Counselling for Better Self Esteem

Do you regularly doubt yourself? Have you questioned your decisions on a regular basis?

Do you remember the dreams you had as a child? What happened to those dreams? To be more precise, what’s holding you back from living the life you desire and deserve?

Did you miss out on promotions at work because you did not believe you were good enough?

Did you ruin relationships because you felt undeserving of love? Are you insecure?

Do you feel unimportant, and that people do not care for what you might have to say?

Do you feel that you have apologized your way through life?

Confident, good self-image and self-esteem, satisfied with life

What is self-esteem?

We could describe self-esteem as “how we feel about ourselves”. It’s how we value ourselves independently of the world. It is how we feel about what we are capable of doing.

How we feel about ourselves may shift on a daily basis, depending on the situation in which we find ourselves. As emotional beings, it is natural to react to any given situation. However, we will perceive the same circumstances completely differently, depending on whether we have good or poor self-esteem. We may recognize these events as just another situation in life that we must deal with, or we perceive it as a personally devastating event.

Usually stemming from childhood, self-esteem is one factor that influences whether or not we live the life we desire. As children, we develop healthy and positive self-esteem and confidence from our primary caregivers. We feel happy when we receive an appropriate amount of recognition and genuine praise for our accomplishments.

When we are not able to do something, we are encouraged to try again, and not let the failure get us down. When we make a mistake, we are neither berated nor humiliated. Rather, we are encouraged to evaluate the consequences, and use the opportunity to learn.

Insecurity, self-doubt and poor self-image

As adults, in the business and the “busy-ness” of living life, we forget how much we have accomplished. We feel defeated when we don’t get what we want. Moreover, we judge and criticise ourselves on a single and temporary “setback” on our path to “success”.

We often compare ourselves to our neighbours, or our colleagues. Perhaps we envy their bigger house, nicer car, or more successful life. Sometimes we beat ourselves up when we are not able to meet the expectations or dreams of our parents. Sometimes we simply forget to love ourselves.

Our relationships are quite often affected when insecurity and self-doubt takes over. Our inability to feel confident about ourselves, our lack of belief in our capabilities, and our diminished self-worth, takes its toll on the people we love. Additionally, our work suffer, our career paths threatened, and our future seem bleak.

We do not live up to our potential, because internally we don’t believe we can do it. In other words, we have poor self-esteem. We do not view ourselves in a positive light, and this has the potential to sabotage so many aspects of our lives.

Healthy self-esteem

When we have good self-esteem, we regard ourselves positively, and we feel capable of achieving our goals and our dreams. We feel deserving of what life has given us, and we look forward positively to what else life has to offer. We have a positive self-image.

When things happen to us, we are usually able to evaluate it for what it is. We process it as necessary, and we are able to let it go without letting it affect us. When we experience failure or defeat, we are able to pick ourselves up, evaluate the situation, learn from it, and restore ourselves to our usual state.

We have a good sense of who we are, and we feel good about ourselves.

However, in the extreme, individuals develop an over inflated sense of self, leading to a narcissistic-type personality, whereby they feel entitled, or that they could do no wrong. Such behaviors or thinking may be self-destructive, and negatively impacts significant relationships.

Can Counselling help improve my pool self-esteem? Certainly, it can. Many therapists use Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to improve poor self-esteem. Ask an Innova counsellor today how they use Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to help you.