— SELF-ESTEEM & SELF-WORTH —
Self-esteem therapy for the person whose worth has always had to be earned
MyMindset NYC · Online therapy · Licensed in NY, FL & DC
There's a voice that tells you it wasn't good enough. It has been there so long you stopped hearing it as a voice.
It used to work. It got you the grades, the job, the reputation for being the one who delivers. Now it wakes you at four in the morning and calls it motivation.
Online therapy for adults in New York, Florida, and Washington, D.C.No waitlist. Most people start within a week.
— WHAT IT IS —
What is self-esteem therapy?
Self-esteem therapy looks at how you learned to value yourself, and at what that valuation is costing you now. Not affirmations, and not talking yourself into confidence. We work on where the measurement came from and whether you still agree with it.
Most people arrive with a version of the same problem: the trust they have in other people's judgement is intact, and the trust they have in their own is not.
You don't need to be in crisis to be here. Plenty of people doing this work look successful from outside, and that's part of what makes it hard to name.
— WHERE IT STARTED —
Where low self-esteem comes from
The harsh things you say to yourself were said to you first, or around you, or about you. Almost nobody arrives having invented their own inner critic.
So one of the first questions is whose voice it actually is. A parent. An adult who was around when you were small. A teacher. A message from the culture you grew up in that got repeated until it stopped sounding like an opinion.
None of this requires blaming anyone. A belief you absorbed at nine was not a decision you made, and it doesn't have to be one you keep.
— PERFECTIONISM —
Perfectionism and self-esteem
Perfectionism isn't a work ethic. It's a rule about what you're allowed to be worth, and the rule keeps moving.
You reach the standard and the standard relocates. Nothing lands as done. The achievement that would have thrilled you two years ago is now the baseline you're measured against.
It shows up as the opposite of what people expect. Not polish. Procrastination, avoidance, decisions you circle for weeks, and work that only starts once you've manufactured an emergency to push against. If you need pressure, a deadline or an enemy to begin, that's perfectionism, not laziness.
And it worked. That's the part most advice skips. The standards got you here. You're good at what you do partly because something in you refused to let anything be adequate. We don't start by taking that away.
What we look at is what the current settings cost. The edge you live on. The worry that you're about to be found out. How rarely you make your own list.
- Rereading something you already finished, looking for the flaw
- Not starting until the pressure is bad enough to force it
- A decision you’ve circled for weeks because no option is clean
- Living in the next thing, so the present never fully arrives
- Holding other people to the standard too, then feeling ungenerous about it
- Calling it high standards when other people call it hard on yourself
- Getting the praise and feeling like an imposter anyway
In session we look at which of these are actually yours, and what each one is protecting.
— FIRST-GENERATION —
When your worth got tied to what you produce
You brought home an eighty and were asked about the twenty.
That's the version people tell me most often. Not cruelty. A household where achievement was what got noticed, and where you were told you'd have to work ten times harder than everyone else. That was true, which is what makes it so hard to put down.
Praise arrived attached to output. The grade, the award, the offer. So you learned what you were worth by what you had most recently produced, and you have been re-earning it ever since.
Underneath it is a debt. Your parents gave up a great deal to put you here, and somewhere you decided that succeeding is how you prove the trade was worth making. That belief doesn't respond to logic, because it was never a logical conclusion. It was a child's attempt to make sense of what the adults around them had sacrificed.
The question that tends to go unasked is whether what you're chasing is yours. A lot of people get a long way in before anyone asks them that, and a lot of people can't answer it the first time.
— ADHD —
Self-esteem, ADHD, and a late diagnosis
Some people doing this work were diagnosed with ADHD in their thirties or forties. Some haven't been diagnosed and are starting to wonder.
What they have in common is years of masking: compensating hard enough that nobody noticed, driven by a fear of being seen as lazy. The compensation worked, and it cost a great deal, and the exhaustion that follows it has its own shape.
A late diagnosis often arrives with grief. There's relief at the explanation, and underneath it a long reckoning with how differently things might have gone, and how much of the self-criticism was never warranted.
I'm not a diagnostician and I don't do ADHD assessment. What I work with is what masking did to how you see yourself, and where ADHD overlaps with the anxiety, depression or trauma that usually got named first.
I'm somatic, attachment, trauma and IFS-informed. Here's what that means when the subject is how you treat yourself.
We find out where the critic lives in your body. Before we do anything with the content of the self-talk, we find out what happens physically when it starts. Most people can locate it once they're asked. That matters, because a belief you can feel is one you can work with.
