Self deprecation: why is it so common?

Why do we downgrade our lives when speaking to others?

“I am so screwed for this exam!”

“I’ll be rolling into January”

“I am such a mess!”

It seems as though we use these kind of phrases countless times when with others and I pose the question to you: why? When there are so many achievements that we could easily speak about, such as a great gym session, feeling prepared for an exam or reaching a goal you had aspired to achieve for a while, why do we choose an easier route to self-deprecation. Is it to find light in a bad situation or within low self esteem? Perhaps to be humble or to relate to others? By understanding our needs, explained brilliantly in Maslow’s hierarchy of Needs, it becomes clear that humans love (and almost can’t live without) a sense of belonging. As internally social beings, it’s vital that we belong to something, so perhaps when we speak to others and downgrade our emotions and position we find ourselves to be in, it’s to feel a sense of belonging amongst others that feel the same way.

Deliberating this issue from a more pessimistic angle, Joe Martin, or the Education Motivator, states that “you only downgrade yourself when you stoop to someone else’s level” suggesting that we could be speaking self-deprecatingly because we believe the person we are speaking to, is below us. However, it could be viewed as a subconsciously internal mechanism, to make a joke out of something that happens to be low self esteem. To laugh about something eases a situation - sometimes masking a cry for help or seeking some sort of guidance. Although downplaying a bad situation can be an easy escape from an intense situation, it is interesting to assimilate the causes of downgrading behaviour. Whether it is to relate to others or to mask a situation, it comes across as something that is common to most people to automatically resort to, therefore an interesting instinct to think about and question.