Woman's Hour - Late Night Woman's Hour: Self-Esteem

Episode Date: August 23, 2017

What's the secret to healthy levels of self-esteem? And can we ever have too much?

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Tonight we're tackling a thorny woman's hour perennial, self-esteem. Eleanor Roosevelt's famous observation that nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent is often quoted. But is it true? Is self-esteem more self-generated than circumstantial? How much of the stuff is enough? How can we get more of it? And how is selfie culture impacting on the self-image of the next generation we've come to london's victoria to girl guiding hq to find out the organization is very aware of the self-esteem and self-image of its young members we're going to be finding out about that with some of my guests tonight

i've got writer and campaigner natasha devon with me welcome Chidera Egeru better known to her Instagram followers as the slum flower welcome Chidera Dr. Philippa Diedrichs a research psychologist who specializes in body image hi and the Girl Guide Association's very own Evelyn Greaves who at 18 is as I understand it already an ambassador and on the organisation's advocacy panel. Hello. Fantastic. Welcome. So I suppose, as this is Late Night Woman's Hour, we should start out by establishing whether self-esteem is a gendered issue. Is it something that women and men, girls and boys deal with differently?

Philippa? I knew you were going to come to me with this one. I think self-esteem is an issue for everyone because essentially what self-esteem is is how someone judges their self-worth so we all have judgments about that. I think where there might be some gender differences is the areas in our lives where we might get our self-esteem from or where we might look to for that but overall I would say yes it's an issue for everyone. We all have a self-esteem, whether it's good or bad or somewhere in the middle. And probably what influences it might

be some differences between different genders. Okay. You all have a special interest in this subject. So I'm going to find out a little bit about that. Natasha, I'll start with you. Why is this something that you care about and write about and work in issues around this? Well, I go into three schools and colleges every single week all over the UK. And I always see my job as kind of trying to unlock the potential of young people so that they can be the very best that they can be and have enjoyment and fulfillment in their lives. But the barriers to that are things which shouldn't matter. Things like them just having self-doubt, feeling that they aren't good enough, feeling that their grades aren't good enough, feeling they don't look the right way. And when you try and articulate that in the wider world, people say,

oh, for goodness sake, they shouldn't be worrying about those things. And I agree, they absolutely shouldn't. But the fact is that they are. And it's holding back the potential of an entire generation of people and I want that not to happen. So when you say it's holding back the potential of a generation is this generation having a more difficult time than previous ones have? It's a really difficult question to answer I think this generation are more emotionally articulate and aware of their mental health and well-being than previous generations so perhaps it's just that it's come to light because they're able to articulate it better

judera you blog and instagram about self-esteem quite a lot and and you wrote about your teenage self if i could go back in time i'd make peace with my spirit sack which i love what was what was going on then? How did you feel and what changed? So first of all, I refer to my body as my spirit sack because I believe that my value extends way beyond what my body looks like. So I feel like I'm just a sack for my spirit, which is the main me. Yeah, the younger me was very, very timid, insecure, and was allowing other people to tell her who she was and why I wrote that was because I wanted people who are in that position that I was in at the time to

understand that it can get better you can get better and the the only way to get better is to believe that you're deserving of better and that's what I had to do to reach that point and and what was the turning point for you then? The turning point was when I got tired of allowing boys to decide whether I was pretty or not. I know it probably sounds tedious but when you're at that very young age what boys think when you're a girl often really matters to you because you judge your value according to how much other people want to be around you and if boys don't want to be around you then there must be something is wrong with you and I I didn't want to give other people that power anymore so I had to decide that regardless of who likes me I like me and

that's what matters love that yay Evelyn we're here in Girl Guiding HQ and and this has been this building has been full of of you know guides and and women who are working with young women and girls for almost 100 years now. How big a part of the Girlguiding movement is this idea of self-esteem and self-worth? I think, especially in recent years, but really all the way through Girlguiding's history, a really big part of Girlguiding has been empowering girls to be what they can to achieve their potential and giving girls the opportunities and the skills to do that, so through leadership or through just week in, week out,

just building skills and making friends. And I think also being an all-girl environment in some ways can take away some of the pressures that Chidera just described. And I think that's really, really important as well. What's your own experience of it? How long have you been in the guides? I joined Girlguiding at five. I was a rainbow at my local group.

Everybody's heads just started to tilt and then so noises are being made that only dogs can hear that was 13 years ago so i've i had a brief break from brownies which is so i was about eight or nine a rebellious period what happened there i joined the scouting movement is what happened but i've been part of both actually since then so um yeah a long time and the opportunities and the the things that I've done through Girlguiding I would never have got anywhere else and it's been such such an enrichment of my life I can't articulate how much it's what kind of thing what would you what wouldn't you have done without guiding? So, well, when I was 12, I went abroad without my family for the first time

and I went to Switzerland. When I was 16, I went to India for 14 days and we did a community project, which I wouldn't have got the chance to do that kind of really in-depth... Where I went, they work with groups over a very long period of time and I don't think I would have had that kind of opportunity. really in-depth. Where I went, they work with groups over a very long period of time, and I don't think I would have had that kind of opportunity. In the past year, I've spoken in the House of Commons with Jess Phillips, MP, and I've met Laura Bates,

which was the best thing in the world. Of everyday sexism. And I've been on various panels. I've done... Well, I'm on the radio now. That's really exciting. This is good news. And I've also done print and TV interviews. So all things I would never have done without Girlguiding.

