Recovery of Your Self-Esteem

With warmth and encouragement, along with her original ten-step process, carolynn hillman puts self-esteem and the accomplishments and real satisfaction it engenders within the reach of every woman. her straightforward approach to conquering feelings of inadequacy and self-defeating behavior include: * practicing six key ways of nurturing yourself * recognizing and appreciating your good points * silencing the inner-critic -and heeding the inner-child * breaking the self-imposed failure cycle * overcoming external obstacles that limit your progressrecovery of your self-esteem supports readers with participatory exercises and inspiring examples that confirm feelings of increased self-respect and achievement. it offers invaluable advice and understanding that will pave the way toward feeling better more of the time.carolynn hillman is a board-certified diplomate in clinical social work. she received her ba from barnard college, her msw from hunter college, and her psychoanalytic training at the national institute of the psychotherapies. she is also an aasect (american association of sex educators, counselors, and therapists) certified sex therapist. for the past twenty-four years she has been helping women and men fulfill their potential and raise their self-esteem. she lives in teaneck, new jersey, with her husband and two daughters and maintains a private practice in new york city of individual, couple, and group therapy.excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved.chapter 1being there for yourselfmarcy was laid off from work. after a month of fruitless job-hunting, she feels like a nothing and a nobody.nancy's three children are late getting off to school, despite her waking them on time, continually urging them to hurry, and finally yelling at them. after they leave she sits with her head in her hands, feeling like a nag, a screaming meanie, and an inadequate mother.linda gets up her courage and phones the man she met at last week's singles party. he says he is too busy preparing a case for trial to make any plans at this time. she hangs up and feels embarrassed, ashamed, unattractive, undesirable, and unlovable.karen, a vice president for marketing, writes a report that includes her recommendations for increasing sales. her boss decides to go with charlie's recommendations instead. karen spends the next week in a funk, questioning whether she's fit for her job.sally has struggled with her weight all her life. she diets down almost to her goal, then gradually puts the weight back on, plus a few more pounds. when her weight reaches what she considers panic proportion, she frantically starts dieting again. whenever she is more than five pounds above her optimal weight, she feels fat, ugly, unattractive, and undeserving.elaine is driving to work when her car sputters, stalls out, and won't start up again. she turns to her husband beside her and berates him for not taking better care of the car, though he knows no more about cars than she does.marcy, nancy, linda, karen, sally, and elaine are all competent, likable women; yet they all have fragile self-esteem. however others may view them, inside they feel deficient and inadequate. whenever something goes wrong, they are sure they're to blame. even elaine, who seems to react by blaming her husband and not herself, does so to ward off feelings of inadequacy. her sense of self-worth is so shaky that she can't bear thinking herself responsible for one more difficulty, so whenever anything goes wrong, she looks for someone else to blame. these women are like many of us.when we react to disappointment with self-blame or by blaming others, it is because we do not have an ample inner reservoir of self-liking and self-appreciation to weather whatever storm we're in. we are not grounded enough in our sense of self-worth to be able to take responsibility for what we contributed to our troubles without