Building Confidence and Self-Worth Through Therapy

There's a particular kind of exhaustion that comes with low self-esteem. The constant mental editing before you speak. The paralysis when facing decisions. The assumption that everyone else is more capable, more deserving, more fundamentally okay than you are. You might look perfectly functional from the outside whilst feeling like an imposter just barely managing to hold it together.

If this sounds familiar, you're not alone. Low self-esteem and lack of confidence are among the most common issues people bring to therapy—and for good reason. These struggles don't just feel bad; they limit your life in concrete ways. They influence which jobs you apply for, which relationships you enter, what boundaries you set, and how much of yourself you're willing to show to the world.

The encouraging news? Self-esteem isn't a fixed trait you either have or don't have. It's something that develops through experience, relationship, and practice—which means it can also be rebuilt through these same pathways. Therapy offers a unique opportunity to develop genuine confidence and self-worth, not through positive affirmations plastered over deep doubts, but through a more fundamental shift in how you relate to yourself.

This guide explores what undermines confidence, how therapy addresses it, and what the journey from self-doubt to self-acceptance actually looks like.

Table of Contents

• Understanding Low Self-Esteem: Where It Comes From
• Why Positive Thinking Alone Doesn't Work
• How Therapy Rebuilds Confidence Differently
• Therapeutic Approaches for Building Self-Worth
• What Confidence Work in Therapy Actually Looks Like
• Signs You're Making Progress
• Self-Esteem vs Self-Compassion: An Important Distinction
• Frequently Asked Questions

Understanding Low Self-Esteem: Where It Comes From

To rebuild confidence, it helps to understand how it gets damaged in the first place. Self-esteem doesn't emerge from nowhere—it's shaped by your experiences, particularly your earliest relationships.

Conditional Worth

Many people develop what psychologist Carl Rogers called "conditions of worth"—the sense that you're only acceptable if you meet certain standards. Perhaps you learned that love and approval came when you were achieving, compliant, helpful, or emotionally contained. Conversely, other parts of you—your anger, your needs, your mistakes, your ordinariness—were met with criticism, withdrawal, or disappointment.

Over time, you internalise these conditions. You begin monitoring yourself through an internal critical voice, constantly judging whether you're good enough. The problem is, these standards are often impossible to consistently meet, leaving you in a perpetual state of falling short.

Comparison and Perfectionism

Our culture actively cultivates low self-esteem through relentless comparison. Social media offers an endless stream of others' highlight reels. Workplaces reward overachievement whilst moving goalposts constantly upward. Messages about how you should look, what you should own, and who you should be create a pervasive sense of inadequacy.

For some people, this generates perfectionism—the belief that if you could just be flawless, you'd finally feel secure. But perfectionism is self-defeating. Every success becomes evidence of what you "should" be doing all the time, whilst every mistake confirms your deep fear of being fundamentally deficient.

Criticism, Bullying, and Rejection

Direct experiences of criticism, bullying, rejection, or abuse powerfully shape self-perception. If important people in your life consistently communicated that you were too much, not enough, or fundamentally unacceptable, you likely absorbed those messages as truth rather than as reflections of their own limitations or distress.

Even single incidents—public humiliation, romantic rejection, job loss—can leave lasting marks on confidence, particularly if they occurred at vulnerable developmental moments or echoed earlier wounds.

Trauma and Shame

Traumatic experiences, especially those involving violation or powerlessness, often generate profound shame—the feeling that you are fundamentally damaged or wrong. Unlike guilt (I did something bad), shame says I am bad. This distinction matters because shame directly attacks self-worth at its core.

Why Positive Thinking Alone Doesn't Work

When people struggle with confidence, well-meaning friends often suggest positive affirmations: "Just tell yourself you're worthy!" "Focus on your strengths!" "Fake it till you make it!"

These strategies aren't entirely wrong, but they're rarely sufficient on their own. Here's why:

The Critic Knows You're Lying

When your internal experience is "I'm inadequate," repeating "I am confident and worthy" often backfires. The critical part of you immediately counters with evidence to the contrary. Rather than building confidence, you end up in an internal argument that reinforces the original doubt.

Surface Solutions Don't Address Deep Patterns

Positive thinking works at the level of conscious thoughts, but low self-esteem is often rooted much deeper—in implicit beliefs formed before you had words, in attachment patterns from early relationships, in shame held in the body rather than articulated in thoughts. Affirmations can't reach these layers.

Performance vs Being

Many confidence-building strategies focus on performance: act confident, achieve things, prove your worth. But this maintains the fundamental problem—the idea that you need to earn your worth rather than recognising it as inherent. You end up on a treadmill of achievement that never quite delivers the deep okayness you're seeking.

