, depression- warns Man about his consciousness. It tells that his mind is in an improper state and he must correct it. For example, a Man can draw conclusions without CONSCIOUS awareness that are contradictory to his beliefs or well being. He is given evidence of such subconscious premises via his emotions. Pleasure, for man, is a profound psychological need. It is not a luxury or pastime, nor is it for the lucky or the beautiful. Through pleasure alone, man experiences the value of life. It is reward for successful function and action and incentive to continue acting. Pleasure is the fuel of his existence.
The Difference between your mind (facts) and your emotions (feelings)
Irrationality is only possible to Man.The sequence of psychological events is: perception, to evaluation, to emotional response. On the surface at the level of conscious awareness, you may only notice: perception, then, emotion.
Thinking and emotions actually operate in harmony. However, they perform radically different functions, and their functions are NOT interchangeable (you cannot substitute one for the other). For example, what one feels in regard to any logical fact is irrelevant. Another example, It is not by means of one’s emotions that one apprehends reality. One of the chief characteristics of mental illness is the policy of letting one’s feelings- wishes, fears, etc.- determine one’s thinking, guide one’s actions and serve as one’s standard of judgment and values (your mind is used for this, not your emotions, for exampleI FEEL depressed, and those emotions feel a certain way so I am going to adopt those emotions in to my thinking paradigm). This is more than a symptom of neurosis; this is a PRESCRIPTION for neurosis. You could not feel confident if you guided emotional situations with your thoughts or if you based your feelings on your mental processes because, the two are separate functions. **For example, the fact that you feel fear to perform some action is not PROOF that you should avoid performing it. Your mind will let you know the logical reason of why you ought or ought not to perform the task. Emotions are not tools of cognition **nor criteria of judgment (for example, when your chemistry is off and you get bizarre thoughts about people). In this case, The decision to perform the task was a logical one, not an emotional situation. **The ability to distinguish between knowledge and feelings is essential to developing psychological maturation. **It is VITAL to the attainment and preservation of self esteem.
Definition of Determinism
Determinism is a group within psychologists who deny any existence of an element of freedom or volition in Man’s consciousness. It holds that, in relation to his actions, decisions, values, etc, Man is passive, that man is merely a reactor to internal and external pressures, that those pressures determine the course of his actions (along with his values, etc., every aspect of his being!), just as physical forces determine the course of every particle of dust. It holds that Man is confronted by more complex alternatives and is manipulated by more complex forces. They say that Man has no choice. Most of the people that support this way of thinking do so because they think that if Man is positioned as a spontaneously, free willed being, they will not be able to predict his behavior scientifically. So, they take this stance in order to satisfy the scientific community and the field. They are similar to Behaviorists who subscribe to Pavlovian Theory.
Emotions imply physical action
Every emotion carries SOME implication for action. Every emotion proceeds from a value-judgment, but not every value-judgment leads to an emotion. An emotion is experienced only when the value-judgment is considered has relevance to his life and actions. For each emotion, there is a dual value judgment, “for me” or “against me”- and “to what extent” (this means how intensely you feel the emotion. This strengthens impulse to action as well as, sometimes, the nature of the action taken).
Repression and a chaotic mind
Repression is a subconscious mental process, brought about by the individual themselves **(We are not robots, we are performing every action to do with our physical body that involves our conceptual mind), that forbids certain ideas, memories, identifications, evaluations to enter the conscious mind. It is an automatized, mental, avoidance reaction where the Man’s awareness is pulled away from any “forbidden” material emerging from less conscious levels of his mind or subconscious. **This is the most formidable and devastating deed that causes Man to feel alienated from his emotions and himself. **Thoughts are the only thing that can be repressed, not emotions. Emotions have to be felt. On the subject of emotions, you can repress evaluations that would lead to emotions or identifications of the nature of one’s emotions. An emotion can be attacked through the repressive mechanism, before the emotion is experienced, by inhibiting the evaluation that would produce it- or during and/or after the emotional experience, in which case the repression is directed at a Man’s KNOWLEDGE (thoughts) of his own emotional state. Contradictions cannot exist in reality obviously, so if a man has contradictory values, it will short circuit his value-emotion-action mechanism. The emotional mechanism translates evaluations into actions a.k.a. reality. The good and positive emotions serve as a motivator. The more a Man practices evasion through Repression, the more he will generally come to fear the negative in general and he will say in his mind that the unpleasant not be looked at. So he begins to block ALL negative things. It becomes his characteristic and automatic response. Repressed material can give you countless clues to their existence, a.The presence of emotions and desires that appear “causeless” (all you would have to do is make your mind aware of these feelings and then link the thoughts that you have been repressing from these feelings with the emotions you are having) and incomprehensible in terms of one’s conscious convictions. b.The presence of contradictions in one’s responses i.e., contradictions between one’s desires, or between one’s emotions and one’s actions. **Detecting such inconsistencies is the SUCCESSFUL starting point of one’s introspective efforts to remove mental blocks .If one has sustained low self esteem, it is the self that you garner a bad reputation with, and no other. To relinquish thought is to relinquish the ego.
