Irish People Have Low Self Esteem

nails1 · 01-07-2014 12:09AM

I find that it is very awkward to have a sober conversation with a tourist, particularly the American ones.

Legs.Eleven · 01-07-2014 12:09AM

Muise... wrote: »

Bet they wouldn't even remember it - they sound a tiny bit forgetful.

Oh ho!;)

donegal__road · 01-07-2014 12:16AM

in Ireland, we are very good at being able to laugh at ourselves.. and to others this might appear like Irish people have low self esteem, but in fact it is a clever technique we use to win the affections of people of other nationalities.*

Irish people can laugh in the face of adversity.. remember, it takes a wise man to play the fool.

*maybe not all Scots, English, Australians and Israelis would agree..

.

Muise... · 01-07-2014 12:52AM

Legs.Eleven wrote: »

Oh ho!;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Lya292wdpo

hatrickpatrick · 01-07-2014 01:08AM

nails1 wrote: »

I find that it is very awkward to have a sober conversation with a tourist, particularly the American ones.

That's exactly what the girl I mentioned was so fascinated by. I told her I was sober only AFTER hooking up with her, she was astonished. Had been living in Ireland for a year and had never got so much as a "hi, how are you" from a guy who hadn't had several shots of dutch courage first.

It's not difficult to draw the conclusion that people's desire to binge drink is at least partially linked to their inability to be confidence and forward without it. It's not a stretch, therefore, to conclude that since people from other countries don't seem to have this shyness problem, that's probably one of the reasons for them drinking less than we do.

Ergo, sort our national issues with self esteem and we sort out our drinking problem, among other things.

It should be plainly obvious that we have a national self esteem issue to be honest. You'd be amazed how many times I'll be asked for advice about a situation in someone's life and I have to stop them at some point and say "STOP apologizing!!!" Whether it's "sorry for going on about this" or "sorry if I sound self absorbed" or "sorry if this sounds foolish"... It seems blindingly obvious that this is a national problem and not merely restricted to the odd individual as it is in most places.

Muise... · 01-07-2014 01:12AM

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

That's exactly what the girl I mentioned was so fascinated by. I told her I was sober only AFTER hooking up with her, she was astonished. Had been living in Ireland for a year and had never got so much as a "hi, how are you" from a guy who hadn't had several shots of dutch courage first.

It's not difficult to draw the conclusion that people's desire to binge drink is at least partially linked to their inability to be confidence and forward without it. It's not a stretch, therefore, to conclude that since people from other countries don't seem to have this shyness problem, that's probably one of the reasons for them drinking less than we do.

Ergo, sort our national issues with self esteem and we sort out our drinking problem, among other things.

It should be plainly obvious that we have a national self esteem issue to be honest. You'd be amazed how many times I'll be asked for advice about a situation in someone's life and I have to stop them at some point and say "STOP apologizing!!!" Whether it's "sorry for going on about this" or "sorry if I sound self absorbed" or "sorry if this sounds foolish"... It seems blindingly obvious that this is a national problem and not merely restricted to the odd individual as it is in most places.

It's not difficult to draw the conclusion that your conclusions are based on studying the really small sample of your peers wherever it is you kids hang out these days.

goz83 · 01-07-2014 01:26AM

Sam Kade wrote: »

What's this we sh1t not everyone went mad spending money. You also believe we are drunks again not every Irish person likes to drink just like Americans are not all fat and stupid.

Only the real ones are.

nails1 · 01-07-2014 02:06AM

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

That's exactly what the girl I mentioned was so fascinated by. I told her I was sober only AFTER hooking up with her, she was astonished.

She thought you were drunk when you were actually sober. That's not exactly a good thing either.

Adamantium · 01-07-2014 02:33AM

Sulla Felix wrote: »

Load of bollix. How can you be emotionally damaged by shít that happened before your grandparents were born ffs.

Playing too much Assassin's Creed, in this case a potato farmer from Galway circa 1841.

The Diabolical Monocle · 01-07-2014 02:39AM

Oh ...UCD roysh.

But I don't suppose you'd have these self esteem issues loike.

osarusan · 01-07-2014 03:53AM

Peist2007 wrote: »

What about.....Micronesia?

