You're not broken. The messages you received about yourself were.
- Feb 27
- 3 min read
Understanding self-esteem through a trauma-informed lens
If you struggle with your self-esteem, it can feel deeply personal and often shameful You can feel like there is something fundamentally wrong or flawed about you.
You have probably learned to live with an inner voice that criticises you often; that tells you all the ways in which you are wrong. This voice can sound very convincing.
But... I'd gently invite you to consider: What if this voice wasn't really yours? What if your self-doubt didn’t originate inside of you? What if all of these messages were something that you were told and believed to be true, but are actually not the truth?
Self esteem isn't a personality trait.
Many people believe that high self-worth is something you either have or don’t have.
In reality, self-esteem is developed through our:
early relationships with parents and/or caretakers
education environments
cultural expectations
experiences of difference or exclusion
subtle and not-so-subtle social messaging
If you grew up feeling different in any way, perhaps sensitive, neurodivergent, LGBTQ+, working class in a middle-class environment, racialised, academically behind, emotionally unsupported, you may have absorbed messages about who you were and who you were supposed to be to be accepted.
Over time, those messages became internalised and started to sound like your own voice.
The inner critic is trying to protect you
In my client sessions and group programmes, we don’t treat the inner critic as an enemy. We understand it as an adaptation.
At some point, your nervous system learned: “If I criticise myself first, maybe I’ll be safer... If I shrink, I won’t be judged... If I achieve more, I’ll be accepted... If I stay quiet and hidden, I won’t be rejected.”
These strategies make sense in context. They were intelligent responses to your early environment. But what helped you coped then may now be unnecessarily keeping you small.
When shrinking becomes a habit
Many of the people I work with are thoughtful, reflective and caring. They didn't fit in growing up and, as such, they learned to:
second-guess themselves
overthink social interactions
prioritise other people's comfort
minimise their own needs
Not because they are weak, but because at some point, that felt safer. Over time, this shrinking can become automatic and they now realise that the cost is high, causing:
anxiety in social situations
difficulty asserting boundaries
harsh self-talk
feeling disconnected from their authentic self
Updating old beliefs
CBT is based on the understanding that our thoughts influence our feelings and behaviour. But it recognises that we can't simply “positive think” our way out of beliefs that were shaped by our lived experiences. Instead, shifting the unhelpful beliefs happens in layers:
Understanding where the belief came from
Recognising how it once protected us
Gently questioning whether it is fully true
Installing a more balanced, compassionate perspective
Hypnotherapy supports this process by helping the nervous system feel calm and safe enough to absorb new beliefs. Insight alone is rarely enough. We need to also create safefy that allows new beliefs to settle.
Coming home to yourself
Improving self-esteem isn’t about becoming louder, more extroverted, or a fundamentally different person. It’s not about performing or pretending to be something we are not. It's about:
reducing the volume of the critical inner voice
feeling more solid inside
trusting yourself a little more
realising that you were never wrong; that you adapted to your environment in the best way you could; you believed the messages in order to survive.
As an adult, you get to update those adaptations through understanding and gentle change.
If this resonates...
If you recognise yourself in this description, you are not alone - far from it. Many of us develop our self-image and self-worth in the same way.
Self-esteem is not fixed from birth. Rather, it is something that we learn and that is shaped by the circumstances we grow up in. And, as such, it can be unlearned.
You don’t need to become someone else. You may simply need to unlearn a few messages that were never truly yours.
