Low Self-Esteem and Jealousy: Comparison, Insecurity, and Relationship Threat

Sep 27

20 min read

Author: Ukrainian Psychological Hub · Published: September 27, 2026 · Editorial Policy

Low self-esteem can make romantic jealousy feel more convincing because a possible relationship threat can also become a judgment about the self: “They are more attractive than I am,” “I am replaceable,” “My partner will eventually realize I am not enough.” Research supports a connection between self-evaluation and jealousy in some people and contexts, but it does not support a simple rule that low self-esteem causes jealousy. Jealousy is an emotion, not a diagnosis, and people with high, average, or low self-esteem can all experience it.

The most useful way to understand the link is through mechanisms. Self-esteem can shape how a person interprets ambiguous events, how threatening a rival feels, how much weight is given to comparison, and how secure a person feels about a partner’s regard. At the same time, romantic relationships can affect self-esteem, and some forms of self-esteem are unusually dependent on what happens inside the relationship. Contemporary relationship research therefore points toward interacting processes rather than a single cause.

This article focuses specifically on the self-esteem–jealousy connection. For the broader distinction between self-worth, relationship insecurity, and jealous emotion, see Jealousy vs Insecurity: How Threat, Self-Worth, and Uncertainty Differ. For the broader jealousy construct, see What Is Jealousy in a Relationship? Meaning, Triggers, and What Research Shows.

What does the research say about low self-esteem and jealousy?

The evidence is real, but it is more complicated than the popular formula “low self-esteem makes you jealous.”

A 2026 systematic review of jealousy measures found substantial heterogeneity in how romantic jealousy is conceptualized and measured across studies. The review included 32 studies representing 21 instruments and concluded that different tools capture different triggers, experiences, expressions, and consequences of jealousy. That matters here because an association between self-esteem and one jealousy measure does not automatically generalize to every form of jealousy or every person. Papa et al., 2026

Some classic studies have found lower self-esteem to be associated with greater jealousy. In a community study, Mullen and Martin reported a correlation between lower self-esteem and greater jealousy concerns, particularly among women in that sample. The design was observational, so it cannot establish that low self-esteem caused the jealousy. Mullen & Martin, 1994

Other findings are more conditional. A study of 154 adults that compared explicit and implicit self-esteem found different patterns by sex and by the type of self-esteem measure used. Greater jealousy was associated with lower explicit self-esteem among men, while findings for women depended on an implicit measure. Those results are a useful warning against treating “self-esteem” as a single, uniform variable. Stieger et al., 2012

A later study of 160 college students found no significant zero-order correlation between self-esteem and romantic jealousy, although self-esteem contributed negatively to one jealousy dimension in a multivariable model. The authors argued that vulnerability in self-evaluation may matter more than a simple high-versus-low self-esteem distinction. Kanno, 2018

The most defensible conclusion is therefore specific: low self-esteem is associated with jealousy in some studies and may increase vulnerability to certain jealousy processes, especially self-comparison and threat appraisal, but the association varies across samples, measures, situations, and other psychological variables. It is not a universal causal law.

Why self-esteem can matter when a relationship feels threatened

Romantic jealousy usually involves a perceived threat to an important relationship. Self-esteem becomes relevant when the same event also threatens a person’s evaluation of themselves.

A partner talking enthusiastically with someone else can be interpreted in several ways. One person may think, “They are enjoying a conversation.” Another may think, “That person is exactly what my partner wants, and I cannot compete.” The external event may be similar, while the self-relevant meaning differs.

This distinction between relationship threat and self-esteem threat has a long empirical history. In an experimental vignette study, Sharpsteen independently varied the degree of relationship threat and self-esteem threat in imagined jealousy-provoking situations. Both dimensions affected the reported likelihood of jealousy and related emotions. Sharpsteen, 1995

Earlier work also described jealousy as involving two potentially painful losses: the anticipated loss of relationship rewards and the anticipated loss of self-esteem. Mathes, Adams, and Davies found general support for this two-part framework, while also showing that emotional consequences did not map neatly onto one mechanism at a time. Mathes et al., 1985

This helps explain why jealousy can feel disproportionate to the visible event. A seemingly small cue may simultaneously raise two questions:

• Is my relationship at risk?

• What does this say about my value?

When both questions become active, the emotional load is larger than either one alone.

