Confidence Coaching

Dr Jim Byrne has been studying approaches to developing self-confidence for many years, and helping individual clients to improve their self-concept as a routine part of his coaching and counselling services. Although REBT has eschewed the task of developing self-esteem, seing self-esteem as part of the problem, CENT, developed by Jim Byrne, sees self-esteem as an inevitable part of the development of each individual's self-concept. If you cannot rate yourself on a social scale, you cannot label yourself, and you are thus in the clouds with the whirling dervishes! No matter how much we seek to shrink our egos, we cannot function in society without one.

Learn how to be more self-confident

Confidence Coaching Service
with Dr Jim Byrne

Learning to manage your self-concept

"Helping you to rethink your self-narrative"

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Self Confidence Coaching

Jim.Nata.Couples.pg.jpg The ‘self' is a very strange and tricky concept. It is highly emphasized in the west and downplayed in the east.

Human beings are delusional beings, who see the ‘world' through stories stored in their heads. We do not, and cannot, look out through our eyes and see ‘reality'. We are always interpreting what happens to us.

Highly prizing the ‘self' is a relatively modern idea, emanating to a large extent from the USA, and especially from Carl Rogers and Fritz Perls, at Big Sur, in California, in the 1960s onwards.

Originally, that emphasis on the self, and the value of the self, and the struggle to find the self, was meant to be liberational for the individual seeker. However, the idea was subsequently taken over by the advertising industry to serve the interests of commercial and industrial sellers of products.

Today we are bombarded with ideas of what we must buy, what we must possess, what we must flaunt, in order to be a ‘cool self'.

Individuals who do not have all those things that are highly rated in the advertising that gets presented on TV, in newspapers and magazines, and so on, now feel inadequate. They feel shame if they do not have the right kind of mobile phone (cell phone). They feel embarrassed if they do not have the latest kind of hairstyle. They feel self-hatred if they do not look the ‘right' shape, or height, or have the ‘right' skin type, or kind of eyes, and so on. They feel envy, jealousy and anger towards those others who do have all the ‘cool stuff', and the ‘smooth moves', etc.

All of these obsessions with being the kind of ‘self' that is portrayed in the movies, and in advertising, is destroying natural self-confidence. This process is all about creating a 'false self', a contrivance. The real self is the felt self which first emerged in your relationship with your mother and father, when you were a little baby, and your real self has been shaped by all of your subsequent relationships. If you feel particularly unconfident, then there might be problems in the way you have historically related to others, and that is what you need to change: Your feeling of yourself in relationship. Your non-conscious self-concept.

No amount of 'stuff' will alter that. Only counselling and therapy - or another kind of 'curative relationship' - can cause you to feel secure in your relationships with others.

If you did not feel inadequate, ill equipped with ‘goodies', you would feel much more self confident. If you were not measuring yourself against others, you would feel a natural self-confidence. If you knew how to control your perceptions and emotions, so that the worst you ever felt, when faced with threats or dangers to your self concept, was mild concern, a little disappointment, some irritation, or even a little (passing) sadness, then you could bounce back to happiness and self-confidence very quickly!

I can help you to learn how to do that -

# to be self-confident in a world which is determined to make you feel bad about yourself so you will buy all the ‘stuff' that is alleged to solve all your problems.

# to be self accepting no matter what ‘stuff' or ‘features' or ‘traits' you happen to have, and no matter whether others consider you to be ‘cool'!

# to learn to love yourself exactly the way you are right now, with all your current traits, features, and ‘stuff', or 'lack of stuff'.

# to feel loved and accepted - to feel securely attached - to some significant others.

Contact me today if you are suffering with feelings of low self-esteem, poor self-concept, or lack of self-confidence in facing the world.

Dr Jim Byrne, Doctor of Counselling,

ABC Coaching and Counselling Services

01422 843 629 (inside UK);

44 1422 843 629 (outside UK).

Email: jim.byrne@abc-counselling.com

Face to face counselling Telephone counselling The stress book About Jim Byrne Site Map Client Testimonials:2

OVERCOMING FEELINGS OF INFERIORITY AND SUPERIORITY

Being an extract from Supreme Self-Confidence in 150 days

Chapter 3. Getting Rid of Feelings of Inferiority (and Superiority!)

Back in the early 1960's, it was still fairly common to read about the "inferiority complex" in popular psychology books and magazines. This concept had been created by Alfred Adler, a former follower of Freud, who broke away around 1912, and established "individual psychology", which included an analysis of power in families. The "self-concept" was already talked about in psychology, defined as "the convictions I have about who I am", but Adler now added the concept of the "self-ideal" (or ideal self), which consists of "...the conviction of what I should be or am obliged to be (in order) to have a place (in the world)". (Mosak, 1995, page 62) . Feelings of inferiority are assumed to emerge when there is a discrepancy between the self-concept and the self-ideal: e.g.: "I am short. I should be tall". (Mosak, 1995). (Feelings of inferiority may also emerge when there is a lack of congruence [or agreement, consistency] between the self-concept and the individual's "picture of the world": e.g.: "I am weak and helpless: life is dangerous". Mosak, page 63).

Adler considered feelings of inferiority to be "normal" (meaning "usual"), so long as they are fleeting, or passing, emotional states. When individuals begin to act as if they are actually inferior, "...develop symptoms, or behave as 'sick', they are then seen as suffering from discouragement or the inferiority complex". (Mosak, 1995).

Today it seems unusual to find any references in the literature to feelings of inferiority or discouragement. Does that mean that all individuals have ceased to feel inferior, or no longer suffer psychological difficulties because of their sense of inferiority? I think not. In a society based on materialism, in which the gap between the rich and the poor is reportedly getting bigger, it seems probable that there will be now more of a false sense of inferiority among the material "losers", and more of an equally false sense of superiority among the material "winners". In other words, individuals probably still conclude that, because of my social or individual circumstances, I’m not-OK, but that bloke over there with the big car and the wads of money, he is OK. (Or sometimes the reverse: Because he is "winning", he is not-OK!)

...more here...

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"The future of reality is seldom as bad as the future of our fears".

"If only I may grow: firmer, simpler - quieter, warmer". Dag Hammerskjold

ABC Coaching and Counselling Services * Halifax * Hebden Bridge * UK *

27 Wood End, Keighley Road, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, HX7 8HJ, UK

Telephone 01422 843 629 (or 44 1422 843 629 from outside the UK)

Unless otherwise stated on these pages, all material appearing on this website is copyright (c) Jim Byrne, 2003-2011

Email: Dr Jim Byrne at ABC Coaching

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On this site you will find lots of information about coaching, counselling and psychotherapy services to help with all kinds of emotional, behavioural and relationship difficulties and problems. Counselling and therapy in Halifax, and Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, UK; in London, Leeds and Manchester, UK; in Edinburgh, York and Wilmslow; and all over the world via the telephone system and by email.

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