How We Measure Who We Are: Understanding Self-Concept

It was day four of my trip to Stockholm. Standing on the train studying the shine of a woman’s hair draped dramatically down the back of her floor-length mohair coat, it took me until then to pinpoint what I’d been grappling with since I stepped off the plane: Stockholm makes me feel ugly and inadequate. It was my first time in Sweden and, after spending eight months in a traditional one-thousand-person town in Italy’s deep south, it was jarring to return to the reality of our very globalised, very consumer-led, world. I’d apparently forgotten about hip wine bars, salons, spas, and designer brands.

I considered the faded orange puffer jacket I was wearing, and its dirty sleeves in dire need of a dry clean. Below this were my scuffed leather shoes, and the thick socks I was wearing for the second day in a row. The station spat us out at another strip of boutiques. Outside of a spa I considered the ritual of self-care, and alongside this admired the window of a shop selling items such as jewellery, coffee table books, candleholders, and blankets. All things typically brought for self-love.

These are things I don’t necessarily need. But, one glance at these shopfronts and I felt their absence in my life, gripped by a sense that I would not be satisfied in myself until I possessed them. When I discuss the feeling of Stockholm with my therapist, i.e. the subtle and constant inadequacy and anxiety I have been feeling, she says it is the product of being around so much effort and inauthenticity. That these shops are trying to tell me that buying their products are the road to the holy grail of human happiness; self-actualisation. Spoiler alert; it’s not.

We like to tell ourselves it’s empowering, that it makes us feel good and complete

There is a difference, albeit slight, between self-care/self-love rituals, and socio-culturally-imposed conditions on how to be. But often the difference is so slight, that it becomes hard to discern where to draw the line and we end up conflating the two. Telling ourselves it’s empowering, that participating makes us feel good and complete. For example, there have been times when I have found myself sitting in the chair of a beauty parlour on my lunch break in physical pain while a woman threads my eyebrows into an ‘acceptable’ shape and removes the slightly darker hairs on my top lip. During these uncomfortable moments, my mind runs over all the many more pleasant things I could be doing with my downtime: enjoying a walk, a slow coffee, or a chapter of my book.

When it is all over and I have paid for the treatment, I look in the mirror and feel lighter and brighter: both closer and further away from my true self. But what is my true self? And who, exactly, are these rituals for? I say they are for me, but there is a tension in these words when I think or write them down.

Self-concept – where do I learn what makes me who I am?

In Disney’s 2019 hit film Frozen, Elsa sings ‘Conceal, don’t feel’ … ‘be the good girl you were always meant to be’. In these lyrics, we are hearing what humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers would call Elsa’s self-concept. Our self-concept informs how we feel about ourselves, how we believe we should and should not behave, think and look, as well as how we appraise and relate to others.

Self-concept is made up of two central components. The first is conditions of worth, which are rules that dictate a person’s beliefs, values, and behaviours. They are called ‘conditions’ because it is believed that acceptance, approval, success, and love are conditional on meeting this set of rules. E.g. if I look/behave a certain way, people will generally like me. The other part of the self-concept is made up of introjections, which are external attitudes that we’ve slowly absorbed over our lifetimes, treating them as fact rather than opinion. E.g. what is considered ‘beautiful’.

Healthy vs. unhealthy self-concept

There are two types of self-concepts, which can be simply understood as healthy versus unhealthy. Rogers defines a healthy self-concept as a self that is governed by an internal locus of evaluation, meaning a person trusts their instincts and uses an internal valuing process. Think having a good sense of who you are and having strong values that are not overly-contaminated by external messages.

In contrast to this is an unhealthy self-concept, which is rigid and governed by an external locus of evaluation. This means that others’ opinions and evaluations of what a worthy and successful person looks like have been internalised and embraced into our personal self-concept, to the point of having forgotten our own thoughts on the matter. Common external conditions of worth are believing you are a better and worth more as a person if you perform well at school or university, have a high salary, look beautiful/thin/strong, are desired by others, have material success, don’t cry, don’t show weakness, never get angry, please others, and never ask for help.

