Many people have poor self-esteem. Likewise, many believed that repeating self-affirmations was a way to improve one’s self-regard. Of course, everyone wants and needs self-affirmation, but it is overrated as a therapeutic technique.
Self-affirmation was a big deal in pop psychology 30 years ago. Bookstores and novelty shops promoted it with posters and T-shirts featuring affirming platitudes. Likewise, business offices posted them prominently in waiting areas.
While there is nothing wrong with ego-boosting messages, the value of simply repeating them to yourself is limited. Remember comedian Al Franken? He lampooned and exposed the fallacy of this craze through his SNL character, Stuart Smalley, who began each day by reciting empty self-affirmations.
While, internet apps have pretty much replaced posters, the emphasis is remains the same. SELF: Self-Care & Self-Love – Apps on Google Play Although, self-affirmations are not a bad thing, they can’t take the place of psychotherapy to repair significant self-esteem issues.
Today, I want to review some basic facts about self-esteem and explain how recent research in neuroscience has increased our understanding of how self-esteem can be damaged and why it is so difficult to repair. Within that context, the legitimate place of affirmations can be better appreciated.
Self-Esteem: High and Low
Just to be clear, self-esteem is how people regard themselves. It is your encompassing beliefs, feelings, and attitudes about your abilities and worth.
When we are born, people naturally have positive self-esteem. They like themselves and feel good about life. Unfortunately, for many, this good feeling does not last.
Based on research data and my own clinical experience, many people have trouble with self-esteem because harsh and often unfair criticism and negative feedback experienced by children turn a positive sense into a negative one.
Why Self-Affirmations Are Important
Self-affirmations correct negative self-images. Distorted and negative impressions and perceptions of a person’s worth interfere with a person’s ability to cope successfully with life.
Helpful affirmations are not just cheerleading but provide a rational and accurate reset of how one sees one’s abilities and worth. Inaccurate Self-Esteem | Pastoral Counseling Syracuse NY
The Limits of Affirmations and Therapeutic Self-Talk
Improving self-esteem, however, involves more than rational correction of an irrational perception. While understanding that one’s self-image is distorted and overly negative is necessary, it is not sufficient to change deeply rooted feelings of poor self-worth.
Increasing self-esteem requires reprogramming negative emotions and physical sensations created by trauma that are connected with one’s sense of self. Expanded knowledge is not enough to change one’s beliefs and behaviors because of the part of the brain where negative feelings are formed.
Traumatic memories that create low self-esteem are not like ordinary memories, like what you ate for breakfast, and they are stored in a different part of the brain, the limbic system. This is the primitive, animal part of the human brain. Unlike the prefrontal neocortex, the limbic system cannot reason and has no sense of time or historical perspective. Its sole purpose is procreation and survival.
Unlike ordinary memories, traumatic memories have no language or words. They are composed of physical sensations connected with feelings of fear, panic and being overwhelmed.
When low self-esteem is triggered, the person does not recall past negative messages about himself or herself. Instead, they experience them as immediate physical sensations of distress in their body.
Since the limbic system does not have words, knowledge experienced through words can’t impact the distress feelings created by trauma.
To repeat, while understanding is needed to provide an integrated healing experience, understanding alone cannot change a person’s feelings about themselves.
Keys to Improving Self-Esteem with Self-Talk
While repeating simple affirmations has little impact on improving self-esteem, affirming self-talk, when combined with somatic therapy, can. A crucial difference between plain affirmations and therapeutic self-talk is the inclusion of reality testing and context. Self-talk is a function of our neocortex that provides history and perspective to held beliefs about the self.
Reality testing self-talk assesses the validity of a person’s beliefs. It is not simply positive but realistically evaluates a person’s strengths and weaknesses.
The process of increasing self-esteem involves not only exposing the factual error of the belief but also providing time and perspective. A historical view allows a person to recognize the differences between a child’s abilities and those of an adult.
Low self-esteem often results from a person believing that they are responsible for a situation when, in fact, they are not. Reality testing enables people to understand why they erroneously felt inadequate or inferior.
Discovering the differences between a child’s and an adult’s expectations, obligations, and abilities is a crucial emotional epiphany. It results in experiencing innocence and self-worth, displacing low self-esteem, guilt, and shame.
Therapeutic self-talk allows a person to understand his/her limits as a child and empathize with his/her vulnerability rather than inferiority. In doing so, they experience/feel their innocence and normalcy.
This realization brings a physical sensation of exhilaration and relief, which can replace negative panic reactions. The emotional/ physical sensation is the missing experience that heals the wounds of the past and restores positive self-esteem.
Summing Up
So, to review, if you know that you have low self-esteem that is getting in the way of your happiness and well-being, it is treatable. Even though there are many self-help books on improving self-esteem, my advice is to see a therapist for help.
Because the negative perception is irrational, rational means (understanding alone) can’t get to the root of the problem. However, understanding plus dealing with the underlying trauma and its psychological scars will do the trick
Rev. Michael Heath, LMHC, Fellow AAPC 3 17 2025
