Having an inner voice that regularly criticizes, doubts, and diminishes you is a clear sign of low self-esteem. This could also include constant self-blaming or a habit of thinking the worst of your abilities and aptitudes.
Low Self-Esteem: Causes, Signs, & How to Improve It
Self-esteem is a powerful thing. It can influence the relationships you build, the risks you take in life, how you view yourself, and the way you talk to yourself when things go wrong.
Many people move through life with low self-esteem without even realizing it. Self-criticism and people-pleasing can seem like character traits, which sometimes makes them difficult to examine and change.
Thankfully, your self-esteem isn’t fixed in place – it can be changed and improved at any stage of the lifespan. This article can help you better understand and improve self-esteem by exploring:
- What self-esteem means and how it’s different than confidence.
- Common causes of self-esteem issues.
- Signs that could point to having low self-esteem.
- Simple ways to improve your self-esteem over time.
- When self-esteem therapy can help you move forward.
What “Self-Esteem” Actually Means
Self-esteem is, generally, the overall value you place on yourself as a person. It can shape how worthy or capable you feel, and how deserving of good things you feel. It’s typically not tied to any single skill or achievement in your life.[1]
Self-image is inherently tied to self-esteem. Self-image refers to the general mental picture you have of yourself, including your
- Abilities.
- Appearance.
- Characteristics.
Having a distorted or critical self-image can directly impact your self-esteem, even if this image doesn’t line up with how others might see you.[2]
Having healthy self-esteem doesn’t mean you feel good about yourself all the time. Instead, it means you typically have a realistic and generally accepting view of who you are, including your strengths and flaws, without your sense of worth depending on others.
Self-Esteem vs. Confidence
Confidence tends to be more specific than self-esteem. For example, you might feel confident giving a presentation at work but still carry deep insecurities about your appearance.
Confidence usually lines up with your trust in a particular ability or attribute, while self-esteem reflects how you view yourself on the whole.
This is important because the two ideas don’t always correlate or move together. You could seem very confident in a social or professional setting while also battling with low self-worth. Further, some people might feel generally secure about who they are even while lacking confidence in a specific skill they haven’t had the chance to fully develop yet.
Potential Causes of Low Self-Esteem
Self-esteem issues usually build up over time, and their causes can vary from person to person. Having said this, they commonly stem from sources such as:
- Early childhood experiences: Growing up around harsh criticism, parental neglect, or conditional approval of who you are can all lead to lasting beliefs about not being good enough.
- Unhealthy relationships: Being mistreated by a partner, friend, family member, or colleague can be corrosive for your self-worth and image.
- Co-occurring mental health conditions: Depression, anxiety, chronic stress, trauma, and more can all impact mood and self-image, making low self-esteem more likely.
- Bullying and social rejection: Repeated exclusion or ridicule from others, particularly during adolescence, can leave a lasting mark on how you view yourself.
- Major life changes: Losing a job, divorce, illness, or other major changes can shake up your sense of identity and inherent worth.
- Perfectionism: Constantly measuring yourself against others or holding impossibly high standards for yourself tends to reinforce existing feelings of inadequacy.
- Discrimination: Experiencing prejudice based on race, gender, sexuality, or other factors can undermine your sense of worth.
Recognizing that any of these factors have affected you is a great step toward understanding where your self-esteem issues may have started and what might need addressing.
Signs That May Point to Having Low Self-Esteem
Low self-esteem looks different for everyone. However, some common patterns do tend to appear often, such as:
Ongoing Negative Self-Talk
Struggling to Accept Compliments
People with low self-esteem sometimes sidestep praise or try to explain it away, usually because the compliments themselves conflict with deeper, negative beliefs about themselves.
Sensitivity to Being Criticized
Feedback, even gently given, can feel like confirmation of your worst fears about yourself. Being sensitive about this can lead to defensiveness as well.
People-Pleasing and Struggling to Say No
Struggling to set boundaries with others and putting their needs above your own can come from tying your self-worth into how agreeable you are.
