Psychologist's advice for people with high self-esteem

Self-confidence is an important condition on the path to a happy life. Such a person is not afraid to take responsibility, takes risks and often achieves incredible results, while others sit on the bench. In their personal lives, people who know their worth are also more successful: there are plenty of examples of quite ordinary girls finding family happiness with wealthy, handsome men. Inner harmony is visible from a distance, and it is easier and more pleasant to communicate with its owner. How to find balance, realize your own uniqueness and start living in a new way? Correct answer: work on self-esteem. Advice from psychologist Anna Dobruk will help you become the best version of yourself.

Symptoms of Low Self-Esteem

As a rule, people who lack self-confidence are easily recognized by their external signs. They usually exhibit the following qualities.

Constant indecision, which is associated with the fear of making a mistake.
Passionate desire to please in order to fit into the team and feel a sense of belonging to the group.
At the same time, hostility towards others and envy of others' successes appears.
Pathological jealousy. Moreover, destructive feelings can arise not only towards a partner, but also towards friends.

Also, low self-esteem is revealed by the manner of speech. How does this manifest itself?

Notes of a negative worldview and pessimism may creep into the conversation.
Excessive self-criticism. A person constantly mentions his shortcomings and the fact that he is not satisfied with himself.
People with low self-esteem take a defensive position in conversations and always look for excuses for their actions, even without obvious reasons. This usually looks like an excuse to yourself.
There is a dependence on the opinions of others and a negative attitude towards criticism addressed to oneself. Moreover, even any phrase of the interlocutor can be interpreted as a claim or insult.

Rejection in childhood

The opposite of parental overprotection is a disregard for the child. Comparison of a child with other children, and not in his favor, constant reproaches, nagging parents form his low self-esteem.

A withdrawn, insecure child in a group is often humiliated by his peers, physically offended, and mocked at his feelings, which aggravates his situation. All these factors reduce children's self-esteem.

Children with low self-esteem grow into “difficult” teenagers. The defensive reaction of some of them is open aggression directed at classmates, teachers, and parents. It is expressed in verbal abuse, insubordination, disrespect, and in extreme cases, physical violence. This is an excellent motivation for activities to correct a child’s self-esteem in early childhood.

A psychologist will explain in detail how to raise a child’s self-esteem - special methods have been developed for this. The main thing is that the little man believes in the unconditional love of mom and dad, in his strengths and abilities.

The role of self-esteem in our lives

Self-esteem reflects your idea of your own strengths and weaknesses and plays a leading role in relationships with others. A self-confident person always has a wider social circle, as he radiates special positive energy. It is easier for such people to overcome life's difficulties and achieve their goals.

Relationships in the family, at work, in society directly depend on your sense of self. By following the lead of your fear, indecision and uncertainty, you are programming yourself for failure. You knowingly deprive yourself of victories, prospects and achievements.

Correct self-esteem gives a person the opportunity to make decisions based on their own beliefs and desires. Do not depend on the opinions of others. Be confident in your own choice. Don't stop there and strive for success.
Society has a great influence on the self-esteem of every person. Upbringing in a family, communication with peers, friends and colleagues either lowers or increases our opinion of ourselves.
Real self-esteem should be built on your own abilities and skills. You need to be able to accept your shortcomings and increase your strengths.

Self-esteem must be real

Reveal your best sides to society, receive praise for your successes. Any normal person strives to choose friends and interlocutors among self-sufficient people.
Underestimating their capabilities prevents people from living fully. Inflated ambitions often lead to multiple mistakes. In both cases, the person refuses to perceive his real self.
Low self-esteem can quickly turn into high self-esteem and vice versa.

In modern society, low self-esteem has become a common problem. Let's consider several effective recommendations that, if followed, will help you reconsider your attitude towards yourself and improve your quality of life.

Diffidence

The state of an individual in which he doubts his abilities and is overly dependent on the opinions and assessments of others is called self-doubt. It affects people regardless of gender, age, financial status and social status.

“The ability to act often precedes the readiness to act” (Andrey Lipkin)

Uncertainty hides a lack of knowledge and skills, dissatisfaction with one's appearance, or an unwillingness to be responsible for one's actions.

