The method I used to help people overcome low self esteem is called Clean Language.  The facilitator (me) helps a client explore what’s happening for them.  We focus mainly on what they would like to have happend and resources that help that.  The Clean Language method is so good at focusing on the good stuff and the exploring that helps find the good stuff, that powerful results can happen.

I won’t be blogging about self-esteem any more but I continue to develop my skills at Clean Language which can help in a variety of areas.  If you have an issue you’d like to work on, you are welcome to contact me and we can talk about me or another coach using Clean Language to help you.

Some posts on Nonviolent Communication
I’ve posting them here to watch later.

The Toilet Seat Argument – Nonviolent Communication NVC

Parenting with Nonviolent Communication (NVC)

Parenting with Nonviolent Communication (2)

I use metaphor in my Clean Language coaching to help people overcome low self esteem.

Clean Language draws meaning from my half dreams in the morning and helps me understand the forces that drive my day.

It lets me understand people in places governed by assumptions, perspectives and connections that I don’t wish to hold.

It helps me travel to people I cannot agree with but can now understand

It is better than the smartest of smartphones for navigating through strange, changing territories

It shows the best next step to scared inner children, lost souls, hesitant daredevils and raging anger.

It connects resources to problems, lets warmth beat scared, transformation beat sinking and shows that taking off a silver red teapot top is all you need to do to stop things boiling over.

It connects you to metaphors as bizarre as Willy Wonka’s golden ticket but more real and supportive than chairs.

It can find a desired outcome in expression, then trust, wonder, learning and change.

It helps me as facilitator to monitor my role, play my part and notice the consequences.

It is the quickest way to difficult places, the most appropriate suit, the most respectful holding, the longest lasting gift

It fits when I don’t.
It leads me while giving me the reins.
We shine as we share.

I’m exchanging emails with a journalist who is talking about low self-esteem and gave this example.  I’d like to use it to explain the Clean Language way of coaching.

“In my experience as a college student, I’m surrounded by girls who act irrationally, especially involving men. An example of this type of girl would be one that calls the guy she’s interested in 20 times, only to leave him another voicemail. It’s obvious he’s not interested in talking to her. However, she doesn’t have the sense of pride in herself to stop chasing and embarrassing herself. In my mind experiences like this go hand in hand with low self-esteem. Men tend to treat women with low self esteem worse than those confident in themselves because they know they can get away with more. They know that no matter how badly they treat this specific girl, she’ll be back at their side the moment they need them.”

Let’s say I was talking to the girl who did the phoning.  I’ll imagine the conversation and make annotations. Let’s call her Jo.

Jo: I’ve called this guy and he didn’t respond.

Coach: What would you like to have happen?  [This invites her to state her goal or desired outcome.  ]

Jo: How do I get him to call? [At least it's clear what she wants. Knowing some context, we strongly suspect it's not realistic, but it's Clean Language and we leave our assumptions and interpretations out of this coaching.  Sounds daft, bear with me.]

Coach:  I’m here to help you find out what to do.  [I won't give direct advice]

Is there anything else about him calling?

Jo: Maybe he’s away.  [Likely to be some sort of denial]

Coach: When he calls, what happens next? [I'm going with the story she gives me]

Jo: We’ll go out and everything will be fine.  Fun, a little romantic.  [She is in full flight of denial. Bear with me]

Coach: And you called and when he calls, things will be fun, a little romantic.  Is there anything else about “when he calls”?

Jo: My friends don’t think he’ll call.  [At some point, the extra information she knows challenges her self-denial story ]

Coach: And you called and when he calls, things will be fun, a little romantic.  And your friends don’t think he’ll call.  Is there anything else about “when he calls”? [I focus on an area for a while to see wht she knows.  I'm not using my own ideas and am using her words, so there is no incentive to emphasise her point as if I'm not listening; I clearly am.]

