10 Proven Strategies to Regulate Self-Worth

How to bring self-worth back to center, again and again.

• Managing your low self-worth emotions when they strike is the key to overcoming low self-esteem.

• If you learn how to manage your triggers differently, self-efficacy develops.

• The more you know you can cope with setbacks in the moment, the more peace and joy you can feel.

If you read my posts on How Low Self-Worth Quietly Shapes Your Life and How to Reset a Low Self-Worth Default, you now have an understanding of how the pain of low self-esteem has compromised your capacity to feel free, joyful, and whole. And you are likely building awareness for how your brain clicks into a low self-worth narrative, by overthinking or generally being self-critical. The last piece of the puzzle is about how to manage your low self-worth emotions in the moment.

For some, the trigger to low self-worth could be a perceived failure, a setback, or feeling less than others in some way. Whatever the trigger, the response is usually one of shame that brings on stress along with alarming thoughts that make you feel unsafe or found out as bad, wrong, or different. When this happens, you can easily be overcome to the point that it is hard to do anything to help yourself improve the situation or get more data that might make you feel better.

Here are 10 research-backed tools that help regulate self-worth the moment the trigger strikes. You don’t have to use all of these, but practicing two or three on a regular basis can make a significant difference:

1. Calm the body: Typically, the first sign a person is triggered occurs way before the thoughts and is a bodily, physical reaction. Build awareness for what happens in your body when low self-worth strikes. Sensations that might signal you’ve been triggered include your stomach dropping, heart beating fast, jaw tensing, thoughts spinning, and feeling frozen. Recognizing what your physical sensation is will help you level it off more quickly.

   
   

2. Label your physical sensations, thoughts, or feelings: Build awareness for what is occurring in your body and your mind so you may gain control. Gently label, heart is beating fast, or “I am aware I feel shame,” “I am observing that I am freezing in real time,” or “I am thinking that I have been found out as not being enough.”

   
   

3. Self-compassion: Self-compassion is a profound tool that research1 shows works in the moment. Remember, whatever the trigger or perceived mistake, you are part of the larger shared human experience. All humans are imperfect, and you are not alone. You can’t get through life without setbacks—that fact connects us to one another. These thoughts will help you feel less different and isolated. Try to say something like: “I accept myself fully as I am in this moment.”

   
   

4. Stop comparisons: Comparing yourself to others, whether finding yourself superior or inferior, only increases low self-esteem. Accept that ups and downs are part of life. Lasting peace comes from self-acceptance, not by trying to be like or better than others.

   
   

5. Remember how you want others to feel around you versus feeling like you need to perform: People rarely remember the details of what you did or didn’t do correctly. They do remember how you make them feel, what your energy is, and how connected and present you are. These are qualities that you can practice right now.

   
   

6. Decrease self-critical perfectionism: Recognize that you very likely have black-and-white expectations for yourself—either you are great or you are awful, you are a success or a failure. This means your success is driven by a fear of shame or being found out. Catch yourself when engaging this kind of self-critical thinking,2 and instead, turn yourself over to radically accepting yourself and your life just as they are in this moment. Acceptance doesn’t mean you like everything going on, but there is peace in saying to yourself, “It is what it is.”

   
   

7. Utilize cognitive reappraisal: If you struggle with low self-worth, then when something happens that is out of place, it’s easy to conclude the problem must be you. Research1 shows that cognitive reappraisal reduces emotional intensity, thereby keeping self-worth intact. So, when you notice a trigger, say your boss doesn’t mention the time you spent on a project, instead of letting your initial low self-esteem interpretation run amuck: “My boss doesn’t mention how hard I work, so she must not like me,” find a way to change your initial interpretation. Reframe the situation in a way that keeps your self-esteem intact: “Maybe my boss is overwhelmed by the project and not yet able to see what I have contributed.” If you remain calm, you will have time to figure out if something bigger is going on versus reacting with panic and intensity, often making the matter worse and reinforcing your low self-worth.

   
   

8. Stay connected: Try to resist the urge to let the shame win and make you hide out. In a given interaction, if you feel low self-worth triggered, you may freeze or shut down. Find a way to stand up, move, and continue to be present. This gives you time to see if you can collect more data that makes you feel better about yourself, or a new topic that takes away the shame.

   
   

9. Bring to mind a peaceful word and image: Find a word and an image that makes you feel calm and grounded when faced with low self-esteem triggers—for example, internally saying the word “calm” and picturing the ocean, or the word “whole” and picturing a rooted tree.

   
   

10. Celebrate your growth: After a challenging event has passed, see if you can identify the ways in which you coped better—and by this I mean coped without being mean or critical of yourself. Give yourself credit for this and commit to repeating it next time.

    
    

Jill P. Weber, Ph.D., - Website - Blog -

References

1. Braet J, Debra G, Giletta M. I've got a friend in me: The effect of self-compassion on affect via emotion regulation in adolescents using ecological momentary assessment. Behav Res Ther. 2025 Oct;193:104807.

2. Fekih-Romdhane F, Sawma T, Obeid S, Hallit S. Self-critical perfectionism mediates the relationship between self-esteem and satisfaction with life in Lebanese university students. BMC Psychol. 2023 Jan 7;11(1):4.