There are many reasons people have low self-esteem, some of which include hard times involving rejection, disappointments, loneliness, and unemployment. While it is normal to have negative thoughts, ruminating on them is not helpful. Instead, advocating for your mental health will help you find acceptance and self-love. Here are five strategies to implement when you are dealing with low self-esteem during difficult times.

5 Ways to Improve Your Self-Esteem During Hard Times

1. Remember that your circumstances do not define your self-worth. When times are really hard for you, it can be easy to compare yourself to others. You might feel like you are less than someone who seems to be doing really well in life. But please remember that this is not true. The person who seems to have it all might be going through an issue similar to yours. Regardless of everyone's circumstances and milestones, you are a human being worthy of happiness, love, and success. By remembering this, you will learn to accept your circumstances without letting them define your self-worth or your life.
2. Remember that a change in routine can be good for you. After any type of rejection or disappointment, you might feel like staying in bed every day. If you lose a job or a partner, driving to work and enjoying date nights will no longer be a part of your routine. So you might think it's better not to have a routine at all. But what if your current routine could be better than your old one? Your life does not end just because your routines do. Your life and your routines will just need to change. It might not seem like it at the moment, but in the long run, these transitions could benefit your emotional state.
3. Set goals that will challenge you. Setting goals can be tough when you have low self-esteem because achieving them requires work. You fear that even if you try hard, you will not succeed. So it can be tempting to set the bar very low. Your rationale is that doing the bare minimum is better than doing nothing, and that's true. But a goal that is too easy for you will not allow you to see and appreciate your growth. Even though challenging goals are harder to achieve, they will help you see your strengths and learn where you can improve.
4. Counter every negative thought with a positive one. Some situations are either boring or stressful. For instance, you might have to take a boring college course before you can obtain your degree. If you work in sales, you might have to close three deals while working with a difficult client. In these situations, negative thoughts like "this is so boring" and "this is too stressful" can distract you from completing your tasks. By creating positive thoughts in relation to negative situations, you will feel a little more hopeful and optimistic. Positive thoughts increase your confidence and fuel your progress.
5. Seek help from a therapist. Many people feel like they need to deal with their issues by themselves. This is not true. Everyone needs help sometimes, and that's okay. If you have been struggling with low self-esteem for a long time, consider reaching out to a therapist for support. They will help you identify triggers, process your feelings about distressing events, and learn coping skills. They will also provide information about support groups and various treatment programs.

When After Life first hit Netflix in 2019, I was immediately in love with a show that deals with mental health, and raving about it. Now, three years later, after watching the final season, I’m raving about it all the more. Back then, I wrote about how impressed I was with how the show handles topics like grief and mental health struggles. Now, wiping away my tears thanks to the final episode, I’m here to say we need more shows like After Life.

Striking Moments on Mental Health in 'After Life'

In the six-episode final season of After Life, many moments struck me as incredibly poignant and educational about how mental health struggles can impact a person. There were two that really stood out for me. I’ll try to avoid spoilers.

The first was when the main character, Tony, describes being in denial. Surprisingly, it’s not denial over his wife’s death but rather denial of how much it was impacting him. Throughout the show, we see how he wrestles with crippling grief, strong bouts of depression, and suicidal ideation. In this scene, he’s talking about how he was in denial of struggling with mental illness.

One thing Tony said that rang so true with me is how he didn’t think he was sick when feeling suicidal; he just thought that’s how things were. That was something I could relate to, and I think it's an incredibly important part of the experience to highlight. When a person struggles with mental illness, it can often feel normal or like the typical way things work. That awareness that things could be different isn’t always there.

The second moment that struck me was when Tony spoke with his brother-in-law, Matt, and recognized that Matt had also been struggling just as much as he was. It was his sister that died, after all. However, as Tony mentions, Matt held in his grief because he was more concerned about Tony and how he was getting on with grieving and his struggles.

This is again something I can personally relate to as I often mask my own struggles for the sake of others. I’m more concerned with making sure others are okay or that my struggle doesn’t add to theirs.