We work out who it belongs to. Once you can hear the sentence in somebody else's voice, it stops being a fact about you and becomes something somebody said.
We treat the critic as a part with a job, not an enemy. It took that job early and it has been doing it for decades. We get curious about what it's afraid will happen if it stops, and there is usually gratitude in this before there's any change.
We go looking for the rules. Everyone has them, few people have read them lately. What am I allowed to need. How much rest has to be earned. We bring them into the open and ask whether they still fit the person you are now.
We redefine what you're measuring. Not with affirmations you don't believe. By working out your actual values, strengths and character, and where each one showed up in your past and shows up now. Your worth needs somewhere to rest that isn't your output.
We make the goals smaller. When the standards are impossible, so is starting. Breaking the thing into actions you can actually take is how motivation stops having to come from dread.
This isn't a quick fix, and you don't need the whole story ready on day one.
— HOW THE WORK GOES —
How I work with this
— WHAT TENDS TO CHANGE —
What tends to change
Nobody can promise you an outcome, and I won't. These are the things people tend to notice.
The voice stops sounding like the truth. It still arrives. It stops arriving with authority, and you get a moment to decide whether to take its advice.
You can use it or not use it. The drive doesn't have to be dismantled. It becomes something you can turn up when it's genuinely useful and turn down when it isn't, instead of something that runs whether or not you need it.
Motivation stops requiring an emergency. Starting without manufactured pressure is one of the clearest signs the work is landing.
Decisions come faster. The circling shortens. You trust your own read enough to act on it.
You ask for help. Managing everything alone stops looking like competence and starts looking like what it cost.
You can let something be finished. And occasionally notice it was good.
Your worth detaches from your output. Slowly, and not completely at first. People describe it as finally being measured by something they actually chose.
Rest stops needing to be earned. You get honest about your own capacity, which is harder than it sounds for someone who has been running on override since childhood.
The standards you hold others to ease too. That change often lands before the one about yourself, and it's usually the first thing the people around you notice.
— IS THIS A FIT? —
Who this is and isn't for
This is probably a fit if
- You’re an adult in New York, Florida, or Washington, D.C. during your sessions
- Nobody around you would guess this is a problem you have
- You’d rather understand where the standard came from than be talked out of it
- You can meet weekly or biweekly
- You’d rather not explain your family or your culture before the real work starts
And probably not if
- You want an ADHD assessment or diagnosis. I don’t do diagnostic testing, and I can point you toward someone who does
- You want confidence techniques without looking at where the self-criticism came from
- You need in-network insurance, Medicaid or Medicare
- You need crisis or same-day support. This isn’t a crisis service. If that’s where you are, call or text 988, or look for a non-police warmline
— WHAT TO EXPECT —
What sessions look like
| Format | Online, on a HIPAA-compliant platform |
|---|---|
| Length | 45–60 minutes |
| Frequency | Weekly or biweekly to start |
| Fee | $225, with a sliding scale from $140 |
| Where | Anywhere in New York, Florida, or Washington D.C. |
| Languages | English, with Haitian Kreyòl welcome in session |
| First step | A free 20-minute consultation |
— BEFORE YOU BOOK —
Questions about self-esteem therapy
What’s the difference between self-esteem and self-worth?
You can have high self-esteem in the areas you perform well in and very little self-worth underneath. That combination is common in people who look like they’re doing well, and it’s usually the harder of the two to work on.
Is low self-esteem the same as low confidence?
Confidence tends to respond to practice. Self-esteem responds to what you believe you’re for, which is a different piece of work.
Where does low self-esteem come from?
Almost nobody invents their own inner critic. Working out whose voice it is doesn’t mean blaming anyone. It means seeing the belief as something you absorbed rather than something you concluded. More on growing up with that here →
Do you work with perfectionism?
We don’t start by lowering your standards. They got you here, and taking them away without knowing what they guard is how people end up back where they started. We look at what the standard is protecting you from, and at what it currently costs to keep meeting it.
I was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. Can this help?
I don’t do ADHD assessment or diagnosis. If that’s what you need, I’ll point you toward someone who does it.
Can I speak Kreyòl in session?
How much does therapy cost, and do you take insurance?
— WHENEVER YOU’RE READY —
You've been earning it a long time
Twenty minutes, free, on the phone. You tell me what's going on. I tell you how I'd work with it. Nobody signs anything. If I'm not the right person, I'll say so, and I'll help you find who is.
No waitlist. If you reach out this week, we can usually start next week.