Home » Misc » Unhealthy self esteem

Unhealthy self esteem


What Are the Signs to Look For and How to Deal with It

Written by WebMD Editorial Contributors

Medically Reviewed by Dan Brennan, MD on November 23, 2020

In this Article

  • What is Low Self-Esteem?
  • Signs of Low Self-Esteem
  • Dealing with Low Self-Esteem

What is Low Self-Esteem?

Low self-esteem is when someone lacks confidence about who they are and what they can do. They often feel incompetent, unloved, or inadequate. People who struggle with low self-esteem are consistently afraid about making mistakes or letting other people down.

Having self-esteem issues can be detrimental to your health and negatively affect your personal and professional relationships. There are many reasons why you may have low self-esteem — your genes, how and where you grew up, and other life circumstances all play a role.

A major factor of low self-esteem, however, comes from your own mental state. Your inner voice, or the thoughts in your head, can be constantly telling you that you are not good enough or worth anything, even if there is evidence to the contrary. Negative thinking in general is linked to low self-worth and low self-esteem.

Signs of Low Self-Esteem

There are several signs that either you or someone you know may be struggling with low self-esteem. Those signs of low self-esteem include:

Sensitivity to Criticism

If you have low self-esteem you may be extra sensitive to criticism, whether from others or yourself. You see it only as reinforcing your flaws and confirming that you are incapable of doing anything right.

Social Withdrawal

Declining invitations to go to a party or meet up with friends, canceling scheduled plans last-minute, and generally not wanting to be around others are signs of low self-esteem. You may not have any desire to hold a conversation or talk about your life because it will only reinforce the depression and anxiety you are already experiencing.

Hostility

For someone with low self-esteem, lashing out or becoming aggressive towards others is a defense mechanism. If you feel that you are about to be exposed or criticized, attacking whoever might criticize you can be a sign of low self-esteem.

Excessive Preoccupation with Personal Problems

Consistently worrying about your own personal issues takes up a lot of time for someone with low self-esteem. You may struggle to help or empathize with someone else’s problems because you are too preoccupied with your own.

Physical Symptoms 

Low self-esteem has been shown to lead to mental and physical health issues like depression, anxiety, and anorexia. It can also lead to unhealthy habits like smoking tobacco, alcohol abuse, or drug use.

Dealing with Low Self-Esteem

You can overcome low self-esteem with the right support, mindset, and change in behaviors. Start with these steps to begin improving your self-esteem:

Identify Troubling Conditions and Situations

Take a moment to think about certain conditions and situations in your life that seem to always deflate your self-esteem. It could be giving a work presentation, dealing with a difficult family member or friend, or facing a life-changing event, like a job loss or a move.

Become Aware of Your Thoughts and Beliefs

After you’ve identified the times in your life where you have felt low self-esteem, evaluate your thoughts about them. How are you interpreting what happened? These thoughts could be either positive, negative, or neutral. They can be based on facts or irrational and false ideas. 

If you take a moment to notice what you are thinking, you can begin to understand whether or not your reactions to what has happened are appropriate and useful.

Challenge Negative or Inaccurate Thoughts

It is important to ask yourself whether your thoughts are consistent with facts or logic. There could be another explanation for a situation that is truer than your interpretation. Sometimes it is hard to break from long-held beliefs that have become part of your reality. Understand that it can take time and patience to overcome any negative preconceived notions toward your life that you’ve built up.

Adjust your mindset

You’ve been able to identify the times where you’ve felt a blow to your self-esteem. You’ve become self-aware about how and why you have the thoughts and feelings towards those events. Now you can take a step back and analyze those thoughts and emotions. You now have the power to change your thought patterns to raise your self-esteem. 

Remember to think and feel hopeful statements, focus on the positive aspects of all situations, and not be afraid to relabel upsetting thoughts. And most importantly, don’t hesitate to forgive yourself. No one is perfect and everyone makes mistakes. It doesn’t make you a bad person—it just makes you human.

Low Self-Esteem | Psychology Tools

Low self-esteem means not holding yourself in high regard. If you have low self-esteem, you might feel shy or anxious around other people, think of yourself as incapable or criticize yourself harshly. Some people with low self-esteem know that they judge themselves too harshly, whereas others hold onto their negative beliefs so strongly that they can feel like facts. Low self-esteem affects many people, and may make you more vulnerable to struggling with other mental health problems [1]. Fortunately, there are helpful psychological approaches for improving your self-esteem.

