Causes of Low Self-Esteem and How to Improve - We Rise Therapy and Wellness

We’ve all felt inferior at some point. We go through breakups, make blunders at our workplaces, find it hard to be assertive in our relationships, and obsess over the silly things we say to our family and friends. While a feeling of insecurity or inadequacy is a natural part of being human, a constant sense of inadequacy, worthlessness, or less than others, may indicate low self-esteem.

A high sense of self-esteem can make you feel confident and ready for anything. However, continued low self-esteem can lead to shame and embarrassment, making you feel more self-conscious about how you look or act.

This can affect your relationships with family members, friends, and coworkers and your overall self-image, personality, and life.

In this article, we’ll dig deeper into what low self-esteem is, its causes, and what you can do to grow the healthy self-esteem you deserve.

What Is Low Self-Esteem?

Low self-esteem is a feeling of inadequacy and low self-worth. It’s a state of mind in which you feel you are not good enough. You may also feel that you do not deserve or have the right to be who you are.

People with healthy self-esteem think positively about themselves and are hopeful about life. They know they’re valued and can identify some of their positive qualities, such as “I am lovely,” “I am loyal,” “I am genuine,” or “I am a good mother.”

People with low self-esteem tend to be more critical and negative about themselves, the world, and their future. These people commonly feel anxious, sad, and unmotivated.

You may doubt your ability to overcome challenges. You might have rough talks about yourself, telling yourself things like “You’re a failure,” or “you don’t deserve it.”

Having low self-esteem can be quite a serious issue. It can affect many areas of your life, such as your sense of identity, self-confidence, competence, and feeling of belonging.

A low self-esteem individual will always try to please others or go an extra mile at work or with friends and family. You may feel OK if you keep meeting these standards, but there will inevitably be times when you can’t, which can leave you sad and anxious.

There is more to self-esteem than just liking yourself; it’s also believing that you deserve love and valuing your thoughts, feelings, opinions, interests, and ambitions.

What Causes Low Self-Esteem?

There are several reasons why you might have low self-esteem, including:

1. A Lack of Confidence in Your Skills

People who lack confidence in their skills tend to have low self-esteem and vice versa. Being confident in your skills and abilities makes you believe in yourself in managing different situations.

This level of self-trust makes you confident and comfortable navigating many situations you might encounter in life – in your workplace or with family and friends. Lack of self-confidence can play a role in causing low self-esteem, but poor self-esteem can also contribute to or worsen poor confidence.

2. Doubting Your Attractiveness and Appearance

Feelings about your physical appearance and self-esteem may go hand in hand, especially if you experience frequent negative comments or reactions. It may be common for you to be stared at every day or receive unkind remarks every day.

It can be challenging to have healthy self-esteem when you often experience thoughtless and unkind people. Unsurprisingly, you may become preoccupied with these negative reactions, which can lead to feelings of anxiety, depression, distress, unhappiness, upset, or anger, as well as fear that others will stare or not be kind.

3. Negative Social Comparison

Social comparison refers to a tendency to evaluate yourself against others. You may find yourself comparing yourself to others in many different ways, including how well you perform at work, how well you do in school, how much money you make, your possession, how attractive you are, or how good you are at sports.

There are two types of comparison in relation to self-esteem – upward and downward comparisons.

People who engage in upward social comparison (comparing themselves to someone they view better than them) tend to have low self-esteem.

Upward social comparisons aren’t always bad. Sometimes these comparisons can provide insight into your life and help you improve. However, If you feel inadequate or hopeless, you may feel less confident.

4. Stress and Difficult Life Events

Stressful situations can affect the way you think, feel, and act. They can also lead to depression and anxiety. These feelings can interfere with your ability to think, act appropriately, and communicate effectively. If these feelings continue for a long period, they can cause severe damage to your self-esteem.

What Are the Signs of Low Self-Esteem?

Signs of low self-esteem include:

Feeling like a failure
Feeling like others are better than you
Not liking yourself
Having a hard time making friends
Trying to do things that make others look at you differently
You don’t believe you’re good enough
You don’t feel comfortable expressing yourself
You get angry when you’re criticized or made fun of
You have trouble making decisions and taking responsibility
You blame others for your problems and failures
You have difficulty saying “no” or setting limits in relationships
You say negative things and are critical of yourself
You joke negatively about yourself
You focus on your negatives and ignore your achievements
Not accepting compliments

Low self-esteem can have serious long-term effects on your life. From being too quiet in class or work meetings to relationship issues, mental health problems, or negative thoughts that can result in self-damaging life patterns. Here are the steps you can take to improve your self-esteem.

1. Develop Realistic Expectations for Yourself

Don’t set yourself unrealistic goals because they will only make you feel disappointed when they don’t come true. Instead, set reasonable but challenging goals to motivate you to work hard on them.

2. Try Not to Compare Yourself to Others or Their Achievements

This only makes you feel inferior and frustrated with your life. Instead, focus on what’s important for you — your accomplishments, goals, and what makes you happy in life — so that when someone else does better than you, it doesn’t upset you as much.

How You Can Improve Your Self-Esteem

3. Take Care of Yourself Physically and Emotionally

Take care of yourself by eating right, exercising regularly, and getting enough sleep each night (and taking time to relax). This will help build up your body’s natural defenses against stress and illness while improving your mood overall. Targets must be achieved step by step, such as starting with a short walk once a day, enrolling in a local gym class, or going for a swim.

4. Practice Positive Self-Talk

This means being kind, supportive, and understanding to yourself. Accept what works for you and do not try to change anything about yourself if it doesn’t work for you (and know when something isn’t working for you).

“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life, but define yourself.”
Harvey Fierstein

We Rise Therapy and Wellness Is Ready To Help You Build a Healthy Self Esteem

It can take time to develop a healthy sense of self-esteem. It’s attained over time, and sometimes therapy can help. This is particularly crucial when you’re facing setbacks or hardships.

We Rise Therapy and Wellness offers individual and group therapy focusing on self-esteem for minority and South Asian women and adult children of immigrants. We aim to help people realize, accept, and value their internal human worth to increase self-esteem.

We strive to help you take emotional obstacles, overcome personal and relational obstacles, and build healthy and meaningful relationships in the future.

The first step in building a strong therapeutic relationship is getting to know you. We then work towards improving your daily functioning.

You will improve your relationship with yourself, others, and food. You will improve your self-esteem by learning to love yourself.

Our therapists are licensed in New Jersey and are currently available to support women of color throughout New Jersey via secure video.

We have 5 South Asian female identifying therapists. We help South/East Asian and BIPOC teens and women In New Jersey find themselves by providing a safe place to process thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and learn the right coping tools to help you rise to your highest potential.