Emotions are different from feelings; the first is a spontaneous reaction of the body while the second is the link that we make between a emotion and what is produced, whether it is a fact or a person. Feelings are part of us noticing our emotions are created by our conscience or thoughts. Thus, if I feel good with my partner, this will reveal an emotion of well being while realizing that she gives us this feeling corresponds to emotions.

Self-esteem, is the power to create a state of well being with ourselves, it is not something that is spontaneous, it is built upon. And esteeming ourselves is to value ourselves how we are as people by realizing all the importance our life represents for us. In fact, nothing in the world is more important than our body. It is through our body that we have to notice our environment. Because being important for ourselves, is to realize that we have the power to do good, to reward ourselves, to evolve and make our lives passionate.

Valuing ourselves is passed on by the qualities that we give ourselves. To value ourselves means we must feel as if we are the handsomest, most intelligent, finest, etc. Here the word "most" no longer means that we feel superior to others, but that we make ourselves feel important. The fact of living with a feeling of superiority is a compensation for our behavior. This shows our difficulty to live with our weakness, we use this feeling of superiority as a mask against ourselves to not see or feel our vulnerability. Self-esteem functions as a balance. When we give ourselves qualities, we can also do it for other people. In other words, the more we have esteem for ourselves, the more we can have for others. A person who feels superior proves that they underestimate themselves. Also, they have the tendency to want to dominate others.

An exchange of affection is done in equal relation since feelings of equality create a reassuring atmosphere favorable to emotion abandon. This feeling comes from taking notice that we are also fragile and defenseless when faced with life just like our partner is. This feeling is linked to the concept of complicity in the couple.

Self-esteem, in addition to being essential in an exchange of affection, serves as protection against all negative comments from certain people. When we are told that we are an imbecile because we are doing or thinking something, we naturally feel bad. Self-esteem can thus be visualized as a point of equilibrium. These type of comments unbalance us physiologically, thus the feeling of being ill when our image is attacked. If we are greatly affected by the negative comments of others, this signifies that we have low self-esteem. So, self-esteem is a wall of protection - the lower our self-esteem, the more this wall is fragile. Thus, when we are faced with behaviors and words that cut us down, the re-establishment of our equilibrium takes time. Then we start to doubt ourselves, "Am I really like that?". If this doubt persists, anxiety takes over, which leads us to make ourselves feel guilty. This guilt can make us say things like, "Why was I born unto this world if all I do is make mistakes?". Making ourselves feel guilty, is to commit violence and making others feel guilty, is to violate them. Therefore, making ourselves feel guilty is a behavior of self-destruction. Even if we have a very low self-esteem, the body has infinite resources. A little voice inside us says that we aren't such a bad person as that and that we are all right deep down. This energy allows us to reestablish the equilibrium and to survive by overcoming this degradation.

By having good self-esteem, we develop good social relations. We gain the confidence of others when we don't judge them and when we accept them for who they are. We thus become aware of behaviors and words which could hurt them. So, when we don't unbalance others, they feel emotionally well with us. But it is even more important to have this attitude towards the person with whom we exchange affection. We give her the most of our attention so that she is comfortable in our presence.

Self-esteem begins with the image that we have of our body. It is with our body that we feel emotions. If we don't like our body, then we can't live in harmony with our emotions and this can make us suffer. Our body produces emotions in relation with the form that it takes. When we don't appreciate our body, we refuse the emotions that we experience and we wish to change the image that it projects. But this is virtually impossible. We have the body that we have, period; we can't change our body like we change our shirt. And our helplessness when faced with this reality makes us suffer.

The body possesses an intrinsic conscious which makes it react independently of our intellectual conscience. Breathing provokes reactions linked to survival: at the slightest lack of air, the body panics, it secretes adrenaline and the heart rate shoots right up. Panic, an emotion stronger than fear, always comes from an outside event putting our life directly in danger, while fear can be provoked by our thoughts following a false interpretation of a situation. Emotions associated with panic are cold, intense heat, vertigo and accidents. Our body clings to life, but we don't think about it because survival is a spontaneous thing.

