Chronic Self-Deprecation

Of all the self-deprecating people in the world, he's the Charlie Browniest.

As they say, humility is a virtue and Pride goes before a fall, but this character might've taken those sayings a bit too close to heart. Whether due to excessively high standards, constant harassment and denigrations from others, overwhelming guilt, or simple Internalized Categorism, the character has a very low opinion of themselves, often to the point of unreasonable self-hatred.

Nothing they do is good enough, any compliments end up getting dismissed out of hand, and whatever mistakes they do make hits them that much harder as a reminder of how pathetic they really are; at the same time, they often Can't Take Criticism due to how much harder those complaints hit them. In extreme cases, this can lead to the character becoming Their Own Worst Enemy, with their low self-esteem manifesting into self-sabotaging and self-effacing behavior getting in the way of getting better.

This trope is especially common in Shrinking Violets (who often perceive themselves as unwanted), Extreme Doormats (who only define their worth in service to others), Eeyores, Snark Knights as well as characters with a Guilt Complex and/or atoners. More vocal or poorly-written examples can get accused of indulging in Wangsting or Compliment Fishing, In-Universe and out, whether it's actually true or not.

Truth in Television, alas; many people in the world do suffer from self-esteem problems, which can feed into and lead to depression and anxiety problems.

Super-Trope of Heroic Self-Deprecation, where a heroic character still feels inadequate despite having accomplished feats of heroism and goodness others could only dream of. A common reason for an Insecure Love Interest as well.

Contrast with Self-Deprecation, the healthier variant of this trope that's limited to cracking a joke or two^note though it can overlap with this trope if it's done all the time by someone, It's All About Me, its exact polar opposite, and Inferiority Superiority Complex, where arrogant behavior is used as a mask for the self-loathing described here. Contrast Negatives as a Positive.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Asteroid in Love:
  • Mai's lack of self-esteem makes her frequently doubt whether she is up to the task as the club president, despite Mira and Ao agreeing she is good at what the club most badly needed at the moment.
  • Not about herself per se, but Mikage tends to see her geology hobby in a worse light than what it actually is. This is best demonstrated in the School Festival arc, she is surprised that many of her classmates seem to be interested in what she's doing—she always thinks rocks are so niche that she expects few people to be interested in them.
• Hitori "Bocchi" Gotoh in Bocchi the Rock! is convinced that due to her incapability of socializing, she's a worthless human being in any way possible. For example, when she flubbed her practice live with Ryo and Nijika (owing to her inability to maintain eye contact), she viewed herself to be lower than a water flea and spent the rest of the scene inside a garbage bin.
• Kaoruko "Kaos" Moeta from Comic Girls tends to think negatively of herself, and punishes herself in ways that go way beyond acceptable. In the third episode, Moeta didn't eat dinner because she was working too hard, and also thinks that, since she screwed up a storyboard for a gourmet manga, she shouldn't be allowed to eat.
• Jeremy and Ian do this to themselves a LOT in A Cruel God Reigns. Jeremy often asserts that he "smells rotten" and that he makes those around him (particularly Ian) "dirty." Ian, likewise, regrets and agonizes over the fact that he did not notice that Jeremy was being abused and that when he confessed, he did not at first believe him.
• Tohru Honda in Fruits Basket maintains that she's weak and useless even as the various Zodiac Sohmas make their way over to meet her and be healed by her universal love. They keep pretty quiet about Tohru's importance to them until fairly late in the story... to Tohru at least. They're always telling each other how wonderful she is, but they don't really inform Tohru of her own importance until the end.
• Hakuron from Haou Airen keeps saying horrible things about himself and insists on telling Kurumi that he's a monster and she should reject him for such stuff, but that doesn't stop him from hugging her passionately and sexing her up. Many times, against her will.
• Happy Kanako’s Killer Life: Kanako is utterly devoid of self-esteem. When she runs into and goes drinking with an old classmate from middle school, she spends the whole time internally lamenting her own sense of comparative uselessness and is surprised that the acquaintance actually isn't annoyed by her. Her craving for validation is part of why she desperately wants to continue her assassin job.
• Hatsumi Narita from Hot Gimmick tends to put herself down quite a bit, feeling that she is weak and unable to vocalize her emotions. The fact that her abusive boyfriend Ryoki actively encourages this in her, by calling her "stupid", "dimwit", "birdbrain", and making her feel bad if her world doesn't revolve around him, doesn't help much.
• I Got My Wish and Reincarnated as the Villainess (Last Boss)!: According to Luna, Elizabeth in the The Saint and the Four Knights canon has little self-esteem due to the Fantastic Racism around her, but still confident of her magic powers. So when Karen surpasses her during the Magic Assessment event in the game, she becomes a bullying Alpha Bitch due to Inferiority Superiority Complex from having nowhere else to hinge her self-esteem upon. This is not happening in the current timeline since this Elizabeth is not only the World's Strongest Woman, she's also a Determinator as well as having developed a liking towards Karen.
• Moriarty the Patriot: William has committed enough horrific crimes to view himself as the devil and worthy of dying and shrugs off anyone's arguments otherwise.
• Due to being neglected by his grieving father, Shinji of Neon Genesis Evangelion view himself as a coward unworthy of the affection of anyone. Piloting his EVA to fight the angels didn't help his self-esteem, as evidenced by this statement he made to Miyabi in End Of Evangelion:
  I don't have a kind, gentle side...I'm just a weak-hearted, wicked boy. I can only hurt other people! So it's better that I don't do anything!
• The Quintessential Quintuplets: Miku seems to value her self-worth in terms of how she performs in comparison to her sisters. Case in point, at the start of the story she considered herself the worst out of them until Fuutarou pointed out that she had gotten the highest score in the mock test he gave them. This seemed to bolster her confidence, and when she started developing feelings for him she was determined to get the highest grades in the final exams in order to confess to him. However, she backs off at the last second when Ichika ends up scoring higher than her. It comes to a head during the Sisters War arc, when after finding out Ichika planned to sabotage her attempt to confess to Fuutarou, she breaks down into tears and confesses to Nino that she's always been afraid of being rejected, thinking that Fuutarou could never fall in love with someone like her.
• Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei: The author himself. Be sure to read his notes at the ends of volumes.
  I think I'm creepy. I just can't stand any part of myself. If I went to a picnic and saw my ugly face reflected in the lake, I'd just jump into it. If I went shopping and saw my ugly figure reflected in the show window, I'd bang my head against the glass and cut my throat with a fragment. My TV is always on. That's because if I turned it off, I'd see my ugly reflection. On sunny days, I have no desire to leave the house. Even my shadow is ugly. I'm an ugly manga child who'll never see the day when I become a swan.
  I changed the lightbulb over my sink to the lowest wattage.
• Taishi Ichimiya in Servant × Service has a very poor opinion of his own abilities, and by Episode 3 he actually views Lucy and Yutaka, both newcomers, even as superior to himself despite him being their supervisor. This is in fact the main barrier between him and Chihaya.
• Shouya Ishida from A Silent Voice is so filled with self-loathing after truly grasping the depths of his cruelty to Shouko Nishimiya when they were in elementary school that initially his only life goal is to make up for his mistakes before killing himself. He struggles to believe that he can ever have friends again because he considers himself to still be a horrible person, which also makes him incapable of realizing when Shouko has not only forgiven him but fallen in love with him (leading to the Maybe Ever After ending). He does get somewhat better as the story progresses, at least.
• Tanaka-kun is Always Listless:
  • The eponymous Tanaka knows he's too listless for his own good, and sees himself as useless and worthless as a person because of it. His friends and family regularly remind him that he is in fact a good friend and they do all love him.
  • While Shiraishi is very competent and popular now, her Friendless Background still affects her thought process, and as such she has a tendency to beat herself up over any mistakes.

