Is the best way to build self-esteem to do it alone?

In my quest to dig myself out of my self-loathing, I've been reading quite a bit on how to develop self-esteem. The thing I keep running into is that each step or bit of advice seems to hinge on acceptance from others. This seems so completely counter-intuitive to me.

For example, if a person sets a goal to accomplish X in Y amount of time and they do it, then they should reward themself. So they have a Coke or something. Then person B berates them for bad eating and getting fat.

The point of the exercise then makes the first person feel worse rather than better. It goes on and on. It seems like unless you're 6 years old on a recreational soccer team it's impossible to have your time in the sun. Someone will be upset with you because you're blocking their sun.

I just don't understand how this is supposed to work? Does anyone have any solid advice on how to develop self-esteem that can't be just shot down or maybe I just need to pick up my coat and disappear?

I guess learning to love yourself and accept your flaws 100% is the first step to building self-esteem.
Like you said you have a thing for self-loathing, maybe working on that would make the rest better.

I'll be honest im super weird especially in public, all my teenage life I hated it. As I grew up I realized my flaws kinda set me apart from the crowd. Im not saying dont fix them, but for once enjoy them before you decide they're not adding a great deal to your character.

I now feel like ever since I've accepted my "weird ", im more confident around people...I can turn my negative into something funny and its never a bad idea.

Hope this helps!

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Wrong,wrong,wrong, it hinges on YOU accepting
yourself, warts and all!

a good way to develop self esteem is to make choices you feel good about. when you feel good, your self esteem goes up. invest in your talents because they make you feel good doing things you are good at, self esteem goes up. be good to others, it makes you feel good, that good feeling elevates your self esteem. make healhty choices about your lifestyle and when you are living a good life, you feel good about yourself, your self esteem goes up.

It's a bit of a chicken or egg quandary on the surface. Do we have high self-esteem from doing what we enjoy and have success in or do we enjoy and succeed because we have high self-esteem? The answer is probably both for some and neither for those unlucky people who were never taught to feel inherent value in themselves. The seed(s) for self-esteem must be planted and nurtured for it to grow. More to the point of the original post, the key distinction is does the person shooting you down simply make you feel bad about what you did or does it reinforce a deep seated feeling of having little or no value or being defective as a person? Also worth remembering is the person berating you is most likely suffering with their own self-loathing and is projecting it on to you. We don't have to shoulder their burden. Staying with the agricultural metaphor... Depression is ~winter~ for self-esteem. What was growing goes dormant and new seeds won't germinate. Farmers don't plow and plant in January. And we can't grow self-esteem while we're depressed.

The soccer reference reminded me of the time my father first came to one of my youth football games. After the game I was proud of my play and that I helped us win. When I met my dad he told me I was terrible and was getting knocked all over the place out there. Not one word of encouragement or praise. Not one seed planted.

I have been living with severe PTSD & debilitating Depression for 25 years. My illness stemmed from ‘Torture trauma’ (details withheld at this stage). I too have been in and out of therapy, on umpteen different medications, ostracised by family, friends and colleagues, and shunned by society in the search for an answer, just an inkling of how to get myself ‘well’. 14 months ago I said ….ENOUGH!….I mean, really, what’s the point of living a ‘quarter life’. A life with constraints put in place by all those that said throughout those 25 years ‘To hell with you, you’re not one of us’. All those lost years of being afraid to live my life because I was told over and over that I didn’t fit in, that I was damaged and therefore not quite good enough.

I have been a draftsman for a lot of my adult life (albeit off and on). Whenever I would make a big error on hand drawn schematics it was always easier to start again rather than make amendments to a messy drawing……So I have now done the same thing with the old damaged, broken, messy me….Thrown her in the trash, and started again.

I changed my name, moved to a different State and chose to be different, chose to be the me I want to be. Not better, not worse, just different. It’s not easy, but nothing worthwhile is. It’s not the solution for everyone, and I totally get that. But I handed myself over to so called professionals and well meaning family members for a quarter of a century, and it didn’t do a damn bit of good. So this has to be better than the hell I was living. I truly believe that the problem with relying on others acceptance of us, including our flaws' creates a 'double bind' that just sends us round and round, forever endeavouring to measure up. There is also no need to accept ourselves the way we are flaws and all. I say....reject who you are, re-invent yourself and become someone entirely different.

I don’t necessarily choose happy, as that’s a concept I’m yet to become familiar with……..I choose life. Q.L

I have not seen that kind of discussion of self-esteem.

To me the key is self-acceptance. I recently came across a good phrasing that really encapsulates it for me: "Even though I have this (fill in the blank) . . . I fully and profoundly accept myself." The fill-in could be your personality, neurosis, weakness, fat, history of whatever, you name it - any aspect of yourself that triggers the loathing. But, you know, we are all just humans. We aren't superfantastic, even though some people appear to have fantastic success and PR. We all have flaws. So wherever you are, whatever stage, it starts with acceptance, and acceptance will go a long way to seeing you through life and not wasting your energy bashing yourself. I don't know if that's self-esteem by definition, but it works for me.

If you're past the age of 6 when you're parents should have been doing this then yes I think it's not just the best way... it's the only way.
I'm not getting the Coke example. Has something like that actually happened or is this a theoretical question based on something you think may happen? Because you're kind of setting yourself up to be knocked down if that is the case. Self esteem is just that... self esteem.

Yep, actually happened. It was Oreo cookies instead of Coke, but yeah it happened. I can't reward myself for a job well done and sure as heck aren't going to get an at-a-boy these days.

Self-worth/self-respect/self-esteem come from acceptance of self...not acceptance from others!

The reward method has been shown to work but a sweet after a workout isn't a good reward. A better reward might be to put some dollar amount in a jar and spend it after a certain amount of time. What you spend it on should also be something enjoyable and not self defeating like a cookie would be. It could be as small as hobby supplies or as big as a vacation. The point is to make it something that isn't going to sabotage. I am sure there are other ideas. There is a book that is pretty good. "The Power of Habit" by Duhigg. There is actually a great story at the beginning about an obese, recently divorced woman who transformed her life through habit. It isn't your typical go to the gym everyday story.

Being self absorbed (negative term) is the perfect solution to low self esteem. People can only wound you if you care enough.

Besides, I'm sure your lovely wife is really the highest prize one can win in boring, and equally self absorbed, America. Simply remind yourself that few men have good wives. That their insanity drove them to depths of depressing despair. Little does one need to prove when one has little else to gain. Respect among your masculine peers? Bah! peers are useless and not usually desired for anything other than their gifted purpose (pressure). Every man ought to be an island. In your case, with the very good wife, it'd be a very lovely half blue half pink island. Simple pleasures here and there, greater pleasures in between, and what else should you prove to anyone of any meaning?