Why We Need More Mental Health Shows Like 'After Life'

Watch the video below to see why I think we need more shows like After Life, the important role it plays in conversations on mental health, and how it relates to mental health stigma.

Toxic positivity seems to be popping up everywhere on social media. Scrolling through Instagram, I see at least two or three posts a day promoting a view on positivity that may actually be counterintuitive to true happiness. People may ask, "What's the big deal with toxic positivity?" The answer is, in my experience, toxic positivity can do more harm than good in promoting mental health wellness.

What Does Toxic Positivity Do to Your Mental Health?

According to Medical News Today, toxic positivity:

"can silence negative emotions, demean grief, and make people feel under pressure to pretend to be happy even when they are struggling."¹ 

Toxic positivity is the practice of constantly spinning even the most horrific events into something positive. At first glance, toxic positivity may seem appealing, but I know first-hand the effects of this modern-day paradox, and they are often counterproductive to genuine healing.

Toxic positivity is not easily distinguished from healthy positivity. We may encounter toxic positivity daily and not even attribute the term to what we are seeing. A few common examples include the mantras "no bad days" or "be happy always." These statements often encourage a false sense of reassurance and attempt to mitigate negative emotions by avoiding them.² The problem is avoidance is not acceptance. In diminishing negative emotions and potentially mental health illnesses, toxic positivity often works against eradicating mental health stigma. 

How Can We Stop Toxic Positivity for Our Mental Health?

Some people may be deflated by this article; they may think I am criticizing those who use positivity as a coping mechanism. To be clear, I love positivity. I think it is a great way to put less-than-ideal things in our life into perspective, but there is a difference between positivity and toxic positivity. The former, great, the latter, not so much.

Don't worry; I won't drop a bomb like this without presenting ways to practice positivity without diminishing negative emotions. Here are a few tips:

• Be honest with emotions, both good and bad. Toxic positivity dismisses emotions instead of affirming them, and to combat this, we must embrace -- but not dwell on -- all our emotions, even the unpleasant ones. To avoid getting stuck in a funk and a negative spiral of thinking, what works for me is setting a time limit for letting myself feel these emotions. This exercise is relational to the magnitude of the situation, but take failing an exam, for example. I am upset, maybe even ashamed; I don't dismiss these emotions; in fact, I do the opposite. I let myself feel the disappointment, but I do not stay there; I take a breath and focus on the good.
• Encourage others to rethink spreading toxic positivity. People who battle mental health illnesses are all too aware of the fact that sometimes, people just don't get it. It's frustrating; I know, I've been there. Instead of being angry at those who may not fully understand the situation, a more productive way to spend our energy is through education. We can spark open discussions with our friends, family members, and colleagues and help others see a different perspective on the matter.

Sources

1. Villines, Z., "What To Know About Toxic Positivity." Medical News Today, March 2021.
2. Princing, M., "What You Need to Know About Toxic Positivity." UW Medicine, September 2021.

As the youngest in a slightly dysfunctional family full of addiction and mental illness, it was no surprise that I would eventually find myself battling those same demons. I grew up surrounded by booze, drugs, and chaos with very little conversation on the seriousness of alcohol abuse and addiction.

For years, I lived in a cycle of binge drinking for several days in a row, followed by crippling anxiety and deep depressive thoughts that made life feel nearly impossible. Those uncomfortable and unbearable symptoms always led me to the liquor store and right back into the cycle. I found myself stuck, repeating this over and over again.

Finally, after a week-long bender with my family, the shakiness in my body and the racing thoughts in my head told me it was time to stop. I had experienced too many dark days filled with physical and emotional pain, and I knew something had to change. I made a conscious decision to dedicate one month to sobriety.

During this time, a close friend had mentioned a 30-day guided meditation course she had just started. I was willing to try anything to keep me away from the thought of drinking again, so I joined her. Within the first month, I fell in love with both sobriety and meditation. This was where the true inner healing and my road to sobriety began.

Meditation Led Me to Sobriety

Through weekly therapy, reading self-help books, daily meditation, journaling, goal setting, and a lot of uncomfortable alone time, I started to feel connected to who I really was, apart from drinking. I learned how to engage with others confidently and began to enjoy my own company soberly. I found beauty in life again with a sober, clear mind.

