one of the most amazing things that has been said to me in therapy is that self esteem doesn’t exist.
and that floored people and the psych went onto say that what she meant was that self esteem is a concept that actually includes a vast array of things and labelling them all as one thing is really limiting and prevents actual improvement
you could have real strong pride in the things you create and hate your body
you could hate your creations but also want to share them with people
you could not hate yourself at all but not take care of yourself, engage in reckless self endangerment
thats all bundled under ‘self esteem’ but saying ‘i need better self esteem’ doesn’t mean anything
whereas if you say ‘i need to work on ways to keeping myself safe, refusing to act on destructive urges’ or ‘i want to be in a place where i believe compliments trusted people give me’
thats concrete, thats a goal.
having it said in therapy helped a lot of people in my group stop saying ‘i have low self esteem’ and start specifying about the actual issue they have
Wow, that is so, so helpful.