What is low self-esteem?

Self-esteem is the opinion you have of yourself. When you have healthy self-esteem, you tend to think positively about yourself, and optimistically about life in general. People with healthy self-esteem know that they are valuable, and will be able to name at least some of their positive qualities, such as “I am a good friend”, “I am kind”, “I am honest”, or “I am a good father”.

When you have low self-esteem, you tend to see yourself, the world, and your future more negatively and critically. You might feel anxious, sad, low, or unmotivated. When you encounter challenges, you may doubt whether you will be able to rise to them. You might talk to yourself harshly in your mind, telling yourself things like “You’re stupid”, “You’ll never manage this”, or “I don’t amount to anything”.

Your self-esteem affects how you live your life, but it is fragile. If you have low self-esteem, you might be always trying to please other people, or go ‘above and beyond’ at work or with your friends and family. As long as you keep meeting these standards you may feel OK, but there will inevitably be times when it’s not possible to do so, and this can quickly leave you feeling low and anxious.

Self-esteem exists on a spectrum. Some people with low self-esteem find that it only affects them with certain people, or in certain situations. Other people find that their self-esteem colors everything they do.

What is it like to have low self-esteem?

Rosie’s belief that she was not good enough

I grew up in a family of doctors and scientists. While I was growing up, I always felt compared to my sister, ‘the good one’. I was more active and energetic than her, and I loved climbing trees and running around with the dog. I often got told off for that. As I got older, people kept comparing me to my sister (“Why can’t you be more like her?”) and I started to wonder if there was something wrong with me. My sister was always well behaved at home and school. Even the teachers compared me to her, which left me feeling like I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t achieve as well as my sister academically, and I went on to work for the local council. My sister, on the other hand, became a doctor and our parents always praised her achievements. I felt like I was a failure, and the odd one out in my family.

I came to therapy when I was thirty. I was burnt out at work and my relationship had just ended after four years. I felt depressed, as if I had failed at life. I always gave 110%, I’d always tried to do everything perfectly at work and never wanted to let anyone down, even if it meant saying yes to extra work even when I was already overwhelmed. This meant that I had little time for my partner or my friends, but I worried that if I said no, my boss would think I wasn’t up to the job. Once, I got a 3 out of 5 on one of my competencies in my appraisal, and I felt like I was a complete failure. As a result, I worked even harder, and I worried about making mistakes or getting things wrong: I was always putting myself down.

Do you suffer from low self-esteem?

A diagnosis of low self-esteem should only be made by a mental health professional or a doctor. However, answering the screening questions below can give you an idea of whether you might find it helpful to have a professional assessment.

I feel like I’m a person of worth, at least as much as others.
 Strongly agree  Agree  Disagree  Strongly disagree
On the whole, I am satisfied with myself.
 Strongly agree  Agree  Disagree  Strongly disagree
I never feel useless.
 Strongly agree  Agree  Disagree  Strongly disagree
I encourage myself kindly when things don’t go right.
 Strongly agree  Agree  Disagree  Strongly disagree
I have a number of good qualities.
 Strongly agree  Agree  Disagree  Strongly disagree

 

The questions above can’t provide a definitive diagnosis, but if you ticked ‘Strongly disagree’ to a lot of these questions it is an indication that you might be struggling with low self-esteem. You might find it helpful to speak to your general practitioner, or a mental health professional about how you are feeling.

What causes low self-esteem?

At the centre of low self-esteem are the negative beliefs and opinions you hold about yourself. Nobody is born with beliefs like this – they develop as a result of the experiences you have throughout your life. How other people treat you, particularly when you are growing up, can greatly affect upon how you see yourself. Experiences that make you more likely to develop low self-esteem include:

  • Experiences such as punishment, abuse, or neglect. Punishment, abuse, and neglect are very powerful experiences. Children who experience them often jump to the mistaken conclusion that they are bad and must have deserved what happened to them.
  • Insufficient warmth, affection, praise, love, or encouragement. You might not remember anything overtly traumatic happening, and wonder why you feel the way you do about yourself. It is possible to develop low self-esteem without specific negative experiences, but simply through a deficit of enough positive ones. Without enough reinforcement that they are good, special, or loved, children can form the impression that they are not good enough.
  • Failure to meet other people’s expectations. You might feel that you are not good enough because you didn’t meet someone else’s expectations. These might have been your parent’s standards, or some other authority figure. For many people with low self-esteem, it doesn’t seem to matter whether the standards were fair or balanced in the first place – the part that ‘sticks’ is them not meeting these standards.
  • Inability to fit in with your peer group. Belonging to a ‘group’ or a ‘tribe’ is important – it’s one of our survival needs. Being different or the ‘odd one out’, especially during adolescence when you are forming your identity, can powerfully impact your sense of self.

