The "What Keeps Low Self-Esteem Going?" handout presents key factors that maintain low self-esteem.
Offers theory, guidance, and prompts for mental health professionals. Downloads are in Fillable PDF format where appropriate.
Includes client-friendly guidance. Downloads are in Fillable PDF format where appropriate.
An editable Microsoft PowerPoint version of the resource.
The “What Keeps It Going?” series is a set of one-page diagrams explaining how common mental health conditions are maintained. Friendly and concise, they provide an easy way for clients to understand at a glance why their disorders persist, and how they might be interrupted.
What Keeps Low Self-Esteem Going? is designed to help clients with low self-esteem understand more about their condition.
Understanding what keeps low self-esteem going is crucial for effective intervention. By identifying these factors, therapists can develop idiosyncratic models of clients' experiences and focus their interventions.
Designed to help clients experiencing low self-esteem.
Explain to the client that certain difficulties persist due to cycles that maintain them.
Use the handout to discuss what might be keeping the client's difficulties going.
Pinpoint and personalize maintaining factors that are relevant to the client.
Explore how these maintaining cycles can be interrupted.
Research studies have shown that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is one of the most effective treatments for low self-esteem (Kolubinski et al, 2018). CBT therapists work a bit like firefighters: while the fire is burning they aren’t very interested in what caused it, but are more focused on what is keeping it going. This is because if they can work out what keeps a problem going, they can treat the problem by ‘removing the fuel’ and interrupting this maintaining cycle.
In 1997, psychologist Melanie Fennell identified key components that are thought to explain why some people keep suffering from low self-esteem. The What Keeps Low Self-Esteem Going? information handout describes some of these key factors which maintain low self-esteem. It illustrates these maintaining factors in a vicious flower format, in which each ‘petal’ represents a separate cycle. Helping clients to understand more about the cognitive model is an essential part of cognitive therapy for low self-esteem. Therapists can use this handout as a focus for discussion, or as a template from which to formulate an idiosyncratic model of a client’s experiences.
