Improving Low Self Esteem the signs & symptoms of low self esteem
Here are excellent free ways to improve low self esteem. This section of our site is all about self-esteem.
Here you can learn about low self-esteem signs and symptoms, the causes, and the ways of improving low self-esteem. Moreover, here you can learn how to build your self-worth.
('Self esteem' is usually hyphenated. We will use it both ways on this web page because most online searches for this subject are done without hyphens.)
Do you like yourself? Do you feel good about being you?
If so, your self-worth is high.
Do you dislike yourself? Do you feel bad about being you? If so, your self-worth is low.
Your self-worth is your fundamental evaluation of yourself.
In other words, it is how you feel about yourself.
We all feel better about ourselves on some days more than on other days; some fluctuation is to be expected.
However, ignoring temporary ups and downs, how do you feel about yourself overall?
In relation to improving your health, happiness, or fitness, it is important to know, because, if you have low self-worth, without first improving your fundamental evaluation of yourself it will be harder for you to achieve your goals.
Signs & Symptoms of Low Self esteem
How do you feel about yourself?
For people with high self-worth, the usual ups and downs of life may lead to temporary changes in how they feel about themselves, but only to a limited degree. In contrast, life’s usual ups and downs can make a vast difference for people with low self-worth.
The bad news: If you dislike or even hate yourself, you may not care about yourself enough to do anything to feel better about yourself. Unfortunately, low self-worth never improves itself.
You won't wake up some magic morning with high self-worth. Sadly, the suffering caused by the feeling of low self-worth never just vanishes by itself. It needs to be worked on.
The good news: Fortunately, you yourself determine your own feelings about yourself. This is why it is possible to build self esteem and improve it permanently. If you take the time to learn what to do to increase it and actually take the relevant steps, you can enjoy good self-worth for the rest of your life.
Usually there's a difference between thinking that something is the case and it being the case; just because we think something doesn't mean that what we think is true. If someone thinks, for example, that he or she is the most terrific person on planet Earth, this does not mean that other people agree!
In the case of self esteem, however, your thinking something actually does make it true for you. The truth about your self-worth exists only in your mind! Therefore, the key to improving self esteem is improving how you think about yourself. You are the only person who decides how you think about yourself.
High & low self esteem signs
A confusion removed
Some people confuse having high self esteem with being egocentric, self-centered, or conceited. On the contrary, people who are egocentric often have low self esteem, which they try to mask by acting in an arrogant way.
With respect to relationships with others, people with low self-worth have no choice but to be selfish. It's as if they feel that they have so little intrinsic value or positive energy that they cannot give of themselves to others.
Therefore, if you want to develop good relationships with others, it's important to develop a good relationship with yourself. Respecting yourself is having high self esteem. Without it, it's difficult to have caring encounters with others.
Furthermore, nobody knows you better than you do. Other people take their cues about how to think about you from you! As you begin to improve how you think and feel about yourself, you'll notice that other people will naturally begin to think more of you as well.
It's not only possible to increase how much you like or love yourself, it's also indirectly possible to increase how much others like or love you.
Symptoms of low self esteem and the causes
You were not born with low self esteem
As infants we learn to sort objects into "self" and "other." Understanding requires sorting objects into groups such as “food” or “not food,” "hot" or "not hot," "hard" or "not hard," "Mom" or "not Mom," and so on. You were not born with your self-concept; you learned it.
You also learned how to evaluate yourself. You were not born with feelings of poor self-worth; you learned them. You learned them by adopting the evaluations that some other people had about you. These other people may have been members of your immediate family, caregivers, playmates, teachers, coaches, or religious authorities.
The fact that you have low self esteem demonstrates that you learned from at least some of them to adopt a low opinion of yourself. They may have yelled at you frequently or even beaten or abused you.
They may have ignored you. They may have criticized you harshly. They may have rejected, ridiculed, or teased you. They have may expected perfection from you at all times.
When you did poorly at some task, you may have picked up the message that there was something wrong with your whole self instead of just that particular performance.
That was their fault, not yours.
Instead, they should have frequently given you lots of loving attention and hugs. They should have praised you.
They should have listened to you and spoken to you respectfully. They should have trusted you and provided you with unconditional positive regard.
They should have encouraged you to risk failure and to learn how to grow from it. Once you acquired low self esteem, that fact itself had serious consequences.
It increased your chances for depression. It made you more likely to feel lonely and isolated. It increased your levels of stress and anxiety.
It made performances in school and, later, during you working life more difficult. It made creating good friendships and having good experiences more difficult.
In short, you learned how to have low self-worth and certain negative consequences followed from that.
That was not your fault.
Improving low self esteem
Why improving self esteem is possible
Let's assume that you happen to have a poor opinion of yourself and that you would like to improve it.
What should you do?
It's important to accept that your low self-worth is not unrelated to everything else. In other words, your poor evaluation has a cause; it is not an uncaused event. Over a period of time, you learned how to have a poor opinion of yourself.
So improving it requires unlearning it and learning to think more highly of yourself. You are the only obstacle to doing this; you have the ability to increase your feelings of self-worth whenever you decide to do so. This section of our website will help you to begin.
You can start to show respect and kindness to yourself whenever you choose. You do not need to have approval or permission from anyone else. Simply decide to do it and then practice it each day.
On a daily basis, ignore your inner critical voice. Practice self-nurturing. Start to treat and heal you with kind, uncritical, encouraging words. Remember, we are all equal. You have as much right to live your life as anyone else!
