Therapy for Self-Esteem

Do you wonder if you have a negative self-perception? Have you ever wished you had a more compassionate or realistic view of yourself? A TPG therapist can help.

What Is Self-Esteem?

Self-esteem is what you think of yourself. It is informed by your internal evaluation of your qualities, including your strengths, weaknesses, skills, and abilities. When your self-evaluation is reasonable and relatively accurate, you are likely to have healthy self-esteem. However, many people have a hard time assessing themselves accurately.

What Is Low-Self-Esteem? 

Low self-esteem means you tend to view yourself negatively. You may feel inadequate, incompetent, or impatient with yourself. This perspective can make you feel like an impostor—the so-called “imposter syndrome”—and rob you of feeling satisfied with your accomplishments. Low self-esteem can affect decision-making and can present in many ways, including symptoms of anxiety, depression and addiction.

Is Low Self-Esteem an Individual Struggle?

Experiences of oppression and devaluation also impact our sense of self-worth. We are born and raised within a social structure that assigns meaning or value to race, gender identity, disability, class, sexual orientation, body size, and other characteristics. Low self-esteem may reflect how systemically devalued your identity and worth have been.

How Can Therapy Help Low Self-Esteem? 

A therapist will help you to come to a fuller and more realistic sense of yourself. This means understanding yourself in a holistic way. We thrive on appreciation our strengths, which fuels our effort to work on what needs to be addressed in our lives. Seeing a therapist to deal with a lack of confidence and impaired self-esteem can involve:

• Identifying negative core beliefs(e.g., “I am lazy”)
• Exploring your personal history for origins of low self-esteem
• Understanding what triggers your negative self-concept
• Learning how to manage emotions such as fear, anger, envy
• Building up your internal strengths and resources

Further Reading

For further reading on self-esteem, social oppression, and decolonizing mental health.

For general self-esteem, see the Wikipedia summary.