Now, guided meditation, practicing gratitude, and mindful walks alone have become a part of my daily routine. These moments are when I feel the most alive and connected to my truest self. These practices have allowed me to break away from the temptation to drink. I changed my life using a power I had all along. I changed my life by putting the bottle down and turning within.

How Mindful Practices Can Help with Alcohol Addiction

At first, meditation was unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and incredibly difficult, but the strength I have gained through my practice has given me the confidence to continue. What I have learned is that it's not about being "good" at meditating. What matters is you are silencing your thoughts and connecting with your mind, body, and soul.

Meditation and mindfulness have allowed me to quiet my thoughts, understand why I chose to drink, manage any cravings, and heal my inner child. It has taught me to live each day with gratitude, compassion, and love. Addiction is different for each person, and overcoming it is certainly not "one size fits all," however, my experience has shown me what a powerful tool meditation can be for recovery.

Mindful Meditation and Sobriety Apps

InsightTimer is a free downloadable app with thousands of options for guided mediation. YouTube is another free resource for guided meditation videos. As for addiction recovery and sobriety, NoMo is a free sobriety tracker with many useful tools and resources to help you maintain sobriety and celebrate your growth. These apps are easy to use and have helped me throughout my journey.

Mindful meditation has given me the strength and desire to want to consciously enjoy my life rather than drink it away. Living with an addiction can feel dark and heavy, but building self-awareness and living consciously can create beauty and bring light to your life. I encourage you to try to find that light because it is within you.

Once you suffer from verbal abuse, it can be hard to see a life without it. I have often found myself over-analyzing responses from people trying to decipher if they are genuine or have an underlying harmful intent. It can be challenging to look past the hostile environment that one is accustomed to and see that there are positive people in the world who do not cause harm. 

Once a Victim, Always a Victim? 

Thankfully, no matter how long you have been the victim of verbal abuse, you can break free and change your story. But bringing yourself out of the victim persona is not always easy. For myself, I was angry at my past circumstances and let them dominate my thoughts and feelings for years. As a result, I could not move forward and continually fought my thoughts of inadequacies. 

These underlying feelings altered how I made choices in my life and kept me as a victim longer than I should have been, even after leaving an abusive situation. Even though I lived in a different apartment, I let my abuser take up space in my head by replaying those awful words whenever I felt anxious or nervous about my life. 

I sabotaged myself into staying a victim for years without realizing the damage I was doing to myself. 

Change From the Inside Out

I am happy to say that after using many mental health resources, I have found some strategies to help me heal and move forward and away from being a victim. Not scrutinizing everything my partner says to me for negative connotations has allowed my head and heart to recover somewhat, knowing that he would not deliberately say or do anything to hurt me as others have in the past. 

It takes a great deal of strength and understanding to not fall back into old habits. Although I do have days where I become anxious and upset over a conversation, I try to talk things out so I find that reassurance that I have nothing to worry about in the present. 

You do not have to stay a victim for the rest of your life, even if you have spent your entire life as one. There is the possibility of moving on, away from abuse, and finding peace in the life you deserve. However, if you feel stuck and unable to find the strength to take the steps forward, I encourage you to reach out for help, as I did. Keep looking for the support your need to help change your situation from the inside out. 

I have a slight tear in the meniscus of my left knee, and the whole situation stinks. For weeks, I could barely walk. My knee is getting better now, thanks to physical therapy. Not only is the physical therapy making my knee better--and hence making my schizoaffective disorder better--but the fact that I have to drive somewhere in the snow and ice of a Chicago winter twice a week is chipping away at my fear of driving.

Progress Being Made in My Schizoaffective Fear of Driving

Granted, I don’t drive very far to get to physical therapy. It’s less than a mile away from my apartment. I would walk there if it weren’t for the tear in my knee tissue. And it’s treacherous outside. To be honest, I’m afraid to drive to physical therapy tomorrow. But I’m not as scared as I was last week when the snow and ice were new. And I’m not as scared as I was when I first drove to physical therapy. Things are improving.

