Here we launch this activity to find your strengths:
Exercise 1
Think of 5 achievements that you have achieved throughout your life: Finish your career, work in the sector you want, learn a third language, play a musical instrument, learn to cook alone, seduce your partner … If it is difficult for you to find them It is because you are not generous with yourself, so imagine that a friend had achieved this success, what would you say? How would you recognize it?
Then think about what positive personal characteristics are necessary to achieve these achievements: curiosity, initiative …
You already have it, and these are your strengths!
Exercise 2
Gratitude is a strength closely related to self-esteem; try this technique to practice them.
Letter to a very dear person: The activity consists of writing yourself a letter describing yourself in the third person. They allow 20 minutes to complete it. After that space, the person is asked how they have felt and what they have learned about themselves.
“I am looking forward to Friday because I am going to introduce you to a person I love very much. It’s called (write your name here) ……… and it’s (describe your positive physical, psychological and social characteristics that you like).
Then continue to describe yourself in the third person as if the letter was written by a person who loves you very much.
What I like the most about them is that ………………………
Some of the people who love you the most are ………………
What he’s most proud of is …………………………
What I would need to feel more comfortable with myself and with more self-esteem is to stop …………
He ends by writing the following paragraph verbatim: “I think you would be surprised if you knew how important and special he is to me because the truth is that he is the person with whom I have the most stimulating, passionate, and lasting relationship of my life.”
Turn your negative thoughts into rational responses.
Our internal dialogue is essential when it comes to building our self-esteem.
In people with healthy self-esteem, this dialogue is usually friendly, positive, and comforting. But it becomes the opposite; a voice appears that constantly criticizes, punishes, and despises achievements.
This inner voice is irrational and tends to interpret any situation in the worst possible way, even when there is no objective evidence to reach that conclusion.
What do we have to do? Detect those irrational, negative thoughts about yourself and question their objectivity, changing them for more realistic and objective ones. It will be time to put them to the test so that your reason will defeat them. Is it a real threat, or is it unfounded?
Identify in which situations they appear and what exactly they tell you. Your negative thoughts are usually always the same, so how do they make you interpret situations? What emotions do they provoke in you?
The better you understand the emotions they cause you, the less power they will have over you, and acknowledging your feelings reduces its impact.
What is low self-esteem?
It is defined as the difficulty that the person has to feel valuable in his depths, and therefore worthy of being loved by others.
People with low self-esteem seek, sometimes without being very aware of it, the approval and recognition of others and often have difficulty being themselves and being able to express freely what they think, feel and need in their interpersonal relationships, thus like being able to say “no” to the other without feeling bad about it.
People with low self-esteem often experience anxiety in intimate and emotional situations. The causes that explain low self-esteem are highly variable and numerous; for this, psychotherapy constructs hypotheses about the reasons that triggered these feelings.
Main affected
The main ones affected by low self-esteem are undoubtedly adolescents; this is a consequence of various factors, such as lack of communication, respect, support, love, and affection on their parents and environment in general.
Low self-esteem is a severe disorder that affects millions of men and women, destroying their relationships, paralyzing them with fear, and creating lives that will never reach their full potential—leaving them unbalanced, needy, and frustrated.
d) Consequences of low self-esteem
Low self-esteem develops anguish, pain, indecision, discouragement, shame, and a host of other discomforts.
It leads a person to feel undervalued and, because of this, to constantly be comparing themselves with others, underlining the virtues and capacities of others, and seeing them as beings superior to them.
The affected person becomes convinced that he is incapable of achieving anything he sets out to do.
Furthermore, this also harms the health of the person:
Insomnia: the frustration and strong dissatisfaction that we are not very competent and of little worth is a source of sleep problems.
Hypertension: among the causes of hypertension are obesity, sedentary lifestyle, and emotional stress. Self-esteem problems are added to this list of causes of hypertension, mainly due to the vital pessimism that low self-esteem produces, reducing activities to a minimum.
Depression: Depression is one of the most complicated diseases, which shows that what happens in the emotional sphere is immediately transferred to the physical plane. Having low self-esteem, thinking that we cannot do anything, even that we do not deserve to be happy, is a sure ticket to depression.
Eating disorders: self-esteem problems often refer to the aesthetic aspect. It is common to look ugly or look fat when you do not have good emotional stability. The next step is to obsess and change it until we find ourselves with an eating disorder. This happens mainly to people who suffer bullying regarding their physique.
And finally…
Suicide: The risk of suicide among people with low self-esteem is high. A person who is unaware of what he is worth, who does not feel loved, who has locked himself in pessimism, may want to end this negative and frustrating life.
Feelings of a person with low self-esteem.
Jealousy
Love and jealousy are intimately related since the one who loves usually remains alert towards the other person. Jealousy in small doses is healthy, but it can be unhealthy and cause irreparable pain when they are excessive. As with many psychological problems, jealousy is the beginning and the end of a personal or family situation.
It is usual for jealousy to occur in every relationship for fear of losing a loved one, But you have to be able to control them to be happy since it is difficult for a jealous person to become so since his desire to control his partner and suspicion of all his actions make it impossible for him to achieve that happiness.
“I want to love you without suffocating you, appreciate you without judging you, join you without enslaving you, invite you without demanding you, leave you without feeling guilty, criticize you without hurting you and help you without belittling you. If I can get the same from you, then we can meet and enrich each other” (Virginia Satir)
People with low self-esteem are constantly comparing themselves to others. They believe that they do not have good qualities. Therefore, they feel inferior to others. They also feel that others are more important than themselves.
We are envious because we do not accept ourselves. We do not love ourselves enough. Envy and jealousy are toxic emotions. However, we can use these emotions and transform them into healthy ones. For this, we need to love and respect ourselves as we are and be grateful for who we are.