Comic Books

• Bone: In Tall Tales, Stillman the small dragon has very low self-confidence due to his inability to breathe fire, and at one point declares himself to be "lower than a germ". He gets over this once he finally breathes fire right and helps Big Johnson.

Comic Strips

• Peanuts: Charlie Brown will be the first to tell you his flaws. As he himself will freely admit, he can't fly a kite, loses at every sport he tries, and doesn't have the respect of his peers, his kid sister, or even his pet dog. He frequently takes his problems to neighbor Lucy van Pelt, who will gleefully add to his list of failings and charge him for the privilege of letting her tear him down, only for him to agree with her assessments.
  Lucy: Do you think you have pantophobia?
  Charlie Brown: What's pantophobia?
  Lucy: The fear of everything.
  Charlie Brown: (Beat)THAT'S IT!

Films — Live-Action

• George Bailey from It's a Wonderful Life suffers this. Despite repeatedly sacrificing his own desires to help others, and doing enormous amounts of good in his hometown, he feels worthless because he never got his chance to go to college or travel the world and he can barely feed his family. Eventually it gets to the point where he feels the world would be better off without him; the climax shows how wrong he is.

Literature

• The majority of Catherine Anderson's heroines. They're convinced they're completely worthless and that no man would ever want them for whatever reason but the hero's point of view makes sure the readers know how beautiful and special these women are.
• Ciaphas Cain refers to himself as a Dirty Coward all throughout his memoirs, although officially he's an utterly fearless hero. Inquisitor Vail, who's editing those memoirs, is herself unsure as to whether Cain truly is a coward who repeatedly got lucky or a bona fide hero with self-worth issues given his undeniable skill at arms and leadership. It helps that every single time Cain thought he was doing the smart thing by removing himself to a safe area of the battlefield, he ended up interrupting an ambush or discovering a xenos plot or otherwise saving the day from a completely unexpected danger).
• Due to being Overshadowed by Awesome by the rest of Loki Familia, Raul Nord from Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? has a poor opinion of his abilities that most people thinks he underestimates it.

