What is it and how can I help you to understand and improve it?
Self esteem is essentially how we value ourselves. We might feel positive and confident in our own abilities and lives, or we might feel negative and critical towards ourselves.
Self esteem can influence many aspects of our lives, including work and relationships with family and friends.
Self esteem is an issue that frequently comes up for clients in counselling, people often want a counsellor to help them boost their lack of self esteem and explore with them how to build their confidence. Other times people go to see a therapist to seek support for another problem, and it emerges during therapy that the underlying issue is their low self esteem.
WHAT IS LOW SELF ESTEEM?
Low self esteem is when we place little value on ourselves. We may have developed negative views of life which can make it seem hopeless or pointless. We may spend a lot of time comparing ourselves to others, thinking that we are worthless and that others are much better than ourselves, which affects our confidence.
Sometimes it can leave us feeling that people are taking advantage of us, that we’re constantly under-achieving, or that we need to push hard to be the best to make up for a feelings of inadequacy.
WHAT CAUSES LOW SELF ESTEEM?
Our self esteem can be impacted by lots of different things – life experiences, our childhood, our family, our relationships. Sometimes there are particular people who make us feel inadequate.
We take on negative beliefs which affect how we feel about ourselves and our worth.
Our own personalities can influence these beliefs, but sometimes these negative messages come from what we see in the media or our interactions on social media.
HOW TO RAISE YOUR LOW SELF ESTEEM.
The key is to identify and understand what the negative messages are that are making you feel this way. Once you understand that, then you can start to take steps to address them.
These can be really small changes, such as recognising when these negative messages are untrue and exploring positive things about our lives.
Another thing is to understand if these negative messages are coming from a particular person, from negative friendships and relationships.
It can be helpful to find people you trust and seek out their opinions, people who can help you think more positively.
Looking after your wellbeing in general can boost self esteem, keeping healthy and active, doing things you enjoy and taking up new hobbies.
HOW CAN COUNSELLING HELP WITH SELF ESTEEM?
Working with a professional counsellor can help you explore the way you feel and change your view of yourself and others.
The first thing for the counsellor is to understand your story – to listen to you and ‘walk in your shoes’ to understand how and why you are feeling this way. Helping to identify the negative thoughts that have led you to poor self-belief, how this impacts your behaviour and how you function.
Counselling can help you identify what you would like to change in your life and ways you can make these changes, such as building a supportive network around you and raising your self-care.
These can be small changes, they don’t have to be massive steps but they can make a significant difference to your self-esteem. A lot of people don’t have the necessary tools, don’t commit the time or recognise the value of taking these small steps – therapy can help them with that.
Mark at Be Well Counselling
I am a qualified humanistic Gestalt counsellor based in Romsey near Southampton. I am a registered member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and work in accordance to the BACP Ethical Framework. I offer counselling to adults 18+ and young people (14-18) to help work through and beyond personal issues including self esteem.
Please contact me for further information how counselling can help you.
Kind regards, Mark.
Email : bewellcns@gmail.com
Tel / WhatsApp : 07359 759203
Web : www.be-wellcounselling.co.uk
(Adapted from the BACP article ‘Self esteem’…)
