Self-Esteem Research, Theory, and Practice Toward a Positive ...

176 SELF-ESTEEM RESEARCH, THEORY, AND PRACTICEcompetence and worthiness that has been awakened by the situation.Notice here that because the person’s history is involved, the surfacenature of the problem need not be terribly difficult. Most people, forinstance, can speak in public even if they are nervous about it, and visitinga sick friend in a hospital is usually experienced as a caring momentrather than a terrifying one. The second stage is a particular kind ofchoice and conflict. Here the individual becomes acutely, but not necessarilyfully, aware that he or she must make a choice and that the decisionis a much larger one than it appears to be on the surface.The third stage is one of struggling, movement, and action. It is byfar the most complex part of the process, primarily because the individualnow finds himself or herself engaged in two conflicts: one of which issituational and one that is biographically significant. Moreover, thealternatives creating the conflict have competing motivational structures.One solution is positive and worthy: It calls the individual forwardboth in terms of handling the immediate situation competently andin terms of wanting to actualize by going beyond merely repeating theunworthy and incompetent patterns of the past. These forces are counterbalancedby those associated with the other alternative, which is negativein that it encourages protective, repetitive, avoidant, or inauthenticbehavior. Here the individual is “pulled” back toward historically familiarbut ultimately constricting domains of incompetent behavior andunworthy experience. As the individual struggles between the options,he or she becomes more inclined toward one choice, one that is made inthe context of what is going on at this point in the individual’s life, theunique characteristics of the situation itself, and some degree of choice.Although gradual shifts occur during the process of struggling with theself-esteem challenge, the outcome could go either way until the lastmoment at which time the individual begins to act and starts to live onereality over the other.Although either outcome occurs after a painful struggle, coming tothe more positive resolution seems to be associated with how long andhow deeply the individual engages in the process of struggling. It seemsthat the more the person understands what is actually at stake at bothlevels of the conflict, the more he or she is motivated to take the pro-selfesteempath. Although other factors are at play, such as how much socialor environmental support the person has at the time, we shall see that thisstage also presents important possibilities for therapeutic interventions.The fourth stage in becoming pleased involves moving into what Idescribe as release, relaxation, and being pleased. It is characterized bythe individual’s immediate feelings of release (the affective response),relaxation (a more bodily reaction), and a conscious sense of being satisfied(a cognitive response) with his or her performance in the face of this