About the author
Page last updated by Dr Elaine Ryan
How to feel good about yourself again
Your self-esteem is linked to how you feel – how you talk to yourself inside your head.
Whether you call it confidence, self-image, or self-esteem, you talk about how you view yourself. The terms themselves are neutral, but the meaning you attach to them inside your head may well involve judgements.
Impact of Low Self Esteem
To look at the low impact self-esteem can have on your life, we first need to look at how you view yourself – the beliefs you hold about yourself.
How you feel about yourself – your emotions
You might be critical of yourself or have little self-belief in what you can do. These thoughts 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 or avoid certain aspects of your life. Low self-esteem can affect your work or school, personal life and relationships.
Relationships with others
You probably find that you are very self-conscious or critical of yourself in interactions with other people. You may compare yourself to others negatively – 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 (beliefs) you have about yourself inside your head. You may second guess why they said the things they did or play down your role in whatever it was, you received the compliment for.
Signs and Symptoms of Low Self Esteem
- Your mood may be relatively 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 have to do – the social side of yourself
- You could well feel guilty or worthless
We can turn this around if this sounds familiar to you.
How do I work?
I will show you how to work with 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 use 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.