Live-Action TV

• Although Frasier Crane is usually quite vain, pompous, and full of himself, and quite willing to rub it in everyone's face, this arrogance is largely a cover for his insecurity, and when it fails him, his self-loathing black moods are miserable. His brother Niles usually has to flip their Vitriolic Best Buds bickering on its head and do the same thing to himself to get Frasier out of it:
  Frasier: I wanted my day. I wanted hoopla and fuss, I practically planned the whole thing myself. Says a lot about me as a psychiatrist, doesn't it? I'm a small man.
  Niles: Well, what does it say about me that I was happy seeing you miss your day? I was jealous all week! I'm a tiny man.
  Frasier: Next to me, you're a giant!
  Niles: I stare up at your ankles!
  Frasier: I need a stepladder just to —
  Niles: Oh, let's not do this again.
• Friends: Chandler makes constant jokes at his own expense. His first line of the series is a quip about his pathetic dating life. His snarking actually belies devastatingly low self-esteem stemming from his neglectful parents and constant rejection. This is ironic as he has the most successful, well-paid career of the gang, is relatively attractive, intelligent, and very witty. As the series continues, you see him gain confidence (largely in part to his relationship with the supportive Monica) and as a result, he becomes less self-deprecating.
• Ted Lasso: Nathan Shelley is this in Season 1. As a lowly, bullied kit man, he is surprised by the slightest bit of kindness and decency shown to him by Ted and others, and is too anxious to share his ideas until Ted encourages him to do so. This gets deconstructed in Season 2, where the Freudian Excuse for his behavior is shown in the form of his emotionally distant, critical father. So, despite the support from Richmond, Nate's self-deprecation starts to express itself as an Inferiority Superiority Complex, leading to his Face–Heel Turn at the end of the season. It takes him truly reconciling with his father and learning to love himself in Season 3 for him to find a balance of humility and assertiveness.

Music

• MILGRAM: Prisoner No. 1, Haruka, has non-existent self-esteem levels due to his abusive mother. He views himself as worthless and constantly apologizes to anyone he talks to for no real reason.
• Eminem's Slim Shady character absolutely hates himself (for correct reasons) and many songs in the persona are just him talking about how loathsome he is. In some songs this turns into braggadocious Villain Songs, and in others it turns into whiny Compliment Fishing (which ends with him yelling at his victims for agreeing with his assessment of himself).

Theatre

• Little Shop of Horrors: This is Seymour and Audrey's Fatal Flaw. Audrey believes, due to her hard past, that she only deserves to be with abusive creeps rather than in a nice relationship with Seymour, while Seymour believes, because he's a poor, orphaned slob, that a beautiful woman like Audrey would never want him. This keeps the couple apart, and makes Seymour believe he needs the success from the carnivorous Audrey II to win Audrey's love.
  • Also discussed — The Urchins say Audrey suffers from a "low self-image", and Audrey later points out to Seymour that he suffers from a low self-image and ought to raise his expectations now that he's becoming successful.

Video Games

• Ensemble Stars!:
  • Kanata took the attacks on him as a member of the Five Oddballs very much to heart and genuinely thinks of himself as a monster of the kind that would be defeated by heroes in a story, despite being a genuinely kind person who only had generous intentions before he was victimized.
  • Souma is an extremely hard-working and dedicated kid who always tries to help others when he can and acts as Akatsuki's conscience. However, he constantly doubts himself, feeling like he isn't doing enough and is unworthy of Akatsuki, and becomes upset and self-sacrificing over even minor mistakes. Part of it seems a result of his modern-day Samurai heritage, but the Break the Cutie stuff he went through during the war the previous year definitely gave him an unneeded guilt complex, too.
  • Chiaki acts upbeat and tries to be a cheerful, optimistic leader, but deep down he constantly worries that he's not good enough to lead Ryuuseitai and finds it very difficult to ask for help. Once again, a failure the previous year drives most of this.
  • Makoto was an extremely successful model and is also a very capable idol, and part of the most successful idol unit in the series, and the one that saved the rest of the school from the student council's tyranny. However, he's a very nervy and sensitive kid who always feels like he isn't good enough. His modelling past is actually the main cause: he was great at it but it made him miserable, so he feels guilty about leaving, and his older brother figure from back then who shows up periodically to tell him to give up on his dreams because he'll only ever be a pretty face really doesn't help...
  • Anzu herself is extremely hard-working and understanding and helps the other characters a great deal, but she always tries to deny it when the guys thank her.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Bernadetta and Marianne from Fire Emblem: Three Houses both have horrendous self-esteem issues and don't pass up the chance to bring themselves down with insults. In the former's case, it has to do with her father constantly berating her as an "unmarriageable girl", and in the latter's case, it has to do with the presumed cursed nature of the Crest she bears. After the Time Skip, both are considerably more upbeat though they do slip back into old habits every so often.
  • Prince Alcryst from Fire Emblem Engage has low self-esteem due to always comparing himself to his older brother Diamant and is constantly putting himself down as a result. Some support conversations, however, suggest that this is because Alcryst is kindhearted and cares about his brother too much to bring himself to become a Green-Eyed Monster that hates Diamant, thus choosing to hate himself instead.
• In Kingdom Hearts III, a couple of Riku's lines towards Anti-Aqua seem to imply he's still not quite over his past actions.
  Anti-Aqua: All that's left in my heart is misery and despair... and now, you can share it!
  Riku: There's no need. Got my own.
• In Potion Permit, Hannah wishes to be a great fashion designer like her boss Nova, but she feels that her own designs aren't good enough. When the Chemist tells Nova about her problem, she reveals that she had been taking Hannah's ideas and incorporating them in her next fashion design. With the Chemist's help, Nova makes the dress that Hannah had always wanted to design and shows it to her, making her more confident about herself, and Nova starts selling the dresses while crediting Hannah.