That still does not mean the threat is imaginary. Sometimes a partner is behaving inconsistently, violating an agreement, flirting in a way the couple has defined as unacceptable, or concealing information that matters to the relationship. Self-esteem is one part of the appraisal system; it is not a reason to dismiss evidence.

Self-esteem, felt security, and the question “Does my partner really value me?”

One mechanism connecting self-esteem to relationship reactions is perceived partner regard: how positively and securely a person believes their partner sees them.

Research by Murray and colleagues found that people with lower self-esteem tended to underestimate how positively their partners viewed them. These perceptions were associated with less generous views of the partner and lower relationship well-being. The authors proposed “felt security” in a partner’s regard as an important mechanism linking self-esteem and relationship functioning. Murray, Holmes, & Griffin, 2000

In later experiments, participants with lower self-esteem were more likely to interpret experimentally introduced relationship problems as signs that a partner’s affection or commitment might be weakening. They then reported less closeness and more negative partner evaluations. Murray et al., 2002

These studies were not designed as direct tests of everyday jealousy in all its forms. Their relevance is mechanistic: when a person is less certain that a partner values them, ambiguous relational information may carry more rejection-related meaning.

A jealous thought can therefore contain two layers. The first is about the partner: “Are they interested in someone else?” The second is about the self: “Why would they choose me if that person is available?” Low self-esteem is especially relevant to the second layer.

Comparison is often the bridge between low self-esteem and jealousy

Jealousy frequently introduces a rival, whether the rival is a real person, a possible person, an ex-partner, an online contact, or even an imagined alternative. Once a rival appears, the mind has an obvious comparison target.

The comparison is rarely neutral. People may compare appearance, age, income, humor, confidence, sexual history, social status, intelligence, career success, emotional closeness, shared interests, or any characteristic they believe matters to their partner.

Classic social-comparison research on romantic jealousy found that evaluations of rivals depended partly on attributes believed to be important to the partner. Rivals were judged differently on dimensions perceived as consequential to partner preference. Schmitt, 1988

Experimental work has also shown that jealousy can alter self-perception after the threat occurs. Across three studies, Slotter and colleagues found that induced jealousy increased participants’ tendency to perceive themselves as more similar to an attractive romantic rival. This is important because it reverses the usual causal story: comparison and self-concept can be consequences of jealousy as well as contributors to it. Slotter et al., 2013

That bidirectionality changes the practical question. Instead of asking only, “Did low self-esteem create my jealousy?” it is often more accurate to ask, “How are self-evaluation, comparison, and jealousy currently reinforcing one another?”

Global self-esteem is different from relationship-contingent self-esteem

A person can have reasonably positive global self-esteem while still having self-worth that fluctuates sharply with the state of a romantic relationship.

Relationship-contingent self-esteem describes self-esteem that depends heavily on relationship events. Knee and colleagues developed and studied this construct across four studies. In diary research, people higher in relationship-contingent self-esteem showed stronger changes in self-esteem in response to positive and negative relationship events. Knee et al., 2008

This distinction is especially useful in jealousy.

Someone may function confidently at work, feel good about friendships, and view themselves as capable, yet experience a sharp collapse in self-worth when a partner appears interested in someone else. The issue is not necessarily globally low self-esteem. It may be that romantic acceptance carries unusually high weight in the person’s moment-to-moment self-evaluation.

This also explains why generic advice such as “just be more confident” often misses the mechanism. Confidence in one domain does not automatically change the meaning attached to romantic selection, comparison, or perceived rejection.

Low self-esteem and relationship insecurity are related, but they are not the same thing

Low self-esteem concerns how a person evaluates themselves. Relationship insecurity concerns uncertainty or vulnerability about the bond, partner regard, commitment, or relationship stability. Jealousy is an emotional response that can emerge when something important in the relationship seems threatened.

These constructs can overlap without becoming interchangeable.

A person can have low self-esteem and trust their partner. A person can have high self-esteem and become jealous when there is credible evidence of a threat. A person can feel relationship insecurity because a partner is genuinely inconsistent even if their general self-esteem is strong. A person can also feel jealous in a secure relationship because a particular event activates a personally meaningful comparison.

That is why interpreting jealousy as proof of “insecurity” is too crude. The dedicated comparison is explained in Jealousy vs Insecurity: How Threat, Self-Worth, and Uncertainty Differ.

The same caution applies to attachment language. Attachment-related processes can interact with jealousy, but jealousy alone does not reveal a person’s attachment style, and this article does not use low self-esteem as a proxy for anxious attachment.

