Coaching practices for How to Deal with Someone with Low Self Esteem

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For How to Deal with Someone with Low Self Esteem, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• The person I’m trying to help has basically given up on themselves
• If a friend told me they’d failed like this I’d be warm and understanding in a heartbeat, but I turn on myself with a cruelty I’d never aim at anyone I love
• I keep hitting the exact insecurity my partner is most ashamed of
• Every time I try to tell myself I’m not the worthless, incompetent person I think I am, the whole thing snaps right back
• I love someone who’s struggling and I keep swooping in to manage it all for them, but I’m starting to see that treating them like they can’t handle it might be quietly telling them they can’t

Practices that may help

1. Affirm genuine strengths and effort
   Notice and name real strengths the person brings — not empty praise.
   Motivational Interviewing, Made Practical
2. Apply self-kindness as actively as you would to a friend
   Treat yourself with the same warmth and understanding you would offer a close friend in the same situation.
   Self-Worth vs. Self-Esteem
3. Avoiding anti-ideal confirmation: the sculpting that harms
   Identify the ways you routinely treat your partner as their non-ideal (worst) self, and stop.
   The Michelangelo Phenomenon: How Partners Sculpt Each Other
4. Update the self-concept incrementally
   Revise one specific self-belief at a time — not the whole identity at once.
   Self-Verification Theory, Made Practical
5. Trust their capacity to find their own way
   Hold the belief that they can move through this — don’t treat them as fragile or as a problem to manage.
   Holding Space
6. Shame-attacking exercises
   Do something mildly embarrassing on purpose to prove you can survive and function through discomfort.
   Unconditional Self-Acceptance
7. Replace critic monologue with compassionate self-talk
   Speak to yourself the way you would speak to a close friend in the same situation.
   Working With Your Inner Critic
8. Shift the goal from high self-esteem to authentic self-regard
   Stop trying to feel good about yourself and start aiming for honest, compassionate self-knowledge.
   Self-Worth vs. Self-Esteem
9. Be Fair: include yourself in the fairness you extend to others
   Apply the same standards of fairness to yourself that you would to someone you respect.
   FAST: DBT’s Skill for Maintaining Self-Respect in Relationships
10. Cultivate identity-safe relationships
    Build relationships in which being known accurately — not just approved of — is the norm.
    Self-Verification Theory, Made Practical

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