Overcome low self-esteem: Rediscover your worth through therapy

Low self-esteem is one of the most common issues people seek therapy for. It usually presents as feeling negative or critical towards oneself and can impact many areas of our lives, including our careers, relationships and ability to care for ourselves.

Having low self-esteem can also create a vicious cycle. When we feel bad about ourselves, we are less likely to reach out for support (“They don't want to listen to me”) or take up new hobbies (“No one will like me”). We might also pass up opportunities for promotion or advancement in our careers, not wanting to put ourselves out there for fear of others' judgements.

We imagine all sorts of things when we suffer from low self-esteem and the critical voice in our head can feel overwhelming and overpowering. It sometimes feels paralysing. We want to escape but we have no idea how, and so it is very easy for us to fall into depression, thinking life won't change and things will never get better. After all, we're stuck with ourselves, aren't we?

With therapy, you can begin to see that you do not need to be the person you think you are. Who is this person who ‘makes mistakes', who ‘gets everything wrong' who ‘people don't like'? Is it really you? 

It can be difficult to see when you're in the grips of low self-confidence, but there is a healthy you underneath who knows you can be more and who knows your self-worth. The reason we feel so much anxiety and depression when we suffer from low self-esteem is because this part of you is being ignored. It is your way of telling yourself "Something's wrong. You're not thinking straight." Or, perhaps, more simply: "This isn't really who you are."

When we are caught in the vicious cycle of low self-esteem, it can be very hard to escape without outside support. All we see are the negatives, and what I've written above might feel impossible to connect with right now. After all, if you felt entirely positive towards yourself, you probably wouldn't feel the need to read this article in the first place.

It is incredibly normal to experience low self-esteem. In most of our upbringings and school systems, we are constantly being shaped and moulded to fit a structure set by our parents and teachers. If we don't ‘fit in' in any way, we assume (quite understandably but incorrectly) that there is something wrong with us. 

Therapy can help you explore where some of the thoughts you have towards yourself might be coming from, and whether there is any validity in them or whether they are simply (as I suspect) ways you devised to understand a world that was incomprehensible to you as a child.

When you really see this, you will begin to have thoughts about yourself that are more in alignment with who you really are. You can redefine yourself and come to an understanding that is based on reality, and not on others' ideas of who you ought to be. 

So, answering how to overcome low self-esteem is quite simple. Through therapy, you can understand and let go of everything that is getting in your way. And you may be quite amazed with the results!