How to Understand and Improve Your Self-Esteem

Psych With Mike

Self-esteem is clinically defined as the global perception of self—that is, how one sees oneself. It is difficult to access/change self-esteem itself because it is a global perception. So when therapists work with clients on issues of self-esteem, what we do is work on issues of self-confidence, or as Albert Bandura called it, self-efficacy. Self-confidence/self-efficacy is the domain-specific perception of self. For example, an individual may have played a sport from a very young age. In high school this person may be fairly confident in their ability in the domain of the sport they play but still have low overall self-esteem because in the majority of other domains, the individual operates in, they feel very insecure. When any individual has high confidence in the majority of domains they operate in, their self-esteem will rise significantly.