Do you feel worthless or that your life is meaningless? Do you feel incompetent or inferior? Do you feel unloved or generally unwanted or disliked? Do you find that you need other’s approval and opinions? Anxiety about being disliked or rejected? Frequent or irrational feelings of guilt? Self-criticism or criticism from others? Self doubt and indecision? Fear of making mistakes? Self-destructive behavior? Deference to others? Comparing yourself to others? Discounting your needs, feelings, and wants? Staying in relationships where your investment or love isn’t reciprocated? Defensiveness and hypersensitivity to criticism or negative feedback? Discomfort with compliments? Difficulty speaking up, sharing opinions, or setting limits with people? Frequent negative thoughts and emotions? Being drawn to destructive relationships? Difficulty trusting yourself? Fear of intimacy? Envy of others? Difficulty starting and completing tasks or pursuing goals? Distorted views of yourself and others? Lack of agency – a feeling of “I can’t” instead of “I can?”
Treatment for Low Self-Esteem Issues and changing our beliefs, behavior, and how we think about ourselves can raise our self-esteem. Since many people have struggled with self-esteem issues from early childhood until the present, it’s often necessary to seek counseling for this condition as it’s one that most people aren’t often able to treat on their own. Left untreated, this could lead to serious mental health issues and even self-harm. If your relationship is suffering, improving your self-esteem increases relationship satisfaction for both you and your partner. Often, when only one person enters counseling, the relationship changes for the better, and happiness increases for the couple.
I am a supportive and caring therapist who can guide you to a more realistic sense of self, as well as encourage and help you to take risks and focus on the positives to overcome the grip that low self self-esteem can have. Once you recognize things that trigger low self-esteem, such as the way you look in a bathing suit, or how you feel when you always had assumed that people were talking about you, you can begin to reassure yourself that your limits are self-imposed. The trapped feeling that people with self-esteem issues regularly face can be ameliorated by learning to evaluate the situation and changing negative thoughts. Taking a new and objective view of oneself and the situation is the key to overcoming the powerful psycho-dynamic that is low self-esteem.