Healthy Living Books Books

Rating: - Confused and badly structured
While I found I could identify with much of the symptoms and causes of symptoms in this book I found it badly written and unstructured to the extent of being almost unreadable in parts. Also, the self-help program was based on the assumptions that situations that are affected by your low self esteem have TANGIBLE and OBSERVABLE outcomes which is not generally appropriate to myself. I don't mean to knock this book outright - I found it useful in helping identify certain causes of my social-anxiety and can see that it could be very helpful for certain anxieties. Unfortunately however, not for me.

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Rating: - A waste of time...
I bought this book because I have always had low self esteem about my appearance, ever since days of name calling, ridicule, teasing in my school days about how I looked.

This book is as much use as an inflatable dart board if you suffer low self esteem because you are self conscious and feel negative about parts of yourself.

It gives an example of 'Karen', the girl who is overweight and her self esteem is ruined when she weighs herself and sees she has put on weight.
Her way to overcome this is to believe she is attractive, think of her qualities and even if she feels fat she should go swimming.
What a load of rubbish.
What about Karen's negative self image? What about Karen being self conscious over her weight and believing if people see she is fat that they will judge her negatively and ugly. What about Karen's beliefs that she is fat and ugly and believing no guy would be interested in her? What about Karen's beliefs that fat means ugly? What about when Karen looks in the mirror and sees she is fat and thinks negatively of herself? You cannot just believe 'Oh I am attractive' when you don't believe it.
This book does not tackle people feeling self conscious.

The book does however describe what self esteem is very well and shows some nice diagrams on how low self esteem reflects in low self confidence and anxiety.

But this book is basically a dud. The only people this book will help is people who just lack a bit of belief in themselves.
Throughout the book its funny that it gives examples on mainly 2 examples - someone who believes they are not good enough because his Dad said he wasn't and someone who believes they are bad because her step dad raped her. Your typical self esteem victims eh? It doesn't give examples of Karen who believes she is fat and ugly. Why? Because the writer knew that she hadn't a clue how to tackle such a problem.

Absolute waste of time. I could write a better book than this.

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Rating: - Definitely the first step in tackling low self-esteem
I was given this book by my Clinical Psychologist at the beginning of my therapy for depression, anxiety and low self-esteem. Nearly every page that I read shows me where I have been going wrong with my thought process. The book explains clearly why you have been thinking the way you have and how to reassess those negative thoughts. And she manages to do all this while making complete sense.

This book has been as important in my therapy as the sessions have been with the Clinical Psychologist.

Give it try. It should be the first thing you try to beat low self-esteem.

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Rating: - Very helpful
I found this book to be very helpful as it deals with the cause of low self esteem as well as the elements that keep it going. Obviously it will take time but knowing is half the battle and I would recommend it to anyone suffering with low self esteem or anyone interested in learning more about this issue.

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Rating: - People with low self-esteem need more than just positive thinking techniques
I did not find this book particularly helpful. Ironically, it was my therapist who recommended it to me. The problem is that it is based on the assumption that all people with low self-esteem have got to do to solve their problems is to remind themselves of all their good qualities and to stop thinking negatively about themselves. If only it was that easy for everybody! People with low self-esteem do need to change the way they think about themselves in order to feel better, but they also need people around them who care about them - family or friends - to validate those thoughts. Nobody lives in a bubble - it's all very well thinking you are a fabulous person but what good is that going to do you if nobody else on the planet agrees? All the self-help books I have read on self-esteem, such as this one, make this mistake - they ignore the role having a social network plays in maintaining self-esteem. And the fact of the matter is that many of the people out there with low self-esteem are also lonely - they don't have a lot of family and friends. What they need is not just a book that tells them how to love themselves but also help and advice on how to build their social networks.