Does low self-esteem cause relationship problems, or do relationship problems lower self-esteem?

Both directions are plausible, and current evidence does not justify a simple causal slogan.

A large meta-analysis of longitudinal studies reported small reciprocal prospective associations between self-esteem and the quality of social relationships: relationships predicted later self-esteem, and self-esteem predicted later relationship quality. Harris & Orth, 2020

However, a 2023 reanalysis of the same meta-analytic data argued that those cross-lagged estimates may be vulnerable to statistical artifacts and therefore should not be treated as established causal effects. The authors did not claim that reciprocal effects are impossible; they argued that the earlier analyses did not establish them. Sorjonen et al., 2023

A 2024 review focused specifically on self-esteem and romantic relationship quality reaches a similarly nuanced practical conclusion: the evidence for a simple direct effect is mixed, and the more productive model is one in which self-esteem operates through mechanisms such as trust, perceptions, and reciprocal partner behavior. Wood et al., 2024

For jealousy, this means the direction can become circular. A person who doubts their value may perceive more threat, compare more intensely, and react in ways that create friction. Relationship friction can then become new evidence for negative self-evaluation. In another relationship, the cycle may begin with the partner’s inconsistency rather than the individual’s self-esteem. The sequence must be examined, not assumed.

A practical mechanism: event → appraisal → comparison → jealousy → response → feedback

A useful evidence-informed model is to treat low self-esteem as one possible amplifier within a larger sequence.

1. An event occurs

The event may be ambiguous, clearly benign, genuinely concerning, or somewhere in between: a message from an ex, attention to an attractive person, a delayed reply, a social gathering, a compliment, a shift in intimacy, or a change in routine.

2. The event receives meaning

The mind asks what the event means for the relationship. “Is this relevant to us?” “Does it change what I know about my partner’s intentions?” “Is there a real boundary issue?”

3. The event becomes self-relevant

Low or unstable self-esteem can add a second interpretation: “This proves I am not attractive enough,” “I am less interesting,” “I cannot compete,” or “Anyone better than me could take my place.”

4. Comparison narrows attention

The perceived rival’s strengths become unusually salient while the person’s own value is discounted. The comparison can become asymmetric: the rival is evaluated through their best visible features, while the self is evaluated through feared weaknesses.

5. Jealousy emerges

Jealousy may include fear, anger, sadness, hurt, shame, vigilance, or a desire for closeness. The emotion itself does not determine what happens next.

6. A response follows

Possible responses range from constructive conversation to withdrawal, accusations, repeated questioning, checking, demands for access, or attempts to control a partner. These behaviors should not all be grouped together. Feeling jealous is different from acting coercively.

7. The response changes the relationship

A clear conversation may resolve uncertainty. Repeated accusations may produce conflict. Covert checking may damage trust. A partner’s defensive or inconsistent response may create more uncertainty. The result then becomes new information feeding the next appraisal.

This model explains why self-esteem is best understood as part of a system rather than a single root cause.

What jealousy can look like when self-worth is heavily involved

When self-evaluation is central to jealousy, the content often revolves around rank, replaceability, and perceived inadequacy.

Common experiences can include repeatedly comparing yourself with a perceived rival; focusing on qualities you believe the rival has and you lack; interpreting a partner’s attention as a verdict on your attractiveness or worth; needing a partner’s preference to restore your sense of value; feeling shame for being jealous and then using that shame as further evidence that something is wrong with you; or becoming preoccupied with the question of why your partner chose you.

None of those experiences, by themselves, establishes a clinical disorder.

Repeated thoughts are not automatically obsessions in the clinical sense. Repeated checking is not automatically a compulsion. Jealousy is not automatically evidence of obsessive-compulsive disorder, a personality disorder, psychosis, or an attachment disorder. Diagnostic terms require their own criteria and assessment.

The 2026 systematic review of jealousy instruments is particularly relevant here: jealousy measures differ substantially in what they capture, and a score on a research questionnaire does not independently diagnose a disorder. Papa et al., 2026

Jealousy can also lower self-esteem

The arrow can point the other way.

When jealousy is active, attention may become organized around perceived competition. A person may start scanning for qualities that make someone else desirable and then use those qualities as a standard against which to judge themselves.