Temporary Fixes

Motivational techniques can provide temporary boosts—useful for getting through a particular challenge. But without addressing the underlying relational and experiential patterns that maintain low self-esteem, the effects don't tend to last. Once the inspirational feeling fades, you're back to the familiar self-doubt.

This doesn't mean positive practices have no value. But genuine, lasting confidence requires deeper work.

How Therapy Rebuilds Confidence Differently

So if positive thinking isn't the answer, what is? Therapy approaches confidence from several angles simultaneously:

A Relational Foundation

Perhaps the most powerful element of therapy for self-esteem is the relationship itself. Over time, you experience someone paying sustained, accepting attention to you—not because you've earned it through performance, but simply because you're a person worthy of care and understanding.

This consistent experience of unconditional positive regard gradually becomes internalised. You start extending to yourself the quality of attention and compassion your therapist offers you. The critical internal voice softens, not because you've argued it into submission, but because you've experienced a fundamentally different way of being related to.

Excavating and Challenging Core Beliefs

Therapy helps you identify the specific beliefs underlying your lack of confidence: "I'm not enough," "I'm too much," "Others are more important than me," "If people really knew me they'd reject me." Rather than fighting these beliefs with positive counter-statements, you explore where they came from, how they've shaped your life, and whether they're actually true.

Often, bringing these beliefs into conscious awareness already loosens their grip. You realise they're stories you've been telling yourself—understandable responses to difficult experiences—rather than objective facts about who you are.

Understanding Protection Strategies

Low self-esteem doesn't exist in isolation—it's typically accompanied by protective strategies: people-pleasing, overachievement, withdrawal, self-sabotage, perfectionism. These strategies made sense at some point; they were attempts to stay safe or manage overwhelming experiences.

Therapy helps you recognise these patterns with compassion rather than judgement. As you develop alternative ways of meeting your needs and managing vulnerability, the old protective strategies naturally loosen, and with them, the harsh self-judgement that maintained them.

Practicing Self-Acceptance

Perhaps paradoxically, confidence doesn't come from becoming perfect or eliminating your flaws. It emerges from accepting yourself as you actually are—which includes both strengths and limitations, achievements and failures, admirable qualities and shadow aspects.

Therapy provides a space to practice this radical acceptance. As you bring more of yourself into the room—including the parts you usually hide—and experience them being met with understanding rather than rejection, self-acceptance becomes increasingly possible.

Developing New Experiences

Confidence also grows through new experiences that contradict old beliefs. This might mean experimenting with assertiveness, setting boundaries, expressing needs, or simply doing things you've avoided due to fear of inadequacy. Your therapist can help you identify meaningful experiments and process what you discover through them.

Therapeutic Approaches for Building Self-Worth

Different therapeutic approaches work with confidence in somewhat different ways. Here's what some of the main modalities offer:

Humanistic and Person-Centred Therapy

Humanistic approaches are particularly well-suited to confidence work because they're explicitly oriented toward self-acceptance and actualisation. Person-centred therapy's core conditions—unconditional positive regard, empathic understanding, and congruence—directly address the relational wounds that typically undermine self-esteem.

The non-directive nature means you're not being told how to be different (which can actually reinforce inadequacy). Instead, you're exploring yourself without judgement, discovering your authentic preferences, values, and capabilities beneath the protective layers.

Particular strengths: Deep relational healing, self-acceptance, connecting with authentic self

Gestalt Therapy

Gestalt approaches work with confidence through present-moment awareness and experimentation. Techniques like the "empty chair" might help you dialogue with your inner critic, understanding its protective function and developing a different relationship with it.

Gestalt also emphasises personal responsibility and choice—not in a blaming way, but recognising your agency in how you respond to your experience. This gradual ownership builds genuine confidence.

Particular strengths: Integrating disowned parts, developing agency, present-moment awareness

Transactional Analysis (TA)

TA offers helpful frameworks for understanding how you learned particular self-perceptions. The concept of "life scripts"—unconscious beliefs formed early in life about yourself, others, and the world—helps explain why you might feel inadequate despite evidence to the contrary.

TA therapy involves recognising when you're operating from these old scripts (often the "Child" ego state) and developing more adult, reality-based ways of thinking about yourself. Permission-giving is central: your therapist might explicitly give you permission to be confident, make mistakes, or prioritise your needs—permissions you didn't receive earlier.

Particular strengths: Understanding patterns, explicit permission-giving, updating life scripts

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

CBT for self-esteem focuses on identifying negative automatic thoughts, examining the evidence for and against them, and developing more balanced perspectives. Behavioural experiments test out feared predictions (for example, "If I express an opinion, people will reject me").

Particular strengths: Structured approach, specific techniques, testing beliefs through experience

Psychodynamic Therapy

Psychodynamic approaches explore how early relationships and attachments shaped your sense of self. Working with the therapist as a secure base, you can process past experiences that damaged confidence and gradually internalise a more positive self-image.

