How do I improve my self esteem?

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I certainly hope so. I want so desperately to feel normal and look normal. My life is affected in so many ways
 
This has been a struggle for me my entire life.

I know you mention you have a therapist, which is good. I would make sure you have one that practices cognitive behavior therapy. CBT is something that really helped me alleviate so much of the negative self-talk that was overwhelmed my thinking. Without going into too many personal details, my diagnosis (which has played a role in my low self-image) is also treated with medication, which in my case has been an incredible benefit. Not recommending you go on medication, everyone is different, and that’s only something a doctor can assess for you.

As for praying to the saints, I think you should pray to the Virgin, and to whichever saint speaks to you. I always felt like an outcast in high school, and I was always into saints who were outcasts too.

One, in particular, I’ll mention: I was always captivated by the story of St. Germaine Cousin. She was a french shepherdess of the 17th century, an outcast by society and even of her own family, because she had a skin disease that made her homely. She was forced to live in the stable of her family’s property because her stepmother hated her and her father wouldn’t stand up for her. She was ridiculed by the townsfolk but she she developed a very deep prayer life and led of life of great holiness. She died at 22, when people began to realize the extent of her sanctity. For more info: Germaine Cousin - Wikipedia

I mention her because she had more than enough reason to feel terrible about herself but she overcame her suffering and used it towards something greater. She’s also the patron saint of outcasts and abandoned people, and don’t we all feel abandoned from time to time?
 
Allegra said:
Service. A lot of time we accomplish a great deal more then we though we could when we are motivated to do it for others.
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I echo this. Offering help or doing volunteer service does wonders and not just for those who need it. It helps put things into perspective and you will feel better about yourself.
 
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To be blunt, dear friend, you are focusing entirely too much on yourself. In the title of your thread, “you” are the center, three times emphasizing: “How do I improve my self esteem?”

There is no life in one’s opinions, yet you seek to “improve” your own opinion of yourself, to make yourself feel better! No, dear friend, our opinions are of little value: God’s absolute and eternal TRUTH is the key to happiness.

John the Baptist said it succinctly: “I must decrease; He must increase.” This is so very true for us all. It is not “all about us” - it is about Him. And He points us to the burden, on the road to true happiness, of the Cross. Our cross - the cross we are to pick up and carry, following Him all the days of our life.

Self-esteem is a chase after a fiction: it is the approval of God that matters - seek His approval, first. last, and always. In Him is our self-identity finally found! In Him is our peace, and happiness. Seek Him. You will find your very self, in Him.
 
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Everyone have a story that they create about themselves. It shapes our self-perception and self-image. Always think positive.
 
I see you are Hindu - welcome to a Catholic Forum - but I must disagree with your advice: It is not true that “everyone has a story that they create about themselves.” Is that a Hindu belief - or a common Hindu practice, perhaps?

It is a fact, I’m sorry to say, that many people prefer fiction in entertainment: they find fantasy itself entertaining, time-consuming, time-filling. And it is a fact that some fiction carries a real and important truth in it - like the parables that Jesus Christ used, to teach the eternally true values and virtues in God. But Western secular culture today seems obsessed with empty fiction - or worse than empty - fiction laden with not virtues but vices, not values but disvalues, not truths but lies. Many people become so intoxicated with fantasies, so completely, that they lose themselves in fantasy - and their lives become blurred tangled confused messes.

Jesus - God the Son - came that we might have LIFE: real life, true life, the life that the One God intended for us when He created us out of nothing. Truth is worth seeking, because truth, not fiction, brings true happiness.
 
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jyotisharma2859 said:
Everyone have a story that they create about themselves. It shapes our self-perception and self-image. Always think positive.
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Counter-intuitively, you also have to accept the “negative” you really are feeling and really are going through in order to “think positive.” You don’t dwell on the negative all day long, but you cannot stuff it in a closet of your soul and pretend that you don’t have those difficult feelings or difficult things happening to you or difficult things about yourself to face up to.
There is no love where there is no honesty and vice versa. Love and truth need each other. We need to be able to bring ourselves to God as we really are and trust that God loves us in whatever condition we really are if we hope to have healing from what ails us. The first step to self-acceptance is letting God accept us, and the first step to feeling God accepts us is to bring ourselves out from hiding from God instead of putting on a false front that we think we have to have in order to be loved.
 
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fide said:
To be blunt, dear friend, you are focusing entirely too much on yourself. In the title of your thread, “you” are the center, three times emphasizing: “How do I improve my self esteem?”

There is no life in one’s opinions, yet you seek to “improve” your own opinion of yourself, to make yourself feel better! No, dear friend, our opinions are of little value: God’s absolute and eternal TRUTH is the key to happiness.

John the Baptist said it succinctly: “I must decrease; He must increase.” This is so very true for us all. It is not “all about us” - it is about Him. And He points us to the burden, on the road to true happiness, of the Cross. Our cross - the cross we are to pick up and carry, following Him all the days of our life.

