Ashley
In my experience, there have not been many people in my life trying to give me self-esteem. Another problem is that when someone did I would take what they said as disingenuous (I know this is a cognitive distortion). In my support group I go to (and I am sure you are going to say this as part of your self-esteem thread) we give ourselves a pat on the back for every attempt at some cognitive restructuring. Basically when you have done a negative thought sheet and identified a more positive tilt on the thought, and you use this new thought in a situation. You use the positive thought to change your thinking pattern to an old negative thought or situation you pat yourself on the back for just an attempt at trying to change your old habit or thought. In this way you are not waiting for someone else to pat you on the back you are doing it yourself. A kind of funny thing happened to me I had identified that I should stop seeing the right and wrong in what people are saying to me. Every time I started to try to point out to my father my thought on a subject as being write and therefore his as being wrong I would stop myself from saying the statement. My father misconstrued this situation as I would begin to start talking and then stop because in had caught myself trying to prove what he said was wrong, My father thought that when I was stopping myself from expressing my thought that this was anxiety an inability (brain freeze) to say what I wanted. When in fact I was changing my thinking to stop trying to find the right and wrong in trivial situations. Therefore, where I was changing my thinking using CBT the other person misinterpreted it as a form of anxiety.
Dizzy