Counselling for Confidence & Self Esteem

• Do you feel shy, uneasy or uncomfortable in certain situations?
• Do you appear confident on the outside but have a low opinion of yourself on the inside?
• Do you have a sense of worthlessness?
• Do you think negatively about yourself?
• Do you constantly focus on your flaws or weaknesses rather than your strengths?
• Do you have a negative body image?

Having high levels of self-confidence and self-esteem can make a great improvement to your life including your relationships, career, social life, and it can have a positive impact on your state of mind.

Self confidence is something that we are all born with,  it is the belief in our ability to do and be anything we want, but as we go through our life experiences we lose some of it along the way. We forget how to be confident in different situations and the way we think about ourselves turns form positive thinking (I can do this or I can behave this way…) to negative thinking (I can’t do this or I can’t behave in this new way…). There are many factors that damage and decrease confidence and self-worth including

Although confidence and self-esteem are often grouped together in meaning and are somehow related, there are some clear differences in definition.  While confidence is about having the faith in your abilities or believing that you are capable of taking action or making decisions, self-esteem is about how you think and feel about yourself internally, how much you value yourself, and whether you feel you deserve happiness, success or having a healthy mind and body. Confidence is having a sense of self-effectiveness and social effectiveness, it’s the power to engage and operate in the world.   This sense of belief in our abilities to engage effectively in our personal, professional and social life controls how we think, feel and behave in any given situation.

What causes low self-confidence & low-self esteem?

There are so many reasons why you may be feeling negatively towards yourself including family upbringing, childhood experience, messages received in childhood, school life, relationships, society and culture at large.  There are so many factors that may have contributed and damaged your belief in yourself and your capabilities including past humiliations, bullying, teasing, disappointments, ill-treatment, neglect, childhood deprivation, lack of sufficient amounts of love, attention and praise. We could say that our level of self-esteem and confidence is closely linked to our past experiences – both negative and positive –  and family, social and cultural history.  How we treat ourselves is a true reflection of how we think or believe we deserve to be treated by others.

The good news is that our self-esteem and confidence grow and develop in response to our achievements and successes.

We are not born with low self-esteem or low confidence, but painful and difficult past experiences, relationships and circumstances can damage our natural confidence.  As a result of these difficult experiences we develop unhelpful, negative and limiting beliefs about ourselves, other people and the world as a whole.  Counselling can help you identify and release these old and outdated beliefs, develop new problem solving skills and new thinking patterns that can help your natural confidence and self-esteem to resurface and be restored.

How can Counselling help improve your confidence & self-esteem?

No matter what past experiences, events, or present situations  are impacting on your confidence and self-belief, hypnotherapy together with counselling can help you build new beliefs about yourself and your capabilities.  Ultimately, the goal of talking therapy is to challenge and change the way you feel about yourself and how you perceive yourself and the world around you.  Hypnotherapy works by accessing the power of the subconscious mind to identify and release the reasons behind low self-esteem or low self-confidence, and by doing so positive and beneficial changes can be made naturally and instinctively.  As your belief in yourself and your capabilities develop and improve, you can begin to see things from a different perspective; by seeing yourself and the world around you differently, you begin to choose situations and circumstances which support your new more positive beliefs about what is possible for you to do, to be and to have.