Jo: He will call.  [Rigid denial]

Coach: And you called and when he calls, things will be fun, a lttle romantic. And your friends don’t think he’ll call.
And what would he like to have happen? [I keep returning her undeniable words to her and make her increasingly aware of how solid the story is she is constructing.  She would now be very aware her friends dont' think he will call and she can't think why he wouldn't. ]

Jo: He won’t call. [Actually, she might carry on for longer, but she will see a purer truth of the situation, a recurring pattern or a habit of hers after a while]

Coach: And you’d like him  to call and he won’t call.  What would you like to have happen now?  [We've reached a dead end on what I can achieve.  Either she wants nothing, something else, or finds a way to have him call.]

Jo:  I want him to call.

Coach: And you’d like him to call and he won’t call.  What kind of “I” wants him to call when he won’t call?  [She's persistent and I'm wondering where the real goal is.]

Jo: I’m scared of failing my exams.

Coach: And you’re scared of failing your exams.  And what would you like to have happen?

Jo: I’d like to be proud of myself. [A much wider goal, but something we would work on.  In another case, it might not be self-esteem, but might be about the exams themselves and the task of studying.  At this point the exact nature of why she was chasing him is open to speculation, but I focus on her and her present goal.]

Coach: And is there anything else about being proud of yourself?

…

For more about Clean Language, follow this link.

For more about self-esteem, please contact me.

Some comments from a university journalist regarding self-esteem, insecurity and the effects which she saw as promiscuity, abusive relationships etc.

Good for you, I’m glad you’re looking into the area. I’m happy to respond. I’m quite precise on some points so I don’t like loose assertions.

I urge you to ask why you are writing the article. Is it to help people improve their lives? Is it to gain readers? Is it to help them understand the status quo or past? I’m only really interested in the first one.
Without defining self-esteem, a debate about can easily be about prejudice and judging others.

Many people use it incorrectly as meaning “You are acting in ways that ways that do not reflect my values”. That strikes me as intolerance rather than low self-esteem.

Nathaniel Branden, the writer of several books on self-esteem defines self-esteem as “the disposition to experience oneself as competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and as worthy of happiness.” These challenges of life including finding and keeping a job and caring for oneself.

This is a long way from giving each child a medal to make them feel good about themselves. You have to experience life to feel that you can meet its challenges.

More on good and bad definitions of self-esteem

http://www.overcoming-low-self-esteem.com/tag/self-esteem-is-not

To make strong statements that self-esteem makes you healthier, wealthier, happier and a better Christian/ Muslim/ believer, one should have large scale studies to back up those statement. The definition of self-esteem should be clear.

As for treatments for low self-esteem, if you are measuring treatments or interventions, there should be control participants to compare against and neither participant nor facilitator should know whether the treatment or the placebo is being applied. That might work for aspirin, but it can be difficult in a talking cure.

Some challenge the idea that self-esteem is a good thing. Much of this seems to be based on a warped and poor definition of self-esteem.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=exploding-the-self-esteem

I offer people a coaching service to raise their self-esteem, i.e., to help them raise their sense of competence to meet the challenges of life and their sense of being worthy of love. I see these things as self-evidently worthwhile or indeed, I leave it to the client to determine that they are. If they want self-esteem in order to be happy, they are better off doing coaching focused on being happy, their true goal. For my clients, self-esteem is the concept that they are after.

More on N. Branden

http://www.overcoming-low-self-esteem.com/category/theme/six-pillars-of-self-esteem-nathaniel-branden

Do they?
It’s possible to feel that we are worthy of love and competent to move home and find a job and then also sleep around, get into the wrong relationship and do badly in our job. We can feel awful about ourselves and useless at times, but happen to be very good at reviewing legal documents. Self-esteem is a broad, long-ish view of ourselves and doesn’t necessarily have direct impact on our behaviours and relationships.

I see insecurity as different to self-esteem in ways such as you can feel insecure about your job due to the economy but feel that you are a competent person worthy of love.

You could search for Twitter quotes about self-esteem. People on twitter talk openly about low self-esteem.

I can help people raise their self esteem. People don’t even seem to think it can be raised, never mind setting aside time and money to work with a coach.

