Do these statements sound familiar?
- “I’m not good enough.”
- “I’m not competent.”
- “I’m unlovable.”
If so, you are probably struggling with low self-esteem. Low self-esteem impacts your perception of how you see the world and your role in it. It makes you focus on your mistakes, perceived weaknesses, and flaws. If you have low self-esteem you are likely to discount or ignore positive experiences and comments from others about you. You may experience difficulty being assertive and setting boundaries. Low self-esteem can often show physically in the body posture as well. For example by hunching shoulders, making yourself appear small, and avoiding eye contact by looking down at the floor.
I recently attended a workshop given by psychologist Dr. Melanie Fennell who specializes in helping individuals who struggle with low self-esteem. Dr. Fennell explained that self-esteem develops in a variety of ways. For example, you may experience mental health challenges such as depression, anxiety disorders, or trauma – which leads to feelings of being incompetent or inadequate. Or perhaps you’ve been through a series of negative experiences, such as growing up in a family with extremely high standards that you feel you cannot live up to – thus sending you messages that you aren’t good enough. Or you may have felt like an outsider growing up, like you never really fit in with your family, or at school.
These life experiences create a foundation for forming our sense of self. And as you may already be concluding – if you’ve experienced many negative situations – your sense of self is going to be negative as well. This negativity makes it difficult to believe positive things about ourselves. For example – you may have received compliments at work and taken them as negative, or brushed them off thinking “they’re just being nice”. Or perhaps you shoot down compliments from a friend or romantic partner because deep down you believe you are unlovable.
In thinking about how you perceive yourself in your world – you can probably guess how this impacts your behaviour. In your friendships or romantic relationships, low self-esteem can cause you to have difficulty forming healthy, strong relationships in which you are respected because you don’t believe you deserve that respect.
So how do you change this? How do you create a sense of self that is strong and robust and enables you with the confidence to face life’s challenges?
- Become more aware of these negative beliefs, and observe what’s going on when these thoughts are triggered
- Don’t accept these thoughts as an accurate reflection of who you are, and what is going on, challenge these thoughts instead. Ask yourself, “Is there another way to look at this situation?” “Is there another possible explanation?”
- Practice new ways of thinking and new behaviours that are more in line with your positive qualities
- Be compassionate with yourself. Remember that many people feel like you, you are not alone. We are all human and humans make mistakes. None of us are perfect.
- Seek out support, whether that comes from a close friend, your partner or a therapist. This isn’t something you have to do alone, and seeking out support can help you feel empowered to work on increasing your self-esteem.
These strategies are not easy – they take time, effort and practice. Remember you’re challenging beliefs that may have been around for a long time – so it’s important to be patient with yourself and give yourself time to change them.
Dina Tsirgielis, MA, Mental Health Therapist
CBT Psychology for Personal Development
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