Signs that characterize an insecure person:

avoids communication with people, is afraid of being the center of attention;
constantly tense, afraid of making a mistake;
needs approval and praise;
afraid to be the first to approach, make acquaintances, start a conversation;
compares himself with others, experiencing inferiority, inferiority;
tries to stay in the shadows.

Lack of self-confidence prevents a person from standing out from the crowd, emphasizing his individuality, and defending his point of view.

Psychology of high self-esteem: signs, consequences

Self-esteem is a measure of a person’s perception of his own personal qualities, strengths and capabilities, external and internal data. The effectiveness of one’s existence in modern society, a person’s psychology, his material realization, and interaction with other people directly depend on self-esteem. What can happen if perception itself creates a picture for the subconscious that is much better than it is in real life? Psychology will tell you what this means.

A distorted perception of one's own capabilities can make a person rude, arrogant, and arrogant. The inability to determine your own potential leads to failure in your endeavors, failures and disappointments. The result of the work of a person with high self-esteem is often a lack of public recognition, and as a result, a depressive state.

In order to understand the consequences and extent of the problematic nature of a person’s inflated self-esteem, you need to understand the reasons for its appearance.

The reasons for such psychological violations can be childhood fears and psychological trauma, an inferiority complex, frequent indulgence of parents to all the desires of the child, excessive guardianship, social conditions in which there is no sense of healthy competition (for example, if you are the only girl in a team among men), wide popularity.

Inflated self-esteem, popularly referred to as narcissism, acts as excessive self-confidence, human psychology does not allow him to recognize the likelihood of his opponent being right, an obviously empty desire to reach an unattainable peak, a person does not recognize criticism, does not tolerate statements that do not coincide with his point of view. Such people rarely accept outside help; they try to hide mistakes and failures from prying eyes and accept defeats with desperate pain.

Business failures

A business owner, in order to analyze the reasons for a decrease in profitability, can conduct a self-assessment of the organization’s performance.

Self-assessment of an enterprise’s activities is a comprehensive assessment, the result of which is an opinion about the effectiveness and efficiency of its work. Self-assessment of activities is initiated by the company's management.

More than 9,000 people have gotten rid of their psychological problems using this technique.

Enterprise self-assessment models are differentiated depending on the scope and purpose of implementation.

Classification of self-esteem models:

international;
national;
regional;
industry;
organizational.

Depending on the purposes of the exercise, there are competitive and diagnostic models of self-assessment.

The management adequacy coefficient indicates the level of management at a given enterprise. Having received a report on the analysis, a businessman may come to the conclusion that further work is inappropriate.

Constant failures in work, failure to sign contracts, staff shortages can lead a businessman to think about his insolvency as a leader. The collapse of an enterprise’s activities negatively affects the head of the company, his performance plummets. Financial problems make the situation worse. The result is a decrease in the businessman’s self-esteem.

Signs of low self-esteem

Low self-perception has very specific symptoms:

constant self-criticism;
dissatisfaction with oneself;
excessive sensitivity to the opinions and criticism of other people;
feeling of anxiety, fear of making the wrong decision;
envy of other people's successes;
justifying one's own actions;
pessimism and negative attitude towards the world around us.

If you feel that problems and failures are your constant companions in life, if it seems to you that the decisions you are making are wrong, delve into the study of the topic - how to believe in yourself and increase self-esteem. Otherwise, emotional disorders and depression are possible.

Unrequited love

Love without reciprocity is more common than mutual feeling. People experience unrequited love in different ways: some are content with what they love themselves, without claiming reciprocity; someone is suffering; someone changes the object of admiration, assessing the relationship as unpromising.

People with low self-esteem tend to love a person secretly all their lives, without hope of reciprocity. They consider themselves unworthy of the object of love.

If people with adequate self-esteem have been refused love, they should not dwell on this sad experience. Upon detailed self-analysis, you will find many shortcomings in behavior and appearance. Thinking about this every day, considering himself unworthy of love, a person lowers his self-esteem and will not be ready for a new relationship.

Heightened self-esteem

Recently I saw this picture at a gas station. A new, tinted Audi pulled up. A boy of about eighteen got out of it. Very fashionable, wearing sunglasses. And with a lordly air he began to give instructions to the gas station employees. What do they need to do, where do they need to wipe. After it was refueled. With a careless gesture, he tossed fifty rubles for tea to the girl who was serving him and drove off.

