Self Esteem | 6 weeks to a happier, healthier you

Hey there everybody, and welcome to today's presentation of integrative behavioral health. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. And today we are talking about self esteem. This is day five of the six weeks to a happier, healthier you. Self esteem is your first and most important relationship. Once you're an adult, it's important to have a relationship with yourself. To know who, who you are and feel confident about that and love yourself for who you are. When, when that happens, you have improved health and an improved sense of safety. You're not always worried about whether somebody's going to reject you or not because you feel confident and capable even on your own. And this improved health comes from reduced stress. When you have higher self esteem, you tend to feel like you are more capable of handling life on life's terms. You so which results in in less stress, which results in downregulation of that HPA axis, improved sleep, improved immunity, improved pain tolerance. You know the list that we always go through affectively when we have strong self esteem, we have less anxiety. We're not worried as much about rejection or abandonment or criticism. Now we still don't like it when people are critical or when relationships end, but the degree, the intensity of the anxiety is less. And when we have self esteem, we don't have this underlying constant current of anxiety about is this relationship going to last? We are able to live in the moment and appreciate what is for the moment and and not worry about whether it's going to end. We're just happy that we've got it right now. Good self esteem also reduces jealousy. Jealousy is anger at others for having something or for perceive if you perceive them as a threat. Now when you have good self esteem, you aren't jealous. You may have a twinge here and there of oh, it'd be nice if I had that or, or what have you. But when you have a good self esteem, you feel worthy. You don't feel jealous of other people for things that they have because you're grateful for what you have. Same thing with suspiciousness. When you have a strong self esteem, you are less worried about people trying to undermine you. You are more focused on who you are and knowing that you are a good person and you are attracting positive energy. Cognitively, when you have good self esteem, it helps with optimism when you feel good about yourself. When you feel confident and secure and safe, it is a lot easier to be cognitively flexible and optimistic. All this adds up to increased energy and increased productivity which you know nobody's going to argue with that and relationally, when we have good self esteem, we are able to provide our own internal validation. We don't rely on others to tell us we're okay. Which means if a relationship ends, it doesn't mean like we feel like we are disappearing. We know who we are and have that security and we're able to provide love and compassion and self reinforcement. All of this leads to healthier relationships. When people have low self esteem, when they need others to validate them, a lot of times they will gravitate toward any relationship just to have something, someone there to tell them they're okay. When you have strong self esteem, not only are you more choosy about your relationships, but you are also more secure in living authentically and and presenting your true self in those relationships. And that always honesty and authenticity greatly enhances any relationship. 10 strategies for self Esteem There are tons of books out there on improving your self esteem. I just wanted to kind of boil it down and give you 10 strategies that you could consider using in order to improve your own self esteem. So the first activity that I really like is called the friend list. And what you do is write down all of the characteristics that you look for in a friend and you know, think about the friends that you have, the friends that you want, what you think makes an ideal friend. You can also call it the good person list. Whatever you want to call it, write all those down. When you're finished, go back over the list and figure out which of those characteristics you already have. Most of the time, people are much harder on themselves than on anybody else and they overlook their positive qualities and focus on their negatives. So by doing this, it forces you to look and acknowledge that, hey, I have a lot to offer. I have a lot of really good qualities. I'm loyal, I'm honest, I'm dedicated, I'm compassionate. Whatever it is that you are that you would look for in a friend, if you can see that in yourself, then you can recognize that you bring a lot of good qualities to the table. On top of that, I would encourage you, whatever those characteristics are that are on your friend list that you would want somebody to share with you to characteristics and, and attitudes you want other people to show you, well, start doing it yourself. Start being your own best friend. If you want somebody who is honest, authentic, loyal, compassionate, and, you know, dedicated, well, then start doing those things for yourself. When you do those things for yourself, other people will usually also start doing them. They see the, they see how you treat yourself and they see what you Believe you