While working in the mental health field and throughout my personal journey, I have realized how many of us struggle with our self-esteem. But what is self-esteem exactly? Self-esteem is how we see and how we value ourselves. It can relate to our confidence in our morals, worth, abilities, and beliefs about ourselves. It comes down to our overall opinion about ourselves and the self-concepts that we see. So, how do we better understand how self-esteem can affect us? And how do we build our self-esteem?

Well, first let’s chat about why high self-esteem matters! When we have high self-esteem, we tend to feel good about ourselves and celebrate our strengths. High self-esteem might look like encouraging ourselves, having confidence in decision-making, building healthy relationships, and creating a positive self-image. Establishing high self-esteem can lead to better self-care routines, more perseverance towards our goals, and more confidence. High self-esteem can also help us handle life’s adversities, become more resilient, and develop healthier coping skills. But, what about if we have low self-esteem? When we have low self-esteem, we tend to be extremely critical of ourselves and ignore our positive qualities. Low self-esteem might look like having self-doubt, using negative self-talk, lacking boundaries, and negative self-perceptions. S

elf-esteem can affect our relationships, academics, work, mental, and physical health. Self- esteem can shape our behaviours in our relationships and social interactions, which can affect the quality of our romantic and peer relationships. When we have high self-esteem, we want relationships that offer support, closeness, warmth, and satisfaction. When low self-esteem affects our relationships and social interactions negatively, it can have long-term consequences. Having high self-esteem can help us with major transitions within our relationships and we tend to have better social relationships as well.

As for our academics, when we have low self-esteem, we tend to disengage more from our learning, avoid feedback, and procrastinate. Having higher self-esteem can benefit us through our academic journey by being more persistent, engaged, and motivated, which increases our ability to do well. Having higher self-esteem, allows us to have more strategies to regulate ourselves during school stressors, and promotes task engagement and motivation. When it comes to our work, having low self-esteem can affect us similarly to our academics. We tend to engage in behaviours such as procrastination and disengaging from our workplace to avoid evaluations from coworkers that could be negative. When we have high self-esteem, we tend to seek more instrumental and emotional support from coworkers which will lead to success in our work. Additionally, high self-esteem can help us be more persistent after disappointments in our work. High self-esteem also influences us to find and get jobs with more autonomy, influence, and responsibility than when we have lower self-esteem.

Another important piece of how self-esteem affects us is through our mental health. When we have negative beliefs about ourselves, it can play a vital role in the symptoms of mental health challenges that we might be experiencing. Lower self-esteem can contribute to higher symptoms of depression and anxiety, indicating that when our self-esteem is higher, we have fewer symptoms. Having higher self-esteem can help us be more resilient against symptoms of depression and anxiety. Additionally, self-esteem affects our physical health as well. When our self-esteem is higher, we tend to lean on better relationships and social acceptance. We also ask for and receive more informational and emotional support. Now, how does this link to physical health? Well, this quality of social support helps with our immune system and cardiovascular health, which in turn influences our physical health. High self-esteem also helps decrease our chances of diabetes, strokes, and high blood pressure.

So, how do we build high self-esteem? We can first recognize the beliefs, thoughts, and situations affecting our self-esteem. Once we recognize what might be affecting us, we can notice what emotions or thoughts are negative or positive. We can then start to challenge our negative thinking and thought patterns that might influence our self-esteem. Some thought patterns that can affect our self-esteem might include dwelling on negative things, having all-or- nothing thinking, negative self-talk, or converting our positives into negatives. We can start building our self-esteem by replacing our negative thoughts with positive ones. We can do this by focusing on the positive, using hopeful statements, forgiving ourselves, and encouraging ourselves. We can build our self-esteem by developing self-care activities that are true to who we are. Getting an idea of what we enjoy, what makes us happy, and what we value in our life, can help us understand activities we might like. These activities might include a variety of things such as exercising, journaling, going on a walk, getting enough sleep, and daily affirmations. We can also list our positive qualities and strengths and accumulate our successes in a variety of ways such as through a journal, scrapbook, or a file. This can help us praise ourselves and praise what we have achieved, no matter how big or small, helping us build higher self-esteem.

Following these ways can help you on your journey to improve your self-esteem. Progress isn’t always linear and can take time. Each step can bring you closer to feeling empowered, confident, and resilient!

Reference Links

https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/self-esteem/tips- to-improve-your-self-esteem/ chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/

https://www.mcgill.ca/counselling/files/ counselling/self-esteem_helpful_hints_0.pdf

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5747942/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9306298/#:~:text=The%20findings%20of%20this %20review,health%2C%20and%20less%20antisocial%20behavior.

https://www.verywellmind.com/why-it-s-important-to-have-high-self-esteem-5094127

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-self-esteem-2795868#:~:text=Why%20Self%2DEsteem %20Is%20Important,to%20take%20on%20new%20challenges.

https://www.healthline.com/health/low-self-esteem

https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/self-esteem

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