It was clear from the guy that he was simply bursting with a sense of his own importance, which he strives to show always and everywhere. And from the outside one gets the impression of a confident, tough guy. They say about such people that they “caught star fever” or they say that the person has inflated self-esteem. He really comes across as an overconfident person who thinks very highly of himself.

But this is just an impression. In reality, I believe that there are no people with high self-esteem. In my opinion, this is a variant of unstable self-esteem. It’s just that a person, creating his own internal classification of people, somewhat incorrectly determined his place.

Very often, young people who project their parents’ successes onto themselves have inflated self-esteem. That is, money, connections, social status of parents, this is my status. Since a person considers the successes of his parents to be his successes, he finds a seme place in the classification, on the same level as his parents. Accordingly, he behaves as if he had reached such heights. At the same time, other people see the picture more objectively. And they rate him lower than he rates himself.

Therefore, a certain imbalance arises between how a person evaluates himself and how others evaluate him. And others get the impression that the person evaluates himself inadequately highly. That’s why the expression “inflated self-esteem” came into being. Although not all people understand this. Usually, around a person with high self-esteem, there are always people hanging around who are flattered by such a cool acquaintance.

Being actually in the roles of sixes, they use this connection to compensate for their insecurities. Well, it’s good for a star, there is always someone who admires you, who you can control and feel even more significant.

Small-amplitude oscillations occur, above the level of reality. Peaks of confidence with fantasies may or may not occur. Some people with high self-esteem are so beside themselves that they don't even have fantasies. Why fantasy if I already live like in a fairy tale.

But peaks of uncertainty are uncharacteristic for them. Because when faced with failure, they begin to look for the reasons for failure. And they are usually found either in other people or in external circumstances. And such an explanation helps maintain self-esteem. There is one notch in the graph of falling self-esteem. This can happen if a person is faced with a serious problem and fails, or receives condemnation from one of the small number of people whom he places above himself.

But this hole in self-esteem, as a rule, does not last long. The man quickly flies upward again. Since we have determined that high self-esteem is a variant of unstable self-esteem, then behavior towards other people will be the same as we described above. Only it can be in an even more exaggerated form. If a situation occurs in life in which one’s place in the classification changes, then the result is a change in the self-esteem graph.

Often self-esteem becomes typical for a person with unstable self-esteem. That is, peaks of uncertainty appear, accompanying tendencies towards depression. During which a person can abuse alcohol.

Last resort[edit]

Victorious ending.

Quit your job. And immediately, no warnings for 2 months. In the “Reason” column, write: “because I hate everyone here.”
File for divorce.
Add everyone you know to your blacklist. Answer letters and calls: “I'm tired of you all! Farewell!"
Stop feeding your parrot.
Sell your personal items and get drunk.
Walk drunk at night under your neighbors’ windows and shout to them everything you think about this shitty world.
Tell the police all this too.
And to the cellmates.

Here you go. Now everything is clear. You are nobody. You are worse than no one. You are nothing. Your life is completely meaningless. You drink black. You served 15 days. Your wife left you. Friends abandoned me. Banned from the Internet. Your parrot is not talking to you. You have no choice but to take over the world or commit suicide.

How to deal with high self-esteem

To get rid of high self-esteem, you need to do a tremendous amount of work on yourself and have a strong desire to change for the better. A professional psychologist can help with this.

However, there are simple self-help methods:

Learn to take into account

During a conversation, you need to listen to your interlocutor and respect his point of view. Take criticism calmly and draw conclusions. If something doesn't happen the way you wanted, take responsibility rather than blaming someone else for the failure. It is important to learn to determine a person’s true attitude, to distinguish sincere praise from flattery. Before embarking on a risky project, it is necessary to evaluate all possible options for completing the work started. You should not start something new if you are not sure of the successful implementation of your plans. After the successful implementation of the project, you need to analyze and think about how you could achieve even better results. To improve, you need to treat yourself with a certain amount of self-criticism

Without this, it is impossible to lower self-esteem and make it adequate.

High self-esteem in children

Adequate self-esteem begins to form in early childhood, if during this period parents praise the child too often for everything he does and never cease to admire him.

This attitude leads to the fact that it is difficult for the child to find a common language with peers and to go through the stage of socialization in society.

When he gets into a team (kindergarten, school), it is difficult for him to come to terms with the fact that “he is one of all” and not “the best”. Such children are conflict-ridden and emotional. This situation can cause psychological trauma and the development of low self-esteem.