deserve and they follow suit. Number two, adjust your rules and expectations. A lot of times when we have low self esteem, it's because we don't have what's called unconditional positive regard. We think that in order to be lovable, we have to meet some magic criteria. Okay, well, let's start there then. To be lovable, I have to. And then fill in the blank. In order to be lovable, what characteristics, what things do you have to do in order to be lovable and why? Once you finish doing that, then go back over that list and ask yourself, who else do I hold to this standard? You know, would I tell my child that if they didn't have that cur. That characteristic, they're not lovable? You know, who else do I hold to this standard? How might this standard be unreasonable? If you say, for example, to be lovable you must be perfect or you must be patient all the time. How is that unreasonable? You know, and in with the statement, in order to be lovable I must be patient all the time, well, that is an ideal. But in reality, nobody that I know of is patient all the time. So it's important to modify those extreme words. What are advantages and disadvantages of this rule? So sticking with that statement, in order to be lovable, a person must be patient all the time. What are the advantages to that rule? Well, it helps you look for somebody who's always patient. What are the disadvantages? You ain't going to find anybody who's always patient. You can find people who are patient a lot of the time. But I can think back over my life. Both of my grandmothers had the patience of saints, but I can also remember both of them losing their temper, you know, once or twice when I was growing up. They weren't perfect. We can look through at different people and things that we admire. If you are Christian or Jewish, you can look in the Bible and you can see times where God and Jesus got angry where they weren't 100% patient and tolerant all of the time. So it's important to recognize that if you expect somebody to do something all of the time, that's probably not really realistic and that setting you up to, to be critical of yourself instead of accepting and you know, reveling in the fact that, hey, I am patient 90% of the time, you focus on that 10% that you're not. Well, 90% is a lot bigger. Yes, you can work on your patience. We can always work on it. But recognizing that, you know, 90% of the time you Do a dagum good job. And what is a more flexible rule? And that goes back to adjusting the language. A lot of times the rules that we use are laden with extreme language. You must do it all the time. You must be the best. You must never. So we want to take out those extreme words and replace them with something that's a little bit more reasonable for humans because we are imperfect creatures, that activity takes a while, but it is important to start looking at that. I would also encourage you to think about unconditional positive regard, which means people are lovable. And I would say creatures are lovable because my animals are lovable too. Regardless of what they can do, Regardless of what they do do. They are lovable, you know, because of who they are. You know, my dogs, each of them has their own quirks that drive me a little bit crazy sometimes, but I love them to the moon and back. They are lovable for who they are. My children, my spouse, my friends, the same way. And I am sure that I have quirks that drive them crazy too. But they love me for who I am, not necessarily what I do. Present focus is another important thing for self esteem. You may not have been perfect in the past, but how long are you going to hold yourself hostage from mistakes that you made? What can you do in order to make amends from those mistakes, to learn from those mistakes, to grow from those mistakes, and then to revel in your courage and your growth? You know, again, nobody's perfect. So that present focus really helps us identify what we are doing well and who we are and why we are lovable in this present moment. Sell yourself. This is another fun activity. I do this with my adolescent groups a lot and I encourage them to write an ad campaign to sell themselves. You know, if they were going to interview for a job, you know, how would they sell themselves? If they were going to interview to be somebody's best friend, you know, what would they say? How would they create that campaign? And you know, with adolescents, a lot of times they get really creative, especially in the digital age. They can create. They create, you know, mock ups, they create videos. There's all kinds of stuff that I've seen them do. And it can be really cool. So selling yourself can be a fun activity to do. And you can even do this as a family. Everybody in the family takes turns presenting their ad campaign for why they are awesome. The next activity is a little bit more mundane. It's the values worksheet. And you can go online and search for values list 200 values list there are a lot of different lists out there and they can get quite numerous. 