Self-Esteem

Low self-esteem means your overall sense of your own worth is shaky, often in ways other people can't see. It usually grows from early experiences of being valued for what you did rather than who you were. It isn't a diagnosis or a character flaw. Self-esteem counselling for women offers a relationship where you're accepted as you are, which is often where a kinder view of yourself begins.

What are the signs of low self-esteem?

From the outside, you might look fine. Capable, even. Inside, it can feel quite different.

You might:

• Brush off compliments, or assume people are just being polite.
• Replay conversations afterwards, looking for what you got wrong.
• Feel like a fraud at work, waiting to be found out (sometimes called imposter syndrome).
• Compare yourself with other women and always come out behind.
• Find it easier to describe your faults than anything you like about yourself.
• Stay in situations that don't suit you because you're not sure you deserve better.

Low self-esteem isn't always loud. Sometimes it's a quiet background voice that says "who are you to want that?"

What causes low self-esteem? Rogers and the self-concept

The sociologist Morris Rosenberg spent much of his career studying self-esteem, and the scale he published in 1965 is still one of the most widely used measures of it (University of Maryland, Department of Sociology). He treated self-esteem as one part of a bigger picture: the self-concept.

Carl Rogers, who developed person-centred counselling, put the self-concept at the centre of his theory. Put simply, it's the picture you hold of who you are, what you're like and how you relate to the world, together with the value you attach to all of that (Rogers, 1959).

Rogers noticed that this picture is built partly from other people's reactions. A child who senses that she is loved when she's helpful or quiet, and less so when she's angry or needy, gradually takes those conditions on as her own. Rogers called them conditions of worth. As an adult, she may only feel acceptable when she's meeting them.

That's why low self-esteem so often survives success. If your worth depends on achieving, each achievement buys a little relief. Then the conditions reset.

Why do so many women recognise this?

Many women are raised to be agreeable, modest and focused on others. In collectivist families, being a good daughter, wife or mother can be a deeply held value, and a source of real meaning. It can also leave little room to ask what you want, or to feel good about yourself for reasons that aren't about serving someone. The page on family duty and self looks at that tension.

Moving abroad can add another layer. You may have been confident at home, with a career, a language you spoke fluently and people who knew you. Imagine arriving in a new country where you can't follow a meeting, can't make a joke land, and need help to read a letter from the tax office. It's easy to start believing you're less capable than you are. Identity and belonging explores what a move can do to your sense of who you are.

Rogers used the phrase locus of evaluation for where your judgements of yourself come from. When it sits mostly outside you, in other people's opinions, your sense of worth goes up and down with theirs.

How does self-esteem counselling for women work?

Person-centred counselling doesn't try to talk you into thinking better of yourself. Most people with low self-esteem have heard "but you're amazing" many times, and it rarely lands.

Instead, the counsellor offers what Rogers called unconditional positive regard: acceptance of you as a person, without conditions. That can feel strange at first, even uncomfortable. In practice, the work might include:

• Noticing the critical voice. Where it sounds like it came from, and what it's trying to protect you from.
• Listening to the parts of you that were less welcome. Anger, need, ambition, sadness.
• Separating what you value from what you were told to value. Some of it you'll keep. Some you may let go.
• Finding your own measure. Moving, slowly, towards trusting your own sense of what's good enough.

I won't give you affirmations to repeat or homework to complete. Change, when it comes, tends to grow from the experience of being accepted rather than from instruction.

Self-esteem tests and free resources

If you'd like a starting point, the self-esteem test uses the Rosenberg scale. It takes about three minutes, and nothing you enter is stored. The self-compassion test looks at a related question: how you treat yourself when things go wrong. Neither is a diagnosis. Both can help you put words to something you've felt for a long time.

If you'd like something to work through on your own, the free self-esteem resources page lists checked workbooks and guides, mostly from public health services. Many are based on CBT, which takes a different route from person-centred counselling: it looks directly at self-critical thoughts and tests them. Some people find that useful alongside counselling. Self-compassion is another angle worth reading about, because it asks how you speak to yourself when you're struggling.

When to look for other or urgent help

Low self-esteem sometimes sits alongside depression, an eating disorder or self-harm. Those need specialist assessment, so please speak to a GP if you're worried. If you're in immediate danger, or worried you might act on thoughts of harming yourself, please get help now:

• UK: call 999 or go to A&E. For urgent help that isn't an emergency, call NHS 111 and choose the mental health option. Samaritans are free on 116 123, 24 hours a day.
• EU: call 112.
• Elsewhere: the helplines directory lists verified crisis numbers by country.

Related reading

• People-pleasing, when your worth feels tied to keeping others happy.
• Online counselling for women, on what I offer and how sessions work.

I'm a trainee person-centred counsellor and BACP student member, working under supervision. If you'd like to explore this together, you can book a session.