That kind of public speaking. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there are... It's quite a woolly term. There could be some misconceptions about self-esteem. It's a little bit of a vague term. What do we actually know about it? I mean, how much can we measure it? How accurate vague term what do we actually know about it I mean how how much can we measure it how accurate can we be when we're talking about it Philippa um well in the academic in the scientific literature um as I alluded to before self-esteem

is defined as how someone kind of perceives their overall self-worth um and actually in the field of psychology and the research um that I do and that others do in the area, the self-esteem scale is one of the oldest scales that we still use today to measure psychological well-being. And so these scales that we use are kind of self-report questionnaire measures. And the Rosenberg self-esteem scale, you learn about it very early on in psychology, and it was developed by Morris Rosenberg in the 60s. And it's a 10-item measure that's been used all around the world to assess self-esteem so when a psychologist were trying to measure it some of the questions that get asked are things like you ask people on a scale of one to five to rate how much they agree with these statements

so it might be like overall i feel satisfied with myself or it might you know, I feel like I'm on an equal plane with most other people. Or overall, I feel like I can do as well as most other people. Or I feel overall proud of myself. So those are some of the things that we would kind of tap into to get a sense of a person's overall self-esteem. And what do we know about the consequences of low self-esteem? Because it's not kind of connected to every single social evil. There are specific patterns, aren't there? Yeah. And it's really tricky to measure as well, because I would say that there's kind of this bi-directional relationship. We know that something's going to be a consequence of self-esteem, but we also know that the way that we interact with the

world and the world around us is going to influence our self-esteem. But, you know, speaking to what Natasha said before and the things that she would see every week, I would imagine in schools probably reflects what we see in the research. So people with low self-esteem are probably more likely to experience mental health concerns. So low mood, anxiety and stress. They might have difficulty in social situations. Again, this is depending on the extent of the self-esteem issues, because we all have self-esteem on a spectrum. But it might be that not having confidence to put your hand up in the classroom, to go to a party, to speak up, to take on leadership roles that you might want to do, and things like that. So it could have, because it is a very broad concept, it could have an impact on lots of different areas of your life.

So the thinking is that it's not connected to problems in public, like, I don't know, risky behavior and violence and that kind of thing. It tends to be connected to problems in private, as you say, mental health. Oh, no, I would say that self-esteem would come up in the research as a risk factor for things like substance misuse, as well as other risky sexual behaviors and things like that um it's just being able to say what's a direct consequence and how they i would actually say it's probably going backwards and forwards okay natasha um tell me about the the young people that you're working with when do girls and boys generally start experiencing problems with self-esteem and are there any

differences between the two groups? Just to go back briefly to what you were saying earlier about self-esteem, what the definition of it is. One of the commonest questions that I'm asked by parents is, I think my child has too much self-esteem. And what they mean by that is, I think my child is arrogant. And what they don't understand is that arrogance is a direct consequence of low self-esteem. So if you want to... I think, for example, an example, a classic example of somebody with low self-esteem is Donald Trump. So earlier when you said,

oh, it's not responsible for all the world's problems, it is. Right now, it is responsible for most problems in the world. This is Natasha's own view, not necessarily the view of the BBC. Or the Girl Guiding Association, whose building we're in. Yeah, sorry. Other alt-right leaders are available. But yeah, so to go back to your question about young people, one thing that I've noticed, I've been going into schools now for almost a decade and the demand has become younger and younger. And it's never too early

to start building self-esteem but in terms of when the awareness of the problems comes in I would always have said that it was around kind of year eight when they start to have an awareness of things like eating disordered behavior or body dysmorphic type thoughts or comparing themselves to their peers. That has got younger and younger and younger. And now it's, you know, year four and five, which is, you know, in the middle of primary school. Wow. So you're talking about eight year olds. Yeah. Yeah. And it's difficult to make a differentiation between girls and boys in that way because um i mean that i do kind of endless research into this because it's so difficult but um the way that it was described to me by a scientist that i work with is they said it relates to shame triggers that people who fall at the masculine end of the of

the spectrum their shame trigger relates to strength. And people who fall at the feminine end of the spectrum, their shame trigger relates to beauty. And if you look at the world around you, those triggers are constantly being pushed. So we constantly ask men to prove their strength and women to prove their beauty. And that's what they need to aspire to be thought of as masculine or feminine, which are seen as aspirational things. I mean social media is often talked about as a a real player in the in the self-esteem crisis and and being connected to young people's mental health is that is that what you see in your work? Yeah I mean the the commonest mental health problems in under 21s are anxiety, depression, eating disorders and self-harm. And low self-esteem is a primary diagnostic criteria for all four of those. So if we solve, if we crack the self-esteem thing, it's going to, it's not going to instantly solve all the mental health problems,

