Self-Esteem

Self-Esteem is how you feel about yourself, right?

Yes, it is - it's about your feelings towards yourself, your beliefs on who you are and your sense of self-worth.

So, when you believe you can tackle anything anyone throws at you, that's your positive self-esteem showing. But, feeling worthless, or lacking in confidence in your abilities can be signs of low self-esteem.

The NHS website has a great way of explaining how to overcome low self-esteem. By challenging those beliefs about yourself, seeing the positives, being kind to yourself and learning to say “no” to people. This can be a lot to work on at once! And it can be difficult to challenge the way you think about yourself. Especially if you feel like you’re doing this alone.

Many people might know what they need to do to help themselves, but something is stopping them from being able to do that.

Maybe they need a helping hand? Talking this through in therapy can be really helpful - you can find what those roadblocks are, and figure out how to get past them together.

A lot of the time, these beliefs have developed over the years, from childhood experiences, adolescence, or even adulthood. We can't help but internalise some of the things other people have said/done to us, turning it inwards which can become pretty harmful.

By learning about what happened in the past, we can see how it affects someone now, and work towards changing that. That's a big part of therapy! As a therapist/counsellor (these terms tend to be interchangeable), I try to help the person I’m working with understand - what has happened throughout their life to make them feel this way? And why do they feel it's their fault?

So what about for you? The person reading this? Where do you think you're at with your self-esteem? Is it high, medium, low? Do you want it to be in a better place? Is there anything that stops you?