7 Treatment Goals For Self Esteem (From An Expert)
Over the past fifteen years, I have helped thousands of people with their negative thoughts about themselves. Negative self-talk has been transformed into positive self-talk. I have taught even those with the most negative beliefs about themselves to love themselves. During that time, I have distilled my learnings from each client’s therapy sessions into 7 treatment goals for self esteem that pretty much everyone can achieve.
You see, I believe that we all make mistakes. We’re all imperfect! Some people, whether by accident or as a result of their upbringing, manage to accept those shortcomings and love themselves anyway. For others, their experiences have taught them ridiculously high standards that they can’t possibly achieve so therefore, they always just criticize themselves. They are never good enough. whether that’s about their body image, or feelings of low self-worth when attempting tasks they set themselves.
I passionately believe that everyone can learn to love themselves. When you love yourself and have a healthier sense of self worth, you brighten the lives of anyone you come into contact with. With a more positive self-image, you are more likely to have positive beliefs about your ability to tackle life’s challenges. Self love is something you can learn and get good at through regular practice.
So, What's Self Esteem?
Self-esteem is what you judge yourself to be. We are born with the ability to believe we are “beautiful” or “handsome”. We are also born with the ability to judge ourselves harshly and believe we are “ugly” or “useless”. It’s not only a belief though. When we hold negative beliefs about ourselves, it is quite likely we’ll feel feelings of inadequacy.
Why Is Self-Esteem Important?
Our belief in our ability to complete a task generally determines how well or how badly we’ll complete the task. This affects every area of our lives from making friends, partaking in hobbies or sporting activities, successfully achieving romantic relationships, getting the job we want, the house we want, etc. When we believe in ourselves, we will persist for longer until we succeed, whereas a lack of confidence will make us quit earlier.
Low levels of self-esteem can make it impossible to have better relationships, it can affect our career choices and play a significant role in lowering our general life satisfaction. A negative self-image can cause negative social comparisons in social situations. In other words, our internal self-talk can be “I’m not as good as……..”, or “He/she looks better than me ……..”.
Self-Hypnosis Audio For Self Love
Self-hypnosis can be a great tool to help you visualize your new, confident future where you have all the self-belief and self-love you need.
What Causes Low Self-Esteem?
The causes of low self esteem are many and varied. Here are some of them:
- Critical Parent: Many people who suffer from low self esteem might have grown up in negative environments. Typically, they will have experienced a parent who treated them in a way that had a negative effect. This could be being distant or unloving which led to them questioning why they weren’t loveable. Or it could be a parent who was constantly critical of you as you were growing up.
- Bullying: If you were bullied at school, other people constantly picking on some aspect of your behavior or personality can inhibit you from developing social skills and cause negative core beliefs to start forming.
- Mental Health Issues: Anxiety disorders or depressive symptoms can interfere with your interpersonal relationships and cause you to have feelings of low self-esteem
- Medical Issues: Chronic conditions like fibromyalgia, or physical disabilities can cause you to look at others and envy their lives and, of course, develop negative thought patterns about yourself and the quality of your life.
- Abusive Partner: If your partner is abusive in any way (eg. narcissistic, or gaslighting) this can lead to you feeling unworthy in some way.
What Can Self-Esteem Issues Lead To?
Many issues are interconnected. For example, just as an anxiety disorder can lead to low self-esteem, it can also be a negative consequence of having low self-esteem. Below are some of the possible negative consequences of having low self-esteem:
- Depression: Your constant negative self-talk, constantly criticizing yourself or telling yourself “I’m not able to….”, or “I’m not as good as….” can lead to feelings of depression or hopelessness.
- Fear Of Failing: You might find that you don’t even bother trying because you’ve already made up your mind that you’re going to fail, so not even trying means avoiding the embarrassment for failing.
- Addictions: Many people who feel the pain caused by constant negative thinking try to find comfort or escape in some form of substance abuse such as drug or alcohol abuse.
- Suicidal Ideation: Constantly feeling bad about yourself can lead to harmful thoughts as you find yourself just not being able to cope with life circumstances.
- Bad Relationships: Many people with low self-esteem settle for partners that they simply would not tolerate if they had higher levels of self-esteem. This puts them at risk of being controlled or spoken to in an emotionally abusive way.
- Avoidance: Low self-esteem can prompt you to shy away from social situations, informal contact with work colleagues, or even avoid romantic relationships.
Self-Hypnosis Audio For Self Love
Self-hypnosis can be a great tool to help you visualize your new, confident future where you have all the self-belief and self-love you need.
What Does Someone With High Self-Esteem Look Like?
I would regard myself as a person with high self-esteem, so all I have to do to write this section is to look inwards. Here are some of the ways that I think and behave regularly:
- I regard myself highly and yet have a sense of reality. While I acknowledge I might not be an expert in certain areas, I would still regard myself as “good enough”
- From a feelings perspective, I do not feel inferior to anyone. That doesn’t mean I feel superior to them either – just the equal of everyone. That could be a college professor or a garbage collector.