It helps that I know my car can handle the snow and ice. It’s a Subaru sports utility vehicle (SUV). I can really tell the difference now that I’m driving this car. And it’s a good thing because my alley is completely frozen over.

I scare myself, though. I remember that about a week or so ago, I almost ran a stop sign. I had to slam on the breaks not to blow the sign. Slamming on the breaks is not a good idea on an icy road. Now I know I need to be more careful--it’s not just the car I need to rely on.

I Just Want My Schizoaffective Fear of Driving to Go Away

I really hope my confidence in my driving returns for good because of this. It’s been absolutely crippling to be afraid to drive. I used to go for long drives for fun. I haven’t done that in years. And after I was first diagnosed with schizophrenia (I was later diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type), I would go for drives to calm myself down. I’m not exactly sure where this fear of driving comes from.

I even got really scared tonight just thinking about driving to physical therapy tomorrow. I had this image in my head of almost blowing a stop sign and skidding horribly as I tried to stop at the last minute, hitting and killing pedestrians. Wow, now that I wrote that out, it sounds even more unlikely than I already knew it was.

So, I’m getting there with my driving. I know some find it an annoying trait to look for the silver lining in every cloud, but working on my driving has definitely been a silver lining to the cloud of having a torn meniscus in my knee.

It's hard to know when to ask for help—and, for many, the asking is hard, too. But for an issue as serious as self-harm, getting self-help can be a key stepping stone on the path to self-injury recovery.

Should You Get Self-Help for Self-Harm?

I want to begin with a disclaimer: in many cases, only seeking self-help may not be enough to sustain long-term recovery. There is a reason therapists and other mental health counselors exist, and there is a reason many such professions require extensive study and experience. Mental health issues are complex and multilayered, and it can be difficult to untangle an issue like self-harm on your own.

As such, self-help solutions for self-harm usually work best as a supplementary approach in addition to working with a professional.

However, as someone who spent many years working through the recovery process alone, I also know how powerful the right self-help strategies can be. If you are not ready to seek out professional help, getting self-help for self harm can be a less daunting step in the right direction. You may also want to get self-help for self harm if:

• You do not have reasonable access to professional counseling or therapy options
• You cannot afford a therapy program at this time (even ones with sliding scales or financial aid programs)
• You are in therapy and want to put more effort in on your own time
• You've tried therapy (more than once, with more than one therapist) and did not find it effective

Keep in mind that the efficacy of any self-help strategies you try will depend partly on how disciplined you can be. Just like regular therapy, self harm strategies work best if you can implement them regularly. For instance, when I began using a cognitive behavioral therapy workbook on my own, I made a point of scheduling a specific time block every single week to read at least one chapter and try at least one exercise from the book. This helped me make progress consistently—which kept me motivated over the many months it took to work through the whole book—and kept the strategies I was learning top-of-mind, so I was more likely to use them.

How severe your struggle with self-harm may be is also a factor in this equation. If you are in any danger of harming yourself to a significant degree, or ending your life (whether accidentally or by design), please seek out professional support as soon as you can. If you are not sure of your options—and especially if you find yourself experiencing a crisis—call up a mental health hotline. These people can help you get through a difficult moment and connect you with the best recovery resources for you at this time.

When Should You Get Self-Help for Self-Harm?

The answer to when you should get self-help for self-harm is simple: You should get help as soon as you can.

The sooner you reach out, the sooner you can begin healing. Recovery takes time, and may be an ongoing part of your life for many years to come. It also takes patience, effort, and support. If you're ready to get help, even if it's only on your own, that is a good and important first step forward.

Just remember that self-help is only one element of your support system. The strongest systems include multiple supports—such as friends and family you can talk to without fear of judgment, peers you can connect with who are on similar journeys to yours, and mental health professionals who can help you find the most effective strategies for your unique recovery needs.

The more of these you can bring into your life, the more easily you will be able to navigate the path ahead.

My name is Robert Vickens, and I’m the new author on Creative Schizophrenia. I’ve been diagnosed with schizophrenia and adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). I know we can achieve great things when we have the proper support and treatment. That is what my writing will focus on, treatment and support.