If you want to read more about Self-Talk or our other free psychological tools, see the psychology section of our website, which is listed on the navigation buttons. It works by replacing some thoughts with better thoughts.
If you are not in the habit of doing it, self-nurturing might initially feel awkward. Don't worry about that. Simply begin doing two things.
First, stop being critical of yourself. Stop thinking and saying negative things about yourself. Just ignore your inner critic and carry on ignoring it.
Second, frequently think or say to yourself positive things about yourself whether you believe them or not. In other words, fake it until you make it. If you begin acting the part, you will become the part!
When you begin treating yourself with respect and kind, positive thoughts and words, as if you deserved to be treated that way, gradually you will come to believe it.
"Act the part and you will become the part" holds true for many things in life.
Many others have pointed this out, including philosophers like Aristotle and writers like Shakespeare. If you act a part long enough you'll eventually not be acting any more.
[This works because your self is not a real separate entity beyond your control. Meditation demonstrates this; see the references near the bottom of this page. Meditation is more effective than self-talk; it works because its goal is to enable you to free yourself from all compulsive thoughts.]
How to build self esteem
The turnaround
It's impossible to change your past, but it is possible to decide not to dwell on it and not to let it keep affecting you so severely. If you want better self esteem from now on, it is possible. What it requires is an effort to change the way you think about yourself.
Old habits die hard. It is not always easy to let go of the past. We adults all understand that. Raising self-worth from low to high is not done overnight. However, raising self-worth is easily done over time with persistent effort and the results are invaluable.
The key to raising self-worth is to pay attention to how you think about yourself and how you treat yourself. Once you begin noticing what you are doing to yourself, try to improve it.
The problem is that over time you internalized how some others evaluated you. It is now time to let go of all that. Stop letting others determine the quality of your life.
Banish negative memories from your mind, and, each time they return, immediately banish them again and immediately replace them with better ones. Now is the time to take charge for yourself.
Free yourself from being enslaved by some others' ancient judgments. After all, nobody has power over you unless you give it to them.
Instead of always beating yourself up, nurture yourself.
People with good self-worth are realistic about weaknesses as well as strengths. They accordingly set realistic goals and work toward them, even if it’s only one small step at a time.
They also feel willing to try in areas that they consider important, are interested in, or enjoy, even if they are not particularly talented in that area. They do not take other people’s negative impressions of them too seriously.
When should you pay any attention to someone else's opinion about you? Only when that person (1) knows you well and (2) is a good judge of character, which is best demonstrated by being a good and compassionate person.
If you think about it, aren't there very few people you know who meet both conditions? If so, there are very few opinions about you that are balanced, compassionate, and worth your noticing.
People with low self-worth have a difficult time evaluating strengths as well as weaknesses. They tend to see only their weaknesses. Accordingly, they are reluctant to set goals and feel that they have failed before they begin. They take other people’s opinions of them far too seriously.
They also tend to feel not good enough in areas that they consider important, have an interest in, or enjoy, even if they have a particular talent. People with low self-worth tend to be pessimistic. All this follows from the habit of listening to the inner critic. However, habits can be changed! It is possible to unlearn what we have learned.
One small step is all it takes to begin any journey. One small step at a time is all it takes to continue.
You too can begin to build self esteem. It is made easier with our free psychological tools.
Now think about this!
Please think hard about this statement:
"I don't like myself."
What true sense does it make? After all, it seems to mean that you are two selves instead of one! There's the self who is making the judgment (the "I") and there's the self ("myself") who is being judged. Are you split from yourself?
If so, since suffering is always caused by separation, you are genuinely suffering. Now you can ease your suffering; the effort of improving your self-worth is infinitely better than the distress of suffering from low self-worth.
If you continue to believe negative things about yourself, it may diminish your ability to cope with life and the difficulties that we all have from time to time. You may turn to something that does temporarily enable you to cope. You may become dependent on distractions such as sex, food, drugs, alcohol, or whatever.
Dependency or addiction can further damage self-worth and reinforce negative beliefs. Dependency or addiction can also lead to social isolation, making it even more difficult to improve low self-worth.
Web pages about treatment for low self esteem
We have some free methods that can help to erase symptoms of low self esteem. You are welcome to one or both of our two free email-series for the ultimate cure for improving low self esteem:
Meditation for Serenity, Tranquility, Peacefulness
How to Cure Emotional Eating
The email-series arrive direct by e-mail. You can request them via the request boxes provided on these pages:
Our recommended reading list in relation to self-esteem
You'll find our list of recommended readings on the "best self-help books" page, listed on the navigation/menu buttons.
Mean while, here are are initial suggestions:
Tolle's The Power of NOW
Tolle's A New Earth
Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson's Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
You should be able to borrow these books from your local library if you don’t want to buy them.
We particularly enjoyed writing this page. If it helps only one person, it will have been more than worthwhile.
All our best wishes to you for the future!
If you are now looking for something in particular in relation to this subject, or weight loss, here you can FAST SEARCH our website or the World Wide Web.
Addictions: Drug And Alcohol Abuse
Here is a free Internet resource that we highly recommend in relation to self esteem and drug or alcohol abuse :
drug-alcohol-addiction-recovery
The site is packed with information about alcoholism, drug addiction (including Prescription Drug Abuse), self-esteem, teen drug alcohol abuse and drug alcohol rehab information.
