To make the question narrower, let’s say how should I deal with a girl who has a very low self-esteem? We’re close friends and we may take this to the next level and form a relationship. IMO this is what we both want to. The problem is that she freaks out when message I her late. It seems that she thinks that I may consider her questions stupid or something.
What is the best way to soothe her and make a balance in our friendship/later, relationship?
Just reassure her that that isn’t the case.
Give her compliment her and make her feel special
I use to have really low self-esteem but it is a lot better now, thanks to my boy friend.
When we started to go out, I was so nervous that he didn’t actual like me, because I thought who would like me?
But he tells me every day that he loves me, and helps me through things I’m not good at, gently and with reassurance.
She just needs to know that she does mean something to you and you don’t think she is stupid
This may take a while, and it may be hard work at times, but her self-esteem with go up and she will become confident.
praise her more often. You are great!
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You can’t soothe her. All you can do is reassure her that you value her as a person, a friend, as a potential girlfriend. Compliment her, make her feel special, and treat her right. That’s all you can do.
Usually, a person with low self esteem has confidence issues so deeply ingrained in themselves no one but themselves can change it. She needs to WANT to improve her self esteem or nothing will change. She needs to realize that you not replying to a message within five minutes is NOT a way of ignoring her; perhaps you’re busy, or perhaps you didn’t get the message. You can’t change anything about that. And trust me…unless she starts changing it, you will get VERY tired and frustrated with it in the long run.
Honestly, I was like that early on in my relationship with my boyfriend. I would "freak" over silly stupid things, and I would get upset if he didn’t reply to me quickly. I thought he was ignoring me, was mad at me, or thought what I was saying was stupid or pointless. He got really sick of it, and I got really sick of feeling like that. I still do, sometimes, but really I just had to drill it in my head that he loves me and that whatever I was thinking ("Oh, he’s ignoring me!" or "I sounded like an idiot, he probably thinks I’m so stupid…") was probably not true. Because I think that’s the biggest issue here; she thinks, and gets herself worked up on something that she’s afraid of…but isn’t really true. She needs to force herself to realize that, and you can’t really help. All you can do is sit there and wait until she wants to do that for herself.
It’s not that she doesn’t trust you. She’s just incredibly insecure with herself.
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Personal experience has led me to believe that low self-esteem can’t ever really be "fixed", but that it’s more of a personality characteristic than it is a condition. Or, in other words, it’s something about the person that’s pretty much there for life.
This said, it can be helped a bit by finding and addressing reasons for concern. I doubt this actually fixes self-esteem so much as removes factors that would cause self-esteem to become an issue. Still, it seems to work in practice.
So, if someone has low self-esteem, you can’t really change it, but you can assure them that you don’t think her questions are dumb often enough that they believe it. Now this doesn’t actually improve her self-esteem, but it does help deal with that particular consquence of it.
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Just reassure her that that isn’t the case.
Give her compliment her and make her feel special
I use to have really low self-esteem but it is a lot better now, thanks to my boy friend.
When we started to go out, I was so nervous that he didn’t actual like me, because I thought who would like me?
But he tells me every day that he loves me, and helps me through things I’m not good at, gently and with reassurance.
She just needs to know that she does mean something to you and you don’t think she is stupid
This may take a while, and it may be hard work at times, but her self-esteem with go up and she will become confident.
References :
There is nothing that you can to do change another person.
You can only hope to influence her by being a good example and a supportive friend. Perhaps you should talk to her about the fact that you think her self-esteem is lower than it should be and ask if she would be willing to work on it? Of course, if her self esteem is low, she may just take that as criticism and freak out more.
Otherwise, I think all you can do is reassure her constantly, and hope that she will eventually trust you.
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