In pop psychology, the call to "boost self-esteem" has become a universal recipe for all life's troubles, but in therapeutic work, this abstract request almost always hides much deeper needs. What is actually meant when we talk about "treating oneself well," is it possible to build internal support in adulthood if it was lacking in childhood, and do we really need to strive for "high self-esteem"? We asked Treatfield psychotherapists to deconstruct the myths about "self-esteem," understand the mechanics of internal changes, and comprehend what lies behind this popular request in practice.
Answered by psychotherapist Anastasiia Viktorovska
When a client comes to the first session with the formulation "I want to raise my self-esteem," what usually lies behind these words? What real needs are people trying to express through this universal and somewhat abstract request?
People often call self-esteem what actually relates more to self-worth.
Self-esteem is the way we evaluate ourselves in various areas of life. How satisfied we are with our appearance, abilities, professionalism, relationships, how we behave, or how we handle difficulties. How you look / how you joked / how you evaluate yourself in different situations, circumstances, achievements, and so on.
Self-esteem by its nature always changes due to a large number of different factors. But the problem is that along with it, the sense of one's own worth can fall as well. That is, when a person stops thinking "something didn't work out for me" and begins to believe "something is wrong with me" — this is precisely where the boundary between self-esteem and self-worth lies.
Self-worth is something deeper. It is the answer to the question: "Am I valuable simply because I exist?" Not because I have a certain appearance, high intelligence, a prestigious job, or a great sense of humor.
Self-worth does not depend on whether something worked out or didn't work out for you today. It does not disappear after a mistake, criticism, or failure. It does not confuse its mistake with its own personality. A mistake is what it did, not who it is. Because even people with high self-worth can sometimes try to earn love. It does not nag itself, nor does it hurt itself.
That is precisely why when a person says "I want to raise my self-esteem," I almost always start exploring what exactly stands behind these words: "The opinions of others about me are important," "I cannot be myself," "I need approval," "I constantly criticize myself," "I don't know who I am," and so on.
Therefore, as a next step, it would be good to clarify what exactly is meant by "I want to raise my self-esteem" — to stop depending on external approval? To find contact with oneself? To improve the relationship with the inner critic? To start treating oneself with care and love? Very often in my work, I notice that self-worth is the key request, not self-esteem.
Why do people often confuse self-esteem and self-worth?
Because it so happened that we live in a world where everything is evaluated — starting from kindergarten and ending with social networks, where a selective and "beautiful" life is broadcast to us. Actually, learning to define one's own worth is one of the important factors in working with this topic. Therefore, in my view, it is much more important not to "rate oneself higher," but to learn to think better of oneself: "I am valuable simply because I exist."
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Answered by psychotherapist Olha Lutsyv
What or who exactly has the greatest influence on our self-esteem and attitude toward ourselves in adulthood?
From the perspective of schema therapy, the basic sense of self-worth is formed in the early stages of our childhood. During this period, this unconscious feeling depends on how significant adults, siblings, and peers treat me. A child is not yet capable of rationally or critically perceiving this treatment, so they tend to absorb it as factual truth about themselves. For example, if I cry and am comforted, it means that I am valuable and worthy of support; if my emotions are ignored, then I must be doing something wrong, my needs are a problem, and I am not worthy of love. If this ignoring occurs systematically, a negative core belief about oneself is formed based on this experience, which becomes a filter through which we look at ourselves, others, and the world.
At first glance, it sounds illogical that the internal attitude toward oneself is formed through external factors (for example, the reactions or attitudes of parents), but I promise, it makes sense. The truth is that we are born without an built-in ability to regulate our emotions and, for a certain period, are literally dependent on our parents or caregivers — not only for meeting physiological needs, but also for regulating emotional states. That is, when a child cries and an adult soothes them with voice, touch, or action, the child regulates through this adult, who as if "lends" their nervous system to the child. Over time, provided this experience was stable and reliable, this interaction becomes internalized, and as the child grows up, they acquire the skill of self-regulation and self-soothing. If external care was lacking, the person will be more inclined to continue seeking ways to regulate through someone on the outside, without feeling sufficient support within.
What adults surround us during our early formative years strongly influences how our inner voice will sound — supportively or critically. A child is not born with the ability to criticize themselves; they acquire this skill by copying the reactions, words, or behavior of parents, grandparents, teachers, or other important adults. Did adults give me a sense of my unconditional worth, or did I constantly have to earn it? We carry these patterns into our internal dialogue and adult life.
Is it possible to achieve a sense of self-worth if it was not formed in childhood?
Yes! Absolutely. Childhood is an important foundation, and we will never be able to simply delete this experience, whatever it was. But our psyche has the capacity for reorganization, remains plastic, and can learn if the learning is systematic, prolonged, and consistent. In schema therapy, one of the core working styles is limited reparenting. This is when the therapist becomes an example of a Healthy Adult for the client, who can care for the client's emotional needs in the therapeutic setting, and later help develop the skill to do this independently outside the therapist's office. This leads to the formation of an internal Healthy Adult in the client, who recognizes their own worth and helps combat internal criticism.
However, it is worth emphasizing again the importance of systematic, long-term, and consistent work. This is not a quick process, because much has already been built on the foundation laid in childhood. The additional complexity lies in the fact that core beliefs are often not logical, but rather exist in the space of emotional memory. A person may intellectually agree that they are valuable and worthy of love and care, yet still feel the opposite. In such a case, no attempts to convince through conversation or analysis will help. For this, schema therapy uses techniques aimed directly at experiencing a new emotional experience — chair techniques, imagery rescripting, and so forth.
