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The Undervalued Self

Little, Brown and Company

CHAPTER ONE

Ranking, Linking, and the Undervalued Self

Much of what we do every day is to compare ourselves to others and to strive for respect, influence, and power. That is, we rank ourselves among others. Equally often we link with others by expressing affection, caring, and love, to feel connected and secure. At times we combine the two, for example, by using our rank in the service of a link when we want to improve another’s life, as when we teach or advise someone or parent our children. Ranking and linking are always with us.

Sometimes we are conscious of these activities and sometimes not. Either way, ranking and linking play a role in almost all of our personal relationships and problems, including the problem of undervaluing ourselves.

When we undervalue ourselves, we are ranking ourselves too low. Often we drop into an all-or-nothing feeling of worthlessness or shame as we identify with a part of our personality we would otherwise avoid — the undervalued self. This self is out of touch with reality; it is inaccurate in that it underestimates. Whether we are trapped in that self for a moment or for a lifetime, we lose opportunities and suffer greatly.

While ranking is the source of the undervalued self, the right balance of ranking and linking offers the best solution for it. As you become more aware of how you rank and link with others and see the deeper, mostly unconscious and instinctual reasons why you undervalue yourself, you can often avoid tapping into this self with surprising ease. And when you cannot, this awareness is even more essential for dealing with the undervalued self.

Ranking and linking have been observed in the behavior of all higher animals, but researchers have only very recently begun to recognize these activities as the two primary innate systems guiding all of our social behavior. The phrase “linking and ranking” captures the breadth of what we sometimes mean by “love and power.” Love is one part of the broader behavior called linking; ranking is what actually determines power. “Ranking and linking” was first used as a term in political psychology in 1983 by Riane Eisler and David Loye, and the importance of the ranking-linking interconnection was picked up again in the early 1990s in social psychology, but since then the term has rarely been used.

Separately, however, topics related to power and love have always been a major focus of research on human and animal behavior. I myself have researched them separately. But I woke up to their intimate connection as I addressed the problem I see in almost all of my therapy patients: low self-esteem, leading to a lack of healthy close relationships. I realized that although my patients wanted love or linking, they were always seeing power or their rank in relation to others.

While ranking is an integral and even valued part of our lives — for example, we enjoy sports and friendly competition, and we willingly compete for jobs, promotions, and even future life partners — it has the potential to make us feel bad about ourselves in a variety of ways if we let it color our entire social viewpoint. We must all deal with defeat eventually, and, as you will see, defeat naturally affects our overall sense of self-worth and triggers a temporary depression. So if we see life as a series of competitions and comparisons, we are going to suffer more downs than ups. If we mostly rank high, the inevitable defeats will only feel worse.

Of course, we do not want to eliminate doing well or being on top, but our drive to rank high can blind us to ranking’s other aspects. Besides depression, we feel other negative “self-conscious emotions” after a failure or defeat, such as shame, and these are highly unpleasant. Support from friends and family helps, but the more you rank inappropriately, the fewer strong links like this that you will have.

Many of us do rank too much, partly because of our social environment but largely because of serious defeats in our pasts that amounted to trauma. These bias us toward being vigilant to prevent future defeats and humiliations, so we often see ranking even when it is not present. We cannot heal the effects of these traumas without the tools that come with a full understanding of ranking and linking. Whatever the cause, most of us need more linking and less ranking in our lives, and we cannot create the right balance without being able to see ranking and linking clearly.

WHO MAKES YOU FEEL GOOD? WHO MAKES YOU FEEL BAD?

Throughout this book you will find exercises and self-tests to help you understand how ranking, linking, and the undervalued self operate in your life. Keep a journal just for this purpose, in which you record your answers for easy reference. The first exercise is to make two lists: one of the people who usually make you feel good when you are with them and another of people who make you feel bad. (A person can also be on both.) Leave space between the names, because you will return to these lists to make notes.

Notice that almost all the people who make you feel good are those with whom you have a link — anything from a warm, friendly hello or occasional talk on the phone to a link of love that is central for both of you. Almost all the people you feel bad around are those by whom you feel ranked — encompassing everything from a vague sense of being judged to an acknowledged all-out competition that feels as if it is about deciding who is the better person. Linking relationships leave us feeling good about ourselves and others. Relationships that are largely about ranking tend to make us more anxious about our worth and far less happy. Your lists illustrate in a personal way how much ranking can be associated with unhappiness.

THE DANCE OF LINKING AND RANKING

Ranking refers to our place in a social group or hierarchy. Power is closely related to ranking in that it results from high rank. A gentler way to think of power is as influence over others, which can take many forms, including being respected by others.

Linking is our innate balance to ranking. We are drawn to others, enjoy them, want to know and help them if we can. Love is simply linking amplified.

All day we try to strike the right balance between linking — giving and receiving friendliness or concern — and ranking, working to gain others’ respect through our influence, competence, business acumen, fame, fortune, or the quality of our friends and allies. Others seek a higher rank through their appearance, possessions, or membership in a respected group. We often feel that the balance is not right in ourselves or others, and usually there seems to be too much ranking. In some situations we are constantly thinking about our rank or are expected to know it. At other times we may not consciously think about it. In some settings we would prefer to believe there is no ranking. But in any group of two or more people, ranking is always present, even if only in the background. To strike the right balance rather than be pulled by circumstance requires conscious effort.

Even without conscious intent, most of us try to counteract the potential unpleasantness of ranking...