Therapy for Low Self-Worth & Self-Esteem

Virtual Therapy in California

You deserve to feel at home in yourself

You work hard. You show up. You take care of people. From the outside, you may look capable and successful. And still, somewhere underneath it all, there may be a quiet belief: I'm not good enough. Maybe you learned that you had to achieve to be worthy, keep everyone happy to be loved, or become smaller to avoid rejection.

Low Self-Worth, Trauma & Shame

Low self-esteem isn't always simply a matter of “thinking more positively.” For many people, struggles with self-worth are connected to childhood trauma, emotional neglect, abuse, racial or cultural experiences, difficult relationships, or other experiences that shaped how they learned to see themselves. You may have learned to stay small, keep the peace, achieve, or take care of others in order to feel safe or accepted. Healing can involve understanding these patterns while creating new ways of liberating yourself.

“There's no prerequisites to worthiness. You're born worthy, and I think that's a message a lot of women need to hear.”

Viola Davis

Actress, Writer, Producer

Understanding Negative Core Beliefs

Common Negative Core Beliefs

Negative core beliefs are deeply held beliefs about ourselves that can develop through painful, repeated, or overwhelming experiences.

They might sound like:
I’m not enough.
I’m unlovable.
I’m a failure.
I’m powerless.
I’m unsafe.

These voices aren’t always conscious. They can show up through overworking, avoiding relationships, second-guessing yourself, or having difficulty receiving care.

These beliefs aren’t character flaws or moral failures. They can develop as ways of making sense of experiences within relationships, families, cultures, or environments where your needs weren’t fully recognized or supported.

Perfectionism

Perfectionism can look like ambition, but underneath it may be fear.

Fear of failure. Disappointment. Criticism. Rejection.

Maybe being exceptional became a way to feel safe or worthy.

Eventually, perfectionism can make rest feel uncomfortable. You may feel guilty when you’re not being productive or believe you’re never doing enough.

But you are not here simply to produce. Your life is more than what you accomplish.

You are allowed to take breaks while there are still things left undone.

"I'm Not Good Enough"

You’ve felt all your life that you were not good enough for your parents, at work, in relationships, as a partner, as a friend.

There may always be another goal, another accomplishment, another way you could improve.

And so you keep proving.

But what if there isn’t anything left to prove?

You don’t have to be more successful, more productive, smaller, or constantly meeting other people’s expectations to be worthy. Your worth isn’t something you have to earn through achievement, perfectionism, or taking care of everyone around you.

You’re born worthy, just as you are.

You don’t have to become better to know you are worthy.

People-Pleasing

You learned to be agreeable, helpful, flexible, and understanding. Also, you became good at anticipating what everyone else need.

But also, you may have stopped asking yourself what YOU needed.

People-pleasing can become so automatic that your own needs feel selfish, undeserved, foreign, corrupt, and unfamiliar.

Our work together can help you dismantle these concepts, understand patterns your wonderful self developed to survive, and reconnect with your own voice—not so you stop caring about others, but so caring for them no longer requires abandoning yourself.

I also work with adults in the AAPI diaspora community specifically on these patterns.

Shame & Self-blame

Shame sounds different for everyone. For me, it sounds like “There is something wrong with me.”

Yours may sound like blaming yourself, like “I’m bad”, “I’m too needy”, and “I should have known better”.

Shame can make us hide, isolate, and believe that if people really knew us, they wouldn’t love us.

Trauma, sexual abuse, racism, family expectations, and rejection can all contribute to people carrying the feelings of shame.

Our sessions together can help you become curious about where shame comes from rather than automatically believing it.

You are not the shame you carry.

Approval-Seeking

When your worth depends on other people’s approval, peace can feel like work.

You may constantly wonder:

Are they upset with me?

Did I say the wrong thing?

Do they like me?

Did I disappoint them?

Approval can provide temporary relief, but when it becomes the source of worth, you have to keep going back for more.

Our sessions together helps you to build a relationship with yourself that isn’t dependent on everyone else agreeing with your choices, and you may start to talk to yourself with in more compassionate way.

