Improving your self-esteem!

Hey everyone! It's Atticus :) I hope everyone has had a great week so far and is doing well. This week has been really interesting for me and I've been learning how to cope with some extreme ups and downs lately. Another thing I've been trying to deal with is my own self-esteem. Being in low lows sometimes can really drag our self-esteem through the dirt and I know others might start thinking about self-harm thoughts when stuck in that rut of a self-esteem slump. Here are 6 ways to change your thoughts and improve self-esteem!

1) Focus on what you want to let into your life. We often hear that we need to "let go", but sometimes it's hard to know what we need to let go and how exactly to let go of things. This especially applies to traumatizing things that we just hold onto. Instead of focusing on what you need to let go of, try focusing on what you need more of in your life! Whether it's just more sleep or more people positive people around you, you get to control what you let in.

2) Avoiding all or nothing thinking. Catch the dichotomies in your thinking patterns! These thought patterns can end up starting in phrases like "I'll never.." or "Every time..." or "They always...". Change your thoughts by looking for an alternative grey area.

3) Talk to yourself differently. When we're going through really difficult times and are having self-harm thoughts, it's easy to talk to ourselves in really harsh language and blame ourselves for a ton of things that are out of our control. Harsh language used against ourselves won't make us feel any better, so it's better to talk to ourselves gently to help ourselves grow! Ask yourself "How would my best friend or parent support me and help me in this situation?" and go from there.

4) Give yourself credit for small things and celebrate your wins. There are many times during the self-harm recovery journey where we can often feel hopeless because of all the "defeats" in life that we're being hit with. These defeats are natural and very valid, but it's important to combat the sadness of those defeats with celebrating the wins we receive, even the small ones. Even if you are not done with a project, take a moment to focus on what you achieved so far.

5) Actively practice gratitude for the things around you. Hopelessness and numbness towards the world around us is easy to fall into when we're in a stage of the self-harm recovery journey. Actively looking for things to be grateful of and expressing gratitude towards those you love is scientifically proven to be more beneficial and helps us feel better about ourselves as well. Take a minute to think of everything in this moment that you're really thankful for or grateful for.

6) Improve the moment. This really just means actively trying to do something that interrupts the negative thoughts that you may be having about self-harm. This can help stop our self-esteem from crumbling and can take place by practicing some healthy coping mechanisms or self-care.

Discussion questions:

1) How high or low is your self-esteem? With 1 being having low self-esteem and 10 being high self-esteem, what would you rate yourself and why?

2) What can you do today to improve your self-esteem?

3) What's one thing that you want to accomplish by the end of this week?

I hope this post was helpful and thank you everyone for reading and I hope you all have a great day!

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