You can and should praise children, but it is important to do it correctly. You cannot praise a child in the following cases:

You cannot praise a child in the following cases:

for its external data: this is what is given by nature, and not created by a child;
if the child has achieved something without putting in any work;
for toys, books, clothes - they were bought or given to him, there is no merit in this.

High self-esteem in teenagers

The reason for adolescent high self-esteem is that the child wants to appear better than he is, to achieve recognition from acquaintances and friends.

Another basis for the formation of an incorrect assessment is narcissism, impunity, when parents continue to indulge an already adult child and exaggerate the scale of his achievements.

To develop healthy self-esteem in a teenager, psychologists advise adhering to the following recommendations:

Give the child a feeling of security, support, do not be shy to demonstrate your love, and at the same time stop strictly controlling and making them love you.
Learn to set realistic goals and achieve them step by step.
Don’t solve all the problems for the teenager, give him the opportunity to feel responsible for his actions and actions.
Teach your child discipline.
Praise for real achievements.
Make it clear that mistakes are normal: made once, they will provide the necessary experience and help get rid of mistakes in the future.

Diagnostics

There are three ways to understand that you have low self-esteem.

Method 1. Observation and self-analysis

Carefully study the possible causes. Analyze whether they took place in your life. If there are at least 3 of them, there is every chance of being in the risk group. Next, look through the list of symptoms and cross out those that you do not experience. People who are unsure of themselves cope with this part of the task with flying colors, as they practically do not cross out anything. This is confirmation of the diagnosis.

Method 2. Test

Take one of our many self-assessment tests. If you choose the online option, it must include the author of the method and he must be well-known in psychology. Recommended: Rosenberg, Zang, Leary, Budassi, Dembo-Rubinstein, Cattell, Eysenck, Schur.

Method 3. Consultation with a psychologist

It is recommended to take the same tests from a practicing psychologist. He will select one of the best options, be able to prepare you for its implementation, correctly interpret the results, and at the same time tell you how to deal with the problem. In especially severe cases (in cases of underestimation with personality and behavior disorders, manic-depressive psychosis), he can give a referral to a psychotherapist.

What is high self-esteem

What is high self-esteem? It refers to an individual’s overestimation of their own potential. In other words, a person thinks of himself as better than he really is. This is why they say that people with high self-esteem are often out of touch with reality. They evaluate themselves biasedly and most often notice shortcomings in others rather than advantages. To some extent, this can be associated with the individual’s reluctance to see the good in others, against the background of which they will notice their own shortcomings.

High self-esteem means seeing only your strengths, ignoring your shortcomings. At the same time, other people seem weak, stupid, underdeveloped. That is, a person sees exclusively other people’s shortcomings, not paying attention to the existing advantages.

However, not everything is so simple with high self-esteem. Its appeal lies in the fact that a person with such self-esteem experiences absolute self-confidence. He does not doubt himself, does not humiliate, does not suppress. He is confident in his own abilities - this is the positive side of high self-esteem.

The negative side can be:

Disregard for other people's opinions and interests of others.
Selfishness.
Overestimation of one's own strengths.

It is noted that high self-esteem, like low self-esteem, can plunge a person into a depressive state. This occurs when multiple failures occur. And a depressive state can be described as “I-, You-”, that is, a person sees bad things in himself and in others.

An objective look at your capabilities[edit]

From the previous chapter it became clear that the memory of you will not remain for centuries. You will be left with a dash between two dates. Because you can't do anything.

This is how you imagine yourself in your dreams.

Check it. Try to do at least something: buy Ethiopia, become president of the United States, or at least earn a little money on the Internet. Be persistent, don't give up trying. And under no circumstances deviate from the instructions so that you have nothing to reproach yourself with. Somewhere after the 50th attempt, it will become clear to the Cat that the issue is not bad luck, but your inability to do anything worthwhile.

What to take from you! You can't even drive a bolt into a concrete wall!

Do you still hope that there is something positive in you? Then let's continue.

Factors influencing the formation of self-esteem

Inadequate self-esteem is always bad; it creates discomfort and problems for both the person himself and his environment. But can an individual be blamed for having a wrong self-image? Under the influence of what is self-esteem formed?

