Not Feeling Great About Yourself?

28^th May 2025

Not feeling great about yourself?

Please read on...

Healthy self-esteem is essential for emotional wellbeing and good quality of life. It affects how we see ourselves, how we relate to others, whether we will try new things and how we experience the world.

Self-esteem is how we value and perceive ourselves. It's based on our opinions and beliefs about ourselves, which can feel difficult to change. It's estimated that roughly 85% of people worldwide have low self-esteem (Mind).

If you find you are consistently having negative thoughts about yourself, think you are a failure or feel you have let yourself or your family down, it may be that you are struggling with low self-esteem. This can be stressful and cause anxiety. However, even small positive changes can make a difference. See below for some ideas.

Tips for improving low self esteem:

1. Focus on self-care;
2. Set achievable goals
3. Practice self-compassion
4. Build a supportive network
5. Celebrate accomplishments;
6. Challenge negative thoughts

Sometimes it is hard to work through things on our own and it can be helpful to speak to a trained professional. Both counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy can be useful if you are struggling with low self-esteem. See below for an outline of what they involve:

Counselling

Counselling can help explore the origins of self-doubt and critical thoughts, helping you gain a deeper understanding of why you struggle with low self-esteem. A therapist can help you explore past experiences and relationships that may have contributed to your low self-esteem. Counselling can help you develop a more compassionate and supportive inner voice.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

Focuses on understanding how negative thoughts and beliefs contribute to low self-esteem and how these thoughts impact your behaviours and emotions. A therapist can help you recognize and challenge automatic negative thoughts, such as perfectionism, self-criticism, and negative self-talk. You can learn to replace negative thoughts with more balanced and realistic ones, to improve self-esteem.

If you would like to explore how talking therapy could help you, call us on 0800 047 6861 or drop us an email at admin@drcs.org.uk

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