What keeps low self-esteem going?

Research studies have shown that Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is one of the most effective treatments for low self-esteem [2]. CBT therapists work a bit like firefighters: while the fire is burning they’re not so interested in what caused it, but are more focused on what is keeping it going, and what they can do to put it out. This is because if they can work out what keeps a problem going, they can treat the problem by interrupting this maintaining cycle. A psychologist called Melanie Fennell developed an influential cognitive behavioral model of low self-esteem [3]. Dr Fennell’s model says that:

  • Throughout your life you form negative beliefs about yourself as a result of the way you have been treated. Psychologists call this your ‘bottom line’ or ‘core belief’. Your core belief is how you feel about yourself deep down, for example “I’m worthless” or “I’m no good”.
  • Confronting core beliefs feels unpleasant, so we all develop rules for living that protect us from our core beliefs. These rules guide how you live your life, and as long as your rules don’t get broken, your core belief stays dormant. People with low self-esteem often have rules that are demanding and rigid, such as “I must always please other people”, or “As long as I don’t get criticized then I’m OK”.
  • It can feel very anxiety provoking when it seems like one of your rules might be broken. If one of your rules is “I’m OK as long as everyone is happy”, it might be anxiety provoking if people around you are not happy – you might feel that you have failed.
  • When there is a danger that rules might be broken, you might make anxious predictions about what might happen and fear the worst (e.g. “I’ll be rejected if I can’t do everything that is expected of me”), or you might speak to yourself in a critical way, or avoid tricky situations and use strategies to cope.

Fennell states that all of these elements fit together. Your rules were developed to protect you, but are often rather inflexible and they can stop things from getting better. Although your safety strategies can make you feel good in the short-term, all of them can keep your core belief from changing, and your self-esteem doesn’t improve.

 

Treatments for low self-esteem

Psychological treatments for low self-esteem

A number of psychological treatments have been developed which directly target low self-esteem or self-criticism. These include cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), competitive memory training (COMET), and compassion focused therapy (CFT). There is evidence that they are effective forms of treatment [4,5,6,7,8, 9, 10]. There is also some overlap with psychological treatments for depression.

Ingredients of effective CBT for low self-esteem include:

  • Identifying your core beliefs
  • Identifying your rules for living
  • Developing healthier (more flexible) rules and beliefs
  • Testing your negative predictions using behavioral experiments
  • Facing your fears and confronting anxiety-provoking situations
  • Replacing self-criticism with self-compassion
  • Living in line with your new core beliefs

Medical treatments for low self-esteem

There are no recommended medical treatments for low self-esteem by itself. Where low self-esteem accompanies other problems, such as anxiety or depression, medical treatment may be recommended.