Particular strengths: Understanding historical roots, processing past wounds, building secure attachment

What Confidence Work in Therapy Actually Looks Like

So what does this process actually involve week to week? While every therapy is unique, here are common elements:

Early Sessions: Recognition and Validation

The beginning of therapy often focuses on articulating what you're experiencing. You might explore specific situations where confidence fails you: job interviews, social situations, romantic relationships, creative endeavours. Your therapist helps you recognise patterns whilst validating that your struggles make sense given your experiences.

Many people report relief in these early sessions simply from having their internal experience recognised and taken seriously. The self-criticism often involves dismissing your own struggles ("Everyone feels like this, I'm just weak"), so having a professional acknowledge the real difficulty you're facing is itself healing.

Middle Phase: Exploring Roots and Patterns

As trust deepens, you'll likely explore the origins of your self-doubt. What messages did you receive about your worth? When did you first start believing you weren't enough? How have you protected yourself from the pain of inadequacy?

This isn't about dwelling in the past or blaming others—it's about understanding how you came to see yourself in particular ways. With that understanding comes the possibility of choosing differently.

You'll also examine how low confidence shows up in your current life: Which situations trigger it? What do you avoid? How do you compensate? What opportunities has it cost you?

Practicing Different Relating

Throughout therapy, you're practicing relating to yourself (and being related to) differently. Your therapist might gently point out when you're dismissing your achievements, apologising excessively, or speaking about yourself with harsh judgement. Over time, you develop the capacity to notice and interrupt these patterns yourself.

You might also practice new behaviours within the therapy relationship: expressing disagreement, acknowledging your own needs, accepting compliments without deflecting them. The therapy room becomes a safe laboratory for experiments you'll eventually take into the wider world.

Later Phases: Consolidation and Independence

As confidence grows, therapy shifts toward consolidation. You might test out new behaviours in relationships, work, or creative pursuits and process what happens. Setbacks become learning opportunities rather than evidence of fundamental inadequacy.

Many people find they need their therapist less as they internalise a kinder, more realistic voice. Sessions might space out naturally as you develop confidence in your own ability to navigate life's challenges.

Signs You're Making Progress

Confidence building is gradual, and progress isn't always obvious day-to-day. But over weeks and months, you might notice:

• Internal shifts: The self-critical voice becomes quieter or less convincing. You catch yourself and respond with compassion instead of additional judgment.

• Relational changes: You express opinions more freely. You set boundaries without excessive guilt. You accept compliments rather than deflecting them.

• Behavioural experiments: You try things you'd previously avoided—applying for a job, attending a social event, sharing creative work, having a difficult conversation.

• Emotional tolerance: You can sit with uncertainty, imperfection, or criticism without it confirming your worst beliefs about yourself.

• Reduced people-pleasing: You prioritise your own needs and preferences more, recognising that disappointing others doesn't make you a bad person.

• Realistic self-assessment: You can acknowledge both strengths and limitations without either inflating yourself or collapsing into inadequacy.

• Recovery time: When setbacks happen (rejection, criticism, failure), you recover more quickly instead of spiralling into prolonged self-attack.

Progress often comes in subtle shifts rather than dramatic revelations. You might simply notice one day that a situation that would have previously provoked intense anxiety now feels manageable, or that you spoke up in a meeting without the usual agonising preparation.

Self-Esteem vs Self-Compassion: An Important Distinction

Recent psychological research has drawn attention to an important distinction between self-esteem and self-compassion—one that's particularly relevant to therapeutic work on confidence.

Self-Esteem: "I'm Good"

Self-esteem involves evaluating yourself positively, believing you're competent, worthy, and valuable. This isn't inherently bad, but it has some built-in problems:

• It requires constant maintenance through achievement and comparison
• It can be fragile, collapsing when you fail or receive criticism
• It sometimes depends on feeling better than others
• It creates pressure to maintain a positive self-image

Self-Compassion: "I'm Human"

Self-compassion, by contrast, involves treating yourself with the same kindness you'd offer a struggling friend. It has three components:

1. Self-kindness (rather than self-judgement)
2. Common humanity (recognising struggle is part of being human, not evidence you're uniquely deficient)
3. Mindfulness (holding difficult experiences in awareness without over-identifying with them)

Research by psychologist Kristin Neff suggests self-compassion offers the benefits of self-esteem (wellbeing, resilience, motivation) without the downsides. It's more stable because it doesn't depend on evaluating yourself positively—it's about acceptance rather than judgement.

In Therapy

Humanistic therapies naturally cultivate self-compassion through the quality of relational presence. Rather than trying to boost your self-esteem by convincing you you're wonderful, they help you accept yourself as you are—which paradoxically often leads to feeling better about yourself anyway.

