In the new season of “Black Mirror” on Netflix, the first episode called “Joan is Awful” creates the fantasy of an ordinary woman whose every single action becomes portrayed in essentially a live feed of her life on a fictional streaming service (like Netflix). The premise of this episode is that no one wants their “awful” behaviors to be witnessed by everyone on the planet. Given that most people would prefer, instead, to be seen in a positive light, the plot raises the question of whether the reality of their lives would threaten to put most people’s self-esteem into a dizzying downward spiral.

Getting to the Roots of Self-Esteem

If being exposed for your real, “awful,” self is so terrifying, what would it take for you to base your self-esteem on who you really are, flaws and all? According to King’s College London psychologist Katharine Rimes and colleagues (2023), self-esteem is highly dependent on the beliefs you hold about yourself, called “core beliefs” or “self-schema.” If you think you are worthless and unlovable, your self-esteem will suffer accordingly when something actually does go wrong. Not only do you feel bad about yourself, but you will also engage in behaviors that make things worse, leading in turn to confirmation of your negative core beliefs.

When you see someone engaging in behavior that reflects badly on them, by extension, you may start to take a hard look at your own actions. You witness a boss dismissing an employee for no real reason, and in a way that is hurtful (this was one scene in the show). As repulsive as this is, does the scene cause you to reflect on times when you were unfair? Now, not only is Joan a bad person, but so perhaps are you.

What Leads to Negative Core Beliefs?

The cognitive theory that Rimes et al. use as the basis for their review paper regards self-esteem as “the output of monitoring for socially relevant threats” (p. 2). There are two ways that this monitoring takes place. One is to compare yourself to others in terms of status, or being respected and admired. The second is to gauge your value in terms of social connection, or how much you are liked and accepted by others.

Both of these dimensions have a “self” and “other” component. Personal adequacy as defined in terms of the self is exemplified by the belief that “I am a person of worth,” and with respect to others as “Others look up to me.” The social connection component in terms of the self is represented as “I am lovable,” and in terms of others as “Other people include me.”

In addition to personality and perhaps biological factors, the main determinants of whether people end up on the high or low side of the self-esteem equation are prior interpersonal experiences. If you receive affection and praise from others, especially when you’re young, your core beliefs will develop in a favorable way.

By contrast, neglect, criticism, and lack of affection or praise will turn your core beliefs into constant self-criticism and questioning. With these core beliefs underlying your monitoring of the events that happen to you and how you’re treated by others, you’ll either behave in ways that are adaptive and beneficial to your well-being or in ways that are counterproductive. Your mood, accordingly, will adjust upward or downward as a result.

Society also plays a role. The more that your own culture reinforces positive views of your outward identity in terms of status, the more resilient you will be to experiences. However, if you have a “stigmatized” (socially less acceptable) status, more strain will be placed upon you to remain positive in the face of cues that signal you’re being looked down upon or excluded.

What Can You Do if You Feel Awful?

For individuals with low self-esteem, whose every encounter with others reinforces their already negative core beliefs, the sense of being awful becomes ever-present in their lives. They may ruminate over their flaws, on the one hand, or else go out of their way to gain reassurance from others. For some, avoidance can become their prime method of coping. In any case, as the King’s College researchers note, their mental and physical health will suffer, and they will find it difficult to achieve their personal goals. This becomes a self-perpetuating cycle, which only exacerbates their low self-esteem.

As bad as this outcome can be, a further danger occurs in the way that people with low self-esteem start to internalize the way they think others view them, becoming biased in the way they interpret even their successes, and minimizing their value. If they indeed have a failure experience, however, their cognitive bias leads them to such conclusions as “I made a huge mistake, everyone must be laughing at me,” rather than “I made a slip-up but it’s unlikely anyone noticed or cared” (p. 8).

Recognizing the existence of these negatively-biased beliefs can be the first step to feeling less ashamed or unloved, according to Rimes and her colleagues. Once these beliefs become pulled out and examined, individuals can start (or can be helped to start) challenging their rationality. In the case of making a mistake, relegating it as a “slip-up” instead of a failure can help the individual to become more self-accepting. Thus, instead of being “awful,” in the words of poor Joan, the behavior can be seen as a byproduct of circumstance. Even if it did reflect unfavorably on the individual, this doesn’t need to translate into a reification of someone’s core negative beliefs.

The distinction between self and other perceptions is also important to take into account, Rimes et al. note. There’s a difference between the belief “I am a failure” and the belief that “Other people see me as a failure.” This distinction can, they argue, lead people to compensate for a low other-based self-esteem by constantly striving for success and inclusion, all the while feeling internally deficient, a discrepancy that can eat away at a person’s mental and physical health.

To sum up, it may be precisely because people would rather not have their “awful” behaviors occupy front and center in the eyes of the world that a show which does just that becomes such a guilty pleasure to watch. Even so, such fantasies may have some coping lessons for learning to feel better about yourself, flaws and all.