50, 100, 200 different values are listed and I don't know whether I would actually call each one of them a value. I would call them more a trait list. But you know, if you're going to find it online, Google or search for values list and you will come up with lists that incur, that include words like patience, compassion, creativity, intelligence, courage, diligence, honesty, consistency, curiosity, curiosity, motivational. There's a lot of different words out there and identify the characteristics, the values, the traits, whatever you want to call them on that list that are important to you, that you really want to embody. A lot of times you're going to end up with a lot of check marks. So then go through and distill it down and you know, look at all the different words and figure out which ones are synonyms of each other because a lot of times you will find things that are, you know, words that are very similar to one another. So choose one of the words instead of having both of them there. Once you do that, you'll probably have it narrowed down to maybe 20 or 30 different traits or characteristics. I would encourage you to narrow it down to 10, however many you have. Pick the top 10 that are most important and that takes some thinking. You know, which ones do you want to devote your energy to and which ones are you not going to give so much energy to right now? All right, once you have that done, you're going to break it down one more time and you're going to distill it down to your top five. These are the top five traits, words, characteristics, whatever you want to call them, you want people to remember you by. So if they're talking about you, you know, 20 years from now, they can say, oh, Sally, she was such a patient, compassionate, loving, honest, motivational person. Okay, if those are the things that are important to Sally, then that those are the characteristics that she thinks about every, every day. And before she does anything to say is this whatever I'm getting ready to do, helping me be more embrace those characteristics. The next thing is to create mastery experiences. A lot of times people have low self esteem because they have failed because they haven't had support, because they feel disempowered. Mastery experiences help you feel empowered. And what those are, are small goals, small steps. Instead of saying, I will congratulate myself when I graduate college, say I will congratulate myself once I pass the first test this semester and then pass the next test or whatever. However you want to break it down, but creating experiences that are very, very short in duration, that help you, that build on each other to help you achieve a bigger goal. But every time you h. Experience a mastery experience, then you'll feel more empowered. You can say, okay, I did that. And maybe you're trying to stop smoking, okay? And you've gone to the doctor, you've gotten the nicotine replacement therapy, you've read the books, you're involved with support groups, whatever. You have a plan and you make it through your first day. Well, that's a mastery experience. And you can look back and go, hey, I made it a day. Maybe you don't make it a day. Maybe you set your goal a little bit smaller than that because quitting smoking is really, really freaking hard. Okay? You know, I, I get that. I've seen people go through it. Nicotine is one of the most addictive substances on the planet. So maybe you said it and you say, I, I need to go an hour. All right? Go through an hour. And you go, all right, I did it. I can go through another hour. And you just take it hour by hour. At first, the same thing is true when you're dealing with things like grief. You know, if you feel like you can't deal with the grief, you can't handle it. Okay, well, let's see if you can handle it. Let's see if you can tolerate what your feelings for an hour or let's see if you can get involved with something so you're not focusing on it for an hour and then another hour. And then once it's easy to do an hour, then you up it and you go two hours. And once that's easy, maybe you even make the big leap and you say, okay, I'm going to go four hours now and see if I can do it. Make mastery experiences are so important in developing self esteem because every time you achieve a goal, even if it's a small goal, you realize that you are capable. You realize that you have the power that you're able to do it as long as you don't get too far out in front of yourself. Which takes us to noting your achievements and positive qualities. A lot of people feel boastful or arrogant if they talk about their achievements or positive qualities. You don't have to go and broadcast it from the rooftops necessarily, but it is important to be able to have that dialogue in your own head. Keep a scrapbook or a journal or an online scrapbook or something where every single day this goes back to Those mastery experiences, every single day you put something in there that is an achievement or a positive quality or an example of a positive quality. So maybe you got a job that you've been wanting. Okay, so that's an achievement. Maybe you made a new friend and that's difficult for you. Okay, that's an achievement. Maybe one of your positive qualities that you want to embody is compassion. And so you can note how you were compassionate that day. Whatever it is, you want to have a ongoing list of ways that you embody the traits that are important to you and the achievements, the things that you actually are able to complete, that you actually achieve. So you can look back and say, wow, I actually did that. I did a lot. Too often, just like we're too