Self Esteem Therapy and Treatment
Common Issues of Self Esteem:
- Worrying about being accepted, judged or rejected
- Being critical, or angry with oneself
- Obsess about times people do criticize something about oneself
- Thoughts such as “I’m a failure” or “I’m worthless”
Your self-esteem is an important part of you. It is as important as having a healthy body, eating a good diet, doing meaningful work or service, maintaining an active lifestyle, and including good friends and loved ones in one’s life on a regular basis.Like these others aspects of a balanced and rewarding life, self-esteem is a skill that can be learned, practiced and mastered if you are motivated to work at it. It can be argued that Self-Esteem is even more important than these other elements because esteem helps you be convinced your well-being is worth the other steps to taking good care of yourself. An EMDR therapist can be a wonderful guide and support in this process and help you increase self-esteem more efficiently and effectively.
Oftentimes the way we talk to ourselves can be almost a form of self-torture or self-traumatization. Everyone may occasionally exclaim to oneself, “That was stupid!” when we make a mistake. It’s not very kind, but it’s much better than a strong habit of labeling oneself stupid, or worthless. Habits like this can only be called self-abusive.
Usually people have learned to talk to themselves like this from others who used those words or behaved in ways that led us as a child to draw such negative conclusions. Sometimes we learn from watching a parent talk to himself or herself in those ways. Unfortunately, making the habit a part of ourselves perpetuates the original abuse.
One client came to EMDR therapy for performance help in job interviewing. His anxiety was high, as the economy was making each interview a high-stakes challenge. He had always done well in interviewing and had no negative interviewing experiences, and yet he could be quite hard on himself for how he handled the job hunt process, nevertheless. He and his therapist finally discovered that by witnessing, as a child, his mother criticizing herself while practicing her piano lessons was quite a stress for him and he carried that stress with him. As this experience was processed with EMDR, he began relaxing and said, “I didn’t realize how much anxiety I was carrying with me to the table!” A few minutes more of processing, and he exclaimed, “I’m eager to go to an interview right now!” He was delighted to discover that now he was carrying “eagerness” to the table. What a profound difference it was!
All of the EMDRIA-Certified EMDR therapists listed on this website would be happy to use both their traditional training plus EMDR therapy to help you overcome negative beliefs, emotions, sensations, and memories that may block you from feeling completely comfortable in your own skin, as the unique person that you are, with your personal collection of strengths and weaknesses (or areas in which you are not focusing on much at this time). This is a given part of the EMDR protocol: dealing with limiting beliefs. Through a holistic, client-centered process, the client efficiently comes up with a new positive belief that they grow to completely believe. Many therapists have commented that the clients experiencing EMDR come up with better positive beliefs than the therapist could have “drafted” for them. The joy of this process is what prevents burnout for EMDRIA-Certified EMDR therapists, and makes their clients enthusiastic about their gains.
We wish you well in enriching your life by enhancing your self-esteem.