but it's certainly going to be one of the keys to unlocking it, I think. Chidera, what's your experience of this? Because obviously you're very active on social media and very successful on social media, but you're kind of using it to change the script. Right. I mean, having been on social media for the past five years of my life, I have noticed the way in which my self-esteem has changed through just having a social media account. Platforms like Instagram literally introduce you to new insecurities you didn't even know you had

because of things like likes and the Explore page, which I feel is like the most triggering space on the internet. You're going to have to explain this for the benefit of the listener who might not be Insta-ready. The Instagram Explore page is a space on Instagram where you can see the most popular photos that are being liked or shared by people that you follow um so it's generally like popularity zone and you often come across people that you don't speak to anymore or people that you just don't like and it's not

something that you can actually control because it's it's an automated it's kind of algorithmic algorithm yeah so things like that make the internet very unhealthy to be online on and i realized that i was placing a lot of emphasis on the amount of followers. I reached a point where I was placing a lot of emphasis on the amount of followers I had. So I'd get to maybe 10,000 followers and I'd be like, hmm, I've got 10,000 followers. I wonder what my life would be like if I had 20,000 followers. Because I know the person I follow who has 20,000 followers over here seems to be living real good. And I'd get to 20,000 and I'd be to be living real good now I get to 20,000

I'll be like hmm I am still not happy with my life maybe when I get to 50k I know I'll be real happy at 50k and it just goes on and on and on and on and you realize that it never stops and if you focus on the numbers you will literally drive yourself unwell um I reached that point where I had to stop and ask myself okay if social media were to shut down one day what value does my character have so I'm constantly focusing on working inwards and making sure that whilst I'm making sure that social media serves me I have to make sure that I'm also serving myself and others offline and I'm very interested in the idea that you're using your blog and your Instagram account to kind of spread a message that is against the tide of filtered perfection.

To what extent are you doing that kind of logging your own and blogging about your own experiences and for your own kind of happiness and mental health? And to what extent are you doing it to reach out to other people and to change their lives? So I've realised that if you don't see someone who looks like you in a position of power and success, you'll feel like you can't reach that. Essentially, you can't really be what you can't see. So I didn't see a lot of women who look like me in positions of power, especially women who have saggy boobs. So I created a hashtag called Saggy Boobs Matter. And before I created the hashtag, I searched it and I checked if anyone had used it no one's used it yet so I was like okay this is a conversation yeah no one's been having this conversation

so I started this hashtag saggy boobs matter where I speak about literally the importance of women adoring their bodies for what it looks like right now because i've received a lot of abuse online from you from men who are telling me that i my boobs shouldn't look the way they look for my young age and i'm like thanks for policing my body you were probably breastfed on saggy boobs as well like it's just it just sucks that we have to even be having this conversation but i've received so many messages from young girls telling me that they don't like the way that their boobs look and I'm like that should be the least of your problems right now so it means that it's a conversation that I have to start and so through starting that conversation I've had so many women reach out to me and tell me I feel the same thank you I accept my body now

and it's strange how someone just seeing another person happily living in their body can make them feel they can do the same so I think through not just leading by example but living by example is what has allowed my message to resonate and do you see yourself as part of a bigger movement I do I feel like I'm part of the body positivity movement but I don't want to put myself in a position where I am the face of it because I have I have the privilege of being a slim person I've never been shamed for being too fat or too skinny I've always just been the acceptable size so I feel like I can contribute to the movement but I don't I should not make it about myself because there are fat women who literally are being given death threats every single day for existing and I think they deserve

to have their voices amplified the most okay I mean evelyn tell me a little bit about the guides approach to all this it was interesting to hear you talking about your self-esteem and the effect that guiding has had on on it and it struck me that everything that you described was something that you kind of got out into the world and did you know it was all kind of extrinsic stuff um traveling and public speaking and all that sort of thing. There's a new Girlguiding badge called Free Being Me. What's that all about? So it's been around a couple of years, actually. So it was created by the World Association of Girlguides and Girl Scouts.

But Girlguiding uses it as one of our peer education resources which mean that which means that we we train 14 to 25 year old girls to go into groups and deliver the activities of the badge to girls aged about so for brownies who are eight seven to ten uh guides who are a bit older and then also people my age um and the idea is that because it's delivered by girls who are closer in age to the girls that they're talking to, hopefully the messages will get across a bit better. And what are the messages? The messages are basic.