Robert Vickens’ First Experience with Schizophrenia

It all began a couple of years ago when I started having delusions of grandeur in 2020. I thought I was hearing the voice of God in my head giving me instructions and telling me to do things. I would walk past a crowd of people, and paranoia would set in. Catching snippets of their conversations sounded like they were secretly talking to me, guiding me either through God or some evil force. I would walk around aimlessly to hear more instructions, and when I needed some quiet time, I would walk the beach to get away from people. One night I walked for seven or eight miles looking for the beach. I walked past my friend Amalia’s death site and began to hear her voice telling me, “Keep going; don’t give up.” 

Her voice would later become a familiar voice in my head, guiding me in times of solace.

I finally found the beach and, in a fit to remove my identity, threw away my wallet, laptop, and work shirt, and I slept there all night. The next few years would be all about the voices in my head.

Treatment for Schizophrenia for Robert Vickens

After my first diagnosis, I was reluctant to take my medication. I suffered for it in 2021 and had another four-month-long psychotic episode. Then, I started self-harming by burning myself. My family was worried about me and didn’t know what was wrong. It ended with a trip to the hospital. After that, I started regularly taking my medication, and my symptoms improved.

I cope with schizophrenia by taking my medication—including an antipsychotic and ADHD medication—and meditating. In addition, I’ve opened up to my family about my condition and speak to a therapist whenever I feel down. 

Robert Vickens’ Goals for ‘Creative Schizophrenia’

My goal with this blog is to help others coping with schizophrenia see another side to life. For more about my goals for Creative Schizophrenia, watch this:

So many people suffering from this condition don’t have an outlet; I hope my writing becomes an outlet for us. Creative Schizophrenia is a Godsend because I thought I would never write again (just another delusional thought from schizophrenia brain). But now, I’m even a self-published author. My book is titled DARCCI Diaries: A True Tale of Recovery. It’s about my journey through the South Florida recovery system and the pitfalls within the system.

In Creative Schizophrenia, I’ll support you if you agree to support me. That’s all I know so far, so we’ll go on this journey of healing and recovery together.

I remember when I was in college, I had to stop into one of my roommate’s friend's rooms across the hall. When I opened the door, I felt uncomfortable – not because of anything they said or did, but because of what I saw. The room was bare – I don’t remember seeing anything on the wall, shelves, anything. I remember thinking to myself, how could anyone live in a place like this? After that, I went back to my room and just sat for a while, enjoying my familiar environment. It was the first time I realized what I need in terms of that environment – namely, lots of decorations everywhere. I have found that decorations help with anxiety.

What Decorations I Have

Maybe this is obvious, but decorations are basically extensions of yourself projected via objects. Decorations can be anything – many people wouldn’t consider, say, books or video games to be decorations, but that’s what I consider them to be. They’re things I like, they project my personality, and they brighten up a room. Really, for decorations, that’s most of what I look for.

I also have what would be considered more traditional decorations. Most of what I have are posters and action figures – in fact, I have more posters and action figures than I have shelf and wall space. This is mostly to ensure that wherever I may be living at the time, I won’t be short on anything to decorate the space. I’ve also made some custom decorations using more unconventional items, my favorite being a corkboard near my TV that I have filled with a number of my concert tickets.

What I Like About Decorations

Having decorations everywhere makes me feel a lot more like I’m “at home.” In order to feel comfortable, I need to feel like I’m in a secure environment, because most of the time I don’t feel that way. I’ve felt that insecurity for most of my life. I’ve never thought deeply about why that is, and I’m certain that there must be many reasons for that, but part of it is that I’ve always felt that what I enjoy is so far removed from what other people enjoy. When I find someone with similar hobbies, I feel excited because it happens so infrequently.

Because it happens so infrequently, I feel I need to surround myself with what I like because if I didn't, I would always feel lonely. I know things are not a substitute for people and I’m not suggesting they are – what I am suggesting is that for some people (myself included) it’s necessary to go those extra steps because we need that comfort that much more than the average person.