Self-esteem

Self-esteem or confidence is the belief and sense that particular tasks can be carried out to a particular standard. Self-confidence may refer to a specific skill (e.g. ‘I am a good driver' etc); a general ability (e.g. ‘I get on well with children’) or a social situation (e.g. ‘I feel ok in a small group’).

It is normal to feel confident in some situations and less confident in others. It would be unrealistic to expect yourself to confident about everything all of the time. However, feeling under-confident about most things most of the time can be devastating and overwhelming; impacting family, professional and social life.

The effects of low self-confidence can include:

• Avoidance of situations such as social events, new challenges...
• Negative beliefs, that lead to low self-esteem or depressive thinking
• Withdrawal from engaging/relating with other people
• Acute embarrassment
• Distorted self view (e.g. ‘I am totally useless at absolutely everything’)

Help with self-esteem

Self-help

Moving away from poor self-confidence. You can learn to develop confidence. It is important to become aware of yourself, others and your environment. Notice your strengths and build on them, accept yourself and own your limitations.

Confidence tends to work to a spiral pattern – the more you do that boosts your confidence, the more confident you feel (upward spiral) and conversely, the more you do to undermine your confidence, e.g. a task for which you are under-resourced and therefore likely to fail or underachieve, the less confident you feel (downward spiral).

It is useful to create achievable challenges for yourself, this will help your confidence to steadily build. Avoid setting a very high goal that is unachievable. It is important to recognise that when building up confidence to acknowledge yourself by:

• speaking positively to yourself
• remember what went well
• offering yourself a little reward
• noticing how you feel when you display confidence
• noticing how others respond to you

Remember situations where you displayed a lack of confidence, and see them as opportunities to learn and move towards confidence. It can very helpful to observe others whom you consider confident and learn from them, as confidence is a skill that can be learnt. If you know them well, it can be useful to speak to them and find out what is going on inside them e.g. thoughts and feelings in a situation - You maybe surprised to hear that they feel the same way as you., it

It may be useful to ask friends and colleagues to help develop your confidence, it can be useful to acknowledge your fears by telling someone ‘I don’t feel very confident..’, ask them for positive feedback. This will help you gauge your confidence level.

Keep looking after yourself, you can keep a diary or notebook of your progress and your learning. If you would like some structure, then remember these headings as an approach to self reflecting in your notebook or diary.

• (K)eep Doing
• (I)mprove Doing
• (S)top Doing
• (S)tart Doing

Counselling and psychotherapy

Counselling and psychotherapy can help to improve confidence and self-esteem.

Your next steps are..

Click here to see our 3 step guide to start counselling and psychotherapy.

Reading Recommendations

If you would like to read more about counselling, then I recommend the following books:

TA Today

Ian Stewart, Vann Joines

£11 .99

This is a comprehensive introduction to Transactional Analysis. The book is well structured and is easily read, and covering the main areas of TA theory. A great feature of this book is the examples and exercises included.
Buy this book online now

Counselling for Toads

Robert de Board

£9.99

I love this book and many of my clients do too. This is an informative story about Toad on the road to recovery from 'depression'. Counselling for Toads provides an insight into the process counselling and psychotherapy, this book should be a companion to anyone that is having or thinking about counselling or psychotherapy.
Buy this book online now

Further information and support

The Samaritans