Self-esteem

Maybe you could list everything you've achieved and still not feel that it counts as something. Maybe a compliment makes you squirm, a mistake stays with you for days on end and you've got very good at explaining away anything that goes well. Maybe you've spent years performing a confidence you don't feel and you're exhausted from it. 

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Self-esteem is the sense you carry of your own worth, how much you trust yourself and how you talk to yourself when things go wrong. It's built over years and often long before you had any say in it.

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In how you see yourself

• An inner voice telling you you're not good enough, however much you do

• Putting successes down to luck or timing, while mistakes stay with you

• Holding yourself to a standard that never quite feels reachable

• Deflecting compliments straight away, or not knowing what to do with them

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With other people

• "Faking it" to get through, performing a confidence you don't feel

• Comparing yourself to the people around you and coming up short

• Saying yes when you mean no or feeling like you need to over-explain when you do say no

• Holding back who you are in case it's too much

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In what you choose to do

• Avoiding things you'd like to try in case you're not good enough

• Over-preparing or overworking to make up for feeling inadequate

• Staying quiet about what you want or need

• Resting your sense of worth on the one thing you know you're good at

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When you're neurodivergent

• Years of being told you're "too sensitive," "too much," or not enough

• Masking for so long that you're not sure what you actually like or want

• Measuring yourself against a "norm" that was never built with you in mind

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Self-esteem that's been built over years doesn't shift quickly, and we won't rush it. Together, we'll look at where the harsher ways of seeing yourself came from and how to loosen their hold. That might mean making sense of messages you took on early, looking at what masking has cost you or finding ways to trust your own read on things again. We'll go at a pace that feels right for you and what we focus on is shaped by what you want from it.