system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Is there anything chemically that happens in the body to trigger high or low self esteem?

In other words, is it solely based off of moments in our lives that create our own self perception or is it chemically predetermined to an extent?
gpt
I think a lot of people in these sorts of threads are putting the cart before the horse, so to speak.

Yes, when you have low self-esteem, depression etc. you have a chemical imbalance, but that explains *what* is happening, not *why* it is happening.

All of these problems come from a disorder in thinking, and are based around negative *perceptions* people have of themselves. When an alcoholic picks up another bottle of beer even though every thought in his mind is telling him not, he doesn't decide to drink it anyway because a chemical imbalance is causing low-self esteem, he drinks it anyway because he subconsciously doesn't *believe* he can.

That's why a guy might go years without asking out a girl due to believing he is undesirable and boring, and a result of that is that he'll develop a chemical imbalance because of it. However, when one day he finds himself alone with the pretty girl he's been helping do homework and decides to just go for it and she says yes, he'll *instantly* feel over the moon and incredibly self-confident, since his idea that he's undatable has been shattered and him coming to this realisation feels incredibly powerful and liberating. A result of this is that physically, his chemicals in his brain have changed, but he didn't feel good *because* they changed, they changed because *he felt good.*