I started working with a group of friends through the book on self-esteem by McKay (Self-Esteem, a proven program of cognitive techniques for assessing, improving, and maintaining your self-esteem by Matthew McKay, PH.D. & Patrick Fanning). Here are some thoughts. 

The authors state that one of the most significant things that separates us humans from other animals is an awareness of self. We can define who we are, then decide if we like that identity or not. This is where the trouble starts. That’s because judging, then rejecting, some aspect of ourselves causes enormous pain. So, we cope by avoiding anything that might aggravate that pain of self-rejection. This avoidance works; that is it provides the protection we need, but it greatly limits our ability to live full, rich lives.

This first point, about how "judging and rejecting your self causes enormous pain... and ... when you reject parts of yourself, you greatly damage the psychological structures that literally keep you alive..." was the first major insight I got from the book. I finally started to understand some of my behaviours I couldn't explain to my self. Because, our being will try do do everything to protect our selves from this pain.

For example, during this summer, some of the memories from my youth started to surface back to my memory. Some embarrassing moments for example. I kept them buried as long as I wasn't ready to accept and forgive my self for some of those mistakes. My psyche was protecting me from self rejection. Or why sometimes it might be difficult for me to accept that I might be causing pain to someone - even when they keep trying to tell me I am (like this summer with my sister, when I wasn't ready to accept my self as someone who sometimes does not have understanding for other people's feelings).

Something I heard very long time ago and I never could understand, became suddenly clearer to me. 12 years ago a person I deeply respected told me: I need to become worse before I can become better. For a long time, I thought about this as quite bad approach based on self-criticism. I even tried this misunderstood approach on my self (and got stuck obviously). But I finally understand now: before we can accept, with no judgment, who we truly are, it will be difficult to change. And for that we need to have self esteem: inherent self worth, not one based on judging if we are the way we think we should be.

The insight that laid at a turning point on my road to learning how to moderate my drinking was very much related to this. I started my moderation journey quite successfully. I abstained for 30 days, as suggested by the moderation management (MM) program ("doing a 30"), and started drinking more or less BTB (="by the book", being max 4 drinks per day, max 4 drinking days per week and max 14 drinks per week). After a couple of months I felt confident. But after a stressful pre-summer period, followed by a lot of travel during summer, my drinking started to gradually creep up to my pre-moderation levels. At a high point, I realized I totally relapsed.  After some harm-reduction and licking my wounds with a help of the warm support from my MM friends, I decided to do another 30. I needed that. To recover, to re-evaluate what was happening to me. To try and pick up where I left. It did me good.

After this (second) 30, I went on a short trip, and I had one of the worst WTFs of my life. What was going on?  I did a lot of thinking and soul searching. During my soul searching, a dear friend slapped me in the face with this: "I do not think it is over confidence that hurts you - I think it is a lack of self esteem that crushes you, and you dont trust your self and so you default to the other man the one you are sure about. Change takes courage we must stare ourselves down and see who we really are when all else is striped away"

This was completely counter-intuitive. It felt very confronting and I didn't even understand what she meant. But I felt deeply there was much truth in what she said to me. I took it to my heart.

This has been a turning point.

I gradually started to realize what was going on. I started to realize that indeed I wasn't really letting my self, trusting my self enough to have the well earned success. My inner critic was continuously badgering me, saying that - yes, you did well for a couple of months - but you haven't really changed. Wait until you hit a rough patch. This can not last. Yes, my inner critic, the one that thought for many years was helping me be better, was putting me down, and didn't let me have my well earned success. It was only after realizing this, and gradually starting to take credit for the change I was making, that the change started to "stick".

All these things were quite counter intuitive to me.

The book suggest a number of exercises for improving self-esteem, and I will talk more about those later. The authors say that it's not just enough to read the book, but to actually take the time and go through the exercises. I can see why this is important, however, having a better mental model of how my mind works already *is* a tremendous help.

Another part of the discussion was about "situational" self-esteem issues. I have a problem with accepting I had low self-esteem, as in some areas this is much less the case than in others. For example, I have low self-esteem when it comes to weight, eating habits and body image. My self esteem with respect to my drinking behavior is much higher. This is one of the reasons why for me, learning how to moderate my drinking was way easier than learning how to moderate my eating.

With work, I had mixed experiences. In some aspects, I felt very self confident. However, thanks to the "Now Habit" book, I discovered how my perfectionism and using work-related achievements to define my self worth was negatively impacting my work and related stress. I would feel blocked many times (as of course, the fear of failure was always amplified by the fear of undermining my self worth). But this is the topic for a different discussion.

After having thought about self-esteem for a long time, I think it's one of the key preconditions for leading a full and happy life. I am so grateful to be living in the age of Internet and Amazon, which enabled lot of these insights to come my way. So I feel I owe it to the world to share further.

Take good care of your selves.