It's a lot about body positivity and a lot about accepting your own body and knowing that you're beautiful no matter what you don't have to it's all there's this thing called the image myth which it talks about a lot which is that all societies have uh an idea of what the perfect person or woman because it's specifically about women but there is also an idea about what the perfect man looks like too and nobody can conform nobody will fully reach ever reach that image and we see it because of doctored images and because of photoshop and digital alteration but nobody can actually reach that image and that's driving towards it is just unhealthy

and so it's teaching girls to know to realize that that image myth exists in the world and then finding ways to be happy without trying to conform to it and to kind of disrupt the system of, I guess it's a cycle of constantly trying to achieve it. And so it's giving girls the tools to do that, I guess. Girl Guiding's been doing some research about all this and published a survey of 2,000 girls or thereabouts, which said that 33% of the girls aged 11 to 21 said that how they look in photos posted online was a major worry. What else did they discover and what were they kind of looking for?

They found that a major concern for girls was that they were worried about how they were comparing their lives to other girls and how they were looking at the lives of others and thinking that they didn't quite measure up um which I think is a really I I see that in my life every day and I experience that and it's something that I have to try and and get past but certainly of all the findings that was the one which resonated most with me because of your age are you talking about you know being online um yeah I mean environment Shidero's describing yeah pretty much I think there's I only recently got um like so snapchat for example where you so you can put things on your snapchat story and people will generally put things as they

go through their day and I think it creates a it makes you feel like you're missing out if you're not constantly meeting up with friends if you don't have it definitely creates an idea of the perfect life and um that's certainly something that I know I and a lot of my friends struggle with and when did you start using social media and what was the effect um so I got Facebook at 13 which is the age that you can kind of you're allowed to get it um did you really yeah okay lots of my friends lots of my ac mae'n ddigon ddigon o amser i chi gael hi. Roeddech chi wir? Ie, mae fy mab wedi'i aros i gael. Mae llawer o fy ffrindiau wedi cael hi pan oeddent yn ifanc ac mae'n hawdd iawn cael hi pan oes gennych chi'n ifanc. Mae'n hawdd iawn cael hi pan oes gennych chi'n ifanc.

Mae'n hawdd iawn cael hi pan oes gennych chi'n ifanc. Mae'n hawdd iawn cael hi pan oes gennych chi'n ifanc. Mae'n hawdd iawn cael hi pan oes gennych chi'n ifanc. Mae'n hawdd iawn cael hi pan oes gennych chi'n ifanc. Mae'n hawdd iawn cael hi pan oes gennych chi'n ifanc. Mae'n hawdd iawn cael hi pan oes gennych chi'n ifanc. Mae'n hawdd iawn cael hi pan oes gennych chi'n ifanc. Mae'n hawdd iawn cael hi pan oes gennych chi'n ifanc.

Mae'n hawdd iawn cael hi pan oes gennych chi'n ifanc. Mae'n hawdd iawn cael hi pan oes gennych chi'n ifanc. Mae'n hawdd iawn cael hi pan oes gennych chi'n ifanc. Mae'n hawdd iawn cael hi pan oes gennych chi'n ifanc. Mae'n hawdd iawn cael hi pan oes gennych chi'n ifanc. Mae'n hawdd iawn cael hi pan oes gennych chi'n ifanc. made me wait till I was 13 um so I got that on my 13th birthday I couldn't wait and then excited yeah definitely um I mean I'm quite a private person generally so actually I haven't found that I've shared too especially when I was younger I didn't share too much of my life online um but I definitely I don't know if it was my age or if it was getting social media but I

certainly felt that I started to notice what other people's lives were like and what they were doing and how my life compared to that and I certainly kind of sometimes felt like I was missing out or that I wasn't kind of a a social enough person or a popular enough person well it is a bit chicken egg isn't it but a sadness curve seemed to kick in around about the same time. I mean, Philippa, does this correlate to your findings about teenagers and social media and self-esteem? body image and things like that. But, and there are some experimental studies which have tried to look at cause and effect. And increasingly though, what we're understanding is a more nuanced perspective on social media, because already we've heard like the other women on the panel have amazing social media accounts and are using them to disrupt the system. And so I think the important thing with social media, I think there's a lot of panic about it.

And it can be problematic, but it can also be something that's for good. And so what we tend to see in the research is that particular activities on social media, which have already been mentioned, so seeking photo sharing activities where appearance is a really big focus can be worse for self-esteem and in particular body image.

We also know that using social media to seek validation through comments and through likes and that can be problematic. But at the same time, the research has shown as well that some of the activities that we've heard about here today, so for example, posting images of more diversity or using messages that are about you're okay as you are, are actually having a beneficial impact. But I think one of the interesting things that I don't think social media in and of itself is a bad thing. It's how you use it and what self-worth you get from it. And Shadea explained this really nicely. And then Evelyn has just alluded to it as

well, which is this thing about comparison, which will come up time and time again in the conversation about self-esteem. And this is why there has actually been a lot of criticism in recent years about the self-esteem movement or this idea that, you know, workshops and schools like the one that Natasha do, like the ones that I research and we put out there, is this problematic because are we going to have a generation of narcissists? And we hear this all the time. And I think that really depends on how you define self-esteem and the way that you think about it uh if self-esteem is about how you the way that you get your self-esteem is by comparing yourself to other people because that's like a basic human tendency that we all have to judge our self-worth and this could be on the way that we look on how much we earn on the type