References

  1. Silverstone, P. H., & Salsali, M. (2003). Low self-esteem and psychiatric patients: Part I–The relationship between low self-esteem and psychiatric diagnosis. Annals of General Hospital Psychiatry, 2(1), 1-9.
  2. Kolubinski, D. C., Frings, D., Nikčević, A. V., Lawrence, J. A., & Spada, M. M. (2018). A systematic review and meta-analysis of CBT interventions based on the Fennell model of low self-esteem. Psychiatry Research, 267, 296-305.
  3. Fennell, M. J. (1997). Low self-esteem: A cognitive perspective. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 25(1), 1-26.
  4. Korrelboom, K. (2015). COMET voor negatief zelfbeeld: competitive memory training bij lage zelfwaardeing en negatief zelfbeeld. Bohn Stafleu van Loghum.
  5. Whelan, A., Haywood, P., & Galloway, S. (2007). Low self-esteem: group cognitive behaviour therapy. British Journal of Learning Disabilities, 35(2), 125-130.
  6. Morton, L., Roach, L., Reid, H., & Stewart, S. H. (2012). An evaluation of a CBT group for women with low self-esteem. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 40(2), 221-225.
  7. Waite, P. , McManus, F., & Shafran, R. (2012). Cognitive behaviour therapy for low self-esteem: A preliminary randomized controlled trial in a primary care setting. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 43(4), 1049-1057.
  8. Korrelboom, K., van der Weele, K., Gjaltema, M., & Hoogstraten, C. (2009). Competitive memory training for treating low self-esteem: A pilot study in a routine clinical setting. The Behavior Therapist.
  9. Korrelboom, K., Maarsingh, M., & Huijbrechts, I. (2012). Competitive Memory Training (COMET) for treating Low Self-Esteem in Patients with Depressive Disorders: A Randomized Clinical Trial.Depression and anxiety, 29(2), 102-110.
  10. Korrelboom, K., Marissen, M., & van Assendelft, T. (2011). Competitive memory training (COMET) for low self-esteem in patients with personality disorders: A randomized effectiveness study. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 39(1), 1-19.

About this article

This article was written by Dr Matthew Whalley and Dr Hardeep Kaur, both clinical psychologists. It was last reviewed on 2021/12/09.

12 signs of low self-esteem | PSYCHOLOGIES

91,677

Know Yourself

We are so busy with our daily activities that we often don't even have time to think about our needs. And in vain, because self-esteem and clear personal boundaries determine relations with the world. Much depends on the degree of self-esteem. What are the signs that it is not enough?

1. You let others decide for themselves. There are a lot of fans around to give advice and tell how to do it. Those who always follow their lead lack self-respect. You do not have to listen to everything they say and live according to someone else's orders.

2. You don't hear your intuition. Are you used to shrugging off the feeling of "sucking in the pit of your stomach"? In vain, this is how the survival mechanism works. The instinct of self-preservation tells you how to behave better and safer. Learn to hear the inner voice.

3. You are often used. Unfortunately, some people manage to take advantage of other people's kindness and sensitivity. Be careful and don't let yourself be taken advantage of. This will require work on yourself, but only in this way can you learn how to help others correctly.

4. You hide your feelings. Opening up to another person is scary and difficult, because it makes us vulnerable. But by acknowledging real feelings, you show respect for yourself. Learn to recognize emotions: they can tell a lot.

5. You try very hard to please. If you constantly stifle inner protest and take on something that you don’t want to do at all, you won’t be able to become happy. Saying “no” is completely normal.

6. You put off success until later. If dreams and personal goals always end up somewhere at the end of the to-do list, think about it: is this why you are offended by the whole world? Of course, helping others is great. But one who always forgets about his own desires is hardly able to respect himself.

7. You spend time doing things you don't like. If you do something just for the sake of someone's praise, it's time to reconsider your behavior. To fulfill onerous obligations in order to earn approval from the outside is useless. The condition for a healthy relationship is when everyone wins.

8. You are addicted to self-criticism. Be aware of your strengths and weaknesses well. But why be tormented by unnecessary claims to yourself? It is unhealthy and unreasonable to endlessly lament over what you do not know how or what you did not succeed.

9. You drown out your needs. When you listen to your inner voice, you suddenly begin to understand what you really want. Taking care of yourself and respecting your needs is vital.

10. You are too worried about other people's opinions. Good relationships are important, but no one has the right to encroach on our dignity. Anyone who wants to be happy does not need appreciation.

11. You are in a hurry to judge others. He who is too self-critical treats everyone reprehensibly. But no one gave us the right to condemn other people's actions, and if you agreed to accept yourself, try to reckon with the rest. Let others make the choice.

12. You are stuck in a destructive relationship. Those who do not respect themselves easily fall into dysfunctional, and sometimes toxic, destructive relationships. But you can show concern for other people without forgetting your own needs and desires.

It may sound strange, but as soon as you and your happiness are in the forefront, there will be reasons to respect yourself. Listen to your heart, do what you think is right. It's okay to be who you want to be, it doesn't require anyone's permission. Trust yourself and protect the boundaries, then others will begin to treat you with respect.