hard on ourselves too often we ignore our own successes. And it is so important to focus on every single success and not take the little ones for granted. The next thing you can do is stop sorting things into good and bad. Every time something happens or you think about something about yourself, this. It's either good or it's bad. It just is. If you are a high strung person, I'm a high strung person. Some people may say that's bad. Some people may say that's good, it's just me. It's not good, it's not bad, it's just me. It's who I am and I embrace it I because it makes me who I am as an individual and it gives me my unique talents and qualities that I contribute to the world. So stop sorting things into. Into good and bad and accept them as it's just who I am. Let me embrace it and recognize it. You know, instead of trying to avoid it, you know, know, let's recognize it and develop an awareness that you do not have control over other people's behaviors and reactions. A lot of times our self esteem takes a beating because of other people's careless words or careless actions or their reactions to us or what we do. And a lot of times it has a lot less to do with us and more to do with them. Maybe somebody reacts to you strongly negatively because they remind you of somebody from your past. I had a professor in college that was the spitting image of my mother. Now, however you want to take that, she was the spitting image of my mother. And I reacted to her almost as if she were my mother because she brought out those same feelings that I have towards my mother every time I'd see her. And it was important for me to differentiate between the two of them. But that was not her fault, you know, so it was important for her to recognize or for me to recognize that. But, you know, should that have come up on her radar? You know, it would have been important for her to realize that it had very little to do with who, who she was and more to do with my transference reactions. And this can be positive or negative. You know, we, we also, we often have a lot of transference reactions. You can see somebody that reminds you of your first love, and maybe this new person is really not nice person, a not safe person to be around, but they remind you of that other person from your past that your first love. So you project all of this wonderful stuff on them and you overlook their bad stuff, you know, so it can be good, it can be bad. But it's important to recognize that a lot of times people's reactions to you have less to do with you and more to do with them. Maybe they were stressed on that particular day so they were grumpy with you. Was it something that you did? Maybe, but maybe not. And just checking that and trying to find. I always used to tell my kids, whenever somebody did something that felt rejecting or angry or hurtful or what have you to think of three possible, other, other explanations that had nothing to do with them, why that person may have behaved that way. You know, if they encountered a cashier who was particularly grumpy on a particular day, you know, thinking about what are three other reasons besides the fact that, quote, she doesn't like me, that that cashier may be. May be behaving that way. I mean, after all, the cashier probably doesn't know you from Adam's house cat. So just to summarize activities you can do, you can do the friend list. Figure out what characteristics are important in a friend, which ones you already have, and start being your own best friend. Adjust your rules and expectations. Embrace an attitude of unconditional positive regard. Loving yourself for who you are, being imperfections and all. Focus on the present, recognizing what wonderful qualities you have right now, how you've grown even out of mistakes and things you've done wrong in the past. Focus on the present and what you contribute. Sell yourself. You know, if you had to convince somebody to be your best friend, or if you had to convince somebody to hire you, why would they want to do that? What characteristics, what awesome things do you bring? Consider a values worksheet. Find it online. Check all the values that are important to you. Narrow it down to the top 20 or 30, then narrow it down to the top 10 and the top five and that will help you focus your energy on the characteristics that you think are most important to nurture. Break big goals and big achievements that you want to do into smaller mastery experiences so you are able to have a sense of accomplishment and a sense of personal power. Note Pay attention. Keep a log of your achievements and and how you express your positive qualities or embody your positive qualities every day. Stop sorting your characteristics, your descriptions of yourself into good and bad. They just are. It's who you are and figuring out how that works into who you want to be. And finally develop and maintain an awareness that you don't have control over other people's behaviors and reactions. So if they react to you in a way that is unpleasant thinking to yourself, you know what are three other explanations why they might behave that way that may have nothing to do with me and that can help you not personalize everything and avoid impairing your self esteem for something that you had nothing to do with. I hope you have a great day and I will see you on Monday.