of house we have the type of lifestyle where we're traveling if you generate your self-worth and this could be on the way that we look on how much we earn on the type of house we have the type of lifestyle where we're traveling if you generate your self-esteem and self-worth by comparing yourself to other people you're likely to fall short because we also have a bias to compare ourselves to people who we think are better off than us and this basic kind of what is called a social comparison all the time is a predictor of poor self-. And so if the idea of self-esteem is you have to be awesome and you have to be better than average, which if we think back to the measure that I talked about earlier of how it's been measured in the research,

this idea that I'm as good as most people, there is a comparison tendency in there and I think that's when it can become problematic because everyone can't be above average. However, if your self-esteem is about how you value yourself and where you get it from, as Jadira said, thinking about other ways, it's not just through social media, through likes and things like that. And if you have a more diverse self-concept, then it's not problematic in the same way that the way you use social media doesn't

necessarily have to be problematic. Okay. Natasha, what are you thinking, listening to Philippa speak there? Because this is, you know, touching on so much of what you deal with day to day running workshops. I think Philippa's right in that there's a lot of scaremongering around social media. There are a couple of things that we do know, for example, about the dopamine effect. When you get a notification, you have this Pavlovian response and you want to jump on your phone straight away. And that obviously has implications for concentration concentration and we know that there's a part of the brain that is responsible for how you understand the way that you compare to others like philippa was talking about and that

that can be enlarged in really prolific social media users but hang on part of their brain can actually be enlarged in adolescence again... Go over that again for me. I read a report, Tanya Byron writes about this magnificently. So in people who spend more than four hours a day on social media while their brain is developing, there's a part of your brain that's responsible for understanding how you fit within your peer groups, and that is larger than it is in their contemporaries.

Wow. And we know things like that, but I feel like those things are used then as an excuse to scapegoat social media. So a lot of people will know that I was very briefly a government advisor on mental health, and they fired me. And the reason that they fired me was because I... Well, one of the many reasons that they fired me. And the reason that they fired me was because I, well, one of the many reasons

that they fired me was because I felt that every time the Department for Education and the Department for Health were questioned about things like, is our school system too stressful? Are we putting too much emphasis on exams? Is there a problem with poverty in children? Is there a problem with young people and student debt? All these huge social issues, they were saying, ah, but social media, so really it's all their own fault. And that's not fair. You know, social media is here to stay. We need to find ways that we can live with it and use it healthily. But it's by no means the only reason that young people might be suffering from mental health problems. So there are other factors at play. Absolutely, yeah. What about the practical side of all this then?

I mean, what can we actually do? Chidera, you've told us your own personal example of taking the focus away from likes and actually finding a way to use social media that was very positive and didn't have a poor effect on your kind of self-image. I mean, the things that we're measuring on social media it's interesting isn't it this idea that you know Evelyn I think you said teaching girls that you

know everybody is beautiful and I think that's great but also it it's it kind of there's part of that that kind of rankles with me because I'm thinking well if we're measuring beauty we're still measuring beauty right so I think that's a kind of complicated idea. It's not that I just wonder about that. I mean, you know, what do you guys think? I think it's, yeah, I agree. So what I try to do to maintain my identity whilst being on such an open space like social media is to put myself in positions where I will post a photo

where I'm not looking my best. So there's a photo of me with my wig off, because I do wear wigs all the time, with my wig off. And because I have a condition called traction alopecia. And for those who don't know, it's a hair condition caused by using too many heavy relaxers on your hair and doing really heavy hair extensions on your hair. So the follicle literally just dies and doesn't grow back

no matter what natural products or methods you use. Yeah, so the bald patch is like the size of Arizona it's huge and so in the black community there's a lot of shame attached to baldness so I realized okay if I'm scared of revealing this about myself then that means that there is an issue at hand here especially on a space like social media so what I did was I took my wig off and I posted a photo of the bald patch with myself smiling in the photo so that if anyone screenshots it and tries to be mean,

at least I look happy in that photo. Like I'm taking as much charge as I can of my identity through doing that. And the response was amazing. I got so many positive responses from people saying, thank you for sharing that. And why I did that mainly was because I don't want anyone to think my life is perfect.

