Hypnosis and Self-Esteem: finding your worth again

Do you put others first, before your own well-being? Do you sometimes feel you absolutely have to perform or achieve things in order to feel loved? In your exchanges with others, do you sometimes feel a certain unease, a certain fear that can lead you to get defensive or aggressive? Well, in this "In session" series, I open the door of my hypnotherapy consulting room to you.

I tell you what happens there and how hypnosis can improve your self-esteem. In a few minutes, I'll explain how these questions relate to self-esteem. But first, let me explain the difference between self-esteem and self-confidence. Self-confidence is first of all something that happens in the realm of "doing". That is, confidence means I trust that I can achieve things, that I can take action because I can succeed in what I undertake, and that if I fail, I will recover from that failure.

I will learn. So self-confidence means taking action, trusting that we can succeed or learn from our failures, whereas self-esteem is a little more subtle… It concerns the realm of "being". That is, even if I do nothing, and I mention this because we sometimes seek our worth through our actions, so even if I do nothing, even if I sit in my armchair all day, just for who I am and what I carry, I am worthy of value and of being loved.

That is self-esteem, which belongs to the realm of "being". It is really like the foundation, the structure, the solidity of our inner structure, the base of our inner structure. So how is self-esteem formed? It forms mainly in childhood. First of all, to develop self-esteem, you need to know yourself, to have a good awareness of what is going on inside you.

This is called emotional intelligence: recognising the emotions we feel and knowing how to manage them, and then also being able to recognise other people's emotions and communicate with them as well as possible, in the context of their emotional reactions. So, originally, it is built mainly in childhood, as I was saying. This requires a basic sense of safety. First, having a family with an environment in which we feel safe allows us, as children, to take an interest in ourselves and notice what is going on inside us.

Next, an environment with love, so feeling loved. That is the foundation of self-esteem. Often these criteria are met, but it is even more subtle. Because to build good self-esteem, we also need to have been seen and recognised by our parents, by the adults in our lives, perhaps even by our peers, our classmates: seen and recognised for who we are, for what we naturally radiate.

In my work with clients, I really notice that adults' self-confidence is generally quite good. What is most lacking is self-esteem. And we can understand this partly from a generational perspective. That is, with each new generation, we talk more about emotions and become more aware of what is going on inside us. But previous generations, our parents and grandparents, had less access to knowledge and information in these areas.

They were less aware of themselves and therefore less able to recognise their child in their uniqueness. And in fact, when we lack self-esteem, we can often experience a lack of inner security. That is, when I don't know that I am worthy of love and I don't know my worth, it is as if I always need to see in other people's eyes that they love me, that they recognise me, that I exist.

And this can make us very sensitive in our defence system. That is, when I don't have a base of inner security, I tend to raise my defences quickly when I feel in danger, whether because of my environment or during an exchange with others. So low self-esteem, even if we don't realise everything that is going on inside us at that moment,

can leave us with little inner security, which leads us to have a fairly high defence zone or a fairly thick shell: either we feel few emotions, if we have a shell, or our defences go up quickly, in a rather more aggressive way, or at least with intense unpleasant emotions, whether anger, fear or sadness. So how do we work on these different elements in hypnosis?

Through work with archetypes, that is, the symbols that represent us as children, and that represent the archetype of the father, of the mother, of our inner child. In the end, through hypnosis, thought, visualisation and by anchoring these visual elements to the sensations and emotions inside us, we can relive reference experiences. So when we visualise the archetype of our inner child, an inner child supported by the parental archetypes, the father and the mother archetypes, this allows the child to live reference experiences: being seen and recognised for who they are, loved and even valued for who they are.

Through this experience, we can build a new system of confidence and self-esteem. So, in summary, what is important to remember is the difference between confidence and self-esteem; how self-esteem emerges and how it is built; how it can give us a solid structure inside, so that we feel confident and worthy of value; or, on the contrary, how a lack of self-esteem can lead to insecurity and to defences that go up quickly.

And how, through hypnosis and the archetypal aspects of reference experiences, through the archetypes of the inner child, the father and the mother, we can relive experiences of confidence and of building self-esteem inside us, allowing us to develop our self-esteem. So I look forward to working together towards better self-esteem for you.

Hypnotherapy is a complementary form of support and does not replace medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you have any concerns about your health, please consult a physician first.