Self-esteem has reigned unchallenged in the field of psychology and mental health for more than 100 years. If you can’t be what you want to be - feel what you want to feel, think what you want to think - then it’s time to take a good hard look at your self-esteem. The likelihood is that it is low. And the self-help industry is awash with books that will tell you how to fix it.

This is all highly problematic. Because self-esteem does not exist. In assuming that it does, we are trapping people into a destructive way of thinking about who they are, what they can achieve and who they can be. In schools, this is particularly damaging. It has to stop.

Warped narrative

Self-esteem refers to the feelings that you have about your worth as a person. More specifically, it refers to an opinion you have about “you” as a whole: your whole self. If your self-esteem is high then you feel good about “you” - all of you. If your self-esteem is low then you feel bad about “you” - all of you.

Viewing self-esteem like that, you may perhaps begin to see the issues.

Being told that you have low self-esteem, and then desperately pursuing higher self-esteem, helps to write a narrative in your mind that can lead to decreasing self-confidence, rising anxiety and a reinforcement of limiting beliefs.

So how can such information motivate any young person to think, feel, behave or learn differently? The young person may, in fact, have felt quite good about themselves in certain circumstances, but when they are told that they have low self-esteem - when they really begin to process that message - they can suddenly feel worthless in all areas.

What about our belief that “high” self-esteem is preferable to “low” self-esteem?

Being told that you have low self-esteem can lead to anxiety and reinforce limiting beliefs

As a teacher, you may have read psychological reports informing you that a young person has “low-self esteem”. You may have even heard the phrase used casually when a colleague conducts an “I’m no psychologist but…” assessment - for example, when they are trying to explain the reason for challenging behaviour, such as bullying.

“You know what bullies are like: they behave like that because they have low self-esteem,” they say.

Whatever the context, whatever the difficulty, the proposed solution is always that the person needs to boost, build or raise their self-esteem.

However, does believing yourself to have high self-esteem have a uniformly positive effect on you and those you interact with?

The answer is no. It can make you a salivating guard dog of your own ego and cause you to damage and destroy people emotionally to keep your “high self-esteem” intact. Being informed that you have high self-esteem can ultimately lead to unbridled arrogance and swashbuckling narcissism.

Whichever way you look at it, believing in, advocating, talking about and using strategies around self-esteem are highly counterproductive and potentially dangerous, particularly with young people.

We need a new psychology and a new, more optimistic construct. And all it takes to do this is to add one additional letter. This enables us to shift the conversation. I believe that we need to talk to young people - and to each other - about “self-esteems”.

Multiple ‘self-esteems’

Let me be clear, my request that we should begin thinking and talking about “self-esteems” is not a desperate attempt to create an educational gimmick; yet another Trojan horse that turns out to be a Trojan mouse. It is about seeing young people differently. It will help you to see yourself differently, too.

We have multiple esteems. We interact with others in many contexts and we feel differently about who we are and what it means to be us in all those different contexts.

One of my close friends becomes uncomfortable when she meets new people. She presents as withdrawn, keeps her distance and is quieter than usual as her anxiety takes time to resolve. If the people who know what she is feeling inside do not encourage her into a conversation in such a context, she becomes a socially awkward floor-gazer. This is because her esteem is low in relation to her ability to create rapport quickly in a new social situation.

Mundane human activities like getting a haircut turn into a living nightmare for her because she knows that she will be stuck in a chair and forced to engage in small talk about how busy her day has been, what type of weather she is expecting or where she is going on holiday.

Outside school, Clarke excelled at two skills: breaking and entering

Interestingly, when she is with her friends, she is often the centre of attention. This is because her esteem is high in relation to how she behaves among people whom she knows and in situations that are more predictable for her. She does not have one self-esteem that is high or low, she has esteem in one context that is low and esteem in another context that is high.

Self-esteem is about all of you as a person. Self-esteems are about some parts of you as a person.

When I worked with children who experienced social, emotional and behavioural needs, I used to talk to them about self-esteems. I did this to help them to understand how they could feel differently about themselves in different situations, and to ensure that when they did feel bad they did not have to feel bad about their whole self. They usually grasped the concept very quickly. It made a great deal of sense in their world.

Clarke was a gravel-voiced nine-year-old whose default assumption was that everyone would instantly dislike him. If this did not happen straight away, then he believed it would happen eventually.

According to the notes in his file, Clarke’s self-esteem was “at rock bottom”. Once, when I was talking with a subdued Clarke about how things were going for him, he began to tell me how he struggled with the skills of reading and writing. I explained to him that what he did in school was only part of who he was and asked him about his skills outside the school environment.

Unexpected talents

At this point, Clarke looked at me, became physically animated and his voice rose by an octave. He shuffled on his seat, waved his arms and began to chirp and bubble. It was like being with a different person. And it became clear that outside school Clarke excelled at two skills: breaking and entering. He was very proud of being exceptional in this regard.

Now let’s look at Clarke’s self-esteems:

• His esteem was low in relation to literacy.
• His esteem was high in relation to burglary.

Listening to Clarke describing his out-of-school escapades, it was clear that he did not have “low self-esteem”. He had esteems that varied according to where he was and what he was doing. In that way, Clarke was just like you, he was just like me and he was just like all the young people whom you teach.

Today, I urge you to say goodbye to self-esteem forever and start talking to young people about self-esteems instead. When you do so, you will give every child a compassionate mirror to look into: a mirror that offers multiple, perhaps infinite, ways of seeing and understanding who they are and what they can be.

Talking to them about self-esteems will improve their quality of life and learning. It could even change their world. I have seen it happen.

Dr Tim O’Brien is a former lecturer in psychology and human development at the UCL Institute of Education. His book, Inner Story: understand your mind, change your world, is out now

@Doctob