I don't want anyone to fall in love with the idea of me, and then when they meet me, they don't like the reality of who I am. And also, it's very important that if you are using social media very frequently, like I am, on an image-based basis, that you have to be as true to your identity as possible, because it's really easy to start performing your identity rather than actually just being yourself. And so how I combat that is just trying to really stay as natural as I can

while still keeping my personality there. And it sounds like as well finding situations where you have to be brave and kind of pushing yourself and then therefore that kind of, you know, builds yourself up. fod yn ddifrifol ac yn gwneud cymryd eich hun ac yna mae hynny'n fath o'i adeiladu eich hun. Iawn, ac mae'n anhygoel yn anhygoel bod y her mwyaf a'r peth mwyaf yn fwyaf yn eich hun ac rydych chi'n cael diolchgrifo am fod yn eich hun ac mewn byd ideol, sef yn amlwg, mewn byd ideol, ni fyddwch chi'n rhaid i chi gael diolchgrifo am fod yn eich hun. Byddwch chi'n ddewis eich hun yn unigol, ond oherwydd yr holl gynstrydau sydd gennym ni, mae unrhyw beth rydych chi'n ei wneud yn cael ei ddibynnu ac rydych chi'n teimlo bod yn rhaid i chi for being yourself you should be yourself regardless but because of all these constructs we have in place um anything that you do is taken apart and you feel like you have to

perform a certain way to fit into a certain group um the only way to battle that is to literally go back into yourself and ask yourself what is it about me that makes me happy to be me and what value do i contribute to this moment and what gave you the bigger buzz do you think was it the discovery that you were brave enough to put that picture online or was it the response that it got because they're kind of two different things I think the bigger bus came from from me choosing to earn my identity because I don't think you learn anything from being liked I think what you learn the most from is when you put yourself in risky positions because no matter the result you still learn something and through that I learned that

people aren't as horrible as you think they are and two I've realized as well that if you have bullies the best way to beat them is to literally own that thing that you're being picked on for so I've put myself in a position where you can't expose me regarding my bald patch, because I've told you I have a bald patch. You wouldn't have known if I didn't tell you, so I'm reclaiming my power, literally. I mean, I think older listeners who are tuned into this and grew up without the current emphasis on self-esteem

might be wondering about some of the advantages that they have, having grown up in a society where it was more about zooming out and seeing yourself as a small part of a bigger picture rather than having so much focus on you know your own image and what you're projecting and who you are appearing to be and stuff I mean I think that idea does seem to play into the the guiding movement Evelyn wouldn't you agree I mean the idea of the good deed, the idea of, you know, where you fit in a larger group, it's key to it. Yeah, definitely.

I think there's something very human in that, that you want to feel part of a bigger community and being able to do that, I think, is very empowering sometimes if you're already feeling lonely I think especially um being part of a community is so important we've talked a lot about the problems but I mean this sounds like we're getting to some of the building blocks of of really good self-esteem Natasha what are some of the others for you I mean I think that there's a real tendency at the moment within education in particular to spend too much time talking about

what we should be doing as opposed to just doing it so if you look at the funding problems we've got with sport art music and drama and it seems to me that they've been replaced with well-being lessons where during which you are told how important it is to make time for sport art music and drama in your life and it's like well why aren't we just doing them now? I think habits is so fundamental because they're what you default to in those times when you might be having a bit of a crisis and you're not able to consciously measure where you are. You know, just taking time to look after yourself is not something that we should ever have to learn,

but increasingly it's becoming more and more important. You know, having creative outlets and understanding that your skill set is different from the people around you is is really important okay philippa what do you think the building blocks of self-esteem good self-esteem uh i think what we fundamentally we want everyone to feel like they have some worth and to and to feel like that they can contribute to society or to, you know, their family or whoever that might be. But I think what we don't want to get into is this idea that, you know, everyone has to be great

and everyone has to be feeling good all the time because, you know, we don't, you know, suffering is part of the human condition as well. And so I think if we're constantly seeking, you know, whether it's the dopamine hit through social media or the validation or likes or just wanting to feel good all the time we're going to feel unhappy because there is this idea now within psychology that we have to become more accepting of the times where we don't feel so great so some of the negative emotions as well and there's a

real movement towards just becoming aware and accepting the different emotions that we have and not getting too hung up on them because when we get so hung up on feeling good all the time, it actually often does the opposite because we're constantly striving for something. And I think what, instead of always striving for those good feelings or to try and avoid pain or to avoid fear or to avoid feeling bad about yourself, kind of what Natasha has alluded to a bit already is this idea of working out what you really value in life and what's important to you. And, you know, when you start making decisions on your life about what's important to you and what you value, that ultimately takes you down

a life that's more fulfilling. So for me, what I value in my life is my family is really important to me. Travelling and exploring new places. I'm I'm really passionate about, um, women and girls and making sure that they have equal opportunities. And when I do things in my life that contribute to that, that's what makes me feel good. Um, and the other thing is, yeah, if we were all just sitting around working at how we can make ourselves better, feel better, that's a very insular view of the world. And it does tend to become a little bit narcissistic as well. Um, As Evelyn pointed out, you know, getting out there and having human connection. And what I'd like to do is to have us also thinking about how can we be kind to ourselves and recognize our own self-worth, but also what contribution are we going to have to our

