Self Esteem

Self esteem or sense of self is about how we feel about ourselves. It's about how we see ourselves, not physically or emotionally, it's more about the opinions and feelings that we have about ourselves. Do we feel good about ourselves confident and comfortable around others? Or do we sometime feel inferior, worthless and useless. Our self esteem develops very early on in life. If we are loved for just who we are and given unconditional approval in our early years by our parents or guardians we tend to develop a strong sense of self or strong self esteem.  In other words we feel good about ourselves. If this approval and encouragement continues as we grow into adulthood we develop a strong sense of self and are comfortable around people and situations and have the confidence to meet the demands put upon us by others.

But for most of us life isn't that simple. If we have developed a weak sense of self during childhood due to the fact we were given more disapproval than approval and not encouraged and regularly put down or just ignored. We then can develop a weak sense of self or have low self esteem with a tendency to be less confident and be less able to cope with what life may throw at us.

Self esteem differs from person to person and it's not all about our childhood. Even if we have had very positive upbringing, many positive experiences in our life and always coped well under pressure a number of life crisis events such as bereavement, loss of job, debt, relationship breakdowns, pressures from work, family pressures, Illness etc can bring our confidence crashing down and weaken our self esteem.

Our self esteem is a vulnerable part of us and it can quite easily take a knock. It's often when we get concurrent negative life experiences that we start to feel a lack of confidence and feel less able to cope. For others it can be a one to one relationship where a person is being controlled/abused and can't see a way out. In these circumstances we have a tendency to feel hopeless, worthless, become depressed and have little confidence. We tend to seek reassurance from others and become more dependant than when our lives are going well.

However the good news is that we can and do recover from negative life events. Strong self esteem can be regained or if we had little to begin with then there are lots of thing that can be done to build a strong sense of self which makes us feel more confident. This can take time; how long depends and varies on what our learned beliefs are, the influences of others around us, what life experiences we have had and our social circumstances, for example, housing, work, money, friendships etc.

Some life events or experiences either reinforce our original beliefs or cause us to have doubts about them. For example bereavement, loss of job, debt, relationship breakdowns and so on.  If we had developed a set of negative beliefs in the past this in turn could affect how we perceive future life experiences. In other words we can have a tendency to only notice the negative side to life and have a negative view of life in general.

In these circumstances a person may find alternative ways to cope with life like opting out altogether from certain activities. For example, a person may have had a really bad relationship breakdown, so to keep themselves safe in the future they say 'I won't do that again, I will stay single and not get involved'. Another safety mechanism is to only ever aim for very small targets in life then there is less fear of failing. The problem with this type of behaviour is that it maintains our feeling of being inferior as we never get to know what we might have actually achieved. In other words this is what's called avoidance and avoidance is unhelpful because it maintains a problem rather than it ever being tackled or solved.

Another way of trying to protect our self esteem is to strive for perfection. This is an attempt to prove to oneself and to others that they are good enough and not a failure. Striving for perfection can be helpful in the short term but long term it can be very exhausting to maintain. It can cause us to be constantly anxious and very driven but ultimately we are likely to fall short or fail at something. At this stage we then tend to exaggerate our shortcoming and failures, often out of all proportion, making us feel a failure and not good enough.

Most people have a mix of beliefs, some people's beliefs are more positive than others. But to help us build up our self esteem it can be useful to look at how we see the world and what negative beliefs we posses and work on altering them.

In addition to this we need to build and strengthen out positive beliefs. One of the ways we can start to do this is by recognising and challenging negative thinking and unhelpful behaviours. 

As a final word on self esteem just because someone says something bad about you it doesn't mean it's true. It's more often about the other person trying to feel good at your expense. Just because you may be feeling bad about your self it doesn't mean you are unlovable: you are loveable. Just because you have had a bad start to life, some negative experiences or a range of crises and your confidence is low it doesn't mean to say that you will always feel like this. Ones self esteem can and does repair. Your self esteem can be strengthened and you can go on to be all thing s that you want to be.

Counselling can be extremely helpful in the process of getting over bad experiences, the process continues to work cognitively, this then helps to strengthen your self esteem and improves how you feel about your self. This in turn helps you feel more confident and more able face the world and generally feel better about your self all round.

- James Harris, 2009