Self Esteem and Confidence

How to feel good about yourself again

Your self esteem is linked to how you feel about yourself – how you talk to yourself inside your head.

Whether you call it confidence, self image or self esteem, you are talking about how you view yourself.  The terms themselves are neutral, but the meaning you attach to them, inside your head, may well involve judgements.  Judgements about yourself.

Impact of Low Self Esteem

In order to look at the impact low self esteem can have on your life, we first need to look at how your view yourself – the beliefs that you hold about yourself.

How you feel about yourself – your emotions

You might be critical of yourself, or have very little self belief in what you can do. These thoughts inside your head, can make you feel sad, ashamed, guilty and anxious.

The thoughts and feelings can then affect what you do. You might find that you apologise a lot, or avoid certain aspects of your life. Having low self esteem can affect your work or school, your personal life and relationships.

Relationships with others

You probably find that you are very self conscious, or critical of yourself around interactions with other people.  You may well compare yourself to others, in a negative way – I’m not good enough, they are better than me.

Maybe you try your best to be accepted, and go overboard trying to please people.  This can lead to resentment as there is only one of you, and many more “others.”

Work

If you do well at work or college, people may compliment you, but these compliments will not fit with the image (beleifs) you have about yourself, inside your head.  You may second guess why they said the things they did, or play down your own role in whatever it was you received the compliment for.

Signs and Symptoms of Low Self Esteem

• You mood may be quite low
• You may feel tired
• You could well experience changes in your appetite
• Your sleep may become affected
• You might not find things as enjoyable as you did before
• You might withdraw from activities that you do not really have to do – the social side of yourself
• You could well feel guilty or worthless

If this sounds familiar to you, together, we can turn this around.

How do I work?

I will show you how to work with your thoughts – your “self talk” to ensure that your thoughts are helpful (as opposed to hurtful) to you.

You will discover new helpful beliefs about yourself. This in turn will affect how you “feel” about yourself – in a good way. I will used tried and tested researched methods to help you to improve your self esteem and raise your confidence levels.

We shall use Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Mindfulness Based Approaches to provide you with a “toolkit” to feel good about yourself.