Visual Novels

• Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: Nagito Komaeda often deprecates himself while praising others. He has been known to describe himself as "garbage," "useless," and "worthless," among others.
• Yuuya Sakazaki in Hatoful Boyfriend deliberately comes off as confident, cheerful and carefree, undisturbed by anything and everything. He's really a secret agent, who is never enough to carry the day on his own but is always crucial, and who has great strengths. Get to know him and you find signs that he doesn't think much of himself, probably stemming from something he did in his past. Oblivious to that, Hiyoko can worry that he sometimes gets self-deriding or despairing and urges him not to listen to his detractors, that he's a better person than he thinks .

Web Animation

• LEGO Marvel Superheroes: Maximum Overload: Played for laughs with Spider-Man, who often puts himself down and is prone to declaring "It's all my fault!" At one point, the other heroes demand to know how exactly the villain's plotting is his fault and all the Webhead can do is awkwardly reply, "Give me a minute." In another episode, Thor arrives with Spidey in tow and mentions he found him, "whining on a rooftop" (though Spider-Man insistently points out he was "angsting").

Web Original

• CollegeHumor takes it to the logical extreme with "The Guy Who Deflects Compliments", in which Zac refuses to take any compliment and instead deflects it into this (e.g. "Nice pen!" "Looks cool, writes poorly"), culminating in Siobhan complimenting his ability to deflect compliments... which he genuinely thanks her for noticing.
  Siobhan: Just take the compliment!
  Zac: I will when I deserve it!
• The titular character of Daisy Brown is prone to fits of self-loathing.
  • "Hateful Thoughts" is full of her doing this, screaming about how much she hates herself, about how her viewers only care about Alan, about how she thinks her father may have created Alan because he hated her and wanted a new "perfect" child to replace her, etc.
  • She does it again briefly in "the basement": after Lithop assures Daisy that she can help her and the other monsters, because she's the doctor's daughter, Daisy tearfully responds with "Lithop, no, I can't help you, I can't even take care of myself!"
• hololive: Calliope Mori, even after hitting the top charts in the hip-hop genre, is famously known for putting herself down, despite the praise of her friends and fans. She's even touched on the topic in some of her songs.

Western Animation

• My Little Pony 'n Friends: Due to her accident-prone nature and because she feels she doesn't have any special talents, Shady has a very low opinion about herself.
• Ready Jet Go!: Sean has a rather low opinion of himself despite his accomplishments. He is anxious almost all the time, and he is honestly shocked when Mindy sincerely calls him "cool" in "Magnet, PI".
• Steven Universe: Downplayed with Amethyst. While she rarely angsts on-camera and plays up her Wild Child side, a few glimpses Beneath the Mask confirm that she's taken Pearl and Garnet's disapproval of her Boisterous Bruiser tendencies to heart. As the show reveals that she was "defective" and didn't receive the standard programming other Gems received, she would be considered a failure by her species' standards. Only after Character Development does it become clear that a lot of her "jokes" at her own expense weren't jokes at all.
• The Owl House: Beneath Luz Noceda's happy exterior lies a girl with next to no self esteem, even before she suffers her Trauma Conga Line. Luz never gives herself any slack, and when she screws up, she always takes it as a personal moral failing, such as how she voices her shame over in directly causing Eda to lose her magic, condemning herself for Amity getting fired after helping her, and especially after she learns the role she played in the Day of Unity and its aftermath.

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