Increasing Your Self Esteem
Are You Accepting Yourself Unconditionally?
Orlando counselors report that feelings of low self-esteem can greatly contribute to anxiety and depression. Counselors at GroundWork Counseling in Maitland believe that healthy self-acceptance is essential to mental health.
Self-esteem refers to the overall opinion a person has of himself and how a person judges and evaluates himself. At the core of self-esteem lie an individual’s core beliefs and a belief about the type of person you think you are.
Characteristics of low self-esteem include:
- Feeling anxious.
- Feeling depressed.
- Social isolation.
- Lack of social skills.
- An inability to accept compliments.
- Emphasizing the negative.
- An inability to be fair to yourself.
- Being overly concerned with what you imagine others think about you.
- Neglecting yourself.
- Worrying about whether you have treated others badly.
- An inability to trust your own opinion.
- Hesitant to take on challenges.
- Treating others well but treating yourself badly.
- An inability to put yourself first.
- Expecting very little from life.
Orlando counselors at GroundWork Counseling in Orlando assert that low self-esteem can have an impact on many areas of our life including:
Work/School. People with low self-esteem may consistently underperform at work or school and often avoid challenges because they fear failure. Conversely, people with low self-esteem can also be relentless perfectionists in an attempt to avoid failure. Individuals with low self-esteem rarely give themselves credit for a job well done and have a difficult time believing that their achievements are the result of their own strengths and skills.
Relationships. People with low self-esteem are often overly sensitive to criticism and have an excessive need to please others. Quite commonly, they place other’s needs above their own, believing that if they don’t engage in people pleasing, others will not like them or want to know them. People with low self-esteem often expect to be rejected.
Recreational Activities. Individuals with low self-esteem often avoid leisure activities because they fear being judged (art, sports, etc.). Some individuals with low self-esteem don’t engage in leisure activities because they believe they don’t deserve to enjoy themselves.
Self Care. Many people with low self-esteem don’t put themselves very high on their own priority list. They tend to not take very good care of themselves, which can contribute to physical illnesses, depression, anxiety and burn-out.
Counselors GroundWork Counseling in Orlando report that many factors contribute to and help to maintain low self-esteem including childhood experiences and one’s current thought and behavior patterns. Our Orlando Counselors indicate that self-esteem can be a life-long quest. When we make our inevitable mistakes, self-esteem tends to plunge and we are back to the pursuit of self-esteem. This cycle of high and low self-esteem takes place continuously throughout our lives.
Therefore, even more important than self-esteem is self-acceptance. Renowned psychologist, Albert Ellis, instead recommends we strive for unconditional self-acceptance, which means accepting yourself as you are, respecting and appreciating yourself for the wonderful, yet flawed human being that you are. Unconditional self-acceptance does not mean resigning yourself to accepting all current situations or condoning all of your behaviors, rather it means accepting your self with the goal of improving what you can. Albert Ellis reminds us that we are all simply human beings, fallible, imperfect and uneatable. If you feel that you may benefit from self-esteem counseling in Orlando, call one of our Orlando therapists today.
