On Being Different – Part 2

The last post on this topic ended at puberty, but I’m going to take a little side track into the realm of self esteem…

It’s my birthday soon. (June 27). I find it somewhat interesting that I’m still excited about it, and I’m 24 (25 soon), compared to those around me it seems a bit old to be concerning myself with such things. Honestly I’m not sure why. Birthdays are important to me, the beginning of one’s existence. True it is existing on this pathetic lump of rock dominated by socialistic, greedy, power hungry morons, but hey that’s better than not existing at all, right?

As to the why… I was once talking to a friend of mine about my blog (http://galileoace.com (inadequately updated)), and he said..Well I can’t remember exactly what he said, but it was along the lines of “you love yourself too much”. He didn’t mean it offensively or anything, just stating what he thought based on what I’d written on my blog. That I thought myself special, above others so to speak. I’d never really thought of it to be honest. Maybe I hold my birthday to such esteem because it’s my birthday. (which would make sense duh). I think I’m so special that people should pay attention to me and my anniversary of the day of my birth, and generally everything I do…

Hell if I think about it, even this journal could be seen as an attempt to garner attention for myself…..

Another friend of mine once asked me what I saw my self esteem level as, I replied that I didn’t think I had any; as in, not high or low. Just not there. Exempting myself from that whole self-appraisal stuff. And just recently renaeden asked what I thought of myself, and honestly I couldn’t give a decent answer, it was only after I thought about it for a bit that I could give an answer, which was still a pretty shit answer. I commented then that maybe I use other peoples’ comments of my as my guide for my esteem? renaeden didn’t agree citing the numerous times I’ve ignored what others have said about me.

So how does this come together? Am I self hater or a self lover? My blog points to the latter. But I’m not sure on either, I am an attention seeker and I do seek the appraisal of others, I know this from analysing past behaviours in various places; often seeking approval for something I’ve done whether it be a joke, or something creative or even just digging a hole. “Wow look what I’ve done. Aren’t I great? No really..am I great?” However if their response doesn’t meet the response I expect I tend to dismiss it. That can flow both positive and negative.

To part of me that is separate (I might explain that in another post) all this behaviour I exhibit certainly points toward some one that has low self esteem, and yet I like who I am (maybe not where (in life) I am..yet), and what I stand for, and enjoy my birthday; a day that is all about me; would that not constitute high self esteem?

Yet again I appear to be a paradox, an exception.

I would’ve ended this post here, but I am currently chatting with my friend (the 2nd mentioned) about self esteem (he’s a psych student), I asked him if it were possible for someone to have both high and low esteem and his response was this:

absolutely. Self esteem is an abstract concept that is hard to pin down or measure accurately. It is more like a continuum than a case of “you have it or you don’t”

It would be typical of my autistic brain to interpret esteem as a black and white concept. On or Off. Truly binary is how my brain tends to understand concepts and ideas. But it’s not just a problem for autistic people, but also scientists.

something I learned this year was about operational definitions
when we have a concept like self esteem, it is abstract
but to be scientific in dealing with it, we need to make it concrete and measurable
so we say something like: “self esteem is made up of how much we like ourselves, and our confidence in getting what we want”
then we use operational definitions to measure it
like: “self esteem is measured by the person’s score on an ‘opinion of myself scale’ and our score out of ten on a ‘confidence’ scale”
but our definitions will always restrict our view of self esteem, and can never measure it fully

:: nods :: Sounds a bit like something out of quantum physics, where they can measure a certain particle’s location or velocity, but not both

hence why people often use multiple operational definitions

So I suppose I’m not so different after all? Maybe. Maybe not… I guess the question then is how do I react to self esteem..Is it the same as a “normal” person?