- When someone compliments me, I always feel good. I allow myself to feel good. I tell myself the compliment is warranted and accept it graciously.
- I never second-guess my decisions or actions. I choose to believe that I have only ever done my best in a given situation. While there may be something to positively learn from the situation, it also means there is nothing to criticize myself for.
5 Self Esteem Quotes
Here are some famous quotes from famous people about self-esteem. It is worth dwelling for a moment on each one and asking yourself if you could embrace the meaning of it.
"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent".
"Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are".
"Believe you can and you're halfway there."
"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance."
"You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection."
Self-Hypnosis Audio For Self Love
Self-hypnosis can be a great tool to help you visualize your new, confident future where you have all the self-belief and self-love you need.
How To Build Healthy Self-Esteem
We can achieve positive change by using two major motivators that are at our disposal. These are pleasure and pain. According to Sigmund Freud, human beings are always “seeking pleasure and avoiding pain”. To achieve positive change, we have to accomplish two major tasks. We have to:
- Eliminate negative thoughts
- Form positive thinking habits
To eliminate negative thoughts or beliefs about yourself, you can simply get a strong elastic band and wear it on your wrist and each time you hear your internal voice saying something negative, snap the elastic. The aim is to associate an unpleasant physical sensation with doing that thought. Over a couple of weeks, you’ll do that negative thought less and less.
Your 7 Achievable Goals
Here are 7 suggestions for improving your self-esteem:
- Let Go Of The Past: Whatever led to your self-esteem issues (eg. being criticized as a child), you have to let it go. The way to let it go is to forgive whoever did it to you. This does not mean meeting them face-to-face and saying “I forgive you.” Instead, you can just imagine it. Imagine they are standing in front of you right now and you are telling them that you forgive them. As you imagine forgiving them, imagine you grow in size and they shrink.
- Forgive Yourself: Realize that you have been very harsh to yourself. Perhaps imagine having a conversation with 5-year-old you. Imagine saying to him/her some of the things you regularly say to yourself. Feel how it feels to say this to a child that you love and care about. If you imagine this really vividly, this can feel quite emotional. Maybe you’ll feel quite shocked at how you have been communicating with that child up until now. Then make him/her a promise that you will never speak like that again. Promise to be loving and caring from now on.
- Celebrate Your Uniqueness: No more comparing yourself unfavorably to others. Instead, be pleased for them and remind yourself of your unique qualities.
- Learn To Say No: Being a people pleaser means you are not as important as the other person. Stop saying yes all the time. Give yourself permission to say no every so often. If the other person doesn’t like this, well, they are just going to have to deal with it!
- Set Good Boundaries: You have to decide what you are going to tolerate from now on. If, in the past, certain people have attempted to control you or take advantage of you, where are your new boundaries? There has to be an imaginary line in your mind that they are not allowed to cross.
- Make A List: Get out a sheet of A4 paper and start listing all of the things you actually like about yourself. Put that list somewhere you can see it every day when you awaken from sleep. Then read over it and remind yourself every day of what a loveable person you are.
- “Love Yourself” Time: Set aside at least five minutes every day to practice being nice to yourself. During this time, pick all of the things from the day that you are proud of yourself for, or could compliment yourself for, and go ahead and do it. Feel good about them. During this time, there are no “buts” allowed. When you have a self-esteem problem, you need to get in the good, positive habit of having positive thoughts about yourself every day until it comes naturally to you.
Self-Hypnosis Audio For Self Love
Self-hypnosis can be a great tool to help you visualize your new, confident future where you have all the self-belief and self-love you need.
Self Hypnosis For Self Esteem
Self-hypnosis has long been used as a powerful tool to help people make positive changes in their lives. Remember, the ultimate goal is that you don’t have to make a conscious effort to do this. Listening to a self-hypnosis recording every day for 30 days helps you to embed positive thoughts and positive behaviors in you mind so that they become automatic. I have distilled my fifteen years of experience with low self-esteem patients into writing and recording a powerful self-hypnosis recording called “Learn To Love Yourself“.
You can click on the link and download this recording instantly and get started straight away. By listening every day for thirty days, you’ll have a healthier sense of self-worth and a more positive outlook. This recording draws from hypnotherapy, NLP, and cognitive behavioral therapy to help you change the way you think about yourself. You’ll gradually change those cognitive distortions and reframe negative experiences.
If your self-esteem issues stem from mental health conditions, there are other recordings that may suit you better such as “Overcome Depression“, “Overcome Anxiety“, etc. If you like you can browse through all of my hypnosis downloads.
Author: Paul Hunter
Although thousands of people read his blog every month, Paul's path to success was not an easy one. Click here to read his amazing story "From Unwanted Baby And Adopted To A Respected Self Help Blogger". If you want to send Paul a quick message, then visit his contact page here