Text: Elena Anisimova Photo source: Getty Images

New on the site

Erectile dysfunction: why it occurs and how to overcome it

“There is nothing to be afraid of”: 6 bold life lessons from Elon Musk — learn the secret of his success

“Husband is offended because I want sex less often than he does. I’m thinking about a divorce”

“A friend blocked me in text messages for no reason”

Milf dominance: why men are attracted to older women

“Stop tolerating this!”: how to overcome partner’s aggression

Sleep well: a new way to deal with nightmares has been found

What men value in women: do you agree with the opinions of the heroes?

Where does low self-esteem really come from and how to fix it?

Health

Low self-esteem (which is formed due to childhood traumas, biological characteristics and bad life experiences) can be dealt with. The scientific director of the psychological center "Quality of Life", a specialist in the field of cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy Alexander Erichev told Sobaka.Ru what steps will help to do this.

Reasons for low self-esteem

People with low self-esteem always have negative core beliefs about themselves. They appear in the process of life experience - including if a person has faced a large number of punishments, prohibitions, insults, neglect. The first group of such beliefs is associated with defectiveness ("I'm somehow not like that"), the second - with helplessness ("I'm weak") and the third - with the lack of love ("they don't like me").

Negative beliefs often arise when childhood is not satisfied basic needs. First of all, the need for love and acceptance. For example, at the time of the birth of a child, maternal feelings did not awaken at the mother, and the father generally disappeared in an unknown direction. Another situation is emotional deprivation from parents. For example, they were not used to expressing warm feelings, were less emotional than other families.

Quite often people suffer from low self-esteem, who seemed to have quite good support in the family, but got into a situation of prolonged bullying. For example, at school, such a situation can seriously change the perception of oneself. The man, remembering the time of persecution, says that he felt fear and helplessness. He was in a state of chronic stress for a very long time, and this negative experience stuck with him.

When a person's self-esteem is distorted, he finds even more evidence in events that he is bad

There are also biological prerequisites for a person to have a fixed low self-esteem. For example, a dandelion baby and an orchid baby can be born in the same family. "Dandelion" will grow through the asphalt and will be less sensitive to environmental factors. Such a child will more easily cope with the same bullying. And the orchid child, who, for biological reasons, is more vulnerable and shy, will not be able to resolve this situation, perhaps he will not even seek support from his parents. We must not forget that we all have different types of nervous system. We are different from each other even at birth, and then life also leaves its serious imprint. The production of hormones changes, stress reactions are fixed.

Distortions in personal thinking play a huge role in our self-esteem. We all perceive the same situation differently. Recent studies show that even our memories should not be trusted, because they are seriously distorted, including under the influence of our emotions. So, if a person has a distorted personal self-esteem, and he feels weak, helpless, defective and lazy, then he will also perceive all the events that happen to him in a distorted way. And find more and more evidence that he is bad.

One person with low self-esteem will avoid contact with the opposite sex out of fear, while another, on the contrary, will have a huge number of casual relationships

What bad thoughts about ourselves lead to

in addition, the person himself tries to protect himself from them by a set of rules. That is, he seeks to prevent the confirmation of his fears and fears. For example, if he thinks that he is unloved, then what strategies of behavior will he demonstrate? They can be completely opposite. One will avoid contact with the opposite sex for fear of being rejected anyway. The other will choose a different behavior: on the contrary, he will have a huge number of casual connections, and he will perceive each acquaintance as a trophy. In appearance, he will seem confident and impudent, but in fact, behind this behavior, hide his negative attitudes towards himself. Such rules that a person has created for himself can be different. For example, a person decides that he must always be polite. Or if he is criticized, it immediately means that he is bad. And if he doesn't try his best, he won't achieve anything.

A person with low self-esteem attributes all failures to himself, and success to chance

To assess your self-esteem, ask yourself a series of questions. Has your life experience taught you to value yourself for who you are? Do you have a good opinion of yourself? Do you take good care of yourself and take care of yourself? Do you like yourself? Do you value both your strengths and weaknesses equally? Are you quite satisfied? Do you feel entitled to other people's attention and time? Do you judge yourself the same way you judge others – no more, no less? Are you more inclined to encourage yourself than engage in self-criticism?

While working on self-esteem, one should not strive for it to become inflated and fly away into space. This is also not good. When we deliberately make unrealistic demands of ourselves and declare something like “I am the king of the world,” the more often reality tells us that something is wrong with our beliefs about ourselves. High self-esteem is often unstable, so external circumstances can easily unsettle a person. And you need to strive first of all for stability and learn to support yourself.