How to "hold on" in conditions of the pursuit of success, comparing oneself to others (for example, on social media), or criticism from those around us?
First of all, it is important to become aware of this moment and try to activate your caring side. It is helpful to ask yourself:
- What does this situation mean for me about me? Whose voice does this remind me of? It is worth reminding oneself that this is an automatic thought, not a fact about me.
- What might my need be here? How can I take care of myself here?
There is another technique — to imagine what we would say to a person we care about in the exact same situation. Would we compare, criticize, or devalue them, or would we rather support, help, and listen? And then try to apply that same tone to oneself. It is also useful to develop self-compassion. It usually sounds like this: "It hurts to hear/see this, and it is natural that it is difficult for me right now. Many people in my place would feel the same way. This does not mean I am generally incompetent. It means this specific situation is complex, and I have the right to be upset before thinking about what to do next."
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Answered by psychotherapist Sofiia Androsovych-Khomenko
How exactly does psychotherapy help change one's self-attitude when a client comes with the request "I want to boost my self-esteem"? What is the criterion for success in this work — does the person ultimately start considering themselves "wonderful," or does something else happen?
I don't like the term "self-esteem," just as I don't like "self-love" — to me, they feel very abstract and overused, so much so that they have completely lost their original meaning.
At the beginning of my journey in psychology, I remember often coming across concepts like high self-esteem and low self-esteem. Then, a bit later, it became fashionable to say that self-esteem shouldn't be low or high, but stable, which probably makes more sense.
I reflect on the fact that when someone comes with a request to "boost self-esteem," I want to ask: what does that mean? How will you know that your self-esteem has "boosted" as a result of our work? Even the word "esteem" (or "evaluation") sounds as if you can never win here or just be yourself. A "bad grade" hurts; a "good grade" feels nice, but it's still within a system where you have to meet criteria and look at yourself detachedly, like a product or a project.
The second question, at the same time, seemed interesting and brought a smile to my face. I don't think a person starts considering themselves "wonderful" 24/7. I'm not a Gestalt therapist, but I have a favorite concept from there: the paradoxical theory of change. It goes like this: change occurs when a person becomes who they truly are, not when they try to become who they are not. When a person immerses themselves in all aspects of their experience and truly and deeply accepts themselves, they actually "change" by refusing to change.
Perhaps what happens in therapy is a shift from the realm of "self-esteem" (evaluation) to the realm of "self-acceptance" (acceptance) or self-discovery. And for this, you need to take a good look at yourself. Even at the things you don't really want to see. What am I like? What traits belong to me? I am hardworking. I am reflective and deep. I am tender, caring, and I care about people. And I like that. I am often dissatisfied and notice the bad more than the good. I can feel envious and want revenge. I don't really like this, but this is me, and I am like this for my own reasons. And it is so valuable to be yourself ❤️
So my conclusion is probably this: the goal of therapy is not to learn to evaluate yourself "better," but to get to know yourself — with everything that is there, not just the conditionally "beautiful" parts — and if not to love it, then at least to be able to see it.
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Answered by psychotherapist Kateryna Rozhkova
In popular psychology articles, the advice to "boost self-esteem" is often heard. However, in therapy, we more frequently talk about self-worth or self-acceptance. How do these concepts differ, and is it worth focusing specifically on "high self-esteem"?
In popular psychology, the concept of "high / stable self-esteem" has literally been exploited for a long time. In contrast, modern scientific psychology and psychotherapy have shifted the focus toward self-worth, self-acceptance, and self-compassion.
Essentially, self-esteem means the ability to evaluate oneself, to grade oneself, to hold evaluative judgments about oneself. It answers the questions: "How good am I compared to others?", "Am I successful, smart, or attractive enough?". And here, even "enough" is a very relative concept.
And the pursuit of high self-esteem carries serious side effects:
- constant dissatisfaction caused by comparing oneself and one's achievements breeds competition (both covert and overt), envy, and isolation. As a result, you feel chronically lonely;
- any mistake, criticism, or failure is perceived as a catastrophe and completely shatters your sense of self-importance — consequently leading to emotional instability and anxiety;
- it is a direct path to perfectionism and burnout.
In reality, self-esteem cannot be stable anyway, and that's okay. After all, it depends on external factors (for example, success in a certain activity, approval from others, financial status, etc.).
Completely avoiding evaluations in life is hardly possible. What we can do is reduce their impact on ourselves and our lives by noticing the difference between evaluations and our actual attitude toward something, defining our values, gradually replacing judgment with a kind attitude toward ourselves, and moving toward self-acceptance. We talked a bit about a toxic attitude toward oneself and how it forms in one of our previous articles.
While evaluations lie more in the cognitive domain, our self-attitude and values stem from the emotional sphere. And this is where the concept of self-worth arises.
Self-worth is a deep inner sense of one's intrinsic value, independent of the current results or successes you demonstrate. It is the unconditional feeling of "I matter, I deserve respect and love simply because I am human."
Self-acceptance is the ability to recognize and accept all sides of your personality without self-judgment or criticism, with self-compassion. In other words, "I am human, I can make mistakes, I have both weaknesses and virtues, and I accept myself and treat myself with kindness even when I fail." And this differs significantly from evaluating oneself.
On top of that, a high level of self-compassion and self-acceptance, unlike high self-esteem, contributes to higher psychological resilience, eases depressive states, reduces anxiety, and allows for faster recovery after life crises.
That is why in psychotherapy we work to shift the focus from evaluating oneself to accepting oneself.
