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Building Self Esteem

For a very long time, I wasn’t comfortable with myself. During my journey to healing, I quickly realized that it’s a lot easier for us to make friends with strangers than our own selves. It took me such a long time to make friends with myself and slowly learn to love who I am. Now that I’m here, I hope to help as many people as possible find their way to self-love.
When faced with a difficult situation, it can be overwhelming and sometimes lead to low self-esteem and self-doubt. This makes it hard to stay motivated and confident. In my experience, it is important to develop coping mechanisms that help you over the long term because everyone experiences difficult times in their lives.
As soon as puberty kicks in, many of us lose self-esteem. Many physical, emotional, and psychological changes begin to take shape during this time, leaving us confused and extremely sensitive. As our bodies change, so does our self-esteem, leaving us vulnerable. Even fully understanding that this is a perfectly normal part of life that everyone goes through didn’t make it any easier for me. Puberty was a time in my life I think back to and wonder whether anyone handles it any better than I did.
I, like many others, struggle with finding a healthy balance for most things, and finding my self-esteem sweet spot is no exception. As I navigate the highs and lows of self-confidence, I often wonder what level counts as optimal. My outlook on self-esteem was, for a very long time, one-sided. I didn't believe there was such a thing as high self-esteem. Now that I know better, I have been very conscious about my efforts to keep my self-worth at a healthy level. 
My name is Teddy Muyeka, and I am passionate about sharing my mental health journey. I am glad to share my experiences here at "Building Self-Esteem" so that I can help others cope better with their struggles. I have lived with depression for a long time, and it has deeply affected my self-esteem. My coping mechanisms during this time, mostly avoidance, turned out to be causing more harm than good. It wasn’t until I started therapy that I started my journey to rebuild my self-confidence and develop healthier coping mechanisms.
Today, I'd like to wish you all a sincere farewell, as this is my last post for the "Building Self-Esteem" blog. I've been thinking about my work here at HealthyPlace and would love to leave you with a few reflections.
Suicide is a challenging topic to discuss. However, it is extremely important. Today, I'd like to talk about low self-esteem indicators that can be early signs of suicidal thoughts and behaviors. (Note: This post contains a trigger warning.)
Throughout my life, I've had an internal dialog of thoughts that offers commentary on my daily life. Recently I've noticed that some of those thoughts can be negative. The negative thoughts occur when I feel that I've done something wrong. These thoughts could come after driving too aggressively, snapping at a friend, or being lazy. Today, I'd like to talk about how those negative thoughts can be damaging and how to accept negative thoughts with grace and build self-esteem at the same time.
I've long been told to let go of the things I can't control, and I always wondered how. It's not like I can flip a switch and suddenly not stress over the various external circumstances I'm dealing with at the time. For years I tried to tell myself that I would just not care about that stuff. It didn't work very well.
Over the past several months, I've been writing about ways to boost self-esteem at a comfortable pace. I find that working at your own speed and setting achievable goals will help set anyone up for self-esteem success. Today, I'd like to talk about something different I tried recently. I want to talk about how challenging myself affected my self-esteem.