Avoiding Challenges and New Opportunities
Fear of failure is often rooted in low self-esteem and can lead people to avoid places and things that they might not succeed at right away. This avoidance can limit growth opportunities and reinforce your existing insecurities.
Withdrawal
Some people with low self-esteem pull away from social situations entirely, worried about being judged by others.
Comparing Yourself to Others
Regularly measuring your inherent worth as a person against other people’s achievements can often cause you to feel bad about yourself and tie your self-worth to external validation.
How to Work on Improving Your Self-Esteem
Building your self-esteem is always possible and just takes a little practice. Small, consistent steps can quickly add up and make a real difference over time. For instance, you could try:
Challenge Your Negative Self-Talk
When you notice an overly critical thought, stop and ask yourself if this thought is actually true or just familiar. Try to replace a harsh judgement with more balanced language, the same way you might talk to a friend or family member in need.
Choose to Focus More on Your Strengths
Make a habit of noticing the things you do well, even in smaller moments. Recognizing your abilities and achievements can counterbalance the tendency to focus exclusively on your mistakes.
Set Achievable Goals for Yourself
Break larger goals up into smaller, manageable steps. Each successful step can serve as evidence of your capabilities, gradually shaping how you see yourself.
Practice Daily Self-Compassion
Treat yourself with the same patience and understanding you’d offer a loved one. Mistakes are part of the human experience and don’t need to define you.
Limit Comparing Yourself to Others
Cutting down on social media can help with limiting your comparison to others — your worth can’t be measured against other people’s timelines or achievements in life.
Surround Yourself With Supporters
Spend time with people who encourage and respect you, and set firm boundaries with those who don’t. Healthy relationships reinforce a stronger sense of self-worth over time.
Watch After Your Physical Health
Regular exercise, good nutrition, and proper sleep all support emotional well-being, which influences how you feel about yourself.
Celebrate the Wins
Acknowledge the progress you make, no matter how small it seems. Self-esteem building is a process, and setbacks are normal and to be expected.
How Therapy Can Help With Low Self-Esteem
Self-esteem strategies can go a long way, but some self-esteem issues run deep enough to require extra mental health support.
Self-esteem-based therapy can help you identify where these patterns began and work with you to build a more compassionate, balanced sense of self. This process can take time, but it can often help you to make lasting changes in your life.
Therapy approaches such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) are commonly used to address low self-esteem, both on its own and as a function of other mental health conditions. It does so by helping you identify thought patterns and replace them with more useful ones.[3]
Other approaches, such as psychodynamic therapy, may focus on processing past experiences that shaped your self-esteem to begin with. Modalities like acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) focus on encouraging you to accept negative feelings while taking actions that align more with your personal values.
It’s important to remember that there’s no fixed timeline for the healing process. You might notice a major shift within a few months, while other people with self-esteem issues tied to childhood may need longer. Progress never happens in a straight line, but support is out there to help you along the way.
Find Self-Esteem Therapy at Mission Connection
Working through self-esteem issues doesn’t have to be something you do by yourself. If low self-worth and self-esteem connect to your past or current experiences, relationships, or other ongoing mental health challenges, we’re here to help.
At Mission Connection, we offer personalized outpatient treatment tailored to your unique needs. Our expert clinical team provides a range of evidence-based mental health treatment approaches.
In addition to standard outpatient care at our locations in California, Virginia, and Washington, we also offer more intensive levels of care, such as a partial hospitalization program (PHP) or an intensive outpatient program (IOP). We are Joint Commission-accredited and in-network with most major insurance providers.
To find out more about our in-person, virtual telehealth, or hybrid program that combines in-person and virtual care, call us at 866-833-1822. You can also get started online. Let us help you or a loved one build a stronger, more compassionate sense of self.
References
- Orth, U., & Robins, R. W. (2022). Is high self-esteem beneficial? revisiting a classic question. American Psychologist 77(1), 5–17. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000922
- Kim, J. et al. (2023). The relationship between mental representations of self and social evaluation: examining the validity and usefulness of visual proxies of self-image. Frontiers in Psychology 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.937905
- Cognitive behavioral therapy. (2022). National Library of Medicine: Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK279297/
