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Recovery from low self–esteem
The road to recovery requires a great deal of your patience, effort and energy. Hard work,
persistence, patience, and a sense of faith and hope will pay off in the end as you begin to feel
the glow of healing self–esteem. This process is filled with setbacks and relapses and you must
accept this as part of the human condition. If you fall off the wagon of recovery, get right back
up and keep on going. No one but you can keep you from your goal of increased self–esteem.
Techniques for creating self-esteem

We develop energy vibrations such as poise, self-confidence, self-love, self-appreciation, and
joy. We develop affirmations regarding our true value and potential. We visualize ourselves in
situations where we have poise, self-confidence, self-love and an ability to interact effectively
from a base of our true self. We act as if we have self-esteem. Self-esteem gives permission for us
to grow effectively and happily in the human world. As we examine our values, we discover that
we have full self-esteem only if we are complying with our values. We need to have the values
that provide valid feedback on our actions, such that they trigger alarm bells when we commit
an act that is truly destructive or self-destructive. If we value life, we value this alarm mechanism
that tells us that our current actions are diminishing our life.

Where does self-esteem come from ?
As newborn babies, we did not enter this world equipped with a self-concept. Everything you
are today, you have learned or experienced since birth. Every attitude, belief, value behaviour
and fear you may have right now has been learned. It therefore follows that if there are
elements that no longer serve your best purposes, you can ‘unlearn’ them, let them go and
replace them with more positive elements that will serve you better.

As we have seen from the Erikson stages of development, from birth throughout the stages of
our lives, we grow emotionally as human beings by successfully passing through the various
development phases of life from infancy, through childhood and teenage years, to adulthood
and then old age.
Children are born unafraid and without the inhibitions of adults.

They are born with only two fears, the fear of loud noises and the fear of falling. Ask anyone who
has raised children about their experiences and they will tell you of the apparently fearless
behaviour of children. They will climb high trees, run out in front of cars, put their fingers in flames
and frighten the living daylights out of their elders with their suicidal tendencies. For their own
protection, they are gradually taught what to fear by adults. Other than falling and of loud
noises, all fears children learn are taught to them by adults or by painful experience.