More than 85% of all the people that I’ve coached with social anxiety since 2009, suffered from severe low self-esteem, and that wasn’t as a result of their social anxiety per se.

For the vast majority of people, low self-esteem is directly linked to how safe they feel sharing themselves with others, which makes total sense.

Think about it.

Self-esteem is basically your opinion of yourself:

• How much do you value yourself
• How much you respect, appreciate, and feel worthy
• It’s your self-worth.
• It’s your opinion of yourself and how much value you believe that you are
• It’s your attitude toward yourself
• How you feel about yourself.

So of course, self-esteem is usually linked to your level of social anxiety.

Because if you feel bad about yourself, you easily anticipate others feeling that way towards you as well, and treating you accordingly.

And so, you might more easily anticipate rejection, or being treated like crap. And that is then easily perceived as a threat. And whenever there’s a perception of threat, there’s anxiety.

Therefore, for most people, boosting their self-esteem is an essential strategy for lowering their social anxiety.

And that excellent self-care is a way to boost your self-esteem? And that poor self-care can actually lower your self-esteem significantly, even if it’s normally high or healthy?

I learned about this a long time ago from an online psychiatrist. I’ve visited some dating programs. So this is like 20 years back or something that I check this out. But his name is Dr. Paul Dobransky. And he created a system called Mind OS, where he synthesizes the different disciplines of psychology, in order to teach personal development via diagrams.

And one of the things that he taught there was that self-esteem is emotional energy. And it consists of two elements:

1. Well-being
2. Confidence

Confidence he describes as a fatherly kind of energy. It’s like:

“I can do it, I’m gonna get this done. I have trust in myself, I can make this happen.”

It’s like an empowering kind of energy.

Well-being is like a motherly kind of energy, which is more soothing. It’s taking care of yourself and making sure that your needs are met. It’s the motherly kind of energy.

And he says that you need both of these in order to have healthy self-esteem.

I agree!

I’ve experienced this in my life as well. And here’s an example of that.

A long time ago, 7 or 8 years. I don’t know how long ago exactly. But I had a significant stressor in my life. I had trouble, couldn’t see my daughter, I had to go to court. And this was a very difficult, very, very stressful situation for me. I didn’t know what was going on.

But what was happening was I was feeling very perfectionistic.

I was snapping like this. And I was forgetting things. I have a conversation with a friend of mine. And after 20 seconds or something, I’m like, dude, just start over again. And he was talking about some business concept because I just lost it.

I can’t focus anymore. I don’t I don’t understand. I can’t follow. I was forgetting my motorbike key in my scooter the whole time, was forgetting names, couldn’t think of things, and was super perfectionistic on that.

And I’m like:

“What the hell was going on?”

I reached out to my mentor, who’s also a psychotherapist. And I said:

“I think I’ve got some perfectionism issue coming up, but I thought I’d dealt with it. But anyway, we have a little session on it?”

David is his name. David was saying to me, he’s like:

“Look, you’re not getting enough emotional vitamins. This situation, this stressor, the record, and everything is weighing on your system. And all you’re doing is working and dealing with this, this stressor. So that’s not good for you. You’re not in a good emotional balance as a result of that. So you need to get more emotional vitamins.”

So basically what happened was the situation was eating up my well-being and as a result, it was lowering my self-esteem.

I was still having my confidence, but my well-being was just completely drained because of this situation.

And I also wasn’t filling up that well-being because had to pay for a lawyer. And there was a lot of stress with work and so on, and so forth. So I wasn’t feeling that up.

And basically what David was saying was like:

“Look, you need to get that well-being filled up. So you need to do things that make you feel good, that make you feel relaxed that make you feel at ease. You need to fill up that well-being” — without specifically using the words. His words were, you need to get more emotional vitamins.

So he suggested talking with friends, connecting with people that you feel good with, doing fun things, sitting at the beach – whatever you can do meditating, dancing (I didn’t dance at that time, that would have been a good activity), but anything and everything that would make me feel good, watch funny videos that would distract me, go for a massage.