The sensation of our body weight makes us experience emotions; when we are really tired, we feel heavy (we have trouble carrying our own weight). Fatigue is an emotion directly linked to the efforts given off when we move and walk to support our body mass. Our body is the source of feelings relative to our moods; if we feel good, joyful, and full of energy, we will bear our weight better, and we will feel light.

The size and weight of our bones, the width of our shoulders, the distribution of our muscular and adipose mass, are responsible for the form that our body takes. Our morphology determines our freedom of movement, our strength and the space that we take up when we are seated or lying down in relation to others. If we know how to notice, the forms and the functioning of our body are sources of emotions of well-being and this is what makes the feeling that we love ourselves tangible. To build self-esteem, we must try to appreciate our body; so this appreciation will be executed by letting ourselves be led by the positive emotions that it generates.

Self-esteem implies self-confidence and in our possibilities. The fact of considering ourselves as an intelligent, flexible and creative person allows us to acquire self confidence. This allows us to advance quicker in life because, not fearing failure, our push ourselves to finish everything that we undertake. Self-confidence leads us to many different experiences, which raises our level of knowledge and openness of life in general.

When we have self-esteem, it is easy to say that we are "able to"... The word "able" refers to the concept of power and "self-esteem" means to have power over ourselves. Power can be seen as a pejorative since one of its definitions concerns the control that we can enforce on others. There exists two ways to make someone do what we want them to do. There is manipulation where we make it so that they don't see what we are doing. It is an illusion: we make them fall in a trap and we then work it so that they will do things that they didn't decide to do. The other way is blackmail. We tell them exactly what we want and we threaten them if they don't do it. These two behaviors are violent and they threaten the liberty of the other. Since we don't have the right to decide for others, the only real power that we can execute is on ourselves.

Having power over ourselves gives us the will to undertake things and to engage ourselves in a loving relation. Affection exists in a couple when both people are emotionally engaged with each other. On the other hand, engaging ourselves requires good self-confidence because it is somewhat insecure since we lose in some way a part of ourselves. Emotional engagement implies we will reveal our true personality (without masks) and give in to the other without taking account of it. We must fully have confidence in our partner because knowing our emotions, she could easily manipulate us. Engagement consists of a risk that we take by letting ourselves be influenced and directed by the other. Without asking questions we expect to receive love. Self-esteem is a hold on our being. We lead our lives and not anyone else. We have the choice to get carried away by our partner or not. Engagement is thus getting in the other person's game without feeling like we are losing our personality. This ability to let ourselves be influenced proves above all else that we have self-esteem. We all live in our own universe made up of our personality, interests, tastes, experiences and knowledge. Letting ourselves be influenced, is to enter in the other person's world to become part of it.

Life is possible due to the energy which pushes us to be interested in subjects and daily events. It motivates us to try new things which can feed our minds. Thus, we go from one passion to another throughout our lives, but some passions last longer than others. Passion corresponds to the intensity of emotions experienced in relation to our interests and the amount of energy dispensed in our daily activities. Being passionate means that we accept to suffer to reach a goal because once it is met, it will give us a moment of pleasure.

Every person lives many passions at once, for work, hobbies, social relations, love relations and children. Letting ourselves be influenced by others, we must for one moment abstract ourselves from our own passions to integrate those of our partner. If she is interested in classical music, we should make an effort to appreciate and share the pleasure that she gets from listening to this kind of music. This abstraction is possible due to the esteem that we receive from ourselves. In having low self-esteem, we are very insecure and we have a tendency to hang our passions to protect ourselves from others. These are usually unexpectedly great, which has a consequence makes us insensible to what we are, our needs and our emotions. Thus by being emotionally cold, we pay less attention to our partner, we don't listen and her emotions and we can't therefore comfort her. This lack of esteem is characterized by the feeling of being lost and suffering and excessive passion makes us insensitive to our suffering.

