The Self-Esteem Guided Journal: A 10-Week Program

This journal is very thorough with its guidance in your journey from discovering how you become who you are today and what you can do to change it. Each day there is a section that ask a specific personal question you need to answer and those questions require you to step back and reflect back on your life experiences. Themes include: being aware of how your "shoulds" controls your choices in life, how you developed your current self esteem level, learning acceptance etc etc... Very therapeutic!

Around this time last year I was going through a very difficult time in many areas of my life. I won't go into extreme detail, but some of these included the consistent physical and emotional abuse from my dad, a really nasty break-up from a relationship that had lasted years, and the worst relapse into anorexia that I have ever had. Needless to say, I had pretty much no self-esteem and confidence. During this time, I would frequently go to bookstores to calm or relax myself, and it was during one of these visits that I found this book. I had looked at a few others, but none of them really struck me as appealing as this one. But still, as a college student, did I really feel that I would have time to write in this 70 days in a row? Still, this rut was something I wanted to get out of, and I ended up buying this book. I was both excited and scared to start writing in this, but I forced myself to write in each and every entry. Some days were easier then others, but all required some thought that would have me feel incredibly different in a refreshing way in a matter of 10 weeks. I'm not going to say that a journal can solve all of your problems...I still had to get out of the bad situation in my house though other means, but this journal helped me incredibly in obtaining the confidence and self-esteem I needed and it really helped heal the pain from the life-long abuse and the break-up. I'm no therapist or anything--I'm barely out of my teen years--but this journal was incredibly helpful and really did a lot more then I had expected. It helped me to really feel free inside and helped me to move on from the past. A year later (I had finished this journal around mid-June last year) I am still a happy and confident person and I still think that it was through the help of this. My only recommendation if you get this journal is to be totally honest when you write. Write this as if no one else would ever see it. If you are nervous about someone else reading what you have written, set up something like a LiveJournal (livejournal.com) and set it so that only you can read the entries.

Journaling is probably one of the best ways to learn about yourself and come to terms with who you really are, what you want to do with your life, and the obstacles that stand in your way. A dedicated journal writer often finds him or herself filling up numerous journals and notebooks full of writing. While this amount of writing may be quite useful in the search for self, often the writer finds him or herself writing in circles and never getting to the heart of their issues. The Self-Esteem Guided Journal is the answer. This ten week journaling programs leads the journal writer through daily journaling themes. These themes are extremely relevant, taking the self seeker through self esteem related issues such as an unbalanced self portrait, history of your self esteem, how the shoulds rule your life, and living your own truth. These are aspects of the self that every person could probably use a little attention and analysis.

In my work as a psychotherapist, I recommend this book to my clients to help them explore their self-esteem issues. I highly recommend it to both practitioners and their clients as a valuable resource --- one I've been looking for for some time. Pamela D. Blair, Ph.D., Psychotherapist and Author, The Next Fifty Years: A Guide for Women at Midlife and Beyond