Self-esteem is a part of your self-concept, otherwise known as your sense of self. Your self-concept is how you view yourself, your beliefs about yourself, and how you feel about yourself.
Self-esteem can be both too high or too low, both of which can cause mental health and relationship issues. This article covers what self-esteem is and how to have a healthy amount of it.
What Is Self-Esteem?
Self-esteem is your sense of self-worth. It describes how confident you are in your abilities, personality, and values. With high self-esteem, you’ll feel confident, competent, secure in your personal identity, and like you belong amongst others.
Low self-esteem can be at the root of many unhealthy behaviors like pleasing people or even manipulation, anything to get others to give you the value you don’t have in yourself.
Fortunately, self-esteem is something that can be worked on. Researchers have found that it will ebb and flow naturally over a lifespan as well, with the lowest self-esteem occurring in childhood and evening out around adulthood. Things like trauma, chronic stress, and other external factors can influence this trend though.

Signs of Low Self-Esteem
Low self-esteem is when you don’t think very highly of yourself. You may doubt your capabilities, dislike your personality, or struggle to understand your value. Signs of low self-esteem include:
- Constant self-criticism and negative self-talk
- Difficulty accepting compliments or praise
- Perfectionism and feeling like you're never good enough
- Avoidance of social situations due to fear of judgment or rejection
- Trouble setting and maintaining personal boundaries
- Feeling undeserving of happiness and success
- Comparing oneself to others and feeling inadequate
- Difficulty making decisions out of fear of making mistakes
Remember that low self-esteem does not have to be a permanent state of self. It can be worked on, healed from, and built up stronger.
Signs of High Self-Esteem
On the flip side, high self-esteem is when you feel competent, capable, and worthy. Importantly, this worth isn’t based on something external like your productivity or goodness; instead, it is innate. People with good self-esteem believe they are valuable because they are themselves. This feeling can ebb and flow with the events of living, but someone with healthy self-esteem won’t feel themselves emotionally destroyed by events that threaten their value.
- Confidence in their abilities and decisions
- Embracing their own unique qualities and feeling comfortable in their own skin
- Resilience in the face of challenges and setbacks
- Maintaining healthy boundaries in relationships
- Willingness to take on new challenges and try new things
- Ability to accept compliments graciously and believe in their worth
- Empathy and compassion towards themselves and others
- Feeling secure and at peace with themselves, even in the absence of external validation
If you resonate more with the list of low self-esteem symptoms, there is hope. Self-esteem can be built and practiced.
What Causes Low Self-Esteem?
Low self-esteem can have many causes, stemming from a simple stage of life to trauma. Some causes of low self-esteem include:
- Negative Childhood Experiences: Hurtful or critical upbringing, neglect, or emotional abuse can deeply impact self-worth.
- Bullying or Peer Rejection: Hurtful interactions at school or within social circles can inflict lasting damage to one's self-esteem.
- Media and Societal Pressures: Unrealistic beauty standards, societal expectations, and social media comparisons can erode self-confidence.
- Trauma and Abuse: Surviving trauma, including emotional, physical, or sexual abuse, can significantly reduce self-esteem.
- Chronic Stress: Prolonged periods of stress, particularly when linked to challenging life circumstances, can wear down self-esteem.
- Unhealthy Relationships: Toxic, abusive, or unsupportive relationships can contribute to feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy.
- Perfectionism and Self-Comparison: Striving for unattainable perfection and comparing oneself to others can lead to feelings of failure and low self-worth.
- Chronic Illness or Disability: Coping with health challenges can lead to feelings of diminished self-esteem and a sense of loss of control.
Most of the things that influence your self-esteem are out of your control; you don’t choose to have low self-esteem, but your experiences have taught you to have it.
Fortunately, you have much more agency over how you build higher self-esteem. Coping mechanisms, therapy, and group therapy can all help you build higher self-esteem.
How to Have High Self-Esteem
Too high of self-esteem can be a bad thing and lead to arrogance, overconfidence, and an inability to see your own mistakes or flaws. (We all have them!) However, low self-esteem can lend itself to anxiety, depression, eating disorders, or, on the extreme side, suicidal thoughts.
To build self-esteem, try these activities:
- Get to know yourself: When was the last time you spent some quality time with yourself? Have you gotten to know yourself? When you get to know who you truly are—your values, beliefs, likes, and dislikes—you may find yourself valuing yourself more.
- Set boundaries with others: Sometimes our sense of self is too wrapped up in what other people say and think of us. This is because we don’t have good boundaries with the people around us. Practice saying no and standing up for yourself today.
- Challenge the unkind things you say to yourself: Cognitive distortions are untrue, negative thought patterns. For example, “I’m so lazy” and “No one likes me” are both all-or-nothing thinking patterns that negate all the positives. When you start thinking negatively about yourself, stop and ask: Is this the whole truth? What’s one positive thing I can say about myself right now?
- Write down things you like or appreciate about yourself: It might seem silly at first, but bring attention to the things you do like about yourself. For example, you like how you always try your best, your sense of curiosity, your humor, how you respond to a friend’s crisis or the love you give to your pet.
- Put down social media: Social media can have its positives, but it has plenty of negatives, too. One of those negatives is how easy it is to compare yourself to others or feel behind. The lives portrayed over social media are curated and edited, it’s not a true reflection of people, and it can be harmful to compare yourself to them. (Have a social media addiction? Here are some tips on how to break it.)
- Engage in self-care: Self-care isn’t just bubble baths and face masks. Sometimes it’s getting up and going for a walk, engaging in a hobby, or calling a friend. Get out and do the things that make you feel good about yourself and that you enjoy doing, then do them often.
- Group therapy: Group therapy is a great way to build self-esteem because of its inherent relationship-building and interpersonal dynamic skill-building. Group therapy for self-esteem can be a good way to address low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, and more.
Lifebulb is now offering group therapy for self-esteem. This group will walk you through how living according to your values helps build self-esteem, a critical component in the common therapy technique called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
If you’re interested in group therapy or individual therapy for low self-esteem, talk to our support team. We can get you matched with a therapist near you and verify your insurance coverage. If you’d rather, you can browse a list of licensed therapists near you using our therapist directory.