Dear Therapist:
Our 17-year-old son struggles with ADHD and also has very low self-esteem. He recently told us that he wants to work on his confidence and how he feels about himself.
The challenge is that much of his frustration seems to come from difficulties with organization, follow-through, and daily functioning. He does not have much interest in working on practical strategies.
We sometimes feel that his low self-esteem is a result of not functioning well. If he were more successful in managing his responsibilities, perhaps he would feel better about himself. Or do we need to focus on the self-esteem first?
How do you tell the difference? Do you build confidence first, or work on the underlying difficulties that are causing so much frustration?
Response:
From my perspective, there is a significant difference between self-esteem and confidence. There are people who have an abundance of confidence, yet struggle with self-esteem. This may seem like a contradiction, but they are really two different things that result from different sources.
You wonder whether your son should work directly on his confidence or whether he should begin by addressing the factors that underlie his lack of confidence. This question can only be simply answered if we are speaking about confidence (and not self-esteem).
If your son doesn’t feel confident in himself because of certain perceived and reinforced limitations, it would seem logical that he would need to either address these limitations or build himself up in other areas. For instance, even if he has no interest in working on organization and follow-through, he might be motivated to focus on socialization or other skills. Since, by definition, self-confidence relates to one’s abilities, it would make sense to focus on enhancing existing abilities in order to increase his confidence.
For me, self-esteem is related to self-confidence only in the sense that increasing the former typically leads to an increase in the latter. This, too, might appear contradictory. If confidence is related to capabilities, how would self-esteem affect confidence?
In fact, self-esteem doesn’t directly affect self-confidence. However, when a person feels good about who they are (not what they do or can do), the insecurities that prevent them from appreciating their capabilities are lessened. This helps the person stop hyper-focusing on perceived weaknesses or failures and begin viewing themselves more realistically.
Consider how your son might feel toward a friend who had exactly his limitations, issues, and capabilities. He is likely much harder on himself than he would be on this friend. He probably feels far worse about himself than he would about this friend.
Self-esteem is about identifying and appreciating our intrinsic qualities—those that relate to how we think and feel. We like and feel good about others based on who they are inside, not what they do or accomplish. Positive self-esteem comes from feeling good about who we are inside.
For various reasons, it is difficult for us to feel toward ourselves based on our intrinsic qualities, despite the fact that these qualities are what inform our feelings toward everyone else. We like others because they’re caring; we like ourselves only if we do something caring. We like others in a general way for their sense of humor; we only like ourselves if people laugh at our jokes.
We feel toward others on an intrinsic level, but we do this instinctively. Therefore, we don’t generally consciously understand what specifically we like about others. Learning to identify and consider those qualities that make us like others is the first step toward building true, intrinsically based self-esteem.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that self-confidence should be ignored. Although positive self-esteem is the ultimate goal—and generally leads to greater self-confidence—this is usually a longer-term goal that addresses our fundamental, underlying sense of self. Even if this is the primary goal, work on building confidence can be done simultaneously.
-Yehuda Lieberman, LCSW
psychotherapist in private practice
Woodmere, NY
adjunct professor at Touro University
Graduate School of Social Work
author of Self-Esteem: A Primer
www.ylcsw.com / 516-218-4200
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