The goal isn't to think "I'm amazing" but rather "I'm okay, I'm doing my best, I'm worthy of care even when I'm struggling." This foundation turns out to be more solid and sustainable than confidence built on achievement or comparison.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to build confidence through therapy?

This varies significantly depending on how long you've struggled with low self-esteem, its severity, and what else is going on in your life. Some people notice meaningful shifts within 2-3 months; deeper transformation often takes 6 months to 2 years. Therapy for confidence is typically open-ended rather than time-limited, allowing you to work at your own pace.

Can therapy help if I've always had low confidence?

Yes. Even if you can't remember a time you felt confident, therapy can help you develop it. Long-standing patterns often take longer to shift than more recent difficulties, but they're not permanent features of who you are—they're learned responses that can be unlearned and replaced with more helpful patterns.

What if I can't afford long-term therapy?

Even shorter-term work can be valuable. Six to twelve sessions might not completely transform deep-rooted self-esteem issues, but can certainly offer new perspectives, start shifting patterns, and provide tools you continue using independently. NHS Talking Therapies offers free counselling, though approaches tend to be time-limited and there may be waiting lists. Some private therapists offer reduced-fee spaces for people on lower incomes.

Will therapy make me arrogant or selfish?

This is a common fear, but developing genuine confidence doesn't mean becoming self-absorbed or dismissive of others. In fact, people with solid self-worth tend to be more genuinely generous because they're not constantly defending against their own inadequacy. Therapy helps you find balance between self-criticism and grandiosity—recognising your worth whilst maintaining realistic humility.

What if my lack of confidence is realistic—I genuinely am not very capable?

It's worth questioning this assumption. Often, what looks like objective inadequacy is actually harsh self-judgement or lack of opportunity to develop skills. That said, confidence doesn't require being exceptional at everything. It comes from accepting your actual capabilities—wherever they are—and recognising your worth doesn't depend on being the best or never struggling.

Can I work on confidence whilst dealing with other issues like anxiety or depression?

Yes, and often these are intertwined. Anxiety and depression frequently both stem from and reinforce low self-esteem. A skilled therapist will help you work with all these dimensions together rather than treating them as separate problems requiring separate solutions.

Do I need a therapist who specialises in confidence?

Not necessarily. Confidence issues are extremely common, and any experienced BACP-registered therapist will have worked with them extensively. What matters more is finding someone whose approach resonates with you and with whom you feel comfortable being vulnerable. That said, humanistic therapists are particularly well-suited to this work due to their focus on self-acceptance and relational healing.

What if I've tried therapy before and it didn't help my confidence?

Sometimes it takes a few attempts to find the right therapist or approach. If previous therapy didn't help, consider what was missing: Did you feel genuinely accepted, or were you being told how you should change? Did the approach suit your learning style and preferences? Was there enough time to go beyond surface symptoms? A different therapist or modality might work better.

Building Confidence That Lasts

The journey from chronic self-doubt to genuine confidence isn't about becoming a different person. It's about removing the obstacles—harsh judgements, unrealistic standards, protective patterns—that have been hiding your inherent worth all along.

Therapy doesn't give you confidence so much as create the conditions for it to emerge naturally: through being genuinely seen and accepted, through understanding where your self-criticism came from, through practicing treating yourself with compassion, through new experiences that contradict old beliefs.

The confidence you build through therapy tends to be quieter than the performance-based variety. It's not about convincing yourself or others that you're amazing. It's about knowing, at a fundamental level, that you're okay—worthy of care, capable of growth, deserving of space in the world. From that foundation, genuine capability and self-expression can unfold.

If you're tired of the constant self-monitoring, the apologising, the holding back—if you sense there's a freer, more authentic way to move through life—therapy offers a proven pathway toward the confidence and self-worth you're seeking.

For humanistic therapy addressing confidence and self-esteem in London, particularly in South West London areas like Fulham, Chelsea, and Putney, contact Kicks Therapy to arrange an initial consultation. We offer both in-person and video sessions, working at your pace to help you develop lasting self-acceptance and confidence.

---

About the Author: This article was written by the Kicks Therapy Content Team, with clinical input from BACP-registered humanistic therapists experienced in working with self-esteem, confidence, and personal growth.

Further Reading:

• Understanding Humanistic Therapy
• What is Person-Centred Therapy?
• First Counselling Session: What to Expect
• Building Self-Esteem Through Therapy

Expert Sources:

• Neff, K. D. (2011). Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself. New York: William Morrow.
• Rogers, C. R. (1961). On Becoming a Person. London: Constable.
• British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). (2024). Working with self-esteem in therapy. https://www.bacp.co.uk/