Always in the shadow of Macronesia. Always. Nothing they do is ever good enough.

Fortheloveosod · 01-07-2014 04:48AM

This can't apply to everyone, but you have to admit there's something to what the OP said. I have fairly adequate self esteem and don't care for drink. I have Catholic guilt but it mostly manifests itself in computer games. Used to manifest itself in money as well but I believe I may have that overcome now. I can't stand to waste any thing, either, sometimes to an absolute detriment. All that's Catholic guilt. For me it's mostly positive but can be negative. I'm dating the same woman for better than a decade now as well. That has to have contributed to my opinion of myself. (And we're both fairly happy about it. At least I am. I hope she is. Oh, my. What if she's totally dissatisfied? What'll I do? Once I ask her she'll only lie, like. She'll tell me everything's grand and her secretly loathing me. There's no-thing else for it, I have to break up with her.)

monkeysnapper · 01-07-2014 05:32AM

Reading a opening thread like this doesn't help . I'm not from Ireland and I find the place great, and so do all the other non Irish people I meet.

Every country of the world focus on the bad things, it's what we humans do.

Flip the switch in your head over to " let's have a flipping great life and be a small bit mad, if not a lot .

strobe · 01-07-2014 08:15AM

hatrickpatrick wrote:

Nobody ever seems to talk about root causes when it comes to binge drinking. The simple fact is that young people get locked mainly so as they can cast aside the extreme and abnormal national social inhibition which has been fostered on repeated generations of Irish people. Alcohol allows them to temporarily shut down the voice in their head which says "don't say hi to that girl, you'll probably make an idiot of yourself", or "don't talk to those people, you'll probably annoy them". We have a severe national shyness - illustrated to me by an extremely attractive Turkish girl I met in a nightclub last year who pondered why Irish guys would never approach her, and why those few who did always had to be hammered out of it first. Ask actual young people why they binge drink, and the most common answer is because it gets rid of their inhibitions, their in-built lack of self confidence and irrational shame which leads them to severely undervalue themselves both socially and sexually.

I'm not blaming the Church as many do, that's too easy an answer. It's a national, cultural phenomenon which in my experience is unique to Ireland, whereby the idea of leaving one's comfort zone on a night out and meeting new people - the main focus of going out in most other Western countries - is a scary concept which requires a gigantic social crutch to be contemplated. My eyes were only opened to this after several trips abroad, on which I discovered that this extreme level of inhibition common to most Irish young people is not norma as I had once believed, but in an international context, incredibly bizarre.

People in other countries don't drink like we do because people in other countries don't have hangups about social interactions which require a desensitizing drug to overcome.

But lots of people in other countries do drink the way we do. Binge drinking exists in the UK, Germany, the USA, lots of other places... Ireland's never top of any per capita alcohol consumption table I've ever seen either (although we are always top ten or there abouts)...

The emboldened part of your post is demonstratibly untrue, empirically so. We don't have to rely on vague personal impressions people have gleemed from weekend business trips away etc. These kind of things are actually researched and studied, and the facts and figures don't back up your assertions. Which would seem to render much of the preamble to it somewhat inaccurate by default.

Thoughts?

Tail Docker · 01-07-2014 08:24AM

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

That's exactly what the girl I mentioned was so fascinated by. I told her I was sober only AFTER hooking up with her, she was astonished. Had been living in Ireland for a year and had never got so much as a "hi, how are you" from a guy who hadn't had several shots of dutch courage first.

It's not difficult to draw the conclusion that people's desire to binge drink is at least partially linked to their inability to be confidence and forward without it. It's not a stretch, therefore, to conclude that since people from other countries don't seem to have this shyness problem, that's probably one of the reasons for them drinking less than we do.

Ergo, sort our national issues with self esteem and we sort out our drinking problem, among other things.

It should be plainly obvious that we have a national self esteem issue to be honest. You'd be amazed how many times I'll be asked for advice about a situation in someone's life and I have to stop them at some point and say "STOP apologizing!!!" Whether it's "sorry for going on about this" or "sorry if I sound self absorbed" or "sorry if this sounds foolish"... It seems blindingly obvious that this is a national problem and not merely restricted to the odd individual as it is in most places.

