emdr

Counselling for Low Self-Esteem In Woking & Guildford

What is low self-esteem?

People with low self-esteem often have negative thoughts and feelings towards who they are as a person, their body and physical appearance, their confidence in making decisions, and their overall sense of worth or value.

People with low self-esteem often have the belief that other people are more important, more skilled, smarter, kinder and overall better people than they are and often discount the positive aspects of themselves so that their perceived reality fits into this belief. Unfortunately, this can lead into an unfulfilling life and in many cases, people react passively to life and “end up” wherever they have “ended up” without the self-agency to chart their own course. Fortunately, we can build our self-esteem through self-exploration, fostering growth promoting relationships, maintaining boundaries and treating ourselves as someone of value; including changing negative self-talk and reframing our internal reality.

Low self-esteem is characterised by various thoughts, behaviours and feelings including:

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Feeling worthless

Having no self-worth or feeling like you can’t do any better.

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Social withdrawal

Interacting with friends or loved ones is often not an comfortable option, you may desire a social life but feel it’s easier to be alone.

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Giving up before you start; or, setting unrealistic goals

Low self-esteem often prevents people from starting due to limitations or feelings of not being good enough. Conversely, setting unrealistic goals as an over-compensation is also common.

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Fear of change

You may fear changing anything to avoid disappointment, rejection and uncertainty. Even if you feel low in yourself, the fear of making a change and entering into the unknown often prevails.

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Seeking reassurance from others, or other external sources of validation

Relying up external sources of validation is a common way for people to counteract issues of self-esteem. Person-Centred counselling aims to help client’s shift towards an “internal locus of evaluation”.

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Feeling inadequate about your abilities

Doubting your ability to function at work or at home.

Counselling for Low Self Esteem

Low-self esteem comes from long-held misconceptions about yourself, which have become established beliefs about your self-worth and value. Low self-perceptions can often arise through not meeting expectations made by others, a lack of care empathic, caring or understanding peers or family or as a result of striving for goals which have regularly not gone to plan.

I offer support so that you can express thoughts and feelings about yourself and explore your self-concept in a safe, non-judgemental environment. This can allow you understand what is going on within you and can provide the opportunity to gradually learn how to accept who you are as a person whilst also looking at expectations and pressure to be who you are not and to re-negotiate what “good enough” actually is. A common start to thoughts and self- talk is “I should be”. This can be very unhelpful as we do have an image what is acceptable behaviour, however, we don’t always let ourselves be human, nor, understand how our past and current situations may make it impossible to meet up to higher expectations.

There is no set time for how long it takes to overcome low self-esteem. Often, low self-esteem has been drip fed into a person’s sense of their self. So then, it can often, but certainly not always, take an ongoing effort to truly become content with yourself.