A person is more likely to conditionally “get” depression or an anxiety disorder if he attributes all failures to himself, and attributes all positive things to chance. Namely, this is usually done by a person with low self-esteem.

It is easy to monitor and stop unfounded criticism of yourself

What to do? Stop criticizing yourself, punish yourself

Psychotherapists distinguish several modes, that is, emotional states, which we enter from time to time. One of the unhealthy is the regime of a critical or punishing parent. In it, we force ourselves to experience feelings of inferiority and guilt, point out that we owe something. At the same time, we criticize for such trifles for which we would never scold others. And we punish in those moments when we really need help.

You can easily see how this mode turns on. It additionally supports low self-esteem or even lowers it even more. For example, when you say to yourself: “Could have done better”, “Why is this not so good?”, “Is that all you did?”, “Others can, and you can”. You also present the results of your work as some kind of nonsense. Others praise you, but you think: “No, it seemed to them, I just got lucky.”

Learn to turn off your inner critic mode and be more supportive of yourself

The good news is that we can easily detect and stop unreasonable self-criticism and devaluation in ourselves. This skill is quite possible to develop even without the help of a psychotherapist. Although it can take a decent amount of time. Try to observe your critical parent for at least a week. You will most likely notice that he appears even when you shouldn't be scolding yourself.

Try translating self-criticism into self-compassion. Instead of the desire to punish and condemn yourself, you should switch to the desire to correct the situation and achieve a better result. Instead of looking to the past, look to the future and try to figure out what can be done now. Shift the focus from your mistakes to your strengths and resources, and instead of frustration, anger, and anxiety, try to be supportive of yourself.

Learn to express emotions, both negative and positive

Stand up for your boundaries and rights

Develop assertiveness - the ability to stand up for your boundaries and rights so as not to destroy someone else's personal space. It is believed that assertive behavior quite clearly correlates with adequate self-esteem. What does it include? Open and sincere expression of positive emotions, as well as open (but adequate) expression of negative ones. We need to learn how to properly express our negative emotions - this is very important. Assertiveness also includes the ability to self-defense and the ability to say “no”. Quite often, when we feel anxious and helpless inside, we agree to things that are obviously unpleasant for us. And then we begin to blame ourselves: “How could you, you definitely had to refuse, why didn’t you refuse, you could pull yourself together!” Assertiveness also includes initiative, the ability to offer, ask, respect one’s own dignity - now this is beautifully called such a term as “proactivity”.

Often we can't say "no" to a person and end up blaming ourselves more for it

Practice assertive behavior other than "You're a rag, come on!" , but in the style of "You're worried, but let's try to take a small step now." It is also worth praising yourself for trying, even if it has not yet been successful. For example, you failed to deny, although you tried to do so. Or you said “no” but the other person insisted that you say “yes”. But this is already a reason to tell yourself that you have practically succeeded, although not yet completely.

Take care of your needs

Learn to take care of yourself and your needs (again, without overstepping other people's boundaries). This is probably the most difficult advice, because it requires a fairly good level of awareness. You can learn this slowly - you feel that you want to drink water and drink it. Try to listen to more ambiguous needs and feel your desires.

Imagine praising yourself as your favorite child

Learn self-efficacy

Self-efficacy is the extent to which we are aware of our ability to cope with certain circumstances. If we feel that the world is so inexplicable and cruel that we cannot do anything, then naturally we will evaluate ourselves worse. If we perceive our ability to act, this gives us significant help and support. For me, a good example of self-efficacy is independent travel. At first you are scared, and then you get the feeling that the world around you is quite friendly, that you can easily deal with the transport network and find yourself a place to sleep.

Support yourself and celebrate your achievements

It is important that support and praise in your address does not turn into something like: "I'm so cool." Think about what you can support yourself for today? What good did you do during the day? Imagine that you yourself, as your beloved child, say good words. At the same time, praise can be not only for certain successful actions. For example, I survived a difficult situation, I coped with it - this is also a reason for praise. It will be good if it becomes your tradition to notice your achievements.

Build goals in accordance with personal values ​​

To reinforce adequate and stable self-esteem, you need to learn to look for your values.

Learn more