The Self-Esteem Workbook

I am a psychotherapist working at a mental health agency. Working with many teen-age girls who are swept up by the media and their peers, only to fall and be hurt causes me to go further. In a group setting, we are working on self esteem without making Narcissistic personalities to improve the self-esteem. Core Self is most important, not the external. Forming the Core Self is more difficult in a society that says otherwise. It's a great book.

this book is one of the most commonly borrowed books by patients. they report liking it and it helping them in making progress in their journey to greater sense of self worth. i personally liked it, as well. easy read. not the most academically-based, researched book, but, then, it's supposed to be an applied workbook. another reviewer wrote about not liking the anti-gay sentiments. i, maybe not as astute as that writer, found that the issue wasn't as much anti-gay as it is the person who is gay who doesn't accept one's self. either way, it's turned out to be an excellent book, i would recommend it and i think that it was definitely worth the purchase price, new.

The book is a collection of materials and exercises which the author developed for a college-level course on self-esteem. Like the other customer who gave it two stars, I also feel it is very much geared towards a student audience, or generally towards young adults. A lot of the examples are taken from performing on tests, studying hard, and generally from the hard work of building up competence and a sense of self-efficacy. There is very little on building up self-esteem in interpersonal relationships (though arguably, young adults would benefit from that as much as anybody else - anyone remember their teenage lovesickness?). Also, the exercises seem a mish-mash between a cognitive approach similar to McKay's self-esteem workbook, and one that helps you re-frame your narrative about yourself.

Finally, apart from a single, not very helpful, nod towards readers with disabilities, there is no discussion or even awareness of how stigma and discrimination can affect self-esteem, never mind any exercises which could help in such a case.

My recommendation for better self-esteem for people from a wide variety of backgrounds would be Better Boundaries: Owning and Treasuring Your Life, which, despite the title, is actually in large part about building self-esteem, since the authors state: "You protect what you care about". Since they see personal boundaries as a result of self-esteem, they set out to help people build it. As a middle-aged, disabled man who is already competent and successful in his work, but whose self-esteem issues mostly center around romantic rejection, I found this work vastly superior.

Received this itme as stated in GOOD condition and in a timely manner. I originally purchased this book and it was stolen. Im so glad that I didnt have to kick out the originial price from Barnes and Nobles again - Whew, thanks for helping me save BIG bucks!