Feeling Good: Overcome Depression and Anxiety with Proven Techniques

by David D. Burns

Recognize that there is only one way you can lose a sense of self-worth—by persecuting yourself with unreasonable, illogical negative thoughts. Self-esteem can be defined as the state that exists when you are not arbitrarily haranguing and abusing yourself but choose to fight back against those automatic thoughts with meaningful rational responses. When you do this effectively, you will experience a natural sense of jubilation and self-endorsement. Essentially, you don’t have to get the river flowing, you just have to avoid damming it. Since only distortion can rob you of self-esteem, this means that nothing in “reality” can take away your sense of worth. As evidence for this, many individuals under conditions of extreme and realistic deprivation do not experience a loss of self-esteem. Indeed, some individuals who were imprisoned by the Nazis during World War II refused to belittle themselves or buy into the persecutions of their captors. They reported an actual enhancement of self-esteem in spite of the miseries they were subjected to, and in some cases described experiences of spiritual awakening.