Self-esteem is a chase after a fiction: it is the approval of God that matters - seek His approval, first. last, and always. In Him is our self-identity finally found! In Him is our peace, and happiness. Seek Him. You will find your very self, in Him.
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Why did John’s letter say things like this?
“See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.” 1 John 3:1

I would reword what you are saying in this way: It does not make sense to go to God looking for approval. We don’t deserve approval, and we never will. You are right; that is a chase after a fiction. That is why it was necessary for Christ to die for us. We go to God for grace, to be made new not by what we do but by what God has done for us. No, the worth of sinful humanity is in being made part of Christ, because Christ alone is pleasing to God. Even Our Lady is pleasing to God because she is entirely one with Christ, as her Magnificat proclaimed and as the Church reiterates explicitly:
The Virgin Mary, who at the message of the angel received the Word of God in her heart and in her body and gave Life to the world, is acknowledged and honored as being truly the Mother of God and Mother of the Redeemer. Redeemed by reason of the merits of her Son and united to Him by a close and indissoluble tie, she is endowed with the high office and dignity of being the Mother of the Son of God, by which account she is also the beloved daughter of the Father and the temple of the Holy Spirit. Because of this gift of sublime grace she far surpasses all creatures, both in heaven and on earth. At the same time, however, because she belongs to the offspring of Adam she is one with all those who are to be saved. She is “the mother of the members of Christ . . . having cooperated by charity that faithful might be born in the Church, who are members of that Head.”
(Lumen Gentium, chapter VIII)
 
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jyotisharma2859 said:
I agree with you. It’s something that everyone should know.
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Adam and Eve’s story tells us how scary honesty can be. Praised be to the Almighty, when we hide, we are ardently searched for. If we scapegoat or dissimulate when we are uncovered, though, grace has no choice but to let us have our way until we are willing to let the truth out in order to let grace in. Yet we have no reason to fear, either, for Our Lord continually knocks at our door.
 
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Fake it 'till you make it.

Seriously. Keep it a secret. Get up in the morning and act as if you are the most highly esteemed person you know. No one has to know that you’re not. Pretend you are. Put on the role of high self-esteem. You might never overcome your low self-esteem, but you can fool everyone and build a good life for yourself anyway. Keep it packed away for when you’re alone at night and you can pray for the strength to make it through the next day.

Take it from me, someone who has suffered low self-confidence my whole life. If I can beat low self-confidence, you can beat low self-esteem.
 
If one goes through life with a mindset of “I have low self-esteem,” then one is bound to have low self-esteem.
It’s a mind game you have to play with yourself.
EVERYBODY feels inadequate at times, feels pressure, has low self-confidence, and beats himself up on the inside. Everybody. The difference is that some people lift themselves out of it. It can literally be a conscious decision.
 
Hey, I used to think positive thinking was a load of bunk too, but it actually does help. I Think it was Will Rogers who said “People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Now obviously Will wasn’t taking into account people with depressive disorders who need professional help and may benefit from medication. But if it’s just a matter of choosing your mindset for the day, I can choose to beat up on myself or feel negative, or I can rejoice in the Lord, take his hand, give thanks for all the positives in my life (like I woke up, no one is shooting at me, I feel healthy today, I have a roof over my head, food for breakfast, heat in the house, a job, friends, cuddly cats, Jesus appearing at Mass, etc) and say “Bless this day” and get on with it.

I choose the latter, and I choose to believe God doesn’t make junk. That’s positive thinking.
 
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I don’t read as many biographies as I should, but.

I’m aware of a common thread through the lives of every man or woman about whom a biography has been written. They all had self-doubts at some point, even at multiple points, and many points. They were all great in spite of it.
 
Jesus tells us to love our neighbour as ourselves. This implies that we must love ourselves.
 
The psychology behind the “Self-esteem” gospel is rooted in worldliness and is part of the health and wealth gospel. It misses the point on conversion of heart and the death to the self, and replaces it with the mediocre feel-good-about-one’s-self ideology. If you claim to believe that God is your Father and that you will be inheriting His Kingdom, yet still suffer from poor self esteem, simply means that you have little faith. One has to graduate and grow from merely intellectualizing the faith and believing doctrinal facts, to having one’s heart, mind, and soul transformed by God’s grace. Rejoice that you are unworthy to be saved yet Jesus saved you. Rejoice that you are unworthy for Jesus to have suffered for you, yet He suffered for you. Rejoice that you are unworthy to be given a share in God’s Eternal Life, yet God is offering it to you. Once one dies to one’s self, criticism or praise has no effect. This is a lifelong journey of transformation. The death to the self is central to Christian holiness, so one has to awake to this truth and begin the journey…

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Gab123 said:
If you claim to believe that God is your Father and that you will be inheriting His Kingdom, yet still suffer from poor self esteem, simply means that you have little faith.
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Actually, no, it really isn’t always that simple.
Le_Crouton said:
I certainly hope so. I want so desperately to feel normal and look normal. My life is affected in so many ways
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Let me ask you a question: Do you think anyone else’s worthiness as a human being depends at all on their looks? I don’t mean that physical reality doesn’t make extra weight put an abnormal strain on joints and so on. I’m talking about giving yourself permission to see yourself as a normal person regardless of where your body is on the curve from lightest to heaviest.

The reason I ask is this: It is far easier to take care of your body because your dignity as a human person makes it worth it than it is to continually think your self-care is worth the effort because your body seems as if you take care of it. If you make the motivation dependent on the results, you will always have this fear of losing the results. That fear is damaging, no matter how you look.

That is why self-esteem is a worthwhile thing: that is, it is our motivation to love ourselves as we would anyone else. Not more, not less–although the bias in favor of ourselves is so typical and the value of self-forgetfulness is so great that it is typically wise to err in favor of others. Still, if we don’t see ourselves as having the same needs and needing the same mercy and care as anyone else, we make the duty of self-care much more difficult for ourselves.

Choose to love that person who looks back at you in the mirror. Choose to be forgiving towards her, choose to challenge her in positive ways, choose to encourage her to do what is best for her and for the universe. Do for her what you’d do for anyone you loved and had a duty to care for, including giving the duty of caring for her to someone who helps you do that, from time to time and when you need the help. Do that for her sake. Her place in the universe makes that the right thing to do. That is all self-esteem is.
 
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Well put, but it misses the point in this case. There’s a difference between advocating self-promotion and recommending that someone with low self-esteem try to climb out of the funk.

A person with low self-esteem is likely to mope about and let the inertia of self-pity and inactivity lead to wasted days.
 
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