How To Solve The Biggest Problems With Coping With Low Self Esteem
Sometimes
we settle for too little due to low self-esteem. Lots of symptoms of low
self-esteem show up in our emotional, mental and physical health, for example:
excess weight, poor relationship decisions, anxiety, stress, feeling ‘stuck’,
self-sabotage…
What’s the difference between self-esteem and confidence? Self-esteem is feeling good about yourself, it’s about your own personal respect whereas confidence is feeling good about what you do…
You are born with high self-esteem!
When a baby is in the room it commands the attention of the room. Everyone is focused on her or him and the baby revels and responds to the attention lavished on it. As the child moves through the stages of early life she or he learns how to have low self-esteem or low self-worth. These lessons often come from those people close to them – parents, a grandparent, aunt or uncle, or a teacher for example. As a result of misguided, or unintentional, comments the child starts to feel as though they are not good enough, feels bad at coming second or third instead of being the winner, feels the standards set are so high that child tries to be a perfectionist, the child tries to be ‘good’, for example. All this ‘learned’ behaviour contributes to low self-esteem as the child retreats into their shell to avoid the criticism, the judgement and or the comparisons.
Confidence is gathered form our external world whereas self-esteem comes from our internal world. Self-esteem is about how we talk to ourselves. As we start making mistakes and we start hearing’ no, no, no’, ‘you should do it this way’, ‘you should be like your brother/sister’, ‘why can’t you remember it, I told you last time how to do it’, and so on… Our thoughts becomes framed around things like ‘I’m not good enough’ ‘I’m useless’, ‘I’m not worthy’, ‘I don’t deserve it’, and these repeated thoughts and beliefs keep on reinforcing anytime we make a mistake, for example ‘I hope I don’t screw this up’ vs ‘I can do this’. We find we get into a ‘shoulda, coulda’ pattern and we start avoiding things to avoid being criticised. And we carry these negative, destructive patterns into our teenage and adult years.
How to solve the problems…
Emotional Freedom Techniques are a group of brief therapeutic interventions and self-help tools that I regularly use to help clients release negative emotions around low self-esteem. EFT is sometimes known as ‘acupuncture without needles’ or ‘tapping’. EFT brings together the principles of traditional Chinese medicine, neuroscience and cognitive behavioural therapy by combining stimulation of a series of acupressure points with cognitive restructuring (specially worded affirmations), typically leading to shifts in thought patterns and relief from both physical tension and excessive negative emotions.
If you, or anyone you know, suffer from low self-esteem which holds you back from enjoying the best in life, please contact me on [email protected] or go to my website www.outcomesunlimited.co.nz for more information
