Helping to Improve Your Teen’s Self-Love
Self-care is defined by taking care of your own mental and physical health to improve your overall well-being. Self-care can take into account physical, emotional, social, spiritual and psychological aspects of your life. Your self-care is extremely important, and often something that is overlooked or put on the back burner. We often find ourselves prioritizing so many other things. Responsibilities, friendships, relationships, children, our jobs, etc. Everything seems to be “more important” than taking care of ourselves, which should not be the case. This leads to feeling burnt out and exhausted by life’s daily demands, which could unfortunately lead us down the pathway to experiencing symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Self-love ties into self-care as the act of loving ourselves and building/ improving our self-esteem. This is something we have to work very hard at, through every stage of life. It is definitely an ever-growing process, and is not something we will ever perfect. Different situations might come up, even in adulthood, where we find ourselves falling into the comparison game and becoming our own worst critic. During the adolescent stage, teens (middle through high school) are one of the most vulnerable populations who are often dealing with low self-esteem on an everyday basis. According to Erikson’s theory on stages of development, the identify vs. confusion stage was categorized for teens years 12 to 18. During this stage of life, our teens and pre-teens are focused so heavily on what people think of them and how others view them, often times much more than how they view themselves. Later on in the stage, as they explore their independence and develop a sense of self, their confidence and self-esteem grows.
How do we as a support system, or even ourselves, foster and grow this confidence and belief in oneself? We need to focus on strengths. By focusing on strengths, we can shift our thinking into more positive thoughts, which in turn can help us have a more positive and brighter outlook on situations. If we are falling into the trap of the comparison game, we are constantly telling ourselves negative thoughts about ourselves or others. Over time, repeatedly, this can lead to prolonged depressive-like symptoms such as shame, guilt, sadness, isolation, etc. As for parents or anyone who is a support person to a teen or someone struggling with their own self-love, we can act as a support and help them identify their own strengths. Many times, people who have low self-esteem might not even be able to identify one strength they have. Sometimes they need someone who knows them well to help identify these qualities for them. It could be something they are good at, or an internalize or external characteristic or quality they possess. It might be important to note, too, that someone might not view a certain characteristic as a strength. You might be able to tweak it to help them view it as a strength. For example, someone might say that they are “too sensitive or too emotional”, in which you can tweak this to say “you are extremely caring and empathetic towards your friends and loved ones, which can both be helpful and hurtful to you because you feel strongly for them when they are struggling.”
Again, strengthening your own self-love or self-esteem can be extremely challenging for anyone and is a constant work in progress. How we talk to and about ourselves is so important. It’s helpful to journal and write down what you are feeling, in which you might notice some negative or unhelpful thought patterns about yourself. Highlight those themes and ask yourself, would you say these mean or hurtful things to a friend? Probably not. Then why is it OK to say them to yourself?
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For more resources or assistance with strengthening your teen’s or your own self-esteem, follow up with us today and set up a consultation or first appointment for teen therapy or therapy for young women.
