Kaitlyn Bruneau (Owning Your Praise)
Licensed clinical social worker Kaitlyn explores how accepting compliments can strengthen self-esteem and confidence. She explains why many people downplay praise—due to anxiety, f...
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How can accepting compliments help us build confidence and self-esteem?
On the other side, looking at how we respond to compliments can be a great way to build up positive self-talk confidence and self-esteem. But how do we do that? The most basic approach would be simply accepting the compliment with a smile, thank you, or something similar. But this can also be an opportunity to practise speaking positively about yourself. You can respond to a compliment with other anecdotes or qualities that align with the original compliment. For example, with the shoe compliment, maybe you share how excited you were to find them in your size, or how you discovered them in the first place. But why is this important? Why is it helpful to accept or own a compliment when it can be so uncomfortable to have that much attention on you? Most likely, if this is something you've struggled with, it's not the only area of your life where you are passing judgement on yourself, minimising your accomplishments, or trying to divert the spotlight away from yourself. You are a unique, capable human being who deserves good things as much as the next person and maybe aren't being the most fair to yourself.
How can you start accepting and owning compliments?
So why not start improving the way you see yourself and how much you allow yourself to take up space by owning the compliments that you receive? If this sounds like you, or even if you're just looking to feel more confident, I would love to challenge you to pay more attention to how you respond to compliments over the next few days. Can you sit with the discomfort long enough to accept or take ownership over the compliments you receive? And if you get the chance to practise this, make sure you take note of how you feel after accepting a compliment versus how you would've felt after minimising one.
Why do people struggle to accept compliments?
First, let's look at the reasons that someone might write off a compliment that they get. Do they not feel that they're deserving? Are they afraid of appearing conceited? Does the attention just feel uncomfortable? Well, there are many examples. These show how minimising or dismissing compliments can often be correlated with individuals experiences with anxiety, social anxiety, or low self-esteem. So by changing the way we respond to compliments, we can also start a journey of building confidence and self-esteem.