I can't really say. It's about rejecting the superficial things people might say about you and focusing on the things that are important and are under your realistic control.
Do my friends care for me? Do I care for them? Have I used my existence to make the world better even in any kind of sense? How have I improved myself recently?
I have a friend who keeps track of praise/good outcomes/successes, and revisits them when they're not feeling great. They'd keep track of a good grade or successful project outcome, or positive emails/reviews, that sort of thing.
This is a good question and everyone's answer is different probably. For me, I had the resources and willpower to find a good therapist and I went in with the mentality of "this person is going to help me figure myself out so I can appreciate myself more". Going to therapy is one thing, but going in with the mentality of knowing what you want to get out of it is really the best way to see results. There's something different about having a professional person, who you trust, telling you "actually, it's okay to do X." I personally never would've taken friends or family seriously because I was too in my own head about them telling me what I want to hear, and for some reason paying money for that made my therapists advice more legitimate.
Beyond that, self-esteem has the answer in the name. It should come from you, not other people (with the exception of my therapist, who felt like a trusted second opinion). I basically used my therapist to bootstrap my way into understanding that it was harmful to constantly shit talk myself and self-deprecate. So I started turning things around. I used to think it was cringy to think highly of myself but when I finally gave it a try and said to myself "wow, I just took care of myself!" after I tried exercising for the first time in a decade+, I felt like I could actually believe what I was saying. And things kind of started to snowball from there.
Now one other big caveat was me realizing I was trans (turns out heavy denial leads to self-esteem issues, wow), but again, that's where a good therapist can really do wonders.
And how does one produce one's own self-esteem?
I can't really say. It's about rejecting the superficial things people might say about you and focusing on the things that are important and are under your realistic control.
Do my friends care for me? Do I care for them? Have I used my existence to make the world better even in any kind of sense? How have I improved myself recently?
I have a friend who keeps track of praise/good outcomes/successes, and revisits them when they're not feeling great. They'd keep track of a good grade or successful project outcome, or positive emails/reviews, that sort of thing.
This is a good question and everyone's answer is different probably. For me, I had the resources and willpower to find a good therapist and I went in with the mentality of "this person is going to help me figure myself out so I can appreciate myself more". Going to therapy is one thing, but going in with the mentality of knowing what you want to get out of it is really the best way to see results. There's something different about having a professional person, who you trust, telling you "actually, it's okay to do X." I personally never would've taken friends or family seriously because I was too in my own head about them telling me what I want to hear, and for some reason paying money for that made my therapists advice more legitimate.
Beyond that, self-esteem has the answer in the name. It should come from you, not other people (with the exception of my therapist, who felt like a trusted second opinion). I basically used my therapist to bootstrap my way into understanding that it was harmful to constantly shit talk myself and self-deprecate. So I started turning things around. I used to think it was cringy to think highly of myself but when I finally gave it a try and said to myself "wow, I just took care of myself!" after I tried exercising for the first time in a decade+, I felt like I could actually believe what I was saying. And things kind of started to snowball from there.
Now one other big caveat was me realizing I was trans (turns out heavy denial leads to self-esteem issues, wow), but again, that's where a good therapist can really do wonders.