It is so much easier to point out the weaknesses than your strengths. I personally feel like weaknesses can haunt someone because they prove what we are not capable of doing and that is why we might self denigrate sometimes. When I criticize and attack myself, it is because knowing I failed makes me think about if i had tried harder then it would have made a difference. Negative self concept is often hidden from the world because we are suppose to perceive ourself with positivity in order to be accepted but that can change.
Self concept is basically the beliefs and attitudes we role play in our lives. In How to Improve Your Self
Concept, it mentions “your attitudes about yourself may be positive for some roles, and not so positive for others”. There will always be negative views because we do not live even near a Utopia society and we cannot please everybody. Self concept includes two factors, competence and likability. Competence are the beliefs about how good you are at the things you do. Likability include the beliefs about how well you are accepted and valued by others. Basically having to perceive yourself a certain way to fit in. For example, Linda S. Mindle who wrote Breaking Free From a
Negative Self Image, explains “you’ve swallowed the lie that if you just feel better about yourself, everything else will fall into place. But it hasn’t, and your self image remains vulnerable to what people say and what you perceive”. This distorts our self image. Negative self image starts from feedback from others whom then we make our own. But at the same time we are told to “love yourself” and that
“you deserve the best”, so how can we combine negative feedback and positive motivation. We do not. Self esteem, self worth, self regard, and self assurance are all related