Some days you wonder if you will ever be happy. You look in the mirror and you do not like what you see. You meet your friends and they are happy and outgoing; they share about exciting happenings in their lives and you think that your life is exactly the same. You wonder if you will ever feel good about yourself.
Check if any of these questions apply to you
- Do you feel ugly, unlovable, and that you do not measure up to your friends?
- Do you feel insecure, fearful and shy?
- Do you have problems making decisions and feel you need to consult others to decide?
- Do you feel worthless or unimportant?
- Do you fear criticism? Do you have a hard time expressing your opinions, feelings, and needs?
- Do you feel uncomfortable when someone praises you? Do you feel like an impostor if it happens?
- Are you anxious and pessimistic most of the time?
- Do you allow people to take advantage of you? Do you make fun of yourself?
- Do you have a difficult time identifying personal talents and abilities?
- Do you have a hard time initiating tasks out of fear of failure or indecisiveness?
- Are you judgemental of yourself and others?
Learning about Low Self-Esteem
If most of these statements feel true to you, you suffer from low self-esteem. Self-esteem is how we perceive ourselves. We can have healthy self-esteem or impaired self-esteem.
When we have impaired self-esteem life is hard, we feel lonely, inept, “less than” everyone else. Being uncomfortable with who we are and being unable to identify our own talents, we tend to envy others and to be judgemental.
Having a need to be accepted we rely on others to make decisions for us.
We have a hard time expressing our feelings. We tend to please others in order to be liked. We do not believe that we can be loved for who we are, so it is almost like we have to “buy” people’s appreciation by serving them.
At times we make fun of ourselves because deep down we are afraid people will make fun of us.
Because of these behaviors, people with low self-esteem might be taken advantage of or even be abused. When we have low self-esteem, feelings of anxiety and sadness are the norm. We feel lonely, unappreciated, incompetent, ugly, unimportant.
But it does not have to be this way, it can be changed!
Picture yourself having many friends and having a lot of happiness and excitement. Imagine looking at the mirror and feeling proud of who you are. Think about getting good grades, doing well in sports, discovering your personal talents, having your dream job, making money and having the relationship of your dreams…
Imagine feeling free to express your feelings, to make decisions, to assert your needs. Picture you getting attention and praise and feeling comfortable with it.
Feel the empowerment of loving yourself running through your veins, and filling your heart with peace and gratitude. It is all possible, I assure you!
Understanding How the Self-Esteem Develops
Self-esteem is created through your life experiences. Some of the reasons we develop low self-esteem are:
PARENTING STYLE: In the beginnings of our lives, human beings need the guidance and approval of their parents or caregivers in order to learn to love and accept themselves. If a child was brought up in an environment where her parents were unavailable or inconsistent a child might develop a sense that she is not good enough.
SOCIAL PRESSURE: Other factors that affect a person’s self-esteem might be related to social pressure. For example, in our society, we are pressured to fit some standards of beauty, masculinity/femininity, or power. The pressure to achieve these unrealistic standards also makes people feel inferior, or “broken”.
TRAUMA: Being exposed to trauma and abuse certainly affects self-esteem. A person might feel she deserved the abuse for something she did or did not do or she might feel she has not been deserving of love and respect by the abuser. In both cases, the result is a decrease in her self-esteem.
BULLYING: Being bullied and made fun of also will lower a person’s appreciation of her self-value.
UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS: At times, low self-esteem comes from an unrealistic expectation regarding ideals of beauty, performance, as well as the expectation of being liked by all, at all times.
These are all unrealistic expectations but when the person does not achieve her goals, she takes it as a failure, therefore, affecting her self-appreciation. These expectations might come from the social environment or from within the person herself.
ADOPTING POOR BEHAVIORS: When people engage in behaviors that are problematic such as being lazy, using drugs, engaging in risky behaviors, they might develop a distorted sense of who they are; feeling like their morals and behaviors are poor, they might despise themselves for who they became.
NEGATIVE SELF-TALK: Another reason for low self-esteem is the way that we learned to think. Many times we are exposed to constant negativity and negative thoughts are fed consistently in our brains, without any filter.
The repetition of these thoughts become our perception of ourselves. No matter what your reason to have impaired self-esteem, the important message is that you have the power to overcome low self-esteem.
“Love yourself. Enough to take the actions required for your happiness. Enough to cut yourself loose from the drama-filled past. Enough to set a high standard for relationships. Enough to feed your mind and body in a healthy manner. Enough to forgive yourself. Enough to move on.”
– Steve Maraboli –
The Therapy Process
Self-esteem is something that can be changed. Through therapy, you will be able to learn about yourself and get in contact with the goodness within you. By figuring out how your unhealthy self-esteem developed, we can foster situations to recreate opportunities to develop skills, talents, and challenges which will strengthen a healthy perception of yourself.
You will develop tools that will assist you to transform your impaired self-esteem into a healthy one. In the meanwhile, you will learn relaxation tools which can help you to handle the anxiety you will feel while in the process of conquering healthy self-esteem.
As a therapist, I will challenge you to see yourself with different eyes, in a way functioning as a mirror which reflects your skills, talents, and abilities back at you.
Initially, you will start by seeing those qualities, then you will work on accepting they are real and finally you will be incorporating and getting appropriation of your qualities, greatly improving your self-esteem and sense of accomplishment. I will then incentivize and motivate you to pursue enriching experiences to further experience a sense of competence and self-confidence.
The process is very similar to learning how to ride a bike. At first, you see a bike, then you understand how it functions, then you try to ride it and finally you conquer the new skill, which becomes second nature to you.
“Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-break on.”
– Maxwell Maltz –
Once you have a domain of it, the road is the limit: you can ride fast, you can ride for long distances, and you can even ride in a competition, if you so wish.
The same thing happens with self-esteem, once you conquer it, you will feel secure, confident and happy and you will have the potential to conquer the life of your dreams.
“You were born an original work of art. Stay original always. Originals cost more than imitations.”
– Unknown Author –
You do not need to remain stuck on this sad, negative low self-esteem. You can have the life of your dreams!
Call today to learn “how to ride your new bike” and set your destination towards your unlimited potential. I will cheer you along the way!
(561) 635-2431