There is a voice in your head that talks to you in a way you would never talk to anyone else.

It keeps a record. It replays the conversation from Tuesday and finds the one clumsy sentence in it. It tells you that you got away with it again, and that sooner or later people will work out what you are really like.

You have probably lived with it so long that it doesn’t sound like a voice any more. It just sounds like the truth.

What it looks like from the inside

Almost nobody arrives saying “I have low self-esteem”. They arrive tired out by something else — the apologising, the second-guessing, the sense of never quite measuring up. See whether any of these sound like your week.

The apology reflex

“Sorry” arrives before you’ve worked out whether anything is actually your fault. You apologise for asking a question, for taking up someone’s time, for the weather. Somewhere along the way, taking up space started to feel like an imposition.

Running the replay

You get home and go back over the conversation, hunting for the sentence that came out wrong. Everyone else stopped thinking about it the moment they left. You are still there at midnight, editing.

The yes you didn’t mean

It’s out of your mouth before you’ve checked whether you have the time, the energy, or the slightest desire. Then you resent it. Then you feel awful for resenting it, and you do it again next week.

Boundaries feel like cruelty

In theory you know you’re allowed to have limits. In practice, drawing one feels like something you’ll be punished for. So the limit quietly moves to wherever the other person needs it to be.

Measuring, constantly

Against your friends, your colleagues, your sister, strangers on a screen. The measuring is automatic and it is never in your favour, because you’re comparing your inside to everybody else’s outside.

Waiting to be found out

You’re good at what you do and privately certain it’s a clerical error. Praise makes you uncomfortable rather than pleased. Every success just raises the stakes on the day someone finally notices.

One old mistake, still running

Something you did, or something that was done to you, has quietly become the headline. You’ve grown, changed, made amends, done the work — and it still sits there looking like the truest fact about you.

You go last

Everyone else’s needs are obvious to you and urgent. Your own are vague and endlessly negotiable. On a bad week you’d struggle to say what you want for dinner, let alone what you want from your life.

Compliments slide off

Someone says something kind and you deflect it, correct it, or file it under “they’re only being polite”. The criticism, meanwhile, goes straight in and stays for years.

None of this is a personality. It’s a set of habits you learned somewhere, practised for a very long time, and became genuinely excellent at.

If yours isn’t on this page, it still counts. Bring it anyway.

Where the voice came from

Nobody is born talking to themselves like this. The critical voice is learned, and it’s usually learned early — in a house where warmth arrived on condition, at a school where you were ranked and found wanting, alongside someone who felt bigger when you felt smaller. Children don’t conclude that the adults around them have got it wrong. They conclude that they themselves are wrong, and they set about trying to fix it.

Here’s the part that surprises people: the critic usually started out as protection. If you get there first, nobody else can hurt you with it. If you keep everyone happy, nobody leaves. If you never need anything, you can never be a burden. It worked — that’s precisely why it stayed. The cost only turns up years later, when a strategy that kept a child safe is quietly running an adult’s life.

None of which means the voice is right, and none of it means you’re stuck with it. Self-esteem isn’t a fixed quantity you were issued at birth and either got enough of or didn’t. It’s a relationship — the one you have with yourself — and relationships can change.

What it’s like to work with me

I’m not going to sit opposite you and simply tell you that you’re wonderful. If it worked that way you’d have been sorted out years ago — people have probably been saying good things about you for a long time, and you’ve been deflecting every one of them.

What we do instead is slower and rather more interesting. We get curious about the voice: whose it is, how old it is, what it was protecting you from, and what it costs you now. We look at where the guilt actually belongs. We practise the genuinely unfamiliar business of having a limit and surviving somebody’s disappointment about it.

I work in a non-judgemental, kind, curious way that honours your own wisdom about your life. You won’t be told what your boundaries ought to be. You’ll be helped to notice that you are allowed to have them at all.

When it starts to shift, it rarely arrives as a thunderclap. It looks like catching your own self-talk in the act and being a bit gentler about it. Saying no, feeling the guilt turn up on cue, and putting it down where it belongs. Trusting a decision without needing three people to approve it first. Making room for your own worth and your own imperfections in the same body, at the same time.

Feeling nervous about a first session is completely normal, and the occasional awkward moment is too — most people haven’t done this before. After that first hour you should leave feeling heard, understood and seen. That’s the part I care about most.

Hi, I’m Jo

I run Lemon Counselling, a small practice based in Christchurch. I hold a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Counselling and a Certificate in Online Counselling. I’m also a trauma-informed practitioner — which means your experiences are met with care, safety and respect, and we go at your pace.

I was born and raised in South Africa and have lived in New Zealand for nine years, so I know a fair bit about starting again somewhere new. I have a slight obsession with houseplants, and I’ll probably greet your dog before I greet you — no offence.

Through my own therapy journey I have been lost in the woods, and I’m intimately familiar with the shame, sadness, anxiety and confusion that jump out from behind the trees. Together, we can navigate your unique forest and find our way through it.

More about me · Common questions

The practical bits

$150 per 60-minute session.
Online / In person (Christchurch)
No referral needed. You don’t need a diagnosis or a doctor’s note. Just get in touch.
English or Afrikaans — ons kan gerus die berading in Afrikaans doen.
Take your time deciding. Try a few sessions and see whether we click. If I’m not the right fit, no offence taken at all.
24 hours’ notice is needed to cancel, as your session is reserved just for you.

The Counselling Online page covers everything you need for a session, and the FAQ answers the questions most people are too polite to ask.

Other things I work with

If things feel unsafe right now — if you’re thinking about ending your life, or you’re not sure you can keep yourself safe — please don’t wait for an appointment. You can call or text 1737 free, any time, to talk with a trained counsellor. In an emergency, call 111. There’s a fuller list on the Numbers and support page.

Self-esteem