Self-Esteem

Here’s the bad news: Self-esteem is NOT about learning how to consistently think you’re awesome no matter what. Even if you improve your self-esteem, you’re still going to have hard days, you’re still going to have moments where you’re not crazy about yourself, and you’re still going to experience some self-doubt.

But don’t worry – there’s also good news! You can learn to become more confident and stable in your sense of self, and weather the ebbs and flows of your self-image. Here are some of the ways I help people to make these improvements:

Self-Compassion

What most people aspire to when they say they want to improve their self-esteem is actually an improved ability to practice self-compassion. Self-compassion is not something that you learn once and check off your list. (And, truly, few things worth doing are.) Instead, it’s a practice – a way of learning how to talk to yourself.

Most people are much harder on themselves than they are on other people. Learning to practice self-compassion is as simple and as difficult as acknowledging that you are human and therefore fallible. It’s okay to be messy, and it’s okay to fuck up. The important thing is that you learn how to speak to yourself like you would speak to a close friend who was struggling, and to love yourself through the self-esteem attacks when they come.

Some people struggle with this idea, because they believe that their success is grounded in being hard on themselves – that “tough love” is the only way to continue to achieve their goals. This is one of the most formidable myths about self-criticism, because in reality, when you are hard on yourself, you are in a bullying dynamic – only you’re both the bully and the bullied.

Most people struggle with self-compassion, at least to some degree. I apply tools that I learned from studying under Kristin Neff, the world’s leading expert in self-compassion, to support clients in learning how to be kinder to themselves.

Divesting from Perfectionism

I am a recovering perfectionist.

So I know this to be true: You can practice self-compassion, or you can hold yourself to the standard of perfection, but you can’t do both.

Some people wear perfectionism as a badge of honor, or hold it as a cornerstone of their identity. It feels safe and protective, and when it’s going well, it provides a sense of control — but it also involves chasing the impossible. The problem with perfectionism is that when you assess your own value based on how you perform and achieve, you are always just one human moment away from shame and self-loathing.

The issue is actually broader than perfectionism: When you believe that you only have value if you achieve things, your sense of your own worth vacillates by the moment, and is grounded in a million little external things beyond your control. On the contrary, when you believe that your worthiness is intrinsic, your sense of self – and by extension, your self-esteem – is much more stable.

The idea of divesting from perfectionism (and its cousin, workaholism) can be very scary and overwhelming. Perfectionism is a way to “numb out” – like drugs, food, and sex – but unlike those things, it’s societally praised and rewarded. Divesting from perfectionism can mean learning how to sit with hard feelings, and that can be terrifying.

But here’s what lies on the other side of the process of embracing “good enoughness“: the ability to love yourself, practice self-compassion, improve your self-esteem, and build deeper, more meaningful relationships with other people.

Building Shame Resilience

When people say they struggle with low self-esteem, they often actually mean they struggle with shame.

Because here’s what a self-esteem attack looks like:

I’m not good enough.
I’m such a failure.
I’m unattractive.
Frida has her whole life together, what the hell is wrong with me?
I’m undeserving of happiness.

And the underlying emotion of all of these statements is shame – the sense that there is something deeply, inherently wrong with you.

Everyone experiences shame sometimes, so the real question is what you do with it when you feel it. If you try to stuff it down, if you keep it secret, it grows and festers until it feels like all of the mean things you’re telling yourself are absolutely, 100% true. But if you talk to someone about it, practice vulnerability, and engage in uncomfortable conversations with supportive, trustworthy people, shame dissipates.

Through the process of becoming certified in Brené Brown’s Daring Way model, I learned tools to help clients get comfortable in the uncomfortable, engage in authentic, kind vulnerability, and combat shame.

Contextualizing Low Self-Esteem

As a final word, I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the role of our culture in perpetuating low self-esteem. If you’re struggling, it’s because for most of us, the system is rigged.

Capitalism tells us that we’re only as good as our productivity.
The gender binary keeps parts of our personalities locked in tiny, restricted boxes, telling cis men not to express feelings and cis women not to assert themselves, and creating an uphill battle for trans folks, nonbinary people, and anyone else who doesn’t fit neatly into one of those categories.
White supremacy perpetuates a system where the odds are stacked against BIPOC people in every domain of life.

This affects marginalized people – that is, women, trans and nonbinary people, queer people, BIPOC people, and disabled people – more than others, but ultimately it harms everyone. We all walk through the world absorbing these powerful societal narratives about who we should be, and most people can never live up to it.

But just like fish aren’t aware of the water they swim in, it’s easy for us not to notice that we’re swimming in an unjust society. So instead of placing blame where it belongs, when things feel impossible, we turn our vitriol inwards and blame ourselves. Instead of saying, “the system is set up for me to fail,” we say, “I’m such a failure.” And that begets – you guessed it- shame and low self-esteem.

I participated in a year-long, intensive “culture-making” course with Kelly Diels, a justice-oriented marketing consultant who teaches people how to combat cisheteropatriarchy and white supremacy, while promoting equity and combatting social conditioning. Sound like a lot to process? It is, but it’s completely transformed the way I work with clients who struggle with self-esteem. I used to say, “let’s help you get better at this.” Now I say, “let’s first figure out whose voice this is, so that we can put the blame in an appropriate place.”

Reach out

For support in bolstering your self-esteem, reach out to schedule a free phone consultation now!