Helping clients' confidence & self-esteem

Confidence and self-esteem troubles of clients vary greatly. Dimensions of difference include: severity, symptoms, specificity, sources/causes, outward obviousness, consequences/importance, rationality, longevity, and connection with other troubles.

'Confidence' here is broadly defined. It includes the everyday understanding of 'self-assurance', as well as 'self-esteem' (the evaluation by oneself of one's worth) and the lesser used notion of 'self-efficacy' (the judgment of one's capacity to perform behaviours needed for a given task).

Hypnotherapy Psychologist can be approached whatever the nature of your confidence and/or self-esteem problem(s). Do not be deterred because, for example, you think the matter may seem small, silly, or embarrassing. Each case is as serious and important as every other.

Neither be deterred because of your status/position in social/public life. Problems in this area can affect anybody, even if some individuals cover-up the problems better than other people.

Fear & anxiety

A flip-side of missing confidence is often fear or anxiety, hence clients' fears and anxieties will necessarily often be considered. Or fears and anxieties may be the main presenting problems.

The confidence-troubled state

Confidence-troubled existence is so multi-pronged it can be like a state of being:

• We learn to get by, without a solid confident feel inside of us.
• We forgo doing things that require, for us, the confidence that is lacking.
• We cling to any time that somebody has said how confident we are - when we didn’t at all feel it.
• We engage in compensatory efforts that may achieve the same things that confidence would, but we do it the hard way.
• Getting by is ever threatened by conflict between how we feel ourself to be and the expectations upon us - from roles we occupy - to be confident.
• A foremost characteristic of our judgement of others is their (apparent) confidence - which we envy. (Never mind their money or other successes/virtues; we want their confidence.)
• We consider many or most other people to more confident that ourselves.
• We balk at the sight of ‘how to be more confident’ media titles, because we don’t want to admit the need.
• Against umpteen occasions to the contrary, we keep thinking that confidence over the events will eventually become us.
• We worry that others 'see through' any outward confidence we display.

Acknowledgement of such confidence afflictions and their reach can be challenging. Established ways to get by as well as one does may need to become transparent and admitted. Happily, the acknowledgment can also be freeing - through resultant dissipation of the unease/tension that comes from managing everyday functioning despite oneself bearing the artefacts of confidence troubles. (Maybe just reading this website has brought some of that relief.)

Your investment in further addressing and quelling anything like a confidence-troubled state of being will surely be worthwhile. How you do this doesn't matter, as long as the way/ways is/are right for you. Availing yourself of Hypnotherapy Psychologist is one possible way.

Serving your wants

Confidence and self-esteem changes are usually wanted not as an armchair self-development exercise but to do or have one or more desired things. Perhaps because of low confidence or self-esteem you haven't been doing or possessing these things at all, or only with a struggle. Your acquisition of the confidence and self-esteem needed for the undertaking(s) - the satisfactory undertaking(s) - will be our priority.

It doesn't matter what your wants are. Something classically commemoration-worthy, like an endurance or sports achievement? The more prosaic, like 'telling the boss where to go' or ending a toxic relationship? The general, such as to feel an inner strength from your confidence, and/or to show a natural aplomb. Maybe the genteel, like introducing yourself to, and mingling with, members of a walking club you'd love to join? Or (very commonly) that concerning the sexual? It doesn't matter. As long as the desire is moral and legal. Hypnotherapy Psychologist is open-minded and will not be shocked or prejudicial over what you want.

The process of us addressing confidence and self-esteem troubles often clarifies what you want. This itself is empowering.

Sexual matters

Psychological factors have profound and varied effects on sexual functioning. Confidence is but one issue (even if it's an obvious one that comes to mind in this regard, along with anxiety). Correspondingly, the realm of psychosexual therapy (i.e. psychotherapy for sexual matters) is expansive and deep. Psychological matters of concern are broad (behaviour, thoughts, emotions, interests, personality, history, etc.). Social and relationship matters are relevant. And complex interactions of these factors, plus interactions thereof with the biological, will be considerations. *

Just as psychological factors greatly affect sexual functioning, so can sexual functioning greatly affect our mental well-being. A troubled sex life can be devastating; a fulfilling sex life can be a hallmark of a life enjoyed to the maximum. And those things which make for sex lives that are troubled or fulfilled will be personal to each us. So there is no 'wrong' or 'insufficient' reason for considering psychosexual help. There's every reason to consider it.

Every adult's right is to have a healthy, happy, consensual sex life. The Human Rights Bill says as much. And it doesn't matter what for you constitutes the good sex you want, as long as it's consensual when involving others. This is central to the sex positive stance here. Hence Hypnotherapy Psychologist makes no moral distinctions or judgements over types of consensual sex. Your preferrences are your choices and these will be fully respected.

Hypnotherapy Psychologist is truly passionate about helping people to have sex lives that are fulfilling, joyous...exciting, 'stars before one's eyes', life-affirming. It'll be an honour for me to help you, if needed, in this core realm of existence.

Sadness & Depression

Hypnotherapy Psychologist understands the negative states that can accompany low confidence and self-esteem. As needed, these will be addressed to help the help-process.

Helping people when sadness and depression are the foremost troubles is anyway a service of Hypnotherapy Psychologist.

Formal interest in this area for Hypnotherapy Psyhologist has been muddled. The neurochemisty that I studied of the then newish SSRI antidepressants in the 1980s seemed to provide firm basis for these medications' apparent effectiveness. But later some psychologists - especially Professor Irving Kirsch, who I greatly admire and have met - identified that their positive effect could be accounted for, to clinically significant degrees, by 'placebo responding'. And all along most psychologists and psychotherapeutic models have almost nothing (if anything at all) to say about real-life miseries impinging on - and causing, or at least greatly exacerbating - people's sadness & depression.

We won't be able to magic-away very real negative things - maybe horrendous - in your life. However, you'll be heard with the greatest of compassion, and we'll do all we can to offset the effects of those harming things.

Help for the 'secret' of trauma

People often suffer their trauma in silence. They don't tell others of it (what they understand of it). They endure the pain and challenges of it, hoping they'll get through and that their inner disquiet doesn't show. And they quietly avoid what is avoidable that is too challenging given their problems, despite any inherent desirability to the task or its outcome. This can go on for months and years and maybe a lifetime.

Your 'secret' will be replaced with the fact that you have Hypnotherapy Psychologist working with you. We will together work towards a you that's a recovering you, no matter the challenges faced.

The understanding confidant

When we do confide our trauma-related matters to friends or family, the issues may well not be properly acknowledged or appreciated. Others' responses to the disclosure can even further disadvantage you. What you tell Hypnotherapy Psychologist will always be heard and the telling will serve your good.

HelpLite: Because for now you just want somebody to listen

Hypnotherapy Psychologist makes available a special service called HelpLite. This is a style of online psychological help, via video call, that is as simple and informal as possible.

It's offered to ease potential clients with the next step of proceeding with getting help. And it's offered for potential clients who anyway 'just want to talk to somebody' / 'just want somebody to listen'.

HelpLite is akin to support-line services for people in need.