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Lack of self-worth, cause of depression, suicide

By Lanre Olusola
21 June 2018   |   3:55 am
Helen had a low self-worth and self-esteem since she was 8 years old. Everyone thought she was shy and withdrawn. She was a fat baby and had always felt unattractive as she grew older. This affected her self-confidence as her peers in secondary school often made fun of her. Even though she lost all the…

Suicide

Helen had a low self-worth and self-esteem since she was 8 years old. Everyone thought she was shy and withdrawn.

She was a fat baby and had always felt unattractive as she grew older.

This affected her self-confidence as her peers in secondary school often made fun of her.

Even though she lost all the baby fat and now has a great shapely body, She still believes she is not good enough.

This sense of low self-worth, esteem and confidence led her to attract the wrong men who abused her verbally, emotionally and physically.

Hence this led her to believe that men do not find her attractive enough to want to stay in a long lasting, happy and fulfilling relationship. 

I met Helen a year ago and during our sessions, I discovered Helen has a younger sister Toni and a female friend Kemi who she believes are prettier, more intelligent and better than her in all aspects of life.

Helen soon discovered that she had always compared herself with Toni and Kemi who were light complexioned. She said they always attracted the best looking guys and she was left with the other good for nothing boys.

Helen believed that life dealt better with Toni and Kemi.

At age 32 she is still unmarried, while Toni age 30 is happily married with 3 beautiful children. Helen was depressed and sometimes had suicidal thoughts.

She felt if she committed suicide, at least she would be FREE from all the pains of loneliness and failure. During our sessions, she realized that:

She had lost sight of what was important to her, and She was doing major damage on her self-image and self-worth, by always comparing herself with Toni and Kemi, rather than identifying what she had that they did not have and being Thankful for these.

I believe there are several Helens possibly reading this article today, this is dedicated to you.

I will like to share with you some of the exercises Helen and I did together, to help her transition from that painful, lonely, dark, depressive place- to a happier, more confident and powerful state.

I began by helping her discover who she is, this is because she had lost her sense of SELF and had no self-identity.

Below are coaching steps I deployed to help Helen achieve her goal:

I questioned her identity by asking her Who She Is.

This exercise took a while before she found the answer.

This was done over 3 sessions using various self-discovery probing tools and taking various personality tests.

I was able to help Helen highlight her strengths, qualities, values and her limiting, disempowering, negative beliefs and weaknesses.

The second step I took with Helen was to get her to embrace Change, and understand the need to have a different Mindset and Perception about herself.

I achieved this by first eliciting her most deadly, limiting and negative beliefs, then showing her how powerful they were and their overall effects on her.

Once I was done with the two steps, I proceeded to helping Helen Create a New Self-Image. She re-created this New Personal of who she wanted to be.

With all the great positive qualities found from her personality and profiling test reports – Helen suddenly began to see her True Self in the mirror.

I worked with her to create her own bespoke Affirmation statements, which she said to herself every day for 40 days, while looking into her mirror.

I got Helen to start talking, thinking and acting like the new “HER”, which she has just been introduced to.

The next Exercise was to help Helen Identify 3 Positive Female Role Models – These are inspirational women who Helen aspired to be like. She was made to study their lives and set her goals (that is what she wanted to become) in line with certain things these women had achieved.

The next step was a Visualization Exercise, where I got Helen to Picture Her Desired self in 10 to 20 years from her present moment. 

I got her to maintain her new self-image by daily visualizing her future self and identifying what she needs to do, to become HELEN-F which was the name I gave her future self.

As I continued our Sessions, I got Helen to accept the fact that she will have many high and low moments each day.

Hence I helped her develop her own set of coping mechanisms.

I also helped her develop Emotional Resilience using various tools and techniques which she now uses daily to manage her low moments.

Helen soon began to feel good about herself every day, as I worked on her inner self confidence and self esteem.

Would you like to meet the real “YOU”?

Would you like to feel the same way as Helen felt after this Exercise?

Even though you have such limiting beliefs that have held you back for years and caused you sadness and gloom, the Olusola Lanre Coaching Academy is available to help you change these negative, limiting, disempowering beliefs into very powerful, positive and empowering beliefs. 

Register for the Emotional Mastery class, which takes place from the 22nd to 24th June 2018.

For enquirers, call 08077077000 or send an email to info@olcang.com.

To stay motivated and have the right positive mindset, get a copy of the affirmation packs on https://bit.ly/2MCgifs.

In other to overcome depression and Be All You Were Created To Be, check out my resources on https://bit.ly/2t6T5KY.

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