Self-Esteem Therapy

Is Low Self-Esteem Holding You Back From Your Full Potential?

• Do you feel different or abnormal, like you’re always the odd one out? 

• Are you tired of constantly worrying about what other people think of you?

• Do you often find yourself replaying your mistakes and overthinking everything you do? 

Maybe you have so many things you want to accomplish, but your low self-esteem prevents you from doing so. Perhaps you get so stuck in your own head overthinking social situations that you end up avoiding chances to meet new people. Over time, this can create a shame spiral—the less you put yourself out there, the worse you feel. Deep down, you probably wish there was someone out there who believed in you and could help you learn to believe in yourself. 

Low Self-Esteem Often Goes Hand In Hand With Anxiety

Fear of judgment is the hallmark of low self-esteem. You might get withdrawn and nervous around other people because you’re afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing. Perhaps you’re always anticipating the worst-case scenario and imagining that you’ll embarrass yourself if you speak your mind. As a result, you may experience panic attacks, stomach aches, and a constant sense of unease. 

If you want to break out of this anxious mindset and be who you are without any reservations, I encourage you to connect with me. With my compassionate, empowering approach to counseling, I believe that I can help you challenge negative beliefs, improve your self-confidence, and learn to love yourself on a deeper level. 

Our Success-Crazed Culture Is A Breeding Ground For Low Self-Esteem

If you’re dealing with low self-esteem, it’s normal to feel like you’re all alone—but the truth is that you’re not. I would say that over half of my clients struggle with low self-esteem. It’s a growing problem in our culture, and roughly 85 percent of people all over the globe suffer from it.*

Oftentimes, low self-esteem has its roots in early childhood relationships. If you grew up with an overly critical or demanding caregiver, it’s normal to be extra hard on yourself and think of yourself as unworthy. 

That said, low self-esteem is often exacerbated by societal standards for success, beauty, and popularity. Our culture places too high a value on image and accomplishments instead of just accepting people for who they are. Social media only makes matters worse, since it creates a false impression of other people’s lives. All over Instagram and Tik Tok, we see people falling in love, climbing the corporate ladder, and going on expensive vacations. 

Inevitably, this leads to a “compare-and-despair” phenomenon—we feel like everyone is leading a charmed life except for us. We worry that we’re the only ones who don’t measure up. Counseling is a chance to challenge this narrative, realize that you’re not alone, and learn to see yourself in a more empowering light. 

Therapy Can Help You Boost Your Self-Esteem And Practice Being Kind To Yourself 

When you don’t feel confident in yourself, it’s only natural to avoid situations where you risk rejection or failure. But if you never face your fears, your confidence can’t grow. Therapy can help you break out of this cycle of avoidance and learn to challenge the fears that you would normally run away from. You will learn to build your self-esteem in an environment that’s safe, supportive, and deeply empowering. I will be with you every step of the way. 

At the moment, I know you probably feel stuck—I get it. But the truth is that you really never know until you’ve tried. You never know the heights to which your self-esteem can soar until you start deconstructing negative beliefs, challenging avoidance behaviors, and implementing new assertiveness skills. I will give you a safe space to practice these things so that your confidence can increase by leaps and bounds.

What We’ll Explore In Self-Esteem Counseling Sessions

In therapy together, you and I will work on getting to the root cause of your low self-esteem and exploring the events that led you to feel the way you feel. I will teach you to shift ownership of your experiences—meaning that if you developed low self-esteem from being bullied, we may explore how your bully’s issues had more to do with them than with you. In this way, you can try releasing any negative emotions and beliefs that you absorbed from your experience. 

The long-term goal of counseling is to help you live a life unburdened by fear of judgment. I’ll help you set up stronger emotional boundaries between what people say and how you feel, allowing you to have a sense of internal peace that’s unaffected by external events. You can learn to value yourself as you are, accepting that people may not always be pleased by what you do—and that’s okay! 

Skills To Help You Improve Your Self-Esteem

I draw from a wide range of skills, strategies, and affirmations to help clients boost their self-worth. These include:

• Grounding techniques—When you feel anxious or panicked, you can use sensory exercises like meditation and visualization to help you stay grounded and combat feelings of low self-esteem. 

• Assertiveness skills—People-pleasing may temporarily relieve anxiety, but it leads to lower self-esteem because it tells you to suppress your needs. You’ll learn skills for asserting yourself, establishing boundaries, and communicating your needs. 

• Positive affirmations—You’ll keep a running list of positive statements about yourself that you can read out loud to yourself when you find yourself spiraling down. 

• A handout of cognitive distortions—This handout will include a list of negative thought patterns such as catastrophizing, all-or-nothing thinking, or personalization (which means thinking everything is your fault), allowing you to recognize cognitive distortions in real time. 

In the end, my goal is to help you come up skills and tools that work for you. I want you to take what you learn in therapy and use it to increase your resiliency, shift your mindset, and love yourself exactly as you are. 

Let Me Help You Gain The Courage To Believe In Yourself

If you want to overcome people-pleasing behaviors, learn to assert yourself, and become the person you’ve always wanted to be, I encourage you to pursue self-esteem therapy with me. To get started, you can use the contact form or call 214-364-4575.

*The Relationship With Yourself | Psychology Today