The Slotter studies show one way jealousy can affect self-concept: people experiencing state jealousy shifted their perceived self-similarity toward an attractive rival. Slotter et al., 2013

Jealous episodes can also produce shame. Someone may think, “I should not feel this way,” then treat the emotion itself as proof that they are needy, unattractive, weak, or difficult. That self-criticism adds a second source of distress.

This is why reducing the issue to “fix your self-esteem first” is often unhelpful. The relationship between self-evaluation and jealousy can be dynamic. Sometimes strengthening a broader sense of self helps reduce threat sensitivity. Sometimes changing comparison habits matters more. Sometimes the relationship itself needs clearer boundaries or more reliable behavior. Sometimes several processes need attention at once.

How trust enters the self-esteem–jealousy cycle

Jealousy is not only about self-worth. It is also about what a person believes about the partner and the relationship.

Recent research across four studies found that experiencing greater romantic jealousy was associated with greater ambivalence toward a partner. Higher jealousy was linked to perceiving greater partner mate value while also reporting lower trust, which contributed to ambivalent feelings. The studies used cross-sectional, daily-diary, longitudinal, and experimental approaches across participants in the United States, United Kingdom, and Netherlands. Đurić et al., 2025

This matters because a person can feel threatened for at least two distinguishable reasons:

• “I am not good enough.”

• “I do not know whether my partner is reliable in this situation.”

Those statements point to different problems. The first is primarily self-evaluative. The second is primarily relational. Sometimes both are true at once.

Trust should therefore be assessed through evidence, consistency, reliability, agreements, and context rather than through the demand for absolute certainty. Likewise, self-esteem work should not become a way of teaching someone to ignore meaningful information about a partner’s behavior.

Reassurance can help, but it cannot carry the whole system

Reassurance has a legitimate place in close relationships. Partners routinely communicate affection, commitment, desire, and care. A specific response to a specific concern can reduce unnecessary uncertainty and support connection.

The problem is not reassurance itself. The problem is when self-worth becomes dependent on repeated confirmation that can never remain convincing for long.

A person may ask, “Do you still love me?” receive a sincere answer, feel better briefly, and then return to the same question when another comparison appears. If the underlying appraisal remains “I am inherently replaceable,” no amount of partner reassurance can permanently settle every future trigger.

Research on self-esteem and intimacy suggests that lower self-esteem can affect both how people behave in vulnerable interactions and how responsive they perceive others to be. A 2023 review describes pathways through self-disclosure and perceived responsiveness that can hinder intimacy-building when self-esteem is lower. Forest et al., 2023

A more durable conversation therefore separates two questions: “What information or reassurance would reasonably help us understand this situation?” and “What am I asking my partner to prove about my overall worth?”

What actually helps when low self-esteem is feeding jealousy?

There is no established clinical protocol specifically for “low-self-esteem jealousy.” The direct treatment literature for this exact mechanism is limited, so the following strategies are evidence-informed ways of working with the processes described above rather than a proven disorder-specific treatment.

Separate the observable event from the self-judgment

Write the event in concrete terms before interpreting it.

“Partner spoke with X for twenty minutes” is an observation.

“X is better than me, so my partner will leave” contains comparison, prediction, and self-evaluation.

This separation does not force a reassuring conclusion. It simply prevents several psychological steps from being compressed into one apparent fact.

Identify the comparison dimension

Ask what exactly makes the rival feel threatening. Appearance? humor? career status? sexual experience? emotional closeness? social ease? shared history?

Social-comparison research suggests that jealousy is especially sensitive to dimensions perceived as relevant to partner preference. Schmitt, 1988

Once the dimension is explicit, the question becomes more precise: “Why has this trait become a referendum on my value?”

Distinguish global worth from relationship selection

A partner choosing someone is not a standardized measurement of human worth. Romantic choice depends on preferences, timing, compatibility, history, values, attraction, reciprocity, and many context-specific factors.

When jealousy turns partner preference into a universal ranking system, self-esteem becomes unusually vulnerable. The goal is not to convince yourself that you outrank every potential rival. The goal is to stop treating romantic competition as an objective scoreboard for human value.

Broaden the foundations of self-esteem

Relationship-contingent self-esteem research shows that self-worth can fluctuate more strongly when it depends heavily on relationship events. Knee et al., 2008

A broader identity can include friendships, competence, creativity, work, learning, physical activity, caregiving, values, community, interests, and forms of meaning that exist independently of a partner’s moment-to-moment attention.