I think it varies, from not enough to too much with insufficient middle grounders. Both extremes are possibly misplaced and come from not knowing better. Some of the most capable people I know have low-self esteem, and some of the biggest spanners I know have too much.

It's also the case that if you went around full of positivity and friendly confidence, you wouldn't be long in getting the psychological legs kicked out from under you or be labelled a head-case/stuck-up/mad..

jimgoose · 01-07-2014 08:29AM

Tail Docker wrote: »

I think it varies, from not enough to too much with insufficient middle grounders. Both extremes are possibly misplaced and come from not knowing better. Some of the most capable people I know have low-self esteem, and some of the biggest spanners I know have too much.

Nail-on-the-head. It amazes me the leatherin' furken apes around the place that consider themselves "experts" of one denomination or another.

Tail Docker wrote: »

It's also the case that if you went around full of positivity and friendly confidence, you wouldn't be long in getting the psychological legs kicked out from under you or be labelled a head-case/stuck-up/mad..

I seem to be largely immune to Catholic Guilt, thankfully. My default setting is a sort of bull-headed optimism, and it is indeed true that for that you're sometimes labelled this that and t'other, but I'm largely immune to that too.

Sarajevo Assasin · 01-07-2014 08:29AM

Muise... wrote: »

It's not difficult to draw the conclusion that your conclusions are based on studying the really small sample of your peers wherever it is you kids hang out these days.

It's fairly obvious if you look at the evidence.

We drink far too much.

We fight and abuse each other when drinking towards the end of a night. This is symptomatic of unexpressed anxiety when not drunk.

We are overly polite.

Suicide rates are above average.

The over use of sarcasm.

High depression rates.

We take offence very easily.

People in Ireland are on average more insecure and lacking in self esteem imo, that's why we drink so much.

Sarajevo Assasin · 01-07-2014 08:32AM

Tail Docker wrote: »

I think it varies, from not enough to too much with insufficient middle grounders. Both extremes are possibly misplaced and come from not knowing better. Some of the most capable people I know have low-self esteem, and some of the biggest spanners I know have too much.

It's also the case that if you went around full of positivity and friendly confidence, you wouldn't be long in getting the psychological legs kicked out from under you or be labelled a head-case/stuck-up/mad..

You can't have too much self esteem, if you think you can then you don't know what self esteem is. Self esteem isn't a belief in one's relative importance or ranking amongst peers. That is a cover for a lack of self esteem.

When you have self esteem you don't need to tell yourself how great you are because you feel good already. You don't need to try and make your bad feelings go away.

Fortheloveosod · 01-07-2014 08:35AM

I think it's also different with younger people as well. The 'national shyness' mentioned somewhere above is more notable in younger generations, and my theory is that it has something to do with the internet, not being forced to engage in all interactions by at the least using one's voice in real time and at the most being physically face to face with someone and looking at their face. I'm not totally opposed to the internet, either, but it has some serious benefits and hindrances which come with it.

Tail Docker · 01-07-2014 08:38AM

Sarajevo Assasin wrote: »

You can't have too much self esteem, if you think you can then you don't know what self esteem is. Self esteem isn't a belief in one's relative importance or ranking amongst peers. That is a cover for a lack of self esteem.

When you have self esteem you don't need to tell yourself how great you are because you feel good already. You don't need to try and make your bad feelings go away.

I'm going to agree to disagree there. I have a meeting in an hour with a fella who disproves your rule. I do believe there's a high chance he is on coke - that or his Mammy told him he was wonderful a few times too many.

Sarajevo Assasin · 01-07-2014 08:38AM

One thing people generally don't realise causes insecurity is excessive compliments. When you continually compliment a child by telling them how clever and great they are it creates a self image in the child's head which needs to be continually maintained or the childs ego is bruised. We are all born with high self esteem, as we grow up we are conditioned to believe we have worth only if we meet particular criteria. We build an ego, which erodes self esteem.

Fortheloveosod · 01-07-2014 08:41AM

Sarajevo Assasin wrote: »

We drink far too much.

