It’s time to quiet that inner critic.
Online therapy for self-esteem in Oregon & Washington
Stop the battle between who you “should be” and who you are.
How are low self-esteem and social anxiety getting in the way of living an authentic and connected life?
Does this sound familiar?
You tend to focus more on the one thing you did wrong, rather than all the things you’ve done right.
You’re constantly trying to give others the benefit of the doubt, but no one gives this back to you. Not even yourself.
You’re walking on eggshells around others, and spend a lot of energy trying to please others who honestly don’t treat you that well.
It’s hard to set boundaries or say “no” to others when they need something, even when saying “yes” to everything is slowly killing you.
You can’t imagine letting go of relationships, even ones that bring you more harm than good.
You may also struggle with…
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Overthinking
You’re lying in bed at night, replaying every conversation that you had that day, looking for where you might have messed up, hurt someone’s feelings, or said something stupid. And then you’re playing over made up scenarios of what you should have said so that maybe the next time you’ll handle it better. AND THEN you’re thinking about what you should go back and say to that person so you can fix the problem that may not even exist but not look weird when trying to do so.
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People-pleasing
As you’re moving through life wearing the mask of “I’m fine, everything’s fine,” you also find yourself giving and giving and giving to others. Sometimes it feels like you have nothing left to give, yet somehow you keep giving. Others love your generosity, but they often don’t return it. You don’t acknowledge the imbalance because you worry about upsetting them. You consider setting boundaries, but you don’t want to lose them. You’re stuck in people-pleasing and conflict avoidant patterns and you’re so frustrated with yourself for it.
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Feeling "Too Much"
You often find your anxieties minimized by friends and family. Maybe even yourself. You’re pulled to ask others for reassurance, but at the same time, you’re worried about being labeled as “too much” or “too sensitive.” And so you started hiding your worries and vulnerabilities from others. You might be so good at hiding your anxiety at this point, even you forget how much you’re going through. Or you think others have it worse than you so it really doesn’t matter how much is on your plate.
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Feeling "Not Enough"
For as long as you can remember, you’ve never felt “enough.” Not for family members, friends, or romantic partners. Not even in academics or the workplace, despite being a high achiever. You constantly think “what’s wrong with me?”, “why do I do that?”, “what should I have done/said differently?” And you’ve also never quite felt validation from others in a meaningful way. Not to mention you really hate getting and accepting compliments from others.
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Shame & Protectiveness
Maybe this started in your family of origin. You might have grown up in a dysfunctional family household with emotionally immature parents (EIP). Maybe you identify as an adult child of an alcoholic (ACOA). From a young age, you’ve been taking care of others and so you actually don’t know how to even let others take care of you - so you don’t want them to. You also struggle in your relationship with your family and feel shame about how you’re not closer to them because you feel like you’re “supposed to be.”
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Loneliness
Maybe you actually have a great relationship with your family, but forming relationships with peers and romantic partners is the hard part. You might have had experiences of having a close friend group for a long time, but something happened and all the sudden, out of the blue, they stopped talking to you. You can’t help but think “well I’m the common denominator… something must be wrong with me.”
It may feel impossible now, but you can feel confident in yourself. You can be as kind, gentle, and generous to yourself as you are to others. You can genuinely feel like you are enough.
And I can help you get there.
My approach to therapy is focused on how we get that logical “knowing” to seep down into deeper parts of the brain so that you don’t have to keep feeling conflicted between your “logical self” and “emotional self.” Instead, you’ll feel more aligned with genuinely believing those things you know.
I help clients engage in a more meaningful level of processing than traditional talk therapy offers. With somatic approaches such as Brainspotting and EMDR, you’ll learn how to tap into your brain’s natural healing processes to stop the seemingly never-ending spirals that tell you you’re not enough or undeserving.
I’ll help through this process, tailoring each step to your unique needs and circumstances.
My approach to therapy focusing on self-esteem and relationship/attachment concerns comes from a place of considering all aspects of who you are as an individual: helping you to gain and maintain an authentic mind-body connection with yourself so that you can feel more stable, secure, and able to trust and rely on yourself and others.
We’ll spend time in therapy helping you understand the relationship between your past and your present feelings, and understand how much of your emotions and patterns today are about the past and how much is about what’s happening today so you can learn to heal from your past and respond to the pain today in a more helpful way.
Therapy for self-esteem can help you…
Break patterns of negative self-talk
Improve your self-esteem and self-compassion
Validate and honor yourself and your needs
Prioritize yourself without feeling selfish
Create the boundaries you need in life
Approaches
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Brainspotting
“Where you look affects how you feel,” and we can harness this phenomenon and help you find deep, meaningful, long-lasting change.
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EMDR
Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing can help make painful thoughts, feelings, and memories more bearable.
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IFS
Internal Family Systems helps you heal your relationship with yourself.
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Intensives
If weekly 50-minute therapy hasn’t yet helped you find peace, learn how 1-3 days of focused trauma therapy can change your life.
You don’t have to continue being your own worst enemy.
Schedule Free Consultation
Frequently asked questions about self-esteem therapy
FAQs
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It can look a lot of different ways, but ultimately I don’t believe one can really logic their way out of low self-esteem (i.e., with worksheets, journal prompts, etc.).
I believe the quickest and most effective way is to engage in forms of therapy that specifically target this difference between “I should be kinder to myself” and “I don’t deserve to be kind to myself.” That is - somatic and brain-based forms of therapy such as Brainspotting and EMDR.
With these approaches to therapy, you’ll work towards finding the root of why you currently see yourself the way you do and instill more positive thoughts about yourself.
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Others may often tell you you’re too hard on yourself. Every now and then you may recognize it too, but it’s hard to differentiate between things you want to try and motivate yourself and push yourself out of your comfort zone, and what’s going too far.
If you often find yourself in an internal battle with yourself, stuck between what you want to do and should do, or what you won’t allow yourself to do until X happens (you lose that last 10lbs, someone else validates your feelings), you likely can benefit greatly from therapy that is focused on your self-esteem.
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I’m excited about the opportunity to support you creating a different (i.e., better) relationship with yourself! We’ll start with a free 20 minute consultation so that we can meet and see how we connect.
I truly believe the connection between therapist and clients makes all the difference in therapy, so if any of us decides we are not the best fit, I will be happy to provide you with referrals.