How to Deal with Low Self-Esteem

Author: Kristin Wilding

As a psychotherapist, I deal with people suffering from low self-esteem on a daily basis. These individuals may come to me experiencing a variety of different issues, ranging from chronic depression to the collapse of their lives after losing a job, a loved one, or experiencing some other trauma. The problems may differ, but the common factor among them is that those affected often lack the ability to successfully address these issues due to a lack of confidence in their own capability to do so. As a therapist, my role is not to solve my clients' personal crises but rather to build their self-esteem and coping skills so that they can then solve their own problems, no matter how varied and complex. The purpose of this book is to provide the same professional assistance towards building strong self-esteem in a simplified, self-reliant way, enabling a wider audience to benefit from the standard of help that therapists regularly provide to their clients. You may have already heard of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and this is the therapeutic approach we will be using. CBT is a therapy focused on solving practical problems in the 'present moment.' We only delve into the past if it is important and relevant to present beliefs and events. Primarily, we work with you to identify the difficulties you are facing right now, understand what perpetuates them, and then find solutions to overcome them. CBT pays significant attention to your thinking about your problems, examining whether you are caught in one of the many negative thinking traps. It also focuses on your behaviors related to your difficulties – do your actions make things better, keep the problem the same, or perhaps even worsen it? CBT shows you how to restructure both how you think and what you do to achieve the outcome you desire. To structure the book and help you feel fully supported as you work through it, the book is divided into five sections, each building upon the previous one. You might find it best to scan the entire book first, to get your bearings and an idea of what to expect, then return to the beginning and work through it gradually. Do not proceed through the pages of the book until you feel you have truly understood what has been suggested and have committed to carrying out the tasks you will find in the text. CBT bases its assistance on what we call 'guided discovery.' Simply put, if the way you currently think, feel, and act is keeping your self-esteem low and creating other problems, we are interested in discovering what will happen if you change things – try something new or perhaps think about things differently. You will not be asked to adopt random ideas, which is why we call this discovery 'guided'; you will find help and support through a secure structure that – although it will necessarily take you out of your comfort zone – will also help you to embrace the possibility of failure rather than fearing it (which may not happen in most cases). You will be helped towards developing greater awareness of your beliefs, feelings, and resulting actions. The tasks in the book will build on this – on getting you to look at things differently, do things differently, and then measure what you discover from these efforts, which we hope will increase your confidence.