Meditation, particularly mindful meditation, has seen a growing popularity in recent years as an effective mental health intervention. But most people associate it as a stress management tool and may be surprised to hear that mindfulness can help self esteem.
What is low self esteem and how do I know if I have it?
Low self esteem describes a way of relating to yourself which means you do not feel good enough, doubt your skills and abilities and also believe you are unloveble. Such self critical thinking can hold us back in life and affect our mental health. To read more about it click here.
Whats the difference between mindfulness and meditation?
Meditation is a term used generally to describe a period of sitting and focussing your attention either on something, such as the breath, but also can be a visulation or mantra. There are many ways to practice meditation and mindfulness is just one of them.
Mindfulness is a way of increasing your awareness in a non judgmental way of thoughts and feelings by paying more attention to the present moment. Its not about clearing your mind of thoughts but using anchors such as the body, breath or things in daily life to give space to thoughts and feelings and get less caught up in them. You can practice mindfulness when meditating but also you can be mindful in daily life. You can find out more about mindfulness and how to get started by reading this.
Can Meditation Can Help Self Esteem?
There are many different types of meditation and I will explain below how they may differ and how they help self esteem.
Mindfulness. Self esteem is often fuelled by self critical thoughts or making assumptions about what other people think of us. We tend to believe these thoughts even though there may be no evidence of them. Mindfulness can help you take a step back from unhelpful thoughts and realise that they are just thoughts. If you would like to learn more about how mindfulness can help self esteem click here.
Self Compassion has gained alot of attention in recent years as a way of increasing our self esteem by treating yourself as you would a good friend. If we struggle with self esteem we are likely to be self critical and judge ourselves for mistakes but this just perpetuates our feelings. When we practice responding to ourselves with kindness we can eventually develop a more accepting relationship with ourselves which increases self esteem. Self Compassion involves specific meditations designed to harness our compassion capabilities towards ourselves. Click here to find out more about it.
Loving Kindness like mindfulness, loving kindness is an ancient Buddhist meditation that is designed to cultivate feelings of compassion towards yourself and others. You start off bringing yourself to mind and imagining wishing yourself well but then extending that to other people. Evidence has shown that this can increase self esteem and I have adapted a version of this specifically for people struggling with low self esteem. You can read about this here.
What else can help low self esteem?
How can I learn meditation for low self esteem?
I offer therapy for self esteem which includes the above meditations. I also offer 1-1 meditation coaching as well as group self esteem meditation programmess.
Contact me to register for those services.
if you are interested in accessing my therapy services for self esteem visit my main page for more information.
