Self-confidence and Self-esteem
Having an adequate amount of self-confidence is important in life – whether it concerns career or relationships or any other area in our life. However, we can rarely be equally confident in everything we do. We may be very confident in our professional capacity, but feel rather timid and unsure when it comes to interpersonal relationships. The desire to improve self-confidence is common among the reasons that bring people to counselling. Counselling can help you identify the gaps where your self-confidence may be flagging and provide you with knowledge and tools for boosting it.
Self-confidence is often mentioned on par with self-esteem. These are two distinct, although closely associated concepts, and it is important to understand how they relate to each other.
Confidence is about possessing the sense of mastery of certain skills, as well as having trust in your ability to learn and to handle challenges. Suppose, for example, that you feel very confident in doing computer programming but not so confident in skiing. This may be because you did not have enough experience in skiing and/or enough encouragement to help you overcome the initial hurdles. What qualities would help you move forward in this area?
- Having confidence in your ability to learn
- Motivation
- Ability to take risks when trying something new
- Allowing space for mistakes
- Ability to deal with setbacks and persevere
This is where self-esteem comes in. Self-esteem is about having positive regard towards ourselves and accepting ourselves as ‘good enough’ by default. Whether we succeed in a new venture or come to recognize that this may not be our ‘cup of tea’ it does not make us feel as a ‘lesser’ person or a ‘failure.’
Our self-esteem is rooted in our childhood experiences. If we grew up in the atmosphere where we felt loved, safe, valued as a person, not reprimanded for every mistake but supported and encouraged in our exploits we would learn to treat ourselves in a similar way and develop healthy sound self-esteem.
Unfortunately, few of us grow up in ideal childhood conditions and thus we need to undertake some repair work for our self-esteem later in life. The good news is that building up our self-esteem and self-confidence is totally possible and therapy is designed to help you in this process. I have worked with many people whose lives have changed dramatically thanks to improved confidence and self esteem and I will be very happy to help you on your own journey.
Related reading:
Recognising childhood trauma
Healing our inner child
Freeing the inner child
I don’t want to blame my parents
Can therapy really help to change your life?
