Empowered Healing: Signs and Strategies to Overcome Low Self-Esteem

This is a topic that the vast majority of people, including nearly all of my clients, have experienced and had to deal with at some point in their lives.

Low self-esteem occurs when you do not think much of yourself or hold yourself in high regard. It can affect virtually every aspect of your life, such as your relationships, job, health, future, and ability to reach your goals and potential.

Poor self-esteem can also affect your thoughts, emotions and behavioural patterns, taking a toll on your emotional wellbeing. It causes you to focus on your flaws rather than your strengths. You tend to blame yourself when things go wrong. This leads you to always find fault with some aspect of yourself, whether it is your appearance, personality or your capabilities.

The following are some common signs of low self-esteem:

! Negative self-talk
! Poor confidence
! Lack of control over your life and what happens to you
! Poor outlook on life and the future
! Feeling hopeless
! Worry and self-doubt
! Problems asking for what you need
! Trouble accepting positive feedback
! Lack of boundaries and not reinforcing boundaries
! Fear of failure
! People-pleasing in order to gain external validation

Some other signs are feeling anxious, unlovable, incompetent and having a low body image. You may be worried about judgement and judge yourself too harshly. You may think you are stupid, awkward, different, or worthless. These are all negative beliefs that are really opinions rather than fact.

So with all this in mind, you can see how it plays a powerful role in many areas in your life. This is why having low self-esteem can be such a serious problem and can have such a serious negative impact on your life and wellbeing.

Having awareness around these negative impacts highlights the importance of addressing, healing, and changing the traumas, conditioning, and patterns that have created these negative belief systems.

These belief systems are almost always created in childhood, which can be anywhere between birth and 20 years of age. It could be as simple as a learnt behaviour. For example, growing up with a mother who had low self-esteem and learning that behaviour from her negative self-talk. It could also stem from something more traumatic, such as verbal, physical or sexual abuse. Perhaps you were told that you were stupid or you were criticized and made to feel that you or what you do is never good enough. Maybe you felt invisible or experienced abuse. All of these can have a tremendous effect on you and how you develop your sense of self and your identity.

In Forensic Healing sessions, I dig below the issue itself. I work like an investigator to identify the age at which low self-esteem was anchored into a person. I collect information such as an archetype, negative belief patterns or negative emotions. This can lead to a positive vision of how a client really wants to feel. Then together with the client, we are able to address what was happening at that point in time, how all of the information we have gathered ties into their experience and how it has affected different aspects of themselves and their lives.

When you gain awareness, perspective and understanding as to why you have low self-esteem, you can then begin to rebuild it. We revisit a specific age, acknowledge your inner child and validate your feelings. When this happens, you allow yourself to release it all. Then a great healing can take place. You finally know the exact reason why things have occurred and you release the power of that anchor point. This is how true healing begins.

The next phase of the journey is to rebuild your self-esteem. With the insight you gain during your healing session, you can change behaviours and rebuild your self-esteem by noticing your thoughts, forgiving yourself and practicing self-acceptance. It takes time to change and create new behaviours and patterns for yourself, so be patient.

The beautiful thing is that you will learn to not only like yourself but also believe in yourself and believe that you deserve love from yourself and others. You will learn to stand in your power and value yourself, your thoughts, feelings, opinions and interests.

Building self-esteem can also affect your motivation to go after the things you want in life and to achieve short-term and long-term goals. It has a positive impact on your relationship with yourself and how you treat yourself. This also affects how you allow others to treat you. This will help with your ability to develop healthy and supportive relationships.

Developing a healthy self-esteem will impact every aspect of you and your life. As it grows, you will feel more positive about yourself. Your confidence, your sense of well-being, and your outlook on life will improve. It makes you much more resilient, able to cope with life’s ups and downs and also creates more
flow in your life.

Get real and raw. Gain awareness and knowledge. Choose to heal, grow, learn and transform. Step into Your Power. Become the Creator of Your Life. This is what I call “Empowered Healing.”

Karina Barca, Our Expert

Web

Regular Column: Empowered Healing

Karina Barca is a Melbourne-based Medium, Healer, Psychic, Reiki Master Teacher, Mentor, Forensic Healing Practitioner and Facilitator of ‘Sistahood Sundays’. Through her own healing and empowerment journey, her passion became very clear. To serve, inspire and assist all who want to grow, heal, and evolve.