Sexual Abuse and Self-Blame

Sexual abuse can profoundly affect the way a person understands self- worth, and when abuse happens, and survivors have nowhere to turn to, they often look inward for explanations of their pains and suffering.

If you’re a survivor of sexual abuse, you may carry beliefs like:

I should have stopped it.

I should have known better.

I can’t trust anyone, even myself.

Something about me caused this.

But responsibility belongs to the person who chose to harm you.

What happened was not your fault.

Our sessions together can help separate what happened from the shame and self-blame that may have become attached to your identity, and work toward reclaiming your voice and your truth, trusting yourself, and liberating yourself from punishment.

Self-Worth and Boundaries

When you don’t believe your needs matter, boundaries can feel selfish.

You may feel guilty saying no or tolerate behavior that hurts you because asking for something different feels worse.

But boundaries aren’t a declaration that other people don’t matter.

They are a recognition that you matter too.

You can love someone and still have limits. You can disappoint someone and remain a good person.

Sometimes building self-worth means learning that you don’t have to disappear to maintain connection.

Racial and Cultural Experiences

Our beliefs about ourselves aren’t shaped only by childhood or family.

They can also be shaped by racism, stereotypes, exclusion, colorism, microaggressions, and cultural expectations.

You may begin to believe you need to work harder, look different, speak differently, or achieve more to be accepted.

Our therapy sessions together can help you examine the difference between:

Who you are

and

what the world has taught you to believe about who you are.

EMDR for Negative Beliefs

EMDR can be one approach for working with experiences that helped create and reinforce negative beliefs.

Traumatic experiences can become connected to beliefs such as:

I’m powerless.

I’m unsafe.

I’m not good enough.

I’m to blame.

I don’t matter.

EMDR can help you work with traumatic memories and the beliefs connected to them while developing more adaptive ways of understanding yourself.

The goal isn’t to erase what happened, but to help the past become less controlling of the present.

Asian American Family Expectations

For many Asian Americans, self-worth can become deeply connected to family expectations.

Success may feel like gratitude. Achievement may feel like repayment for sacrifice. Being responsible may feel like love. Disappointing your family may feel like failing them.

Therapy can help you explore:

What do I genuinely value?

What was I taught I was supposed to value?

Which expectations still feel like mine?

You can honor your family while also creating a life that feels like your own.

Brainspotting and Self-Worth

Sometimes self-worth struggles aren’t something we can simply think our way through.

You may understand intellectually that you’re worthy while your body feels something completely different.

Your chest tightens.

Your stomach drops.

You freeze.

You disconnect.

Brainspotting offers a body-based way of working with experiences that may not be fully accessible through words.

Together, we can pay attention to what emerges without requiring you to explain everything perfectly.

How I can help you...

My approach integrates Brainspotting and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), along with Liberation Psychology, Critical Race Theory, identity and belonging work, and exploration of the intersections of culture, race, gender, and sexuality. I incorporate somatic awareness, mindfulness, and self-compassion to help you notice how stress and trauma can be held in the body, while creating space to process traumatic experiences and develop greater awareness of the patterns you learned or inherited.

You and I will explore how trauma, racism, oppression, family patterns, cultural experiences, and identities may shape the way you see yourself, relate to others, and experience your body and emotions.

Our sessions together help to put language to your experiences, understand intergenerational and learned patterns, challenge internalized oppressive beliefs, and reconnect with your identity and sense of belonging. I support you in developing greater self-compassion, resilience, agency, and liberating yourself to live more authentically—while reclaiming the parts of yourself, your culture, and your story that may have been silenced

Healing isn’t about becoming someone else. It’s about creating more space to be fully yourself.

Schedule a free 15 minutes phone consultation

619-719-5567

angel@crescentshorespsychotherapy.com

I live and work on unceded land of Kumeyaay Nation.
To learn more and join me in supporting Indigenous communities,
visit Native Governance Center, Museum of Us, and Native Lands.