Unless you are a psychotherapist or psychologist you can forgiven for getting confused with al the different “self-…” words in the world of self help and mental health. You may hear self esteem, self confidence, self worth, self compassion…the list goes on and on. Sometimes these words are interchangable but can also be helpful to see them as having distinct differences which I will attempt to explain here. These difference do mean that its perfectly possible (and even common) for a person to feel confident but lack self esteem.
What is confidence?
Whilst this is debatable, for the purposes of this blog, confidence can be considered a way of projecting yourself on to the outside world. If you are confident you are likely to appear okay in social situations, perhaps perform well at interviews and not be as phased by others at public speaking. You may also have belief about yourself in general which enables you to push yourself in your career or you may feel attractive and confident in romantic relationships.
You can also be confident in certain areas such as confident riding a bike or being a confident cook. In this respect it means having faith self belief and faith in your abilities about something specific.
What is self esteem?
Self esteem is more about how you feel about yourself as a person. It can include whether not you are confident i.e. whether you have self belief that you are good at things. But also includes whether you feel likeable, good enough as a person and worthy of love. Another way to describe this is “self worth”. Therefore self esteem can be considered an overall perspective about yourself which includes whether you have self worth but also self belief and confidence.
Can I be confident but also lack self esteem
According to the above distinctions its therefore perfectly possible to be confident but lack self esteem. For example, you might feel really confident in a certain such as with computers, but feel really anxious socially.
On the other hand you might be be considered an “extrovert” who loves socialising and seems confident “on the outside” but be quite self critical internally and compare yourself to others.
Some people’s low self esteem effects all areas of their life so they hold themselves back in work and relationships because they assume they will fail. However, its very common for people to be successful at work and have lots of friends but still deep down not good enough and wonder if they are loveable. Often in this case a person will need validation from work, friends or partners to reassure them that they are loveable but therefore worry unneccessarily about what people think or whether they have made mistakes. This can actually cause a lot of stress and anxiety even though generally a person may appear to be functioning well.
How do I know if I lack self esteem or self worth
Unless you Donald Trump, most people probably have the odd day where they wonder if they’re good enough. (Although Donald Trumps deluded self belief and lack of compassion for others is also evidence of very low esteem but thats for another blog).
We all have a tendancy to compare ourselves to others and beat ourselves up over mistakes from time to time. But persistantly criticise yourself to the point of feeling regularly stressed or being so anxious about what people think that it impacts your relationships and social life then maybe therapy for self esteem could help. Here are some other signs:
- You are so precoccipied with what other people think of you that you are often distracted, anxious or not able to sleep.
- You feel judged or disliked easily which makes you feel anxious
- You regularly compare yourself to others and feel not good enough which makes you feel low.
- You find it hard to say no as the thought of letting people down makes you feel anxious
- You’re often tired or stress because you cannot prioritise your needs
- You’re very self critical over small mistakes and feel very stressed about them
- You put pressure on yourself to achieve certain things and if you don’t you feel very guilty or ashamed.
- You struggle in relationships because you do not feel loveable
- You feel isolated because you get anxious about social situations.
How Can I Work On My Self Esteem?
If low self esteem and self worth is something you feel you want to work on then there is a lot you can do to help yourself. For example, you can start recording a thought diary of all the ways a lack of self esteem is affecting you. In addition you can look at the ways this impacts how you think about things and whether there is evidence for this i.e. do you assume if you make one mistake you will lose your job or that your friends don’t like you if they do not answer a text.
There are also other effective practices that can help to gradually adjust our feelings about ourselves and develop healthier mindsets such as mindfulness and self compassion.
You can read more about increasing yourself self esteem without seeing a therapist here. However, it can also be very helpful to work with a therapist to improve self esteem and self worth.
How do I know if I need therapy for low self esteem?
Whether or not you want to see a therapist is a very personal choice. You may feel you do not tick the boxes below but would still value a space to offload and work on it. Thats fine and I would always encourage anyone who feels like they would benefit from talking to do so.
However, there are some signs that you would benefit from therapy to work on your self esteem
- You have experienced stressful childhood experiences which have contributed to low self esteem
- You have experienced trauma such as abuse or grief.
- Low self esteem is causing distressing feelings such as anxiety, stress and low mood.
- Your feelings are causing problems in work or personal life
- You have tried to work on it yourself but ssre still struggling.
What will happen when I attend therapy for low self esteem?
Generally speaking all therapists and counselling will offer a space for you to talk and reflect what they hear in a kind but honest way. This increases your awareness to help you know how you feel about things and be equipped to make the changes you need. But here are some common additional tools some therapists might use to help self esteem. When talking to a therapist about working with them its useful to find out what techniques they are trained in.
Challenge thoughts: Having low self esteem means we interpret the world a particular way. A very common example is jumping to conclusions about what someone is thinking about them. Assuming someone is judging you or dislikes you results in feelings of stress and anxiety but we rarely have evidence for this. This technique comes from Cognitive Behaviourial Theray and involves looking for evidence for the thoughts you are having. Most of the time we think in a certain way because our brains are programmed to jump to conclusions and assume the worst but not based on actual evidence. For example, what evidence do you have that your boss thinks you are bad at your job? How realistic is if that you will get fired for making a mistake?
Mindfulness helps us to give space to difficult thoughts and feelings. Often if we have low self esteem we will be caught up in ruminating with unhelpful, self critical thoughts which make us feel worse. Mindfulness can help you take a step back from them
Self Compassion We are often more critical of ourselves than other people. If you are giving yourself a hard time pause and ask yourself what you would say to a friend
Develop healthier core belief. Often at the route of low self esteem in relation to work stress is that only feel good enough if we do well. So the possibility of making a mistake feels really uncomfortable because deep down it makes us feel like a bad person. Therapists will bring attention to this so that you can develop more positive core beliefs.
How can I access therapy for low self esteem?
If you feel that you would benefit from therapy for self esteem and are interested in working with me visit my main page to find out more or contact me directly to arrange a free consultation.
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