communities and to our society? What are we going to give externally? And what most people, you know, Girlguiding is a perfect example. It's an organisation with 10 million members around the world, a million adult volunteers who give up their time and they do that. And they do that because it makes them feel good as well as helping the girls out as well. And what advice would you give parents who are listening to this, who are worried about the self image of their teenagers or their younger kids? Well, along those lines lines i'd say to parents give themselves a break as well because it's hard work and they've also grown up in the same society with the same pressures um but what i would say is if you can is try to role model some of those more positive behaviors um so i'll give the example in a body image context for um for

example and um saying negative things about yourself or putting yourself down which i think um in the uk we have the culture in australia as well as that there's this fear about becoming arrogant as natasha pointed out before and one of the common things i get asked is aren't you worried if you you know make all young people feel body confident they're all just going to be really arrogant uh but that's not the case at all i think we'd have have a long, long way to go before we have to worry about that. But modelling, you know, you know, praising yourself or being proud of what you do as well as modelling, you know, these living your life with, you know, in alignment with your values. I think that's a really positive thing to do. And the benefit of that is it's going to make you feel better personally and it's going

to have a beneficial impact for your children as well. I think parents often miss as well how influential they are on their children. When you talk to parents they don't think their children listen to them and then you talk to their children and they are so concerned with what their parents think about them they are just doing a really good job of hiding it. So I would say praise your children for the things that you want to see when they're brave, when they're kind, when they're funny, when they're insightful, when they're generous. If you start noticing and praising these activities, you'll see that in an effort to gain your approval, they will start practicing those things more. Chidera, when it comes to people bolstering the self-esteem of an environment, what would you like to see on the blogosphere? More control needs to be implemented on social media,

especially when people are receiving abuse online. There isn't enough being done. I mean, you can block and mute someone, but it's just not enough because it comes from so many angles, from various accounts, and there have been so many scenarios where I've blocked someone or I've been blocked by someone and I can just log out of my account and enter a private browser and still view their content. So I think there is a lot more that needs to be done.

And expanding on what you were saying earlier about us seeking our parents' validation, our parents are literally, as children growing up, they're the most important people in our lives and their opinions matter more than anybody's. So I feel that it's so key that parents affirm to their children more when they notice that their children are are being more confident and this is when their children are achieving more things but also for parents to acknowledge when they are wrong because what our

parents make us believe is okay we will repeat that in relationships in life so if you if your parents don't make you feel like your consent is important or if your parents make you feel like an apology is not important for you to receive from them you will kind of go through the rest of your life feeling like how you feel isn't as important. Natasha it sounds like it's a balance between things we actually do and the language that we use. I mean, could there be a checklist, something as basic as that, that we could kind of go through to start to build better self-esteem, either for us or the people around us? I think we need to be wary of placing too much emphasis on language because the English language in particular can be a really

inadequate tool if you're trying to communicate to somebody and a key part of self-esteem is being heard and understood. English people, English speaking people have got a really limited emotional vocabulary. Other languages they've got you know seven words for seven different types of anger, different words for different types of love, you. You've got all these different words to choose from. But English was first spoken by British people who traditionally didn't have feelings. They had tea. And so it's left us with this very limited amount of words.

I think it goes back further than that. So I think it's about understanding that your body and your mind don't exist in silos and that sometimes when your body doesn't feel right, it's your mind trying to tell you something. And what things do you need to do to maintain that equilibrium you know for me no one was more surprised than me when I found out that regular exercise in the form of running was key to my well-being I went through the whole of my 20s assuming any kind of formal exercise apart from sporadic Beyonce inspired booty shaking but now I'm a runner because I know that that's important.

I'm not good at it, but it's good for my self-esteem to know that it's an activity that I do. It's good for my wellbeing and I don't have to be the best at it. So it's things like that is self-expression and often wordless self-expression. And this idea of pushing yourself

to do things that aren't very easy, that's come up a lot in the conversation. Evelynlyn I mean that must be par for the course since you've been guiding since you were five yeah I mean being pushed to do things that I I wouldn't choose to do has been a really important thing for my self-confidence certainly and I think that's a big part of self-esteem as well as knowing that or feeling in yourself that you you can you can do the things you want to do. And that really plays into self-esteem.

So when you're forced, when you're pushed into doing things that you don't think you can do and then you do them, that's a huge boost for your self-confidence. And I think that's probably why it's come up so much. I think that's why it's such a big part of self-esteem. Philippa, this self-esteem. Philippa this your self-esteem movement has been going since the 1950s are we getting the hang of it are we any better at it do you feel like the future's bright? Oh yes I'm an optimist um I think you know self-esteem it's not a new thing this has been throughout history this idea of of our self-worth in the same way that I'm sure there was lots of panic when television came out, in the same way that we're panicking about social media. I think what,

you know, as I alluded to before, is can we use this as an exercise to move towards thinking about in our society at all different levels about what are the important values and what do we want to embrace as a society as well as individuals? So valuing things like diversity and having tolerance, whether that's at a societal level or at an individual level. So tolerating some discomfort. You know, you've kind of, Lauren, been pointing out this idea of lots of positive experiences can come from discomfort. So you have to experience that to get through life. I think, you know as Natasha said before there's a lot of focus on well-being in schools um and I think we're not at the point

yet where we can discard that when things like personal and social and emotional health aren't mandatory parts about what's taught and because that sends a message that that's not important it's like you know the stiff upper lip just keep going but at the same time as Natasha said we don't just want to focus on talking about these things. We want people to go out and live their lives. And so I, yeah, I wouldn't want people to just sit around and ruminate too much and think about, you know, is there a checklist? I think it's working out what's important to you in your life and going out and living it and doing it rather than getting up, caught up so much in the thoughts and the emotions around it. Okay. So building a bit of grit, a bit of stamina.

