Hey All! My name is Diana Garcia, and I’m a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in Florida, owner of a Private Practice called Nurturing Minds Counseling.
Are you constantly trying to look for this high self-esteem? Have you practiced positive affirmation? Tried to let go of these negative thoughts? But find that you’re still not feeling good enough about yourself? If so, then this month’s book on self-esteem is a must-read for you.
It’s The Mindfulness & Acceptance Workbook for Self-Esteem by Joe Oliver, Ph.D. & Richard Bennett, ClinPsyD. This book on self-esteem flips the switch on the typical notions of needing to have high self-esteem and focusing on self-acceptance instead. Because it takes a different approach, I think it’s one of the best books on self-esteem to add to your library.
If you’re new around here this is part of my monthly book therapy series. I pick one mental health/self-help book to review, recommend, and pick out at least three insights just in case you never actually read the book.
Watch the Video on this Self-Esteem Book here:
Read the blog on this Book on Self-Esteem:
This month’s pick is The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Self-Esteem by Joe Oliver, Ph.D. & Richard Bennett, ClinPsyD. This book on self-esteem takes a novel approach to the concept of self-esteem. So if you’re someone who has struggled with achieving this elusive “high self-esteem” then I highly recommend this book. The book moves beyond the typical approach of moving beyond negative self-talk and instead focuses on embracing self-acceptance.
I picked up this self-esteem book because I find that so many of us struggle with having low self-esteem and feel like we are constantly battling all these negative self-stories about ourselves. And a huge bonus is that the authors are utilizing concepts from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy which is one of my main therapeutic approaches. The authors did a great job of breaking this down into an easy-to-understand workbook filled with exercises and things that you can do if you’ve never stepped foot in a therapist’s office.
The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Self-Esteem Summary:
As you can see from the picture above, the self-esteem book is broken down into three parts:
- Part One: Focuses on reviewing why self-esteem is so important to all of us, particularly from an evolutionary perspective. One reason we have all developed the need to be socially accepted is that we needed to be accepted as part of the tribe to survive. A caveman/cave woman who was kicked out of the tribe is less likely to survive alone. The authors discuss how self-esteem development starts from childhood. They start to introduce the issues of the quest for high self-esteem and instead how self-acceptance can be helpful.
- Part Two: Reviews some of the basics of self-care and introduces the concepts of self-compassion. You can check out this blog to learn more about self-compassion.
- Part Three: The six steps to self-acceptance are listed in the picture. Basically, they are taking the six core processes that we use in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and have a chapter broken down with each.
The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Self-Esteem Insight 1:
What exactly is self-esteem?
An evaluation of your entire self. When you think of having low self-esteem, it would like:
I = not good enough.
Many of you could relate to that formula and mainstream society would tell you that you need to focus on having high self-esteem instead. One issue with searching for this is how can you recently come up with one judgment about yourself your entire sense of self that captures the essence of who you are? How is that even possible? It might make you question this notion of needing high self-esteem and putting so much emphasis on this one evaluation.
I want you to do a quick exercise here. There’s a picture of a chair. If you’re sitting in a chair now, you can focus on that chair. If you’re standing, you can just imagine sitting in a chair. Take a moment to get settled in your chair and I want you to consider:
The chair is:
Complete the sentence to describe the chair.
For instance, My chair is firm.
Now, does this one quality fully encompass the entire essence of this chair? Are there other qualities of this chair? Will the chair always be firm?
If it’s hard or even impossible to come up with one evaluation of an inanimate object, how can we do that with ourselves? How can we come up with just one evaluation to encompass every sense of who we are?
The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Self-Esteem Insight 2:
If you’re thinking of high self-esteem, it’s as if you had a devil and angel on your shoulder. You are trying to quiet down the devil and feed the angel. That can look like challenging negative thoughts and incorporate positive affirmations or positive mantras. If that works for you, great no problem! But if you find that it works in the short term but eventually those negative self-stories (the things the devil on your shoulder says) keep coming back.
It’s actually pretty normal that those negative self-stories do come back eventually. It’s how your mind is programmed and specifically how language has developed over time in your brain. The book goes into more detail on that end.
The catch 22 with this approach is the constant focus on quieting the devil and feeding the angel, you end up putting more attention and focus on these devilish thoughts. Your battle to constantly let go of these negative thoughts about yourself really ends up hijacking your attention and removing the energy you could focus on living your life the way you want.
Additionally, there’s an automatic assumption that all these negative self-stories or qualities are intrinsically bad. Which again, is that always true?
When you’re doing well, it’s a lot easier to feel better about yourself and have higher self-esteem. That’s not always the case even but many people find it easier to feel better about themselves when their life is going the way they want.
The reality is that life is hard sometimes. Things don’t work out the way you want. You are a fallible human being, you will make mistakes. It’s normal that uncomfortable thoughts and feelings will show up in those moments. It’s really hard to sustain this high self-esteem about yourself. Because many people associate high self-esteem with achievements or other external factors.
And that’s an issue in itself, associating your worth with achievements or external factors.
I = good enough only if high achievements, status, any other external factors
This formula is not sustainable.
Even if you do achieve this high self-esteem, it might not always help you in all instances. For example, if you had the self-story “I’m the best boss in the world, I have awards to prove it. I’m an awesome boss.”
Now let’s say, you drop the ball and make a mistake. But you refuse to acknowledge it because it’s so important to hold on to this high self-evaluation “Oh no I’m an awesome boss, there’s no way I could have done that.” This favorable self-story isn’t really going to help you move forward, it actually might hinder you.
It’s not listed in the picture but the antidote to focusing on high self-esteem, you want to shift the focus to self-acceptance. There’s a chapter on exercises for you to practice self-acceptance. It’s learning to encompass and accept all the parts of yourself. Holding space for both all those uncomfortable thoughts about yourself and some of the positive thoughts about yourself. Not giving more credence to the positive or negative qualities or self-stories. This also removes this constant pressure of having to get rid of some of these uncomfortable thoughts and feelings and hone your focus on what are the things that really matter in your life.
The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Self-Esteem Insight 3:
For the third insight, I picked out one concrete exercise that you can use when you notice you’re getting stuck comparison. One common theme that tends to show up when struggling with self-esteem is to focus on the comparison trap. This exercise below is one that you can use when you notice you’re listening to this unhelpful comparison and are influenced to change your behavior because of it. You would follow the steps below:
As you go through the steps, the goal is to help you clear that you are not that other person and your needs can be completely different. And you are allowed to understand and listen to your own needs without letting this unhelpful comparison cloud how you want to show up at this moment.
I hope you plan on picking up this book on self-esteem to start to learn how to ditch the quest for high self-esteem and instead focus on self-acceptance.
Next Steps:
- If you feel like you could benefit from self-esteem therapy, check out this page to learn more.
- If you need extra resources and supportive coaching instead of therapy, feel free to explore my coaching business. I’m here to help!
And as always I encourage you guys to continue nurturing your mind body and soul whatever that looks like for you guys.
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