Self-Esteem
Presented by: Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes
Executive Director, AllCEUs
Objectives
~ The Nature of Self-Esteem
~ Identifying and Disarming the Critic
~ Creating an Accurate Self Assessment
~ Identifying Cognitive Distortions
~ Developing Compassion
~ Shaking the Shoulds
~ Handling Mistakes
~ Responding to Criticism
~ Goal Setting
~ Core Beliefs
~ Building Self Esteem in Children
The Nature of Self-Esteem
~ How you feel about yourself in contrast to who you think you “should” be
~ The more rejecting we are of ourselves, the more
~ Distress we experience
~ We seek external validation
~ In order to develop healthy relationships people need to feel good about themselves
Benefits of Strong Self Esteem
~ Stable moods
~ Ability to set healthy boundaries
~ Stronger sense of self-confidence
~ Improved relationships
~ Less stress and feelings of emptiness
Where Does It Come From
~ Positive Regard (Direct & Indirect)
~ Media
~ Family
~ Friends
~ Self
What Do I Value
~ 5 Admirable People
~ Identify 5 people you admire.
~ What qualities do you admire about them
~ For each quality, explain why it is admirable
~ What do you wish was different about them?
The Pathological Critic
~ Arsenal of shoulds
~ Origin of the Critic: Conditions of Worth
~ Why you listen to the critic
~ Catching your critic
~ Talking back
Accurate Self-Assessment
~ Self-Concept inventory
~ Listing your strengths and weaknesses
~ Developing a new self-description
~ Celebrating your strengths
Miracle Question — Activity
~ Based on your (revised) ideal self
~ If you woke up tomorrow with a strong self esteem, what would it be like? What would be different? The same?
~ In your relationships
~ In how you handle stress
~ In your mood
~ In your job, etc.
Cognitive Distortions
~ The Distortions and Combating Them
~ Magnification/Exaggeration
~ Minimization
~ All or Nothing
~ Availability Phenomenon
~ Emotional Reasoning
~ Overgeneralization
~ Mental Filter (only seeing the bad)
~ Personalization and Blaming
Compassion
~ Compassion defined
~ Developing self-compassion
~ Developing compassion for others
~ Creating a compassionate world
The Shoulds
~ The tyranny of should
~ How should affects your self esteem
~ Challenging and revising your should
~ Can, will, cannot, choose not to
~ Atonement and guilt
Handling Mistakes
~ Reframing mistakes
~ The problem of limited awareness (context)
~ Your mistake-success ratio
Responding to Criticism
~ The myth of reality
~ Reality is everchanging
~ Now two people share the exact same reality
~ Responding to criticism
~ What does criticism mean about you?
~ About the situation?
~ About that person?
~ Take what is useful and leave the rest
~ Why are suggestions or feedback not useful?
Asking for What You Want
~ Needs vs. wants
~ Wants inventory
~ Creating a win-win
Goal Setting and Planning
~ What do you want
~ Prioritizing goals
~ Making your goals SMART
~ Making a commitment
~ Blocks and un-blocks to achieving goals
Core Beliefs
~ Identifying Core Beliefs
~ I am…
~ Developing new core beliefs
Improving Self-Esteem
~ To improve self-esteem, you must
~ Change the way you feel about yourself (i.e. change your feelings about your self-evaluation)
~ Focus on your strengths
~ Aim for effort, not perfection
~ Decide if some of the “ideal” characteristics are important to you
~ Change yourself
~ Likely there are some areas in which you want to improve
~ Make a plan to tackle them ONE at a TIME
Improving Self-Esteem
~ Make a list of positive affirmations and add one new one each day
~ When you find a fault in yourself, remind yourself of three positive qualities
~ Do not minimize your accomplishments. Take credit where credit is due.
~ Surround yourself with people who are positive and encouraging
~ Instead of complaining about faults, take positive action
Improving Self-Esteem
~ If there is something you feel “bad” about that is impossible to change, then add a new, positive quality.
~ Do a good deed every day
~ Make changeable, specific attributions for negative events
~ Patience– changes do not happen overnight
~ Accept your fears and work with and through them. Nobody is perfect.
Improving Self-Esteem
~ Evaluate whether you hold yourself to a higher standard than you hold everyone else.
~ Do you think you are that much better than everyone else, or do you just need a reason to beat yourself up?
~ Manage your inner critic
~ Focus on what goes well for you.
~ Caring about what people think about you is good. Worrying about what they think is pointless.
~ Aim for effort rather than perfection.
Improving Self-Esteem
~ View mistakes as learning opportunities.
~ Remind yourself that everyone excels at different things. Stop comparing other people's strengths to your weaknesses.
~ Use insecurities to your advantage.
~ Recognize what you can change and what you can't.
~ Take pride in your opinions and ideas
Summary
~ Self esteem begins in childhood
~ It is imperative to help people separate strengths and weaknesses from who they are
~ Self loathing and rejection contributes to dysphoria
~ Part of self esteem development includes
~ Values identification
~ Understanding wants vs. needs
~ Addressing cognitive distortions