Self-esteem gives us the ability to love someone. It is very worthy to live with this feeling which comes from noticing that our partner feels good in our presence. Realizing that our presence gives her pleasure reinforces our image in a positive way. The more we bring well-being to our partner, the more our esteem will rise and the more we can provoke intense moments of pleasure in our partner.

The more we get to know our partner, the more well-being we will get from an exchange of affection. The more the pleasure is great, the more I will be encouraged to make efforts to discover and appreciate my partner. In fact, any exchange of affection contributes to raising our self-esteem. Self-esteem is a never-ending process. It rises and fluctuates depending on happy or unhappy experiences. We all have in us a strength or desire which pushes us to improve our self-image. In fact, self-esteem is a question of survival. Someone who is suffering a lot mentally has a very negative image of himself. When we no longer find anything good and great within us, we lose the tools that help we defend ourselves from degradation. So, without means of defense, we become pessimistic, which leads to depression. By underestimating ourselves, we have problems overcoming our troubles and we fail more. It is, in fact, positive things which help us psychologically reinforce ourselves.

From our past experiences, we can choose behaviors to adopt and situations which will help us to have self-esteem. Thus, by being attentive, tender and affectionate in a loving relationship, we can reinforce our self-esteem. Self-esteem thus takes it shape due to relations with our family and interactions with those around us. If we were alone in the world, we would have no need to worry about our self esteem because it is always an evaluation that we make by comparing ourselves with others. When we were babies, we did not have the ability to evaluate ourselves. Our parents built up our self-esteem from their love towards us. This love was passed on by the care, affection, tenderness, and attention that they gave us. Receiving love gave us the feeling of being important to them. It is from this feeling that the child sees himself positively. Self-esteem therefore is linked to the feeling that we can be loved and be important to others.

If we lacked love during our childhood, obviously we will suffer from less control over ourselves once we are adults. We will be more vulnerable to the degrading comments and behaviors of others. The fact that we accumulated bad experiences prevents us from making our esteem grow, but loving ourselves lets us overcome this difficulty. It is built up with the help of reasoning, using our ability to reason to escape the negative emotions which lead us to think that we are not good. With reasoning, we can create situations with those close to us to live out valuable emotional experiences. By saving up positive experiences, we acquire a grip on ourselves and esteem that our parents couldn't give us during our youth. Being an adult is characterized by emotional autonomy, which means that we become our own parents to encourage, reassure, love and console ourselves.

Life is a ruthless battle against degradation coming from the people around us. In fact, few people have received all the love that they needed from their parents to have a valuable image of themselves. The less that we have lived in a climate of love during our childhood, the less we are able to have healthy social relations at an adult age. What is more, if our parents continuously criticized us, we will do the same with our close ones. We will unavoidably meet people who attack our esteem at work, at play, etc. All of this has thus added to our experiences of being rejected and judged many times during our lives. From low self-esteem, degradation tires us out, provoking thus depressive moments. To battle against this, we must work on our self-esteem. The more we have a strong and positive self-image, the less we will be affected by others.

In our relations, self-esteem lets us protect ourselves from negative comments and moods swings of our partner. No-one has a perfect self-esteem. That is why we sometimes have degrading behaviors against our partner. But through our errors, we learn to avoid this type of behavior. The relationship lets us increase our self-esteem; it confronts us when we are faced with who we are and shows us where our weaknesses lie in our esteem. Living in a relationship pushes us to overcome ourselves to develop a more positive image of ourselves. With good self-esteem, we maintain better relationships with those around us and our friends, all while being better armed to defend ourselves against degrading behaviors. It is in a relationship that we learn respect. Since self-esteem is principally used to protect ourselves from degrading behaviors, by being less scared of what others might say about us, we develop self confidence. From this, we can give into affection with our partner because we don't fear that they will make fun of us.

A loving relationship is the most important for self-esteem, after our relationship with our parents. An exchange of affection contributes to obtaining a positive self image. The more we respect ourselves, the more we are able to see our partner in a positive manner and tell them that we love them, that they are the prettiest and the finest. Speaking reassures. Someone who doesn't speak to their partner fears compromising themselves. So by speaking, we prove that we are committed to them.