I work in a private practice setting with a variety of ages all the way from five-year-olds to adults. Currently, I am working with a 16-year-old female who is struggling with anxiety and peer acceptance.

Genuine acceptance of a child into the peer group creates the basis for healthy development. In this same regard, we all know that rejection from peers can also affect us negatively, causing us to develop feelings such as loneliness, social anxiety, and depression.

The client that I am working with in particular had a negative experience with her peers in school her freshman year that really affected her self-esteem and her self-worth. As a result of this encounter, she feels the need to please others and do whatever she has to do to fit in so that she can feel accepted. She has developed an underlying fear of rejection and nonacceptance from others and this causes her a lot of anxiety on a daily basis. She struggles a lot with “overthinking” each social situation and this negative thinking and feeling of low self-esteem affects her daily life.

In therapy one evening, we decided to do the “Claiming Who I Am” workshop to help her get rid of some of those negative thoughts and learn how to change them in a positive way. She struggled at first with coming up with positive affirmations about herself and letting go of her worries about the other students and what they think about her. She did, however, overcome this obstacle when I challenged her to look deep within herself.

She stated that she enjoyed the activity and realized that she really does focus on pleasing other people and worrying about what they think rather than taking care of herself.

In the end, the client felt empowered to start putting her own needs first and begin the practice of daily affirmations to help her achieve a more positive outlook on not only herself, but also on what she has to offer others.