This does not mean becoming emotionally independent in the sense of needing nobody. Intimate relationships matter. The aim is to prevent one relationship cue from becoming the sole judge of the whole self.

Ask for information that is specific and proportionate

Instead of “Promise nobody will ever be more attractive to you than I am,” a workable request might be “I felt unsettled by how that interaction unfolded. Can we talk about what happened and what our boundary is?”

Specific questions can be answered. Demands for absolute certainty usually cannot.

Watch for the point where information-seeking becomes repeated certainty-seeking

Checking the same fact again and again can feel like investigation while producing little new information. The relevant question is whether another check is likely to change what is reasonably known or is mainly being used to regulate distress for a few minutes.

Do not automatically label this pattern a compulsion. “Compulsion” has a specific clinical meaning in obsessive-compulsive disorder and belongs to an OCD assessment when the broader criteria are relevant.

Notice what your behavior teaches the relationship

Accusations, tests, covert checking, and demands for proof can create conflict that later appears to confirm insecurity. Constructive disclosure is different: “I notice I am comparing myself and getting scared. I want to understand what is real here without policing you.”

The aim is not perfect emotional control. It is behavior that can produce usable information and preserve both partners’ agency.

When the problem is not your self-esteem

Low self-esteem should never become a universal explanation for relationship discomfort.

A person may have good reason to feel uncertain when a partner repeatedly lies, violates explicit agreements, changes stories, hides relevant information, uses jealousy to provoke reactions, or behaves inconsistently. In those situations, the task is not to train yourself to tolerate anything in the name of confidence.

Likewise, a partner should not dismiss every concern with “You are just insecure.” That phrase can become a way to avoid discussing concrete behavior.

A useful distinction is:

Self-esteem asks, “How am I evaluating myself?”

Trust asks, “What evidence do I have about this person’s reliability and intentions in this context?”

Jealousy asks, “What threat am I perceiving to a valued relationship?”

These questions interact, but they are not substitutes for one another.

If the central issue is confirmed or suspected infidelity, post-infidelity trust repair belongs to the Infidelity & Betrayal Recovery domain rather than to a general self-esteem explanation.

Jealousy, self-esteem, and social media

Digital environments can intensify comparison by making potential rivals highly visible and by presenting selective information about appearance, popularity, intimacy, and past relationships.

For someone whose jealousy already contains a strong self-evaluation component, social media can supply endless comparison material. A tagged photo, follow, like, old comment, or visible connection can become a prompt for ranking the self against another person.

The mechanism remains important: seeing more possible comparison targets is different from receiving reliable evidence of relationship threat.

This article does not treat broad social-media use as a self-esteem problem, and it does not treat online ambiguity as evidence of infidelity. Digital jealousy, electronic partner surveillance, phone checking, and location monitoring require their own analysis of privacy, consent, trust, and control.

Jealousy does not justify control

Low self-esteem can help explain why a person feels threatened. It does not justify controlling what a partner wears, who they see, where they go, which friendships they maintain, or whether they are allowed privacy.

The same rule applies to phone demands, covert account access, location tracking, repeated interrogation, threats, stalking, intimidation, isolation, and violence.

A systematic review of 51 papers from 28 countries found a consistent association between real or suspected infidelity, romantic jealousy, and intimate partner violence. The review does not mean that jealousy alone causes violence or that a jealous person can be assumed to be violent. It does mean that safety framing matters when jealousy is accompanied by controlling or violent behavior. Pichon et al., 2020

For the distinction between jealous emotion and possessive or controlling behavior, see Jealousy vs Possessiveness: Emotion, Control, and Relationship Boundaries.

If jealousy is accompanied by threats, stalking, coercive control, physical violence, or fear for safety, the priority is safety and appropriate professional or local support rather than trying to prove love, provide unlimited reassurance, or surrender privacy.

Can higher self-esteem reduce jealousy?

Sometimes, but there is no guarantee.

Higher or more stable self-esteem may reduce one source of vulnerability: the tendency to interpret a rival’s strengths as proof of personal inferiority or to treat a partner’s attention as a verdict on one’s worth.

But jealousy can arise from other mechanisms: credible relationship threat, uncertainty about agreements, attachment-related processes, prior experience, comparison, contextual cues, or patterns specific to the relationship. High self-esteem does not make a person immune to jealousy.

