“What are the areas of your life that you tend to get stuck in self-alienation? How can you start using self-acceptance in these situations, strengthening your self-esteem in the process?”
Dear Integral Meditators,
In this week’s article I look at self-alienation as an object of mindful enquiry. In my view self-alienation is a common, pervasive issue for many people. If we can start to see it, we can start to deal with it! It is a topic that comes up with regularity in both my shadow coaching work, and my therpeutic mindfulness coaching.
If the subject interests you, then you might enjoy the Mindfulness for emotional intelligence masterclass on Saturday 25th April, 2.30-4.30pm.
In the spirit of integration,
Toby
Are you building self-esteem or self-alienation?
Self-esteem is
One way of thinking about self esteem is as having two parts:
- The part that considers ourself to be worthy of happiness and to have value
- The part of us that feels capable and effective in the face of life and life’s challenges
If you have self-esteem as a foundational building block of your psychological experience of life, it will affect almost everything else in a positive way.
Self-alienation is
Self-Alienation happens whenever we turn away from, reject, or repress awareness of an aspect of ourself. We literally cut ourselves off from a part of who we are, and this part becomes a stranger to, or alienated from our conscious self. Nathaniel Branden wrote a book ‘The disowned self’ on the subject of all the different ways in which we alienate ourself from ourself. It mostly does not happen consciously, very few people wake up saying to themselves “Today I am going to practice self-alienation, and dis-own different parts of myself.” Nevertheless, without knowing it many of us do exactly this, without understanding that it is happening, or how we are doing it.
Why & how we create self-alienation when trying to create self-esteem
Let’s say I am deeply disappointed about not getting a job opportunity that I had interviewed for and had a good chance of getting. To protect myself from the difficult feelings and ‘lowness’ of feeling disappointed (and like a ‘loser’) I repress them, banishing them from my consciousness. By doing this I am trying to protect my self-esteem, but what I am really doing is alienating myself from the part of me that feels disappointed. This ‘disappointed self’ is the very part of me needing support and acknowledgement in that moment. Instead, I turn away from him and disown him.
In this example my instinctive efforts to protect my self-esteem actually sabotage it, and make me weaker by cutting myself off from a part of me. Secondarily, and just as importantly, sub-consciously a part of me will know that I have done this, and will know that we have ‘betrayed ourself’ on some fundamental level. This further lowers our REAL self-esteem, but tragically it has been done to protect the very self-esteem that we are damaging.
Self-acceptance as a route to genuine self-esteem
Let us say that, in the face of my disappointment over the job opportunity, instead of repressing and alienating my disappointment I turn towards it, acknowledging and accepting it. I allow myself to feel and experience my emotions, expressing a degree of understanding and care toward the part of me in pain. By bringing into consciousness the wounded part, and choosing to accept and look after it I:
- Increase my self-esteem by displaying both courage and competency in the face of a challenge
- I keep my personality from being divided against itself, it remains interconnected and in integrity
- I actually pass through the disappointment much more quickly, feeling much more resilient and adaptable as a result
Self-acceptance becomes a route to higher self-confidence and self-esteem, preventing the disastrous (and often unconscious) results of self-alienation and dis-association.
What are the areas of your life that you tend to get stuck in self-alienation? How can you start using self-acceptance in these situations, strengthening your self-esteem in the process?
Related reading: Choosing to be on Your Own Side
Motivating Yourself to Meditate Part 2 – Meeting Your Deeper & Higher Needs Through Meditation
© Toby Ouvry 2026, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com
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