There are lots of ways to increase your self-esteem but I've found in my own journey that a lot
of them are really superficial and don't really get you to where you need to go.
What has worked for me when increasing self-esteem is therapy and it's been a specific type of
therapy called internal family systems that looks at the self and then looks at all of
the parts of self, the parts meaning the ways that we act and react to certain situations
that really push our buttons.
And it creates a distinction between self energy and anger or jealousy or frustration
or upset.
And it allows us to view the people who are triggering those emotions in us in a very
objective way.
It brings the focus back to ourselves and says: OK, this person is reflecting something
in me, how could I heal it.
It takes all the responsibility off other people and it puts it back to self.
For me, raising my self-esteem is all about creating that distinction between what is
self-energy and what are all of my crazy parts that are acting out on a daily basis when
I go into survival mode.
There is nothing wrong with grieving, there is nothing wrong with being depressed, there
is nothing wrong with being jealous or angry or happy or sad.
Those are a range of emotions that we all experience on a daily basis.
When you have a high self-esteem you don't give yourself permission to indulge in those
negative emotional states because they leave you really stuck.
When you have a higher self-esteem you are able to say: You know what, yes, there is
something really bad that happened, yes I do feel really sad about this.
But you don't put your self-worth into the relationship or into the circumstances.
Your self-worth stays with you and you use everything that is going on in your life as
an opportunity to move forward.