You haven’t asked about the solution or way to improve one’s life if one is insecure or has low self-esteem. We can spend endless time thinking of excuses and explanations about why and how there is something wrong with us. I believe that any treatment should be focused on the client’s goals and building strengths and resourceful states or feelings.
Are you interested in writing about “Clean Language” as a coaching treatment for insecurity and low self-esteem? I could explain it to you or give you a session. I’m currently working with someone to see if I can raise someone’s self-esteem with three hours of coaching.
Would you do a follow up article on the effectiveness of Clean Language coaching?
How do you measure self-esteem? One widely used method is the Rosenberg scale. It asks about how the participant feels about him/herself, if their see their good qualities and whether they have much to be proud of.

http://www.wwnorton.com/college/psych/psychsci/media/rosenberg.htm

Self esteem and age

http://scienceblog.com/377/global-self-esteem-study-yields-no-feel-good-results/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-esteem

Kind Regards,
Brian Birch

Whether you are overcoming low-self esteem or not, check out these videos to understand more about Clean Language and Clean Space.

Clean Language taster session – free
Clean Language training

How is Clean Language used by different people?

How to use Clean

What draws us to Clean?

Clean Training is like what?

Clean in Business

Wendy Sullivan

Metaphor

Eddy Smerdon’s Clean Language Summer School testimonial

Clean Summer School Introduction

Whether you are overcoming low-self esteem or not, I hope you enjoy understanding more about Clean Language and Clean Space.

Here is an excerpt from a “Yahoo Answers” reply about whom to ask about overcomoing low self-esteem.

Well done for considering asking for help among people around you.
If you think you are depressed, it would be good to see your doctor.
There are people who can offer “talking therapy” help. Your school counsellor, a psychotherapist and me (a self-eteem life coach – more about that later).
You say you don’t want to talk to your family about it. Can I break this down?
- you obviously don’t want to tell them you have an issue and want them to help you talk it through and solve it
- if you went to someone else, would it be ok to say to your family you are talking to someone about some issues; that you want to talk to someone new and not bring up the detail with people you see day to day? This option would give you some privacy, but would also let them support you in much more general ways. They could help you pick someone to go to. Should you pick someone you have heard good things about? The most expensive? The best trained? then your family could help you assess that the strategy is working; do you feel better? Do you have the tools to cope with life? If I was to work with you, I’d need a parent to authorise the amount and type of communication, but the content could be largely private.

I’m a self-esteem life coach.  I don’t charge for charities and my research project.  I’ve just started a project to see if my coaching method, “Clean Language” produces a 10% improvement in self-esteem in 3 hours for participants who engage in the conversation openly, honestly and fully.

So if you sometimes feel bad about yourself, don’t feel proud of your achievements or feel useless, I’m aiming to prove that I can help people feel less bad, less often and good more often.

How can one measure self-esteem?

There is a questionnaire of 10 questions used widely to measure self-esteem.  Scores are often between 10 and 25 our of 30.  For scores under 20, I hope to raise people’s score by 3 points over 3 hour long sessions.  If we do three sessions over 3 weeks, I will measure success if the score of a test in the fourth week is 10% larger than the score of week one.

If you don’t like the idea of putting numbers to feelings and experiences, then let’s just say I think you’ll feel “noticably better” in three hours.

I use Clean Language – what is it?

Clean Language is a questioning method that uses “clean” questions which have almost no assumptions.  The facilitator (me) focuses on the client’s information and we use the client’s words to model or show what’s going on for them, including choices, traits, patterns and challenges.

I use Clean Language with clients to increase their self-awareness, self-acceptance and self-esteem. By focusing my questions on the client’s words and feelings and metaphors, I can find out when self-esteem drops, what choices the client has and what needs to happen for self-esteem to improve. I focus on the client for the answers, but give them the space to tune in to that. It’s the most effective and practical methodology I’ve found and I’ve received excellent feedback on it.

These posts talk about Clean Language.

Will it work for anyone?

I think people who respond openly, honestly and fully to the questions will benefit measurably.  I’m targeting over 18s without serious related medical conditions.

So if you are interested in being a client on this project and want three hours coaching at no charge, contact me.