How the Conscious and Sub conscious mind work together
As with extrospection, you must aim your attention in a given direction to the exclusion of others because you cannot be aware of everything at all times. Discrimination is required. There are degrees of awareness, you can have focal awareness all the way to total unawareness or unconscious. Since you are able to focus on so much at one time, your subconscious mind works to retrieve stored data (the subconscious mind stores data only) relative to whatever your conscious mind is doing and it integrates the information along to the conscious mind (or whatever other action the conscious mind needs). In this way, the conscious mind and subconscious mind work together to integrate information, and perform the task of thinking. **Mental processes may be conscious or subconscious, and volitional OR automatic. ** In ANY act of thinking, there is constant interaction between conscious, volitional operations (the conscious mind or **WHAT YOUR MIND IS FOCUSED ON IN THE PRESENT MOMENT) and subconscious, automatic ones (what you are not outright thinking of BUT IS IN YOUR MIND). ** The sub conscious never consists of any active, present moment information…this always resides in the conscious mind only).
How to De-repress
**To de-repress or avoid repression, basically, it is imperative that a Man adopt the policy of BEING AWARE of your emotions, that you take note of and conceptualize your emotional reactions and that you identify their REASONS (WHY). **This policy, practiced consistently, makes repression impossible (to continue having it or to gain it). IN OTHER WORDS, I SIMPLY ALLOW MY MIND TO BE AWARE OF ALL OF MY EMOTIONS.
The Definition of a healthy Mind
The measure of mental health is judged by how well that mind performs its biological function to promote the life of the entity or not. The mind’s key function is awareness and knowledge of the facts of reality. Since Man must act, and his very life depends on it, his survival requires that he apprehend reality, so that he may delegate his behavior accordingly. If a Man’s values and goals are in conflict with the facts of reality and with his own needs as a living organism, then he is unwittingly moving toward self-destruction and is unfit to be deemed mentally healthy.
Definition of Epistemology
Epistemology, is a branch of philosophy, it is the science that studies the nature and means of human knowledge. It establishes the criteria of knowledge, defines principles of evidence and proof, to enable Man to distinguish between that which he may or may not regard as knowledge. If a Man’s psycho-epistemological process of thinking is inimical to the primary basic function of his mind, which is cognition, he has a psychological illness. Mental illness is, fundamentally, a psycho-epistemological; a mental disorder is a THINKING disorder, a.k.a your way of apprehending knowledge, from reality, is faulty. For example, a secretary is asked by her employer to make certain that she finishes some office reports by the end of the day; she hears this request as a declaration of her incompetence and worthlessness- and she collapses in acute depression. She does not have an emotional disorder, there is no disorder there. She suffers from a psycho-epistemological disorder. Her problem lies in the mental processes by which she interprets the things she perceives and hears (it is SHE who is performing this faulty mental process). This is what is in turn, generating her emotions. Once such disturbed emotions are generated, they have a negative effect on the person’s thinking (perspective), which then leads to further disturbed emotions (value response), and so on. This is how harmful psycho-epistemological policies are self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating. The emotions are NOT to blame at all; it is the mind. In my past, my emotions (this would include depression), were never to blame. It was my faulty thinking and error laden, psycho-epistemology practices.