We fight and abuse each other when drinking towards the end of a night. This is symptomatic of unexpressed anxiety when not drunk.

We are overly polite.

Suicide rates are above average.

The over use of sarcasm.

High depression rates.

We take offence very easily.

People in Ireland are on average more insecure and lacking in self esteem imo, that's why we drink so much.

Interesting list. Most of it doesn't apply to me, but it surely applies to much of the Irish nation by my reckoning. Though I don't know what I'd do without my sarcasm, and I don't believe I understand how to deal with people that aren't. And at the same time we're overly polite. Depends, but most of us are. I try to be, and I think that's nice. The rest of it I've seen and could definitely use some sorting. Taking offence easily is something I'm working on awhile now but I think I have it under control now.

01-07-2014 08:52AM

The op is projecting his own problems on the nation.

People are obsessed with self esteem to a ridicules amount.

The answered to the drinking is very simple someone has to be the one who goes out and does not drink/get plastered it starts with one person. One of the big toxic mixes in Irish society is...lack of confidence, the lads, binge drinking.

Muise... · 01-07-2014 09:14AM

Sarajevo Assasin wrote: »

It's fairly obvious if you look at the evidence.

We drink far too much.

We fight and abuse each other when drinking towards the end of a night. This is symptomatic of unexpressed anxiety when not drunk. (or maybe drink makes people rowdy?)

We are overly polite. (really?)

Suicide rates are above average. (European? Worldwide?)

The over use of sarcasm. (not very polite)

High depression rates. (spot of a recession on, you know.)

We take offence very easily. (feck off, we do not! :pac:)

People in Ireland are on average more insecure and lacking in self esteem imo, that's why we drink so much.

none of this is obvious or evident; you've just made a list of half-impressions and diagnosed an Alcohopalypse.

jank · 01-07-2014 09:35AM

Interesting points which it would generally agree with. The conversation has turned to drink and one has to be either a fool or ignorant if you think Ireland does not have a problem with a abusing alcohol.

Sarajevo Assasin · 01-07-2014 09:37AM

Muise... wrote: »

none of this is obvious or evident; you've just made a list of half-impressions and diagnosed an Alcohopalypse.

We are certainly overly polite, we say thank you when handing things to each other, we say sorry to get people's attention.

We are more violent than most other cultures after closing time. This is when the mask of friendliness and politeness slips.

Frank Lee Midere · 01-07-2014 09:44AM

Fortheloveosod wrote: »

I think it's also different with younger people as well. The 'national shyness' mentioned somewhere above is more notable in younger generations, and my theory is that it has something to do with the internet, not being forced to engage in all interactions by at the least using one's voice in real time and at the most being physically face to face with someone and looking at their face. I'm not totally opposed to the internet, either, but it has some serious benefits and hindrances which come with it.

You are making up both facts and theories here. Younger people tend to have less of the pathology.

Funny enough the OP's post is an example of a type of Irish pathology. Seeing criticism where there may be none. I work with 60% non-Irish and most are not critical of Ireland. None of them come from perfect countries after all.

We also tend to invent the straw man theory that we think "we are a great country altogether" only to debunk that theory. That's common. But nobody ever says that unironically.

Frank Lee Midere · 01-07-2014 09:46AM

Sarajevo Assasin wrote: »

We are certainly overly polite, we say thank you when handing things to each other, we say sorry to get people's attention.

We are more violent than most other cultures after closing time. This is when the mask of friendliness and politeness slips.

I don't think that's true either. All heavy drinking cultures are violent post closing time ( or late night). The police in Manchester just said they can't really police it.

Sarajevo Assasin · 01-07-2014 09:51AM

Frank Lee Midere wrote: »

I don't think that's true either. All heavy drinking cultures are violent post closing time ( or late night). The police in Manchester just said they can't really police it.

If you have a heavy drinking culture then they are more likely to be low self esteem.

Sarajevo Assasin · 01-07-2014 09:51AM

Frank Lee Midere wrote: »

I don't think that's true either. All heavy drinking cultures are violent post closing time ( or late night). The police in Manchester just said they can't really police it.

If you have a heavy drinking culture then they are more likely to be low self esteem.

Irish People Have Low Self Esteem

Comments