Social factors

The foundations of self-esteem are laid in childhood, from the moment when the baby becomes aware of his “I” and begins to compare himself with other children and adults. But in preschool, and even at primary school age, children cannot yet adequately analyze their qualities and their behavior, therefore the evaluative sphere is formed entirely under the influence of adults. Remember how V. Mayakovsky wrote: “The little son came to his father, and the little one asked: “What is good?” And what is bad?

Therefore, it is the wrong actions of adults that give impetus to the formation of inadequate self-esteem. Here are some of them:

unfair or excessive punishments;
unreasonable and too frequent praise;
constant comparison of the child with other children to show his weaknesses, inability, disobedience;
the position of a “king” in the family or a favorite at school;
emphasizing and focusing the child’s attention on his failures and mistakes.

Child psychologists believe that, in general, praise and encouragement are more beneficial, while constant reprimands and punishments are harmful. The fact is that we experience negative emotions more strongly than positive ones. And unpleasant sensations are stored in memory longer and have a stronger impact on our behavior. This happened in the process of evolution.

The opinions of people around us have a great influence on the formation of self-esteem and of an adult, especially when it comes to socially significant people whose opinions are important to us

Personal factors

The formation of self-esteem is also influenced by a person’s individual characteristics, the uniqueness of emotions, temperament, and character.

People with a sensitive psyche worry more about their failures and about the assessments of others than those who are less emotional.

A person whose melancholic traits predominate tends to get upset even over a minor random remark and remember it for a long time.
A phlegmatic person may not even pay attention to the remark.
Closed, unsociable introverts worry less about the assessments of others than sociable extroverts. On the other hand, extroverts, due to their tendency to demonstrate behavior, often suffer from inflated self-esteem. But people who avoid people and prefer solitude often consider themselves superior to others and despise those around them who are unworthy of communicating with them.

That is, individual personality characteristics certainly influence the formation of self-esteem, but its vector is determined primarily by the social environment. There is another important factor related to a person’s assessment of his own “I”.

Level of aspiration

We all strive for something in life, we set goals for ourselves. And these goals are different: some want to earn money for a new apartment, some want to create their own thriving company, and for others a trip to the sea is the ultimate dream. The degree of complexity, difficulty of a goal or task that a person defines for himself is the level of his aspirations.

Just like self-esteem, the level of aspirations can be adequate or inadequate. Adequate is one where goals correspond to human capabilities. If a school graduate with poor knowledge and low Unified State Exam grades decides to apply to a prestigious metropolitan university, then he clearly has an inadequate, inflated level of aspirations. And when a good student refuses to enroll in a higher education institution because he is afraid of failure, then his level of aspiration is too low. Both are bad.

The level of aspirations is formed under the influence of successes and failures that accompany a person on the path of life, and, in turn, affects the formation of self-esteem. After all, an athlete, constantly setting a bar for himself that he cannot jump over, will very quickly become disappointed in his abilities and in the ability to achieve success. And a low level of aspirations does not contribute to the development of self-esteem and self-confidence.

But psychologists still believe that a low level is worse than a high level and has a bad effect on the formation of personality and its position in society. It makes a person a socially passive loser who does not strive for success.

An objective look at your achievements[edit]

As the ancients said, everything is known through comparison. Compare your achievements with those of others.

This is the future your mother predicted for you.

For example, Bill Gates created Necrosoft, but you did not.
Albert Einstein created the Theory of Relativity, but you did not.
Beethoven wrote 32 piano sonatas, but you can’t even play a “dog waltz”.
Chomsky built a tree, but it never occurred to you.
Maslow drew a pyramid, but you are not capable of even that.

...everything is ahead, you say?

Galois created group theory at the age of 19, Lermontov died at 26 as a famous poet, Jascha Heifetz and Zhenya Kissin became famous as great musicians while still children - how old are you? And what? All you can do is sing “The field is spread out modulo five...”, and even then it’s out of tune.

... Yes, you are not with the greats, you compare yourself with the simple ones.

At the age of 20, N.N. became the general director of Horns and Hooves LLP. And you?
L. has 12 children. And all the redheads are like dad and the freckled ones are like mom. And you are not red-haired, not freckled, but how many children do you have?

You didn't do anything!

Types and levels of self-esteem

In psychology, there are two types of self-esteem: adequate and inadequate. Sometimes they also talk about optimal and suboptimal self-esteem, thereby emphasizing that many people tend to evaluate themselves slightly above average, and this is more the norm than a deviation. Another thing is how highly we value ourselves.

