The “inner ear” of self-esteem

Fragments from the forthcoming book “Fragile People: A Secret Door to the World of Narcissists”.

Our brain has an organ of balance and spatial sense, the vestibular apparatus. It helps us navigate changes in body position and maintain our balance. Without it we would behave like very small children or drunken people, that is, we would not have the ability to coordinate their own movements. The vestibular system is part of the inner ear, which is sensitive to our position in space.

Self-esteem is an “inner ear” of sorts that helps us navigate and maintain a balance between how we feel about ourselves and who we are.

It continuously regulates a person’s perceptions of himself or herself, that is, a complex picture of a person’s inner world is continually formed. “The “inner ear” of self-esteem registers the smallest changes in the environment and self-perception at every moment of life, linking and ordering the image of one’s own self. It endlessly evaluates and compares itself with others, so that it can absorb what is lacking that prevents it from being good. And so this inner ear can be healthy and serve a healthy self-esteem, or it can be sick and significantly distort reality.

Let’s imagine that some abstract Maria has high self-esteem, and abstract Katya has low self-esteem. Let us start with her, because these beliefs are the ones we are most familiar with. So, Katya’s “inner ear” won’t hear anything of value inside her. It will be deaf to the recognition of her virtues and how people see her. It will ignore her achievements. If she does succeed in something, and even if it is highly praised from the outside, the “inner ear” will pick up whispers: “Anyone could have done it. You were nothing, you are nothing. This “ear” will pick up only those signals from reality that inevitably indicate Katya’s “badness,” her lack of success, and her disregard for her. It will signal rejection, seeing it even in Katya’s neutral attitude. It will be attuned to the frequency of her alienation from people and her own inadequacy wherever she appears. It evaluates Katya on a negative scale from insignificant to moderately bad, without entering the realm of the positive. And even if Katya manages to step into the realm of her “normality” just a little bit, the “inner ear” will inevitably discover what else she is not good at, or even defective. That is, no matter how the people around her treat Katya in reality, and no matter how she actually manifests herself in life, in relationships, or in work, her “inner ear” will perceive a distorted reality in which she remains bad and has no way to affect it.

Maria is certainly luckier in this sense. Her “inner ear” works undisturbed, like a normal vestibular apparatus. When there is a chance to fall, our body changes position by the signal of this apparatus. It is the same with a healthy psyche: when something happens from which self-esteem may suffer, Maria’s “inner ear” is tuned to itself. Because of this, Maria is mindful of her real merits and counts on the support of the people around her. Maria’s reality is not filled with hostility and inevitable rejection. Maria sees what is really going on and is willing to “hang on” to it.

A good vestibular apparatus has a mass of nerve endings that signal a change in the environment. So a healthy self-esteem registers everything that happens inside and outside: it notices both the good, putting it in the piggy bank of personal value, and the bad, trying to correct it, compensate for it, or at the very least, to drive it out.

Normal self-esteem helps a person to correlate true virtues and limitations, as well as to constantly exchange ideas about oneself with reality.

That is, Mary’s inner ear hears not only “inwardly” but also “outwardly,” constantly relating her self-esteem to the environment. Because even with the best self-esteem, Mary still has to see and notice how she is seen and how people in her environment react to her.

On what does the work of our “inner ear”, which is tuned to maintain good or bad self-esteem, depend? How is it that our abstract Maria’s “ear” picks up positive appreciation and recognition, but no matter how much admiration and praise you give Katya, she still ends up in the “narcissistic minus”?

This is where it all comes down to whether a person’s narcissism is healthy or sick. Yes, healthy narcissism exists, too, and it is this that gives us the basis for a positive and stable perception of ourselves.