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Areas › Anger › What you are actually defending
Self-esteem works like the lizard. It rises when things go well and drops when they do not, and other people supply the weather. Self-acceptance is the mammal version: it costs something to run, it is not automatic, and it holds when the room turns cold. Nobody manages this all the time, and the point is only that some of the warmth can come from you instead of from the sun.
The one whose heart God has opened in devotion to Him walks in light from his Lord (Quran 39:22). The light is carried rather than borrowed from the surroundings.
الزمر
أَفَمَن شَرَحَ ٱللَّهُ صَدۡرَهُۥ لِلۡإِسۡلَٰمِ فَهُوَ عَلَىٰ نُورࣲ مِّن رَّبِّهِۦۚ فَوَيۡلࣱ لِّلۡقَٰسِيَةِ قُلُوبُهُم مِّن ذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِۚ أُوْلَٰٓئِكَ فِي ضَلَٰلࣲ مُّبِينٍ
What about the one whose heart God has opened in devotion to Him, so that he walks in light from his Lord? Alas for those whose hearts harden at the mention of God! They have clearly lost their way
Qur’an 39:22read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Pooling trials of self-compassion based approaches, these interventions reduced self-criticism, with the size of the effect varying by the type of programme and the group taking part. That is some evidence that inward warmth can be trained rather than only received. The trials varied in quality and were mostly short, so the finding is real but modest.
Wakelin KE, Perman G, Simonds LM. (2022). Effectiveness of self-compassion-related interventions for reducing self-criticism: A systematic review and meta-analysis.. Clinical psychology & psychotherapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Warmth you generate yourself is still there when the conditions change.
Giving up certainty is a loss, and it is fair to treat it as one. People do grieve the version of themselves who knew exactly what was going on.
If you can see yourself, you need other people to do it far less. That is really the whole aim, and it is what takes the sting out of being misjudged.
Esteem shares a root with estimate, and estimating needs a measure. Look at what you are measuring yourself with and you will usually find it was handed to you: money, height, thinness, numbers on a screen.