Why do I have low self-esteem? And how do I fix it?

You get up in the morning, and look in the mirror and you don’t like what you see. Immediately the negative thoughts start racing through your mind, “You’re so fat,” “You’re so ugly,” “No one is ever going to like you.”

After fully berating yourself, you manage to get dressed and make your way to school or work.

Again, the consuming thoughts start pouring in, “I’m so stupid,” “They think I’m an idiot,” “I can’t do it,” “I’m a failure.”

It’s so overwhelming, defeating, and it feels like it will never end. You look at these other girls who just exude confidence and want so badly to be like them. Not afraid to try something new. Not care about looking like a fool if they make a mistake.

You just want to be confident.

So how does this happen? How is that girl able to do everything with confidence and you just can’t stop beating yourself down and getting in your own way?

When you have low self-esteem, you lack confidence in yourself and your abilities.

This comes from our past memories and experiences that make up the way that we perceive ourselves today. 

If you find that you’re very critical of yourself, chances are you learned to be that way from others around you. Often times, this happened because someone (e.g., a parent, a relative, a sibling, a friend, a coach, etc.) was critical of you for something and you internalized their comments and formed a negative belief about yourself.

For Example: Jenny was a competitive soccer player who always tried her best. She had a strict coach with very high expectations. When Jenny missed a shot on goal because a skilled defender got in the way, her coach would scream angrily at her, “Come on, Jenny!! You should’ve had that!” This behavior went on for years and over time, Jenny adopted the negative belief: “I’m not good enough.” This belief followed her into school as well. She would get a 93% on her math test, and she would get very upset with herself that she didn’t get a higher A. No matter what she did or achieved, it never felt good enough. She felt she was never athletic enough, smart enough, pretty enough, etc. This negatively affected her self-esteem, caused a lot of anxiety for her, and Jenny felt pressure to do everything perfectly.

Another Example: Mallory grew up with parents who were constantly stressed, and didn’t have very loving parents themselves. They never complimented her when she would clean her room or play nicely with her brothers. Her good grades also went unnoticed. But when she made a mistake, she was met with a lot of anger from her parents. They would criticize her and yell at her. Eventually, Mallory stopped trying. She was ignored when she did things perfectly, and whenever she did a “good enough” job, her parents always found something wrong with it. She internalized the belief: “I’m a failure.” Because this negative belief about her developed because of the repeated patterns of her parents criticizing her, she now looked at everything in her life through this lens. When she tried to go to college, she believed that she couldn’t do it and eventually dropped out. She often took all the blame in her romantic relationships during arguments because she believed that she was always messing up and couldn’t do anything right. Mallory struggled with depression, low self-esteem, and a lot of self-sabotage because of this belief.

We go through different life experiences that contribute to how we perceive ourselves. That girl who walks around with her head held high and shoulders back likely experienced a lot of encouragement and praise in her life, which she then internalized and formed the positive belief: “I’m capable.” (That, or she already did a lot of processing of her negative past memories!)

So what do you do with this information now? You can’t go back and change the past and you really want to be able to increase your confidence.

Throughout all my years as a therapist, the most effective way I have found to achieve this kind of change is through EMDR THERAPY.

What is EMDR? 

EMDR is an evidence-based therapeutic model that uses a structured 8-phase protocol. To the client, it will feel like 2 phases: the preparation phase and the reprocessing phase.

·      During the preparation phases, we will work to build up your positive coping skills and increase your distress tolerance. This will help you manage anxiety in your day-to-day life, but it primarily will help you be able to tolerate the distress that comes up during the reprocessing phases.

·      In the reprocessing phases, we will go back to those old memories (like Jenny’s experiences with her soccer coach, or Mallory’s memories of her parents’ criticism), and will work through them one at a time, pairing it with bilateral stimulation (e.g., tapping or eye-movements) until your distress about the memory is eliminated.

Through this process, your perceptions about the memories will shift and your beliefs about yourself will change.

For example: Jenny goes to an EMDR therapist and, together, they are able to identify the belief of: “I’m not good enough” that was likely rooted in her experience as a competitive soccer player. She experienced many other events afterwards that seemed to confirm the negative belief, such as not getting the grade she wanted on her math test.  

In EMDR, she will work through the worst memories related to her soccer coach, and through the process, she will come to realize that her coach didn’t yell at her because she wasn’t good enough at soccer, but rather because he struggled with his own emotional regulation. She will realize that she made the team (and never got cut from the team either!) due to her talent, and that her coach relied on his team winning for his own self-worth. He projected his fears of losing onto her because then he would feel like he wasn’t a good enough coach.

 Jenny will also realize that she was a kid and that it was not appropriate for a grown man to scream at and berate her the way that he did, especially over a game. She will shift the blame of her “not being good enough” to her coach being the one responsible for his own inappropriate actions. As a result, Jenny’s belief will shift to “I am good enough” (or something along those lines) and will then start to look at other areas of her life through that lens. She will then continue to work through the subsequent memories that previously “confirmed” her negative belief, to continue to shift and confirm “I am good enough” instead.

Another Example: Mallory decided to try EMDR Therapy to try to start feeling more confident. She will work with her therapist to identify the memories causing her current symptoms, and after the prep phases, will begin processing memories of her parents criticizing her, ignoring her when doing well, and screaming at her. Through this, Mallory will realize that the way they treated her was not because she was a failure. Rather, they behaved in this way because of a lack of parenting knowledge, and a lack of good coping or emotional regulation skills. She will realize that they were repeating parenting patterns that they learned from their own parents, who also only noticed and criticized the negative things her parents were doing as children too.

Mallory will process her anger and resentment towards her parents for not being more loving and nurturing towards her, and will recognize that they didn’t repeatedly criticize her because she’s “a failure,” but because of their own shortcomings/lack of parenting knowledge.

She will be able to recognize that she was a little girl who, of course, wasn’t perfect and was inevitably going to make mistakes at times, but that she deserved more praise, guidance, and compassion from her parents, who didn’t know how to give that to her.

As a result, Mallory will be able to shift (and believe!) the negative belief from “I’m a failure” to “I’m capable.”

You don’t struggle with low self-esteem for no reason, and it’s probably not because you’re a terrible person. 

It is likely due to the collection of memories that “prove” negative beliefs you have formed about yourself over the years. 

And, of course, what we do in present day matters as well. If you’re not taking care of yourself holistically (e.g., exercising, eating a healthy diet, engaging in your community, taking care of your spiritual health, etc.), that will negatively impact your self-esteem as well. However, a lot of our struggle with long-term, negative belief patterns about ourselves are formed through our life experiences.

It is possible to find relief. You are able to work through and find relief from upsetting memories that happened a few weeks ago, 50 years ago, or anywhere in between. And life will undoubetly get a whole lot easier thereafter.

For questions about self-esteem and EMDR, please reach out! I would love to chat with you further.