Adequate self-esteem

Adequate self-esteem, to one degree or another, correctly reflects the abilities and qualities of an individual, that is, it is a person’s idea of himself, which corresponds to the real state of affairs. Such ideas can be either with a + or a − sign, because people are not ideal. For example, when a person says that a bear stepped on his ear, this may not be a belittlement of his own abilities in music, but an adequate assessment of them.

Self-esteem influences all human behavior and his attitude towards himself and towards other people. Thus, with adequate self-esteem an individual:

correctly assesses the relationship between his desires and abilities;
sets realistic goals that he can achieve;
able to look at oneself critically from the outside;
tries to foresee the results of his actions.

In general, for a person with adequate self-esteem, the people around him are important. But he also evaluates their opinion adequately, focusing more on his own ideas about the benefits or harm of his actions.

Inadequate self-esteem

Inadequate self-esteem comes in two forms: low and high. The degree of inadequacy comes at different levels. Self-esteem at a level slightly above or slightly below average is a fairly common phenomenon, and they almost do not manifest themselves in an individual’s behavior and do not interfere with his life and interaction with others. The deviation in this case can only be determined using special psychological tests. And self-esteem that is slightly above average does not even need correction, since a person can quite deservedly respect and value himself, and self-esteem has never bothered anyone.

But it happens (and often) that self-esteem is far from optimal and significantly above or below the average level. In this case, it has a serious impact on a person’s actions and can lead to inappropriate behavior and conflicts with others.

Individual characteristics of people with high self-esteem

People with excessively high self-esteem can be quickly noticed in any team - they strive to be visible, advise everyone, lead everyone and dominate everywhere. Such people are characterized by the following characteristics:

they estimate their capabilities and their importance too highly;
they do not accept criticism, and they are irritated by other people’s opinions that do not coincide with their own;
often have a superiority complex, considering themselves to be right in everything;
emphatically independent and even arrogant;
reject the help and support of others;
blame other people or circumstances for their failures and problems;
do not notice their weaknesses or pass them off as strengths, for example, stubbornness as perseverance, and arrogance as determination;
are often distinguished by a demonstrative type of behavior, they like to perform actions for show;
They tend to be selfish and disrespectful towards others.

There is an opinion that it is better to have high self-esteem than low self-esteem. But here it all depends on the level - people who value themselves too highly can be very unpleasant.

Low self-esteem

People with a level of self-esteem significantly below average cannot always be immediately noticed, especially in a team. They do not strive to be visible and seem simply modest. But in the process of communicating with them, their far from pleasant qualities are revealed:

indecisiveness and excessive caution; dependence on the opinions of other people and the constant need for their support; the desire to shift responsibility, including for one’s actions, onto the shoulders of others; an inferiority complex and, as a consequence, excessive vulnerability, touchiness, and quarrelsomeness; excessive demands on oneself and others, perfectionism; pettiness, vindictiveness and envy; Suffering from low self-esteem, they nevertheless try to prove to everyone that they are “cool” and commit inappropriate actions.

Low self-esteem also makes people selfish, only this is a different kind of selfishness. They are so immersed in their failures and obsessed with self-pity that they do not notice the problems of their loved ones. Very often, those who have too low a level of self-esteem do not know how to respect or love.

This is communication. Communication

The basis of interpersonal relationships is communication - the need of a person as a social, intelligent being, as a bearer of consciousness.

Communication is a process of interpersonal interaction generated by the needs of interacting subjects and aimed at satisfying these needs. The role and intensity of communication in modern society is constantly increasing, since with an increase in the volume of information, the processes of exchange of this information become more intense, and the number of technical means for such exchange increases. In addition, the number of people whose professional activities are related to communication, i.e., who have professions of the “person-to-person” type, is increasing.

In psychology, important aspects of communication are distinguished: content, goal and means. The content of communication is the information that is transmitted from one living being to another during communication. In humans, the content of communication is much broader than in animals. People exchange information with each other that represents knowledge about the world, share their experience, skills and abilities. Human communication is multi-subject and diverse in content.

