What Causes Low Self-Esteem and How To Improve It

We are not born with low self-esteem

Self-esteem and self-confidence are often used interchangeably. However, they are very different. Self-confidence is a measure of our belief in our own abilities, whereas self-esteem relates to our sense of self and how we interact with the world.24 Sept 2020

https://www.torontopsychologists.com/whats-the-difference-between-self-esteem-and-self-confidence

What Causes Low Self-Esteem?

We are born into an environment where our parents and caregivers had their own beliefs, perceptions, talents, problems and ways of coping. It’s an environment we have no control over.

From this, we learn and witness how to live and operate in the world.

These experiences create memories that form our perceptions and beliefs about ourselves and the world.

This is how we form our identity – the way we are labelled by others and ourselves.

Those who have had an unhappy childhood and have been criticized, punished, abused or put down will be more likely to form a belief they are not good enough, wrong, not important, abandoned, rejected, unloved, incompetent or inadequate. With these negative beliefs about themselves, they will have low self-esteem.

The more we think about and reinforce these beliefs the stronger the neural pathways will be in our mind to the past proofs and refereences that support our low self-esteem.

We get a physical reaction in our body when we are triggered by something that reminds us of the time when those beliefs were formed. It could be the way someone looked at us, something someone said or even a taste or smell.

To avoid feeling this way we often self medicate by smoking, drinking, eating, shopping, playing video games, gambling, doing drugs or social media. This can start out by trying to fit in or to feel loved.

This results in beating ourselves up and not feeling good enough because we can’t stop. That reinforces the negative beliefs we have that support our low self-esteem.

Recognise You Can Do Something About It.

By taking ownership and realizing our worth comes from within and not from other’s judgments of us we can start to improve how we feel about ourselves.

Our present situation is based on our past experience. Changing our perception of the past will change how we perceive our future.

Beliefs are not based on facts. They are only what the individual believes to be true.

Memories are not stuck or permanent and two people experiencing the same thing will have a different memory of it. How often have you had an argument with someone about a past event and both have a different memory of it? The latest research shows that every time we revisit a memory it is updated based on what is happening each time.

We tend to focus on a few negative experiences rather than all the positive ones because negative ones have more emotional charge.

Neuroplasticity, also known as neural plasticity, or brain plasticity, is the ability of neural networks in the brain to change through growth and reorganization. These changes range from individual neuron pathways making new connections, to systematic adjustments like cortical remapping. Wikipe

What You Can Do To Improve Your Self-Esteem

eutaptics®FasterEFT™ is a thinking system developed by Robert Smith. It is a combination of techniques including Directed Mindfulness, NLP, Bad/Good collapse, neuroplasticity and the latest research into memory reconsolidation. It is used to update past experiences to positive ones. We are not changing history or what really happened but the way we hold it in our mind, our beliefs and our perceptions. When we change our past experiences and how we perceive them it changes how we create our present and future and how we feel about ourselves. Our subconscious doesn’t know the difference between real or imagined so we can create a wonderful past and future for ourselves.

Once we take ownership of our own situation we no longer need to blame others or the outside world for how we feel about and perceive ourselves anymore.

Then we can forgive others and ourselves for our past behaviours because we knew no different at the time and our caregivers and influencers were only operating from the knowledge and skills they had at the time, the past is over, it’s not happening anymore and we can let it go.

Now we can create a happy future by imagining and feeling it as if it has already happened. What we focus on is what we attract so focusing on what we would like to have will attract more of it.

Diane is an advance eutaptics®FasterEFT™ practitioner, mentor and teacher with 10 years of experience, attending trainings, presenting and working with clients.

Robert Smith is the founder of eutaptics®FasterEFT™ and more information and a free 7-day course can be found at https://chooseconfidence.com.au/feft