Episode 45: How to Build Better Self-Esteem

In this episode,

Lizzie examines self-esteem, how it can fall, and how you can build it back up.

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Post-pod questions to consider

Why has caused your self-esteem to become diminished? What can you do to reframe your self-image and improve your self-esteem?

Episode Transcript

Hey, you're listening to Midnight Philosopher with Lizzie. Thanks for tuning it. 

Today, I'm going to talk about how to build better self-esteem. Self-esteem is the concept of how you feel about yourself. Often, if people have been through trauma, their view of themselves has been diminished. People who've been through trauma often associate a bad thing happening to them with on some level being bad themselves. This of course, is not the case. Trauma is never anyone's fault, and trauma can happen to anyone regardless of who they are. 

But sometimes people internalize the feeling that they deserve bad things to happen to them, which in turn makes them feel badly about themselves. There's different types of trauma. There's big T traumas, the kind of traumas that are listed in the DSM-V for diagnoses like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. However, there are little T traumas, and these traumas are traumas that dysregulate the nervous system. 

Trauma, no matter how big or small, can deeply impact self-esteem and a sense of self. So rebuilding the sense of self-esteem is really important. I've helped clients build up their own self-esteem, and I've also had chronically low self-esteem for a while myself and have had to actively work on building it back up for myself too. 

One time, I helped a client build up her self-esteem is when I had a middle school girl who consistently got into fist fights with other students. She thought of herself as a bad kid and figured she might as well live up to that reputation. I asked her if it was okay with her, if I shared what I thought about her, and she said, yes. I told her that I thought she was a good kid who's just been through a lot. I think that might've been the first time in her life when an adult said she was a good person. We then talked about her fighting. 

We talked about how her anger made sense because of what she'd been through, but how while punching a kid might feel immediately gratifying it wasn't going to get her where she wanted to get. In terms of her long-term goals, she wanted to finish high school. We talked about impulse control and for more on impulse control, you can listen to Episode 35. As she started to believe she was a good person - because we spent a lot of the sessions talking about her strengths and values - and as she developed more insight into her anger and impulses, she stopped getting into so many fist fights, but almost more importantly, she developed a better sense of self and increased her self-esteem. 

Another client I worked with was a mother of two children. Her children had been removed from her care, from Child Protective Services, but were now back in her custody. This client felt like a failure, and her self-esteem was seemingly really low. She felt like she had failed her children. We spent a lot of sessions talking about how she was doing the best she could at the time with the skills that she had. We tracked her progress and how she was able to integrate her emotional experience. 

Now, in a nuanced and kind way, we talked about her strengths and her values, both as a mother and as a person. We talked about how she wanted her kids to have a better life than she did. Through talking about her strengths, values, and the progress she made, she's able to believe in herself more and her her abilities as a parent, and because she believed in herself more and her abilities, she felt better about her parenting. 

Finally, I struggled with self-esteem as well. I felt at times that I'm worthless. One time in particular was when I was struggling with my mental health while simultaneously trying to be a clinical social worker. I felt like I wasn't a good person because I wasn't able to balance myself and my needs with the needs of my clients and the job. 

I worked with my own therapist on building my self-esteem by reminding myself that my job doesn't define me. It is something that I do to earn a living, but while some of the values that led me into social work are values that I chose, I still choose to live by. The profession itself couldn't dictate how I ultimately felt about myself as a person. 

So what are some things you can do if you're feeling like you have low self-esteem? First, you can make a list of your strengths, and if that's too hard, make a list of attributes or things you value in a person. For example, you might list a strength of yours as being a kind person, but if you're not quite there and ready to list your strengths and don't think you fit into that category yet, which is often a sign of low self-esteem, you could put that you value kindness in people. 

Next, ask people close to you what they think your strengths are. If you don't have people close to you, start taking evidence yourself. Think back to the last couple weeks. When did you exhibit kindness? It might help to keep a journal or a notes app on your phone with what your friends and family said about you, and also the evidence you took for yourself. 

Over time, you'll start to see patterns emerge. Once you see those patterns emerge, the next step is believing that those patterns really exist inside you. Building self-esteem is a worthwhile but slow pro process, but noticing your strengths, values, and the progress you make along the way will help build your self-esteem to be stronger. 

Some things can get in the way of building self-esteem, including listening to the critical voices of others. For more on this, you can check out Episode 36 on Toxic Friendships as well as listening to the self-critical voice or negative self-talk in yourself. 

Additionally, having unrealistic expectations or setting yourself up for failure will only perpetuate negative feelings about yourself. To help yourself navigate negative voices and critical voices of yourself and others, you can ask yourself, is what this person's saying helpful or is it harmful? If it's helpful feedback, you can incorporate the part that it feels helpful to you while letting the rest go. 

There's a saying that's eat the meat, leave the bones, and I think this applies to critical feedback as well. The meat being the helpful part, the bones being the part that doesn't feel that helpful. Overall, critical voices, either yours or other people's can get in the way of health, healthy health, self-esteem, and it's important to remember that not all feedback or criticism is necessary helpful or even valid. So it's important to suss out what's actually helpful for you and what you can leave. Eat the meat, leave the bones. 

In this episode, I talked about self-esteem. I talked about how sometimes people might think they're bad people or failures when really they've just made mistakes and have strong values that they want to live by. I talked about how seeing your strengths and values can help you align with having a better self-esteem, and I talked about how your job is not who you are and cannot define your self-worth. Finally, I talked about some steps you can take to build your own self-esteem and some things that might get in the way of of doing that. 

Thanks so much for listening tonight. I'm gonna go journal about my strengths now. Have a good night.