The purpose of communication is what causes this type of activity to occur in a living being. In animals this may be, for example, a warning about danger. A person has many more goals for communication. And if in animals the goals of communication are usually associated with the satisfaction of biological needs, then in humans they are a means of satisfying many different needs: social, cultural, cognitive, creative, aesthetic, the needs of intellectual growth and moral development, etc.

Means of communication are ways of encoding, transmitting, processing and decoding information transmitted in the process of communication. Information can be transmitted through direct bodily contact, such as tactile contact with the hands; it can be transmitted and perceived at a distance through the senses, for example by observing the movements of another person or listening to the sound signals produced by him. In addition to all these naturally occurring methods of transmitting information, man also has others invented by himself: language, writing (texts, drawings, diagrams, etc.), as well as all kinds of technical means of recording, transmitting and storing information.

Human communication can be verbal and non-verbal.

Nonverbal is communication without the use of linguistic means, that is, with the help of facial expressions and gestures; its result is tactile, visual, auditory and olfactory images received from another individual.

Verbal communication occurs using some kind of language.

Most nonverbal forms of communication in humans are innate; with their help, a person achieves interaction on an emotional level, not only with his own kind, but also with other living beings. Many of the higher animals (for example, monkeys, dogs, dolphins), just like humans, have the ability to non-verbally communicate with their own kind. Verbal communication is unique to humans. It has much wider possibilities than non-verbal.

The functions of communication, according to L. Karpenko’s classification, are the following: contact – establishing contact between communication partners, readiness to receive and transmit information; informational – obtaining new information; incentive – stimulating the activity of a communication partner, directing him to perform certain actions; coordination - mutual orientation and coordination of actions to organize joint activities; achieving mutual understanding - adequate perception of the meaning of the message, understanding by partners of each other; exchange of emotions - arousing the necessary emotional experiences in the partner; establishing relationships - awareness of one’s place in the system of role, status, business and other connections of society; exerting influence - changing the state of a communication partner - his behavior, plans, opinions, decisions, etc.

There are three interconnected aspects in the structure of communication: 1) communicative – exchange of information between communicating individuals; 2) interactive – interaction between communicating individuals; 3) perceptual - mutual perception of communication partners and the establishment of mutual understanding on this basis.

When they talk about communication in communication, then, first of all, they mean that in the process of communication people exchange with each other various ideas, ideas, interests, feelings, etc. However, in the communication process there is not just the movement of information, as in a cybernetic device, but an active exchange of it. The main feature is that people can influence each other in the process of exchanging information.

The communication process is born on the basis of some joint activity, and the exchange of knowledge, ideas, feelings, etc. assumes that such activity is organized. In psychology, there are two types of interaction: cooperation (cooperation) and competition (conflict).

So, communication is a process of interaction between people, during which interpersonal relationships arise, manifest themselves and are formed. Communication involves the exchange of thoughts, feelings, and experiences. In the process of interpersonal communication, people consciously or unconsciously influence each other's mental state, feelings, thoughts and actions. The functions of communication are very diverse; it is a decisive condition for the development of each person as an individual, the realization of personal goals and the satisfaction of a number of needs. Communication constitutes the internal mechanism of joint activities of people and is the most important source of information for humans.

Loneliness

One in four people on Earth feels lonely most of their lives. Feelings of loneliness are caused by different situations: one person has no friends or spouse; another's beloved puppy died. The third feels abandoned as old age approaches. Some people already feel lonely without phone calls or messages.

Low self-esteem and loneliness are interconnected. A person who is not confident in his abilities considers himself inferior, ugly, unerudite, and therefore limits his social circle to a minimum. Constant companions of loneliness are pessimism and helplessness.

“We make ourselves lonely” (Maurice Blanchot)

The need for communication is one of the basic human needs, along with food, water, sleep or movement. Low self-esteem erects insurmountable barriers to the formation of normal relationships, exposing the bearer of such an assessment to the risk of loneliness.

If you don’t want to give up and are ready to really, and not in words, fight for your full and happy life, you may be interested in this article .

According to the results of sociological surveys, for 75% of respondents, the lack of social connections means a personal tragedy for the individual. According to nine out of ten respondents, people living separately are indifferent, unfriendly individuals with an unattractive appearance.

In society, a lack of friendships or family connections is perceived as a social failure that affects people's self-esteem. The lack of social opportunities of a single person prevents him from establishing and maintaining contacts with a suitable partner. This lowers self-esteem.