Psoriasis can affect your self-esteem – how you see and value yourself. People with higher levels of esteem are generally secure in their own self-worth, respect themselves and have healthy levels of self-confidence. People with low esteem, on the other hand, tend to be less sure, more uncertain about their worth and sometimes very negative about themselves.
Psychologists believe that low self-esteem is maintained by several habits of thought such as:
- Focusing attention on negative aspects, for example “I’m so ugly” or “I’m so stupid”.
- Constantly comparing against unreachable standards, such as a model or actor.
- Generalizing from a single, negative event to a broad, negative conclusion. For example, thinking that because one person turned you down for a date it means you’ll never have a serious relationship or get married.
Having psoriasis – especially if your lesions are visible to other people – may make you feel self-conscious about your appearance. Most of us are already self-conscious enough about how we look – psoriasis can make it even harder! And people who are ignorant about psoriasis may make matters worse by how they react to the sight of psoriasis plaque or sores.
Rate your self-esteem and get tips to help build it up.
