Online Therapy for Women, Licensed in PA, NJ & DC
Therapy for Low Self-Esteem
You don't see yourself the way everyone else already does. It's time you did.
Providing online therapy for low self-esteem, serving women across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C.
People see your strength. You see everything you're not.
And the two of you have never quite agreed.
People tell you you're doing great, and you can't quite let it land. Your inner critic is louder than any compliment, harsher than anyone's ever been to your face, and it doesn't go quiet just because you got it right this time. You know your accomplishments. You just don't feel them the way you know them. You give yourself less grace than you'd give a stranger, less patience than you'd give a friend having the exact same struggle. Somewhere along the way, you stopped being on your own side, and being hard on yourself started to feel like the only way to keep it together.
Maybe You…
Brush off a compliment before it has a chance to land, or immediately explain why it isn't really true.
Give yourself less grace than you'd give literally anyone else, friend, stranger, even someone who did far worse.
Struggle to ask for what you need, and settle for less instead, hoping someone will just notice.
Find yourself in relationships where you give more than you get back, and don't quite know how to change that.
Hear a running list of everything you did wrong, long after everyone else has moved on and forgotten it.
Feel love and care fully for others, but have a hard time believing you're worth that same care in return.
You're allowed to be on your own side.
How I Help
We'll start with the voice that judges you more harshly than it would ever judge anyone else. Using Internal Family Systems, we'll get to know that inner critic, not as the truth about who you are, but as a part that learned, somewhere along the way, that being hard on you was the only way to keep you safe, motivated, or acceptable. Understanding that is what finally makes room for a kinder voice to exist alongside it.
Self-esteem is built early, often in how consistently we were seen, soothed, and valued by the people who raised us. Using Attachment Theory, we'll look at where the gap between how others see you and how you see yourself first opened up, so you can understand it as something that happened to you, not something wrong with you.
And because you can't think your way into feeling worthy, we'll use Narrative Therapy to help you notice the story you've been telling about yourself, "I'm too much," "I don't deserve this," "I have to earn love", and start writing one that's actually true. Change here comes from practicing self-compassion the same way you practice anything else, small, repeated, and uncomfortable at first.
What We’ll Work On
Letting a compliment actually land.
Practice sitting with praise instead of deflecting it, and notice what it's like to just say thank you.
Giving yourself the grace you give everyone else.
Catch the double standard in real time, and start treating yourself with the same patience you'd offer a friend.
Asking for what you need instead of hoping someone notices.
Practice naming it out loud, even when it feels like too much, and see that it usually isn't.
Making peace with your inner critic.
Understand what that voice has been trying to protect you from, so it stops needing to be so harsh to keep you safe.
Rewriting the story you tell about yourself.
Trade "I have to earn love" and "I'm too much" for something closer to the truth, and start acting like you believe it.
You've given everyone else your grace. It's your turn.
Frequently Asked Questions
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How you feel about yourself shapes nearly every decision you make, who you let close, what you ask for, what you settle for. Low self-esteem isn't a mood, it's a lens, and left alone, it tends to get more entrenched over time, not less. It's absolutely worth addressing directly.
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Because how others see you and how you see yourself develop separately, and the second one is shaped by a much harsher, more constant voice than anyone else has ever used on you. That gap doesn't close just by hearing more compliments. It closes by learning to trust your own perspective on yourself, not just theirs.
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Often, yes. Self-esteem forms early, largely through how consistently we were seen, valued, and responded to by the people who raised us. In therapy, we use Attachment Theory to look at where that pattern started, so you can understand it as something shaped by experience, not evidence of something wrong with you.
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You don't need a dramatic story for low self-esteem to be real. It can build quietly, through subtle patterns like conditional approval, comparison, or simply never being told you were enough as you were. Not having an obvious reason doesn't make what you're feeling any less worth working through.
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Not entirely, and that's not really the goal. Caring what people think is normal and even useful sometimes. The problem is when their opinion outweighs your own, or when you can't function until you know you're approved of. Therapy helps you care less desperately, not less at all, so their opinion becomes information, not verdict.
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Both, but feeling tends to change through practice, not insight alone. We'll work with the part of you that judges harshly, using approaches like Internal Family Systems and self-compassion practice, so the shift happens in how you actually treat yourself day to day, not just in what you understand intellectually.