How did you raise your self esteem?

Or not, as the case may be. This is inspired by something daloon wrote recently. I don’t know if everyone appreciates how much he has written (in volume) but especially his contribution intellectually here. Most of us answer from time to time, sometimes I even write the proverbial one-liner only for a laugh. He has consistently written seriously to a fault, helping many a newbie with an issue, never wavering nor faultering. I salute daloon.

This was an especially sensitive issue asked by a newbie jelly, entitled, I need to move on but I don’t know how. Daloon said, somewhere in the thread, why not ask this question.

Now, it’s been discussed before, but if this isn’t moderated, perhaps there are new ideas and spins on the world of Freud, Jung, Dr. Phil and self-help books ad nauseum.

I recently posed a question about the power of Negative thinking, which quoted the NY Times quoting another paper’s article (sorry, credit where its due) on a study showing perhaps even 50% of the people who have low self esteem (L.S.E. henceforth) actually respond in a negative way to the usual “positive re-inforcement, i.e., telling yourself you are lovely, or smart, or strong or will get over this.

In some cases, possibly even one in two people, the cold hard facts, and professional help of many kinds specific to the individual, worked wonders: as opposed to those who read self-help books; be they chicken soup for the soul, or cheerios for the heart.

If you, dear (patient flutherite) reader have had low self esteem issues in the past or present: how did you deal with it? (Sorry I’m sounding like Carrie Bradshaw.)