Is this really the road to self-actualisation?

Let’s back up a bit. Self-actualisation is the idea that each of us has an intrinsic or truest self. The best version of ourselves. This doesn’t mean the most attractive/wealthy/’insert status symbol here’, but the most balanced, healthy, social, creative and intelligent self, that we have pursued and learned to embody because we wanted to. Because it felt true to who we are, on our deepest level. Not because anyone else told us any of these things were desirable.

The problem is that much of Western culture, through marketing, consistently bombards us with conditions of worth. ‘Buy this and you’ll be envied’, ‘look like this and you’ll be desired’ and so on. It should be said that few parts of the world are exempt from external conditions of worth. Stockholm just happened to be a place where those external conditions were particularly obvious to me. I consider the people living in this city, who interacted with the various stores with a jaded look about themselves. I wonder if they recognise the way every business is geared up for self-improvement, or if they have simply been in it too long to notice.

The condition Stockholmers appear to be imprisoned by is one I also recall observing in Melbourne. In these cities, and many others I’m sure, there seems to be a consensus that the more up-to-date and groomed your aesthetic, the more envious your lifestyle is to others; the more worthy you feel even if you’re unrested, unhappy, and disillusioned by the process.

Though, as my therapist asked me when I spoke of my inadequacy that day, “do you think this is really the road to self-actualisation, Harriet, to fulfillment?” This as in casual designer outfits, skincare routines, shiny hair, art museum apartments, an insanely equipped kitchen, perfect relationships, a strong career, a busy after-work lifestyle, etc. “So, what do I do with this?” I asked. “Do I tap out and feel terrible about myself next to all the people still participating and upholding the conditions?”

“No”, she said, shaking her head. “You change the way you measure worth.”

You risk self-loss by suppressing, denying, or betraying your needs and values

I have since become obsessed with external conditions of worth and understanding where they come from. It is human nature to strive for love, acceptance, approval, and validation, and many of us will consciously and unconsciously change how we are to achieve these needs, to feel worthy. The criterion of a ‘worthy person’ comes to us in implicit messages by way of society’s many voices. Common voices can be seen as billboard advertising, influencer posts, VIPs skipping lines, beauty bias, bullies, and fame just to name a few. These dynamics are played out in front of us every day repeatedly, rubbing against our personal and individual feelings, beliefs, desires, and needs.

The more we listen and adapt to these messages, the more estranged our self-concept becomes to our authentic self. This gap, which psychotherapists refer to as cognitive dissonance (a mental conflict when your beliefs don’t line up with your actions), is a risky place to operate from. If you suppress, deny, and betray your intrinsic self for the sake of social approval for long enough, you risk self-loss, which manifests as a kind of identity crisis characterised by chronic anxiety, depression, irritability, disillusion, and identity confusion.

You need a space of unconditional acceptance to locate your true self

Rest assured, it is normal for humans to oscillate between an internal and external locus of evaluation, and nobody is immune to external influence. However, too much emphasis on external sources, opinions, and norms is problematic because it means we are denying the self in some way and distorting who we really are. Identifying whether you generally operate from an external locus of evaluation can be difficult as this has been our normal way of operating since we were very young. In this way, they can be difficult to distinguish from our genuine beliefs and values.

While it is not easy, it is not impossible to distinguish if external conditions are governing your life. Look out for internal dialogue like ‘I should’ or ‘I must’ and ask yourself how much a decision or behaviour is for you, vs. for how you are perceived. Life is too short to live according to external conditions of worth, like getting your face threaded on your lunch break and being put down by decadent window displays or the drape of another woman’s hair. You owe it to yourself to find what makes you feel true wellbeing, and live in accordance with that.

 

If you’d like to explore how to find your intrinsic self, Sarah Blondin has a beautiful mindfulness recording that you can listen to. If you feel you have little autonomy when it comes to your own life and place too much importance on other people’s opinions of you, exploring conditions of worth with a therapist can be a rewarding experience.