The cure for self-esteem!

I've always hated the 'self-esteem' movement, I'm guessing it started sometime in the late '80's/early '90's and has been a vital part of public education and discourse ever since.  I remember sitting in a ridiculous class called 'Skills for Adolescents' ands staring blankly at a blue spruce out the window, wondering what it all meant and why, what was the point of this class?  Tell people they are good because they feel that way about themselves, really?  Even my juvenile mind could pierce that vapid farce but they dedicated a whole class to it.  Why not teach me to balance a checkbook, run a spreadsheet, or change the oil in a car: those are actual skills that are useful, not this vague fuzzy feeling of groundless happiness they wished to engender in my fertile young mind.  I think what I resented the most was that they treated me like an idiot: just think it and it will be so!  I might be young but I wasn't stupid, even my five year old knows that life isn't happy just because you think it is!  We don't need to deal with the neglect and abuse at home, the broken family, the emotional damage of countless years of heartache and fear and manipulation, we'll just paint the exterior a pretty color and everything will be just peachy...if you like white-washed tombs that's a great idea!  I needed something real, something that would actually fix the root of the problem, not just 'the power of positive thinking.'

Twenty years later I'm still dealing with the fallout (of my life, not that class!).  The hardest thing for me to do is love myself, consider myself worth caring for.  Apparently all those self-esteem courses weren't the answer.  But this article is.  Too bad I couldn't read it through, show it to the guidance counselor, and have a study hall instead of all those wasted hours!