I did all of those things. And I prioritized it because he helped me realize, like:

“Look, you’re not coping. And this is a difficult situation. And whenever there’s a difficult situation, you need to increase that self-care, make sure you get as much of your needs met as possible so that you’re as resilient as possible to deal with this difficult situation.”

So I took that to heart and I started doing all these things. And bit by bit, I climbed out of that. And I started to feel a lot more balanced, even though that big stressor was still going on.

Now eventually that stressor was dealt with, and everything was fine. But I kept this lesson as a big insight.

And I wanted to pass this on to you because inside our Social Confidence Club, a lot of people are dealing with this – sometimes they underestimate how important it is to take good care of yourself.

And this is such a simple thing you can do to improve your self-esteem.

The other side (boosting your confidence) – that’s maybe for another video. That’s not as easy as this, this is a lot easier.

And so here are a bunch of ways that you can improve your self-care, and as a result, increase your well-being which then boosts your self-esteem, which most likely positively affects your social anxiety.

Here we go.

We want to take care of your basic needs

• Sleep
• Food
• Workout

If you don’t sleep well enough, everything is off. So that’s very important.
You can take naps during the day. 20-minute nap. They really rejuvenate you.
Healthy food energizes your body, of course.
And working out is great, really helpful. It releases feel-good chemicals called endorphins. And the body-mind is connected. So when you make your body feel good, you feel good.

When you have good feelings and your thoughts are more likely to be on the more optimistic side.

Here’s just a quick list of things that I wrote down that you can do. Of course, this is up to you anything that makes you feel good.

• Read a book
• Get a massage
• Have a hot shower
• Bath with candles
• Play your favorite music
• Dance
• Watch movies or go to the cinema
• Wear your comfiest clothing
• Watch funny videos
• This teaches you to interrupt negative thinking which damages your self-esteem. And it fosters your self-acceptance
• Walk in nature.
• Call or go for coffee or lunch with a friend or family member
• Stand in the sun for a minute while breathing deeply.
• Go for therapy
• Do acceptance tapping
• Tap and breath

Of course, this is not a conclusive list. But just to give you an idea.

This is important. If you avoid proper self-care, you’re depleting your self-worth, which affects your self-esteem, which affects your social anxiety.

So take proper care of yourself and make it a priority.

This is not a luxury, this is a necessity.

Now, especially if you’re feeling like,

“Well, I’m too busy. I don’t have time for this. I’ve got kids, I’ve got a career” — Especially if you’re too busy. This is very important.

You’re at the risk of burning out eventually if you don’t take enough time for yourself and you have a boost in well-being and a boost in self-esteem to gain by doing this.

It might be that you’re suffering from lower self-esteem which in turn causes you to not feel worthy and deserving automatically of doing this self-care and putting other people first.

Make this a priority.

It’s going to help you when you empower yourself when you grow your well-being when you are higher on self-esteem you can be of more help to others.

Value yourself, make this a priority, and take great care of yourself so you can boost your self-esteem and hopefully, likely, reduce your social anxiety as well.

Now if you want to start with some excellent self-care right now, I suggest watching and tapping along with this video that has recently created has a powerful tap long, all you do is simply follow along and do the tapping within 10 minutes, you’re going to feel better, you’re going to feel a bit better, you’re going to get some relief because you’re going to have a different perspective on how you see yourself and the challenge that you’re dealing with.

Or if you want to feel more inspired, check out this video, which is a recent video that I released and has a testimonial from a former social anxiety sufferer, who had severe social anxiety suffered for decades and overcame it completely. And I think that all really inspire you that so check it out.

Talk to you very soon. Bye

If you experience Social Anxiety, click below to receive the FREE “7 Secrets to Social Confidence” Mini Course!

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Sebastiaan

Sebastiaan van der Schrier is a Social Confidence Coach and ex social anxiety sufferer. He helps socially anxious people become confident using a unique and painless approach. He is the host of the Social Anxiety Solutions podcast show and runs the first ever online Social Confidence Community.

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