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Family is the first social environment for children, where parents are having role as the main significant others. The way how parents treat their children will form children’s self-esteem. If parents ask for a lot of assertion to their children more than children’s capabilities, then they will reject himself. Parents who compare their children with their siblings and continually emphasize their weakness, it also can reduces children’s self-esteem. Stepping into adolescents, children will find another social environment beside family and experiences which affecting the growth of children’s self-esteem. A low-self-esteem adolescents will feel worse when facing a failure experience. For them, failure is a corroborating proof that they are worthless. In the end, low-self-esteem adolescents mostly look at themselves negatively. This is the case happened to the subject of this study.The single subject (n = 1) in this study is a 19 years old woman, and currently studies in a college. Her problem in family and friendship has lead her perceiving herself negatively. Despite her superior IQ, healthy body, well-off family, and good GPA, her low-self-esteem makes the subject feel worthless and negative-outlook on herself. Authoritative parenting style that committed by her mother is concluded to be the reason of the subject’s low self-esteem.

Based on the assessment accomplished, it was found that the subject has belief of herself that 'I am not good enough'. She had negative thoughts about her that 'I am not loved by parents'; 'Whatever I do is always wrong’; 'I am not as smart as my friends’. Then, the situation that usually causes the rise of automatic thoughts is when the mother compares her with her siblings or when her friend says that she is stupid. Due to that situation, she is lack of self-confidence and judges herself to fail reaching the expected achievement.

If this low self-esteem is not intervened, the subject may not have self-confidence, easily experiencing emotional tension, low academic-self-efficacy, and low achievement-motivation. With her cognitive abilities, her awareness of the problems, and willingness to participate in this intervention, the subject is expected to develop her self-esteem with the right intervention. To help improving subject’s self-esteem, the most appropriate method considered is cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) in order to change the thoughts, beliefs, and negative emotions.

Interventions were carried out in 3 sessions (60-120 minutes on each session). Session 1: subject is given the insight about pattern interaction of thoughts, emotions, and behavior. She also has to identify her basic beliefs, rules/ assumptions, automatic thoughts, and cognitive distortions. Session 2: subject performs cognitive restructuration by engaging several techniques which can help her to evaluate the negative thoughts risen. Session 3: subject has to find her positive aspects and strengths. Subject was also trained to use relaxation techniques in order to control the negative emotions that emerge.

The results of this study indicates that CBT is effective in increasing self-esteem for adolescents. Before following the intervention sessions, the subject feels negative emotion i.e. anxiety and worry about future. Other than that, she feels having a lot of uncontrollable negative mind. She also has unbalanced and unrealistic rules/assumptions. After the intervention, she is able to identify her negative thoughts and cognitive distortions she has. In addition, she is able to realize that her anxiety comes from her own negative thoughts that she created herself and it has not proven true. Moreover, she is also able to manage the thoughts more fairly and balanced on the negative things encountered and she has new rules / assumptions that are more useful and realistic. In general words, subject is capable to change her negative thoughts risen by using the technique taught during the therapy.

 

Keywords: Self-esteem, adolescent, negative thoughts, cognitive behavior therapy.