Angela Trainer, a psychotherapist from Glasgow, offers advice on regaining self-esteem after a break up.
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00:00 I've come out of a long-term relationship and I've been on a couple of dates but my
00:03 self-esteem is through the floor. How do you get your self-esteem back after a breakup?
00:08 Well it sounds like you've lost a lot recently and I'm wondering was your confidence invested
00:16 in your partner? Is your confidence invested in your relationships?
00:23 Self-esteem is an inside job. It's something that we have to work at. We need to take a break
00:31 after the end of a long-term relationship from researching and going straight into dating.
00:38 We need to direct the longing that we have for this self-esteem, for this esteem.
00:46 We need to get it to come from ourselves and that means the relationship has to begin with you.
00:52 We need to peel it, feel it and heal it as I often describe in the writing that I do. Peeling back,
01:00 what's really going on? You know this feeling of rejection, of loss and of abandonment can come
01:06 from earlier times in our lives usually and all that's happening today is that all those old
01:13 feelings are being triggered. So sometimes it's worth our while to just make sure that we're
01:18 looking at where have we felt these feelings before and have we actually allowed ourselves to
01:25 feel them and to heal from them. And we're not just looking for a panacea in the present to stick
01:33 an elastoplast on old hurt and pain. We need to embrace ourselves and you need to learn how to
01:39 love the parts of you that feel rejected or that are feeling the loss. Sometimes just putting
01:45 your hand on your heart, having a good cry or writing it down, speaking to somebody that you
01:52 trust, whether that's a good friend, a family member or a professional about how you feel.
01:58 Don't bury it. Self-care is crucially important and that's not just about face packs and pampering
02:06 yourself and having early nights. Sometimes we need to do a fearless moral inventory. We need
02:13 to do what I call the list. What is it I want from a partner? What are all the qualities I would hope
02:19 and expect that they would have? What are all the things that I want them to be for me? And having
02:27 done that you then go through the list and you rate yourself on it. How much do you offer this
02:34 to other people? Do you have these qualities? Do you have these attributes on a scale of zero to
02:40 a hundred? How up there are you with all of these things that you want from someone else? And then
02:48 do I show up for myself with these qualities? Am I patient, kind, compassionate, generous to myself?
02:58 Because if I can't give it to myself, how on earth do I think I'm ever going to be able to give it
03:04 to someone else? And why should I expect that someone else should fill that hole in me and
03:10 be all these things for me when I'm not? So the work really starts with me. A lady called Sherry
03:17 Huber wrote a fantastic book called Be the Person You Want to Find and it's really there in the
03:25 title of the book. With self-esteem we need to start doing the things that we would respect
03:31 in other people. What are those things? What are those qualities and things that you would say
03:37 that person's got self-esteem and they have blah. Begin to develop those things. What's your
03:44 self-worth? What's the value you place on yourself? Do you have good boundaries with yourself and
03:52 with other people? That's often a great place to start for self-esteem. Keep your word,
03:59 care for yourself. What does that look like? Self-esteem is often a form of self-discipline.
04:08 That's really what self-care is about. And to finish with a wee bit of a funny, but it's true,
04:16 the 12-step programmes often suggest that when we are looking at working on ourselves and we're
04:25 looking at the possibility of building better relationships we should start off with a plant
04:29 and see if we can keep a plant alive for a year by caring for it. And if we manage that,
04:35 to then get a pet and if the pet's still alive at the end of the year and in good shape,
04:40 then to think about moving on to a human relationship.