Self-Esteem Counselling

Self-Esteem Counselling in Clondalkin, Online and by Phone

Poor self-esteem is a key cause for people requiring counselling therapy. Viewing yourself in an overly negative way leads to cognitive and emotional distortion of reality.

Simply put, the lower we value ourselves and others, the less we believe we can manage stress in our lives. As time goes on, our threshold for managing stressors in our lives spirals downwards.
Our thoughts and emotions exaggerate our inabilities and past failures. Our abilities and past successes are, for the most part, ignored and forgotten.

My work in Prevail aims to gently challenge the false self-beliefs clients hold about themselves.
This challenge is never abrupt.

Over the course of the sessions, the client is asked to reflect on the validity of their negative self-belief.
They are asked to practice alternative self-beliefs that improve their management of stressors.

For dealing with immediate stress, the client will benefit from solution-focused approaches.
For longer-term stress, Prevail uses Cognitive Behavioural Therapy approaches.
All therapy is provided within the trust-building approach of Person-Centred Therapy.

What Approaches are used in Self-Esteem Therapy

Low self-esteem can be dangerous.
It can lead to a person’s thoughts being very nihilistic.
They may believe their life has no positive purpose or hope of one.
This results in their mood dropping to levels where their behaviour could be life-threatening.

In such a situation, the client is requested to attend the nearest emergency department for medical care. They should leave Prevail in the company of a trusted person.
Thankfully, such events are very rare.


Initially, solution-focused therapy helps the client to untangle the immediate confusion they have. To learn more about this, click HERE.

Once the client is willing to do more work on their issues after their primary presenting issues are resolved, cognitive behavioural therapy is appropriate.
This will help identify the core negative beliefs of the client and their triggers in their everyday life.
To learn more about CBT, click HERE.

Our self-esteem is largely based on our perception of our self-image.
This is a highly sensitive area for us all.

For a counsellor to work with a client whose self-image is cracked, they need to tread very carefully.
This is the reason a person-centred approach of non-judgmental acceptance is the context for all interventions used.
To learn more about this, click HERE.

How can Counselling help Low Self-Esteem?

Improving our self-esteem makes us feel more able to take on the challenges of life.

Therapy helps the person to first overcome the blocks to improving their self-esteem.
As the therapy progresses, the causes of these blocks are identified and worked through.

Eventually, the triggers for their low self-image will be diluted. The client practices new coping mechanisms to manage these triggers.
Over time, the client adapts these coping mechanisms to be an everyday part of life.

Specific Aspects of Self-Esteem Counselling

Therapy for a client’s self-esteem is both practical and personal in its nature.
Practical in that it focuses on a client’s thought pattern and content. Working on changing how we think is a practical trial-and-error process.


‍The therapy is also very personal.
Low self-esteem evolves from early life experience. Facing the presumptions we have about ourselves and others because of these experiences can be very uncomfortable.

They may well be buried in the client’s memory and so hard to uncover. When uncovered, the memory of them can remind the client of the past trauma and cause them to want to avoid further work on it.
Revisiting this area may mean going back to heal long-held memories.

Learning to develop new coping mechanisms may start with the client considering appropriate coping skills they could have used earlier in their life. This obviously does not change anything about how the client’s life experience up to this point.

It can, however, help the client to understand how changing their view of the initial trauma could have prevented a lot of heartache.
This can help them change their view of how this trauma is triggered in the present.

This encourages them to believe that changing their current reactions to past triggers can have a positive, long-lasting impact on their future.
This process is called Inner Child Work. To learn more about this, watch a short video by clicking HERE.

Related Blogs

The Shawshank Redemption. The blog on this film explores how the central characters grappled with the experience of extreme harshness in prison life. While they could have been overcome by despair and anger, their inner spirit’s drive for hope won out.

Skills for dealing with emotional pain. How I work the CBT approach is dealt with in this video.
My belief that how we think is what causes how we feel, how we behave and how our body responds to us is outlined in this blog.

Building self-belief. It can seem overly simplistic to believe that we can achieve greatness by acknowledging routine achievements. Allowing ourselves to see how good we are with the mundane can encourage us to take on greater goals in life.

Frequently asked questions about Self-Esteem ounselling

Book with Prevail for Self-Esteem Counselling

To book a self-esteem counselling session with James, click here: