Who Do You See When You Look in the Mirror?

Does Your Self-Esteem need a Boost?

If like me you are approaching the festive season with a bit of self-reflection, that's not unusual.

Coming to the end of the year quite often leads to a brief appraisal of the months that have gone before; how good a year it was, what was bad about it and maybe giving ourselves a quick inner rating of our success in coping with it. Sometimes we might even give it a narrative along the lines of 'that was a tough one-hopefully next year will be better' or 'I really need to try and get a grip on my career/my finances/my love-life next year!'. Our internal assessment of ourselves is a precursor to our self-worth; if we see ourselves poorly then our self-esteem and self-confidence will be low.

I always find the thought of the holiday season a bit unnerving too; not least because we'll most likely be reconnecting with relatives and friends over Christmas and New Year who we may not have seen for a while. That means the possibility of questions about work, your love life, your children; not to mention where you are going on holiday next year. Before we know it, we're comparing ourselves with others.

If you are on any of the social media platforms as I am, they can be filled to overflowing with posts about cooking the perfect roast dinner, the perfect party outfit and the perfect make-up.

All these things can intensify or confirm feelings you have about yourself. and if you are looking at yourself in that mirror and berating yourself, this blog post is for you.

Help-I think my self-esteem is low!

Here are some areas where low self-esteem manifests and more importantly , further on I will cover some ways to get it back! It's worth being aware self-esteem does tend to vary over time but if you are:-

• Struggling to look in the mirror or avoiding them at all costs

• Feeling your confidence at work is holding you back from achieving your potential

• Have a sneaky feeling your low self-esteem is preventing you from finding a partner

• Feel you are good at something but then second guess yourself

• Aren't looking after yourself as you should

• Have a sense of not being worth it in friendships

then the chances are your self-esteem has dropped.

One thing I can say for certain is; many people I have worked with have self-esteem that has all but died on the hill of Comparison or Negative Self-talk. All this focus on perfection isn't great if you find yourself comparing yourself to others unfavourably.

Finding yourself dropping into the Comparison Spiral often leads to that other psychological chestnut-Imposter syndrome.

That being said, hopefully this blog will give you some hints and tips around increasing your self-esteem-it may be lower than you would like, but there's lots you can do to improve it.

How do we get our Self-esteem?

We get our self-esteem from a variety of sources; self-esteem is quite a complex melting pot of past experiences, our level of nurturing as children, our resulting self-talk and how 'competent' we feel in our daily lives. We almost can't help taking notice of what others think of us, which will cause problems if we believe they always think badly of us.

As I mentioned earlier, our parents way of nurturing us affects our opinion of ourselves. Ideally we should learn from them that we are loveable whatever we say or do as a child. If our parents love is conditional i.e. based on how well we perform in life, it will mean we easily fail in their eyes and struggle with our self-worth.

Just because we didn't get enough of the right things as a child, it doesn't mean we can't improve our opinion of ourselves.

Let Me introduce you to 'Positive Strokes'

I recently attended a course on Transactional Analysis , where we learned about 'Positive Strokes'.

I had encountered this before as part of my therapeutic counselling training and I found it was one of the quickest ways to increase the self-esteem of individuals in a group.

1. Each person writes their name on an envelope.

2. Over the course of the meeting/day everyone writes on a piece of paper what they think of everyone in the group and puts it in the individuals envelope.

3. The one rule is that the comment is POSITIVE, absolutely no negative remarks allowed.

4. It is personal choice whether you sign each comment with your name.

5. By the end of the day, each person picks up the envelope with their name on it and gets to read all the positive things others think of them.

It's a really great way for people to find out their good points-which, believe or not, we all have.

Obviously this method only works in a group HOWEVER-why not write down everything everyone has ever complimented you with? You could even ask close friends and family what they like about you. The only caveat is that they don't just mention your physical attributes.

Once you have all the nice things people have said about you, pop it in an envelope and promise yourself you will read it from time to time.

Self-Care as a Self-Worth Boost

I use a variety of techniques in my sessions with people that seem to have low self-esteem; it's one of my favourite issues to work with.

One of the best ways is to start on a Self-Care Mission.

This involves looking at where you are not fully taking care of yourself, physically, socially, psychologically, mentally and spiritually.

Once you have identified which areas you are struggling with, you can then make an intention to incrementally increase things you do.

You may be great at brushing your teeth, keeping your medical appointments but not so good at getting outside, connecting with others or having enough mental stimulation.

When we start to care for ourselves, something magical happens-we start to believe we are worth looking after!

Negative Self-Talk-try to switch it to Positive

We all have an Inner Critical Voice. For some people it is particularly loud.

Having a critical parent or having been bullied at school for example, can make it louder.

Our brain is wired for safety and/or survival, it is it's first priority.

It makes sense then that anything else is just the icing on top of the cake as far as your brain is concerned. What that means is that we may have to put some work into keeping our self-esteem up being as your grey matter isn't making it a priority.

We all have what's called a negativity bias, that is our brains will subconsciously look for the negative so we have to sometimes work at steering it away from it.

This might look like, switching negative thoughts you have about yourself to something more realistic. The 'I'm always useless at dealing with technology' to 'I need to learn a bit more but that's okay'.

Give these a try and let me know if they help.

If you need support for your self esteem just click here