The 2024 review of self-esteem and romantic relationship quality is useful here because it rejects an overly simple direct-effects model. It argues that self-esteem matters through intermediate relational processes, including trust and reciprocal behavior. Wood et al., 2024

So the aim is not “raise self-esteem and jealousy disappears.” It is to identify which part of the jealousy process is actually being amplified by self-evaluation.

When professional help may be useful

Professional support can be useful when jealousy is persistent, highly distressing, repeatedly damages relationships, or becomes difficult to manage without escalating conflict.

A clinician can help distinguish among several very different patterns: ordinary jealousy intensified by self-comparison; relationship insecurity; repeated reassurance seeking; habitual checking; intrusive thoughts; depressive or anxiety symptoms; trauma-related responses; substance-related problems; obsessive-compulsive symptoms; or fixed delusional beliefs.

Those distinctions matter because the appropriate assessment and treatment depend on the pattern. Jealousy itself is not a diagnosis.

Urgent clinical or safety assessment becomes especially important when jealousy includes fixed false beliefs with strong conviction, psychotic symptoms, major behavioral change, threats, stalking, violence, or severe escalation. Those situations should not be reframed as merely “low self-esteem.”

What this evidence means in everyday relationships

The self-esteem–jealousy link is best understood as a vulnerability pathway, not an identity.

Low self-esteem can make some romantic threats feel larger because the person is simultaneously trying to protect the relationship and protect a fragile evaluation of the self. Comparison can connect those two threats. Perceived partner regard can amplify them. Relationship-contingent self-esteem can make everyday relationship events move self-worth up and down. Jealousy can then feed back into comparison and self-concept.

But none of these mechanisms means that the person is destined to be jealous, that every jealous feeling is caused by insecurity, or that the partner’s behavior is irrelevant.

The most useful question is therefore not “Am I jealous because I have low self-esteem?” It is “In this episode, what is the actual relationship evidence, what am I comparing, what am I concluding about myself, and what response will give me better information without turning fear into control?”

That question preserves the psychological reality of jealousy while keeping self-esteem, trust, comparison, behavior, and relationship evidence in their proper places.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does low self-esteem cause jealousy in relationships?

Low self-esteem can contribute to jealousy in some people, but the evidence does not support a universal one-way causal claim. Studies have found associations in some samples, mixed findings in others, and important differences depending on how self-esteem and jealousy are measured. Relationship threat, comparison, trust, partner behavior, and context also matter.

Can someone with high self-esteem still be jealous?

Yes. Jealousy can occur whenever a valued relationship appears threatened. High self-esteem may reduce some self-comparison processes, but it does not eliminate responses to uncertainty, boundary violations, credible rivals, or other relationship threats.

Is jealousy just insecurity?

No. Insecurity can contribute to jealousy, but the terms describe different constructs. Jealousy is an emotional response to perceived relationship threat. Insecurity can refer to uncertainty about the self or the relationship. See Jealousy vs Insecurity: How Threat, Self-Worth, and Uncertainty Differ.

Why do I compare myself with people my partner finds attractive?

A perceived rival provides a natural social-comparison target. Research suggests that comparison can become especially salient on characteristics believed to matter to the partner. Jealousy can also change self-perception after the threat occurs, so comparison may be both a contributor to jealousy and a consequence of it.

Does reassurance fix jealousy caused by low self-esteem?

Reassurance can be helpful when it answers a specific relationship concern, but it cannot permanently guarantee worth or eliminate every future uncertainty. If reassurance produces only brief relief and the same question rapidly returns, it may be more useful to examine the underlying self-evaluation, comparison, and threat appraisal.

Should partners share passwords to prove trust?

Password sharing can be consensual, but it is not a universal requirement for trust. Consent, privacy, autonomy, context, and the ability to say no matter. Coerced access, covert checking, surveillance, threats, and monitoring are different from mutually chosen transparency.

Is low self-esteem a diagnosis?

No. Self-esteem is a psychological construct describing self-evaluation. A low score on a self-esteem measure is not, by itself, a psychiatric diagnosis.

Is jealousy a mental disorder?

Jealousy itself is not a diagnosis. Ordinary jealousy can range from mild to intense. Clinical assessment becomes relevant when there are broader symptoms or serious impairment, such as obsessive-compulsive symptoms, psychosis or delusional beliefs, severe mood symptoms, substance-related changes, stalking, threats, violence, or major behavioral escalation.

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