You Can Change Your Life For The Better – Strengthen Your Confidence And Self Esteem
I can offer you a warm caring environment that will support you as you learn how to value yourself for the unique and special person that you are.
Self-Esteem
It is said that as much as 96% of the population suffer with low self-esteem! If you are wondering if you suffer from low self-esteem have a look at the list of symptoms to see how many apply to you:
- Feeling disconnected, don’t belong, not included, invisible
- Fear of commitment | fear of making decisions | fear of making the wrong choice
- Needy, jealous and possessive in relationships or distant, cold, uninterested and unresponsive
- Alone | lonely | sad | grief | everyone leaves you
- Everything is a struggle and hard | have to struggle to survive
- Feeling as though you are to blame for everything
- Feeling powerless, hopeless, helpless, futile, despondent, down
- Anger, resentment, blame, rage, hatred (usually resulting in episodes of aggressive behaviour)
- Taking responsibility for other people and their problems, so others feel great while you feel drained and dumped on
- Overly pleasing others while denying yourself what you want
- Feeling like you don’t belong, are different from others and that nobody really understands you
- Fear of embarrassment | humiliation | shame – preventing you from doing the things you want to in life
- Low or no confidence, little or no self-worth / self-like / self-love
- Shyness, awkwardness or feeling uncomfortable with other people
- Feelings of anxiety, fear or panic of the unknown
- Feeling unloved | unwanted | rejected | abandoned | as though you are a disappointment (black sheep of the family)
- Feelings of not being successful or actually feeling like a failure.
Although this looks like a long list it is not comprehensive and you may have a few more that you could add to it!
When people have valued their ‘worth’ from the job they do they are vulnerable to developing depression when they are no longer in the paid workforce, e.g. pregnancy or becoming the primary child care parent (as some men are now choosing to do). Retirees may find the transition very difficult and for those who are forced to relinquish a paid job for reasons of ill health or have suffered an accident, their sense of worthlessness can surface very quickly.
For many people, if their ‘ worth’ is not coming from success, love or approval by others they often struggle to know how they can attain it? For those whose job had been the main building block of their existence and then experience a situation when other people ask “what do you do for a living?” may suffer a further deterioration of how they value themselves.
It might be interesting to learn that negative emotional reactions almost always occur as a result of low self- esteem. So how we look at ourselves (self- image) acts as the magnifying glass that turns mistakes into events that overwhelm us. In addition to depression, low self- esteem can be linked to eating disorders and a variety of abuse.
Self-Esteem is how I regard myself as to who I am.
Self-Respect is how I regard myself as to what I do.
Self-worth includes both of the above. It is how we regard the wholeness of self. Self respect can be good, while self-esteem may remain low.
Self-confidence refers to how we display our self-worth to other people and to our interaction with others.
The degree to which we are comfortable being assertive is reflected in our levels of Self-Esteem, Self-Respect, Self-Worth and Self-Confidence.
Self- Respect
Self- respect refers to respect for oneself, one’s character, and one’s conduct. Self-respect is not contingent on success because there are always failures to contend with. Neither is self- respect a result of comparing ourselves with others. Having respect for others is difficult if you have no respect for yourself. The idea of self-respect is very closely related to self-confidence, but respect is more about what you do whereas confidence is about how you feel.
Our self-concept affects our self-confidence
Our general beliefs about ourselves can have a powerful effect upon our self-confidence across many situations.
Self-confidence and life skills – What is the secret to self-confidence?
Self-confidence and life skills can thrive through encouragement and positive feedback from other people according to Dr. David McClelland, (1917 –1998) an American Psychological theorist and leading authority on achievement motivation who summarised years of research on self-confidence by stating that the most important factor for developing self-confidence is to master the needed life skills.
Early Childhood Development
Early childhood development is vulnerable to the positive or negative interaction with significant people in a child’s life, for example, parents, siblings, teachers, friends, extended family, and so forth. Such experiences will form the foundation and play a significant role in how the child interacts with the wider world. But, we must also be aware of the child’s natural personality too and understand the ‘nature-nurture’ interplay. Ongoing life experiences can strengthen or weaken the foundation already laid down in childhood, particularly abusive relationships which, over time, chip away at what once appeared solid.
At different stages in life, we may need to draw on different aspects of our self. We may also choose to listen to the ‘messages’ we received when young from significant people that influenced our upbringing. We also need to look at the things we like most in ourselves and when they would be inappropriate (i.e. a fun-loving nature would be inappropriate in a business meeting at work). We need to look at the things we don’t like in ourselves and see how it works for us in a positive way (i.e. being ‘sensitive’ may, in fact, be the very aspect of a person that encourages other people to share their own sensitive issues).
I can offer you a warm caring environment that will support you as you learn how to value yourself for the unique and special person that you are. Please call me so that I can help you feel good about yourself, to feel confident, and able to cope with any situation in Life, whether at work, at home, or socially. I am a Qualified Clinical Hypnotherapist and Specialist Counsellor. I offer both a Counselling and Hypnotherapy Service. Call me today and take the first step…. to open the door to a better tomorrow.
