Self Esteem

Hello everyone, welcome to the Said in Therapy Podcast. Have you ever considered going to therapy and you ended up not going? My question is why? In my humble opinion, I believe everyone can benefit from therapy. In fact, I believe everybody should go at least once in their life.

My name is Iman Tohami and I'm a psychologist. This podcast tells you all about everyday cases with everyday people who have everyday problems and difficulties, and sometimes they carry around really deep wounds. These are their stories.

Growing up, I always believed that the most powerful tool human beings have is storytelling. When we share our unique stories, we connect. When we hear stories, we connect. And with connecting, we sympathize and we heal ourselves and each other.

The cases I want to introduce to you will come from all over the world. But a lot of the cases take place in the Middle East, where I found mental health awareness is still in the infant phase. So it is even more important to share therapy stories that encourage people who have concerted therapy to finally go.

In the next episodes, I will give my clients and others the opportunity to share their personal journey with you. So it will benefit them by speaking up and you by ultimately understanding that you are not alone if you have gone through the same things.

Today's episode is going to be about self-esteem. Many people struggle with low self-esteem. And believe it or not, this is something I have struggled myself with for the biggest portion of my life. So it is an episode that is very dear to my heart and my journey.

The first client I want to introduce to you is no longer with us. And yet her impact on me was so powerful that I wanted to honor our time together by dedicating this episode to her. We cannot ask for her consent anymore, so we call her simply Bahar.

In one of many sessions we shared together, she told me that this is how she would call her daughter. In one of my internships that I held in Germany, where I was also born and raised, I ended up spending six months of my studies in Triya, which is a very little town in the western part of the country.

It is the year 2010, and I was still considered a newbie. Barr was 20 years old and had a Turkish background. She was only a few years younger than me, which made us connect very quickly. She suffered from stage four cancer and spent the last days of her life in the hospital where I worked.

This is one of the cases where I think I have had little impact on the patient other than spending time with her and have conversations she enjoyed. We both were massive Harry Potter fans. In retrospect, I can say with deep conviction, she helped me more than I helped her.

She had piercing blue eyes that radiated a lot of warmth, and nothing took away from her beauty, even though she was a little bit too skinny after the chemo treatments, and her hair had long fallen off. But what was the most impressive about her was not that she was pretty.

Believe me, she was really pretty. It was the fact that she was at peace with herself and the world. She wasn't afraid of death anymore. In fact, she saw meaning in almost everything that happened to her. Nothing would shake her faith.

And by that I don't necessarily mean religious faith, even though it was definitely part of it. It was the faith that everything belongs to a bigger picture and everyone has a role to play. Her most common quote was, Who are we to decide that we are not worth it?

Who are we to decide that we are that we are of lesser value than someone else? Her self-worth was not defined by her accomplishments because she had hardly time to have any worldly accomplishments, but simply stemmed from the fact that she felt she was a human being and she was worth it.

I believe it is the first time I share this story with anyone. Not even my family or close friends know about her. And to do it so publicly was a really big deal for me. It's not like I think about Bara every day, but sometimes on really bad days, I go back to this memory and I try to calm myself.

I say, I am not my accomplishments, I am more. Repeat that. I am more.

We all know that self-esteem or sometimes self-worth or self-respect is very important for our lives. Too little self-esteem can leave us feeling depressed and defeated. It easily tricks us into believing negative things about us and leads us to bad choices.

We also fall into destructive relationships and end up not living up to our potential. On the other hand, too much self-esteem can be viewed as off-putting or too much, and it can damage personal relationships as well. Self-esteem on both sides of the spectrum is harmful.

So it's best that we find balance. But first, let us answer the question: what is self-esteem? We psychologists use this term self-esteem to describe a person's sense of self-worth and personal value. In other words, do you like yourself?

Do you appreciate yourself? We consider self-esteem a personality trait. So, as you can imagine, when it's really low or really high, it's not the best trait to have. But we all can work on our self-esteem and regulate it to become healthier and better.

So I want to focus on low self-esteem for today. I want to give you a few tips that you can incorporate into your daily routine. First, beliefs are not facts. So when you find yourself talking negatively to yourself or making hate comments about yourself all the time, I encourage you, I really do, take pen and paper to write down the thoughts.

Find evidence against them. Find facts to back up that you are not a bad person. I know it sounds silly to do, but trust me, it works. It's also a sneaky way to focus on the positive. We all need a little bit of that, don't we?

Second, notice how you talk to yourself and change it. If in your head all day you say nasty things about yourself, you will start believing them. So you will have to start fighting back. And it can start with one thing or two things that you say during the day that is positive about yourself.

Display gratefulness. It can be really anything. If you make great coffee, then praise yourself for making great coffee. Unfortunately, studies show that it takes five positive things to negate one negative. So please keep on doing that. Remember that.

And also keep that in mind when you talk to other people. Third, notice what you think of others. Have you ever sat in a restaurant and thought to yourself, oh my god, look at this person? Notice that and work on changing it as well.

Because honestly, it's not only our self-talk, but also the conversations in our head that we have all day. So when you look negatively at someone, it will affect your mood. I challenge you, if you find yourself judging someone, immediately say something positive about them.

It changes your mood, I guarantee you. For instance, when you see someone with a very horrible outfit, something that you would absolutely never wear, well, tell yourself he might really like it. The fourth point is owning your own faults.

We all have faults. There is no chance in denying that. Talk about them, name them, learn about them, because ignoring them can become worse. And sometimes we all are too stubborn to recognize that we have something to work on.

When that happened, or if that happens all the time to you, please apologize to yourself, give in and tell yourself, you know what, I'm really bad at ABC. I should be working on that. Fifth point, make amends. When we replay and replay and replay bad situations and arguments in our hat, they become worse.

Sometimes we had a very bad falling out with someone we really loved. It is not always possible, but if you can make amends. And it doesn't necessarily mean that you need to apologize. But sometimes it's good to have a final conversation that gives you closure.

But again, that's not always possible. Sixth, and that leads me to the final point. Let go. When you have a bad experience that shaped you, sometimes it's really hard to forget it. But the more you talk about it, the better it becomes.

So I encourage you to talk about it. If you have family and friends that you can entrust with your secrets, please do so. And if you feel that you need professional help to get over a certain situation, please take it.

So that leads us to the end of this episode. I really hope you enjoyed it. And please, I encourage you if you have any questions. Hey, thank you so much for tuning in. And hopefully, you will tune in again next week.

It will be another episode talking to or about clients of mine. And you can find us on social media on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. The handle is always @saidintherapy. Thank you so much.