Confidence and Low Self Esteem
Confidence and Low Self Esteem
What do you really feel about yourself?
Do you feel lovable? Do you put yourself and your needs first? Do you feel deserving of love, joy and success?
If the answer to any of the above is no, then you may be struggling with a lack of confidence and low self-esteem.
Why therapy?
Therapy can help us to explore where our negative thoughts and feelings have come from and provide tools to challenge those messages we have told ourselves for far too long.
Often, low self-esteem has its roots in the way we were treated as children when our negative image of ourselves was set up. In adulthood, these negative thoughts can continue to hold us hostage, keeping us ‘small’ and making it difficult for us to see our inherent self-worth and value in the world.
Perhaps, as an adult, you find yourself in a relationship which does not support you to feel good about yourself. So you keep your head down …
“I’m hopeless at …”, “I’ve never been able to …”, “Why would anyone want to be with me?”, “I don’t deserve …” These are the kinds of messages which some of us unconsciously live by.
Therapy is a place where we can we take the brave step to share with someone else all of the critical and unkind messages we tell ourselves – and perhaps others tell us too - and then we can begin to free ourselves from their power.
A therapist is an unconditional listening ear, someone who will hear what you are saying without judgement and with compassion and respect.
If I’m not who I thought I was, then who am I?
but........
Once I say all those horrible things about myself out loud, then what?
Talking helps. Being truly listened to helps. It takes courage to voice what can feel shameful and secret but shining a light on those dark thoughts can be truly empowering.
Confidence comes with practise, sometimes it comes with ‘faking it to make it’ but the journey is worth the effort you put in!
With your therapist’s help you’ll begin to see another way of viewing yourself in the world, with your head held high and an understanding of what triggers you and how to care for yourself in those challenging situations.
This is often a question our clients ask when they start the journey to change what they have believed about themselves for so long.
It can be frightening to face the prospect of changing a lifetime of critical messages and begin to see ourselves in a more positive and confident way.
It can feel like we’re being arrogant or smug when we begin to truly believe we are “worth it”. But that can also be a part of our social conditioning which needs to be explored and challenged.
In therapy, you have the chance to practise new behaviour, ask for your needs to be met, speak aloud the kinds of words you’d like to believe about yourself “I am perfect as I am”, “I love myself”, “I am lovable” …
In the safety of your confidential therapy sessions you will begin to see that anything is possible when you take the risk to see yourself as perhaps you’ve never had the confidence to do so before.
What difference could therapy make?
At first it feels hard, but as the therapy progresses, it begins to feel easier and easier to speak kindly to yourself, to challenge those who would put you down and keep you small. You’ll begin to put yourself first which is nothing less than you deserve.
We all have the right to feel good about ourselves. It’s time to make the choice to give up the old, negative messages and replace them with new, positive and life-enhancing ones.