Article 5 of a five-part series exploring whole person self-esteem.
Notice me! But just the part I want you to see! Unfortunately, that will never be!
The biggest struggle with social worth is that all the world is not a stage. You can’t limit how you are seen to just the parts that you want to display and share on the stage. Life has a way of revealing all of you. Your public self, and, with or without your permission, your private self. All of you is on stage. For better or worse, what you share in this life is you. And, “That in itself is a tremendous thing.”
The concept of “social worth” came to me while working with a 12-year-old middle grade student struggling with low self-esteem. I can’t remember her name or face. But I do remember much of our conversation and her insightful, yet very painful words, “I can’t escape my social media. Even when I log off, their insults and bullying still stays in my head.” This comment came after we had discussed her self-worth and skill worth. Together, we recognised that neither concept had adequately addressed her struggles with low self-esteem. Sharing our perspectives, together we grew wiser that day as social worth emerged.
Sharing connects us all in ways we see and know, and also in ways that are unseen and unknown. These connections impact and define your social worth, which then impact how you see yourself and what you choose to do. And while self-worth is innate, and skill-worth requires focus and energy to work at, social worth is beyond your control. And often beyond your own life experiences, as it includes a vast, virtual world.
The psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion studied the shift in perspective between being an individual and being part of a group. He was brilliant in recognizing and explaining the unseen group dynamic connections shared between us when we worked together as a group. In contrast to Jung’s theory of the “collective Unconscious” which is about how everyone shares a universal unconscious, Bion focused on how individuals connected and acted within a group. And in doing so, two concepts really resonated with me and social worth: 1) That people in isolation can be in a group, and 2) every group consists of two groups – the one you see and the one you don’t.
Now, you might ask, “How can someone be in isolation and a group?” Well, Bion described groups as having a common and shared function, work, or purpose. So, imagine if you are 1 out of 100 people walking on the city sidewalk. Not a group. Everyone is doing their own thing. But then there is a car accident, and 10 people rush to help. That is now a rescue group. They are working together towards a shared purpose. A group formed by an unexpected, brief, shared purpose.
Taking a group’s shared purpose into the virtual world, you will discover that you don’t need to be together, or even have met in real life, to be part of a group. Many people play video games in isolation with a group of people they belong with. We zoom, tweet, and reddit into groups. Social media creates all kinds of groups, full of isolated individuals connecting to something outside of themselves. You can feel raw, intimate, powerful connections with a group you’ve never actually met. We all belong to two group types: 1) Groups that are physical, like family, friends, or social groups, and 2) virtual groups that can actually exist somewhere on social media or not exist anywhere except in your mind’s beliefs, values, and assumptions.
Bion took that idea of a virtual group into a personal and historical perspective. He believed that when a group of people meet, there is the group you see, the “work group” and the group that exists inside of everyone’s mind, the “basic assumption group.” The basic assumptions include all of the thoughts in your head, including from past experiences and memories. This outside and inside self idea is reflected in The boy, the mole, the fox and the horse by Charlie Mackesy when he writes, “Isn’t it odd. We can only see our outsides, but nearly everything happens on the inside.”
The challenge for social worth is to recognise and decide how important each invisible connection is in your life. Much like you can’t control time but can control what you do in your time and the focus and intensity of activities stuffed into your time. Social worth isn’t about how much you can’t control; it is about how much you can. Your beliefs, values, focus, and assumptions about your connection to each group in your life. Where they are and how you would like them to be.
The biggest challenge in trying to evaluate and decide the importance of connections and impact of sharing is your mindfulness of deception. That is because while self-worth can distort reality, and skill-worth can judge reality, social worth can deny or create reality.
You as a person are physically visible and self-worth is inherent. So, to have low self-esteem requires a distorting inner voice that puts you down. Skill-worth is not inherent but is learned through effort and focus, so low skill-worth requires a negative, unrealistic, judgmental inner voice that denigrates your skills and abilities. Then there is social worth, which is about sharing your life, which includes input and connections from others, so low social worth requires a deceptive inner voice that projects, mind-reads, fantasizes, mislabels, and fortune tells to create a sense of public shame, rejection, condemnation, and vilification.
Social worth significantly impacts your self-image and self-esteem by manipulating your perception of your social connections. The key to improving social worth isn’t to fight the deception or to recognise the manipulated perception, but rather, to mindfully evaluate your own personal values and beliefs about how you want to connect and share yourself with others. In other words, do not let social worth define you. Allow your self-worth to define you. Do not let social worth determine which skills you are most passionate about. Allow your skill-worth to evolve from your passions and purpose. But do allow your social worth to reach out and connect. Share yourself. Be vulnerable. Be popular or not. Be extroverted or introverted. Be yourself. Do yourself. And as you share yourself, take some time to mindfully recognise if those shared connections are lifting you up, holding you steady, or pushing you down into being someone you don’t respect and struggle to validate.
Whole person self-esteem is constantly shifting focus between the three building blocks of self- esteem: self-worth, skill-worth, and social worth, as you strive to find and define yourself. All of yourself, which includes faults, flaws and damage, as well as strengths, beauty, repairs and construction.
Healthy self-esteem is not about being perfect, extraordinary, or unique. It is not about achieving any specific goal. You are not required to be the best or live up to anyone else’s expectations. You don’t even have to live up to your own expectations. Life involves just trying, which includes confusion, exploration, failures, and successes. There is value in all that you do. And that is why, healthy, whole person self-esteem is about being, doing, and sharing all of yourself, without hiding, hurting or denying any of yourself. You are always good enough. So explore and take risks, for win or lose, you create yourself with the choices you chose.
Dane Jorento, MSW, LICSW is a speaker offering keynotes, seminars, and workshops on mental health, trauma, ADHD, and relationships. He specialises in BCA Holistic Therapy, EMDR, and DBT approaches.