Yeah. I mean, you want to have grit and stamina. You want to be kind to yourself as well. So it's not about just plowing through things and not being patient or kind. And when you fail at things or when things don't go as well, you don't want to beat yourself up about it. So you do need to have a level of self-kindness um but also it's about you know accepting the realities of life that there are different emotions that we're all going to experience at times in the same way when we experience pain that's going to pass too when we experience really highs as well that's going to pass so it's just having that greater kind of emotional awareness but also the capacity to tolerate and experience lots of different emotions

I think also I think also self-esteem isn't something that it just happens overnight you couldn't just have a checklist and do the things on it and then you have really great self-esteem it's something that you have to build over a long long time and we need to be teaching children and young people how to build it up and how to keep it as well, because you can lose self-esteem. You're not sort of born with some self-esteem and then you get more. You can get it and lose it.

Yeah, I think a checklist would suggest that it's something that's attainable once you do all the things on it, and it's just not how life works and it's not how people work. of course not i mean chidera what do you think about the conversation about body positivity and self-esteem i mean you know they're big issues for especially the younger generation who are controlling the online conversation a little bit i believe that we're in a great position where we're even having these conversations because I remember this time five years ago, it was a lot more difficult for this conversation to be met with such reception. People would either dismiss it and say you're just bitter

or just say that, oh, you're just trying to cause trouble or like, oh, whatever, here we go again, mis-opinionated. But because more people are becoming aware of it these conversations are now being had in such a normalized way and that's why I'm constantly on about the fact that if people see that it's happening more often it becomes normalized and less of this big thing everyone's making out to be I mean what would you say to the people that I think Philippa mentioned earlier? You know, this this idea of, oh, we're just breeding a generation of narcissists and all they're doing is taking photos of themselves every five minutes. I mean, you know, how do you answer those criticisms?

I think for the development of not just the child, but any person who is still alive, you do a better job when you love yourself you can be a better lover a better carpenter a better blogger a better presenter if you love yourself because self-love isn't just about saying I'm amazing self-love is about also saying I'm really terrible at this but I'm trying and I love myself enough to try again and do better next time so self-love is about building yourself and it's about understanding that you can reach that goal you have for yourself and if you dislike yourself you're not going to progress as much as if you do love yourself because with love comes acceptance and if you accept yourself then there's room for you to grow man you should have given me this talk before we started i don't i would say also those people

should come and meet actually like speak to people my age, because it's not just about social media and people posting selfies and things. Like, people have such low... People might have such low self-esteem, and I think a lot of it is linked to academic stuff, in my experience, doing A-levels. But obviously, people are in all different places, and the reasons for their low self-esteem yn fy mhrofiad, yn gwneud A-lefel, ond yn amlwg mae pobl i gyd yn gwahanol llefydd a'r

rhesymau ar gyfer eu llos self-esteem yn mynd i fod yn gwahanol. Ond yn sicr, dydw i ddim yn dweud bod unrhyw un i'w gwybod yn narsesist neu... Dwi'n gwybod pobl sy'n argyfwng, ac rwy'n gwybod pobl sy'n coci, ond dwi ddim yn gwybod unrhyw un sydd â who has so much self-esteem that they're a dislikable person. Normally the more self-esteem somebody has, the more people tend to gravitate towards them because they love themselves and then they love themselves enough that they can love other people in a fulfilling way as well.

I think the perception is that when you tell people that you go into schools to speak about self-esteem, it's quite a nebulous word. People think you go off into a meadow and hold hands and make a caring circle and chant I love you whilst wearing a crown of daisies but oh tell me tell me you do and as fun as that sounds um you know you do end up meandering into the kind of territories that we've hit on today you know you cannot have a conversation about body image, for example, without touching on things like gender, sexuality, race, diversity, tolerance, these really big, weighty issues which have never been more pertinent than they are.

And that is always, as well as what has already been said about young people not deserving the reputation that they have, that's the answer that I always give when people say that it's not important. It's at the core of so much. Okay. Thank you very much to my guests tonight and all of their wonderful self-esteem.

You've given me a boost. Thank you very much to my guests, Natasha Devon, Chidera Egeru, Dr. Philippa Diedrichs and Evelyn Greaves. I'm Sarah Treleaven and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories and Evelyn Greaves. the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in.

Available now.