29 Self-Esteem Group Therapy Activities for Your Clients

If you were to search for a definition of self-esteem, you’d find a range of descriptions of what it actually is. Generally speaking, self-esteem refers to how an individual views and evaluates themselves (American Psychological Association, n.d.). Self-esteem is shaped by a person’s mental health, environment, and personal history, and it isn’t fixed — it shifts based on what’s happening in a client’s life and how they’re relating to themselves in the moment.

Every client has different factors contributing to their self-esteem. It’s often tied to a person’s values, goals, fears, and insecurities. As an example, if a client values their role within their family, their self-esteem may be closely tied to how they feel they’re showing up as a child, sibling, partner, or parent. Similarly, if a client has struggled with an eating disorder, their self-esteem is often closely tied to physical appearance and other factors connected to that struggle.

Self-esteem can impact a wide range of mental health concerns, including anxiety, depressive symptoms, and body image concerns — negative self-evaluation is even reflected in the diagnostic criteria for several mood disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2022). Clients with low self-esteem often isolate and withdraw from family and friends, and struggle with persistent negative self-talk. In this post, I discuss 29 self-esteem group therapy activities for clients working through self-esteem concerns.

How Does Group Therapy Help Individuals with Self-Esteem Issues?

Group therapy can provide a safe, supportive, and educational environment for clients working on their self-esteem. It helps clients see that they’re not alone in their struggles, and that there are others who genuinely relate to what they’re experiencing. Group members also have the opportunity to practice skills — such as communication and boundary-setting — that low self-esteem often quietly erodes over time.

Self-esteem group activities give clients a place to apply what’s been introduced in session. Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy is a well-supported approach for self-esteem concerns, so many of the activities below draw directly from CBT concepts clients can practice together and continue using on their own.

Considerations Before Facilitating a Self-Esteem Group

Self-esteem group therapy can offer real opportunities for connection, insight, and skill-building. That said, it’s worth approaching with some clinical nuance, since self-esteem struggles often sit alongside other concerns that deserve attention in their own right.

Clinical Consideration	What Counselors Should Consider
Distinguish Self-Esteem from Self-Compassion	Self-esteem is often tied to evaluation and comparison, while self-compassion is tied to how a person treats themselves regardless of how they measure up (Neff & Vonk, 2009). Facilitators should be mindful that boosting self-esteem alone — without building self-compassion — can leave clients more vulnerable to setbacks that challenge their self-evaluation.
Screen for Co-Occurring Body Image or Eating Concerns	Self-esteem work frequently overlaps with body image and disordered eating, particularly for clients whose self-worth has become closely tied to appearance. Facilitators should screen for these concerns and adjust activities accordingly, especially anything involving mirrors, appearance-based affirmations, or body-focused imagery.
Watch for Hopelessness or Risk Beneath Low Self-Esteem	Persistent, severe low self-esteem can sometimes mask underlying depression, hopelessness, or risk for self-harm. Facilitators should continue standard risk assessment practices rather than assuming self-esteem work alone addresses these concerns.
Be Mindful of Cultural Differences in Self-Concept	Self-esteem, as commonly discussed in Western psychology, tends to emphasize individual achievement and self-regard. Clients from more collectivist cultural backgrounds may relate to self-worth differently, often in connection to family or community roles. Facilitators should avoid assuming a single cultural model of healthy self-esteem applies to every client.
Avoid Forced Positivity	Affirmation-based activities can feel hollow or even invalidating for clients who aren’t ready to believe them yet. Facilitators should introduce affirmations and positive reframes as skills to build toward, not requirements clients must immediately accept.
Consider the Role of Trauma	Low self-esteem frequently has roots in earlier relational or traumatic experiences. Facilitators should be prepared for self-esteem work to surface trauma-related material and know when to slow down, validate, or refer for more targeted trauma treatment.
Model Healthy Self-Regard as the Facilitator	Clients pick up on how facilitators talk about themselves, their own mistakes, and their own limitations. Modeling balanced, non-punitive self-talk reinforces the same skills the group is working to build.

Clinical Note: Self-esteem group therapy activities should be facilitated by qualified mental health professionals within an appropriate treatment framework. Interventions should be individualized based on each client’s history, co-occurring concerns, cultural background, and treatment goals.

Self-Esteem Group Therapy Activities

When selecting self-esteem group therapy activities, it’s important to take your specific group members into consideration. Modifying the activities below to reflect concerns you already know your group struggles with can make them significantly more impactful.

1. Understanding Types of Self-Esteem and Their Impact

Clients benefit from understanding that self-esteem isn’t simply “high” or “low” — it can also be inflated or unstable in ways that create their own problems.

What It Is: This psychoeducational activity introduces different presentations of self-esteem, including low, high, and inflated self-esteem, and how each can affect mental health, including anxiety, stress, irritability, disordered eating behaviors, communication difficulties, substance misuse, and social isolation.
How It Helps Clients: Understanding this range helps clients recognize that the goal isn’t simply “more” self-esteem, but a more stable, accurate, and compassionate sense of self-worth.
How To Do It: Provide psychoeducation on the different presentations of self-esteem and their associated mental health impacts. Ask group members to reflect on which pattern feels most familiar and how it shows up in their daily life.

2. Thoughts, Feelings, and Behaviors: The CBT Model

Understanding how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors interact gives clients a foundation for nearly every cognitive skill that follows.

What It Is: This activity explores the role our thoughts play in shaping our feelings and behaviors, specifically as they relate to self-esteem.
How It Helps Clients: Recognizing that a thought — not a fact — is often driving a feeling gives clients a concrete entry point for change, rather than treating their self-esteem as fixed.
How To Do It: Ask group members to identify thoughts that impact their self-esteem, both positively and negatively. Discuss how these thoughts connect to specific feelings and behaviors.

3. Thought Challenging for Cognitive Distortions

Cognitive distortions are especially common in clients with low self-esteem, and learning to catch them is a foundational skill.

What It Is: This activity teaches clients to identify a cognitive distortion they experience and walk through a structured thought challenge to evaluate its accuracy.
How It Helps Clients: Practicing this process in group gives clients a repeatable framework they can apply independently the next time a distorted thought arises.
How To Do It: As group members identify a cognitive distortion they struggle with, walk through a thought challenge together. Encourage members to practice their own thought challenges before the next session.

4. Identifying and Challenging Core Beliefs

Automatic thoughts are often the surface expression of a deeper, more stable belief a client holds about themselves — and lasting self-esteem work usually needs to reach that deeper level.

What It Is: This activity helps clients identify core beliefs driving their self-esteem, such as “I’m not good enough” or “I’m unlovable,” which tend to be more deeply held and harder to shift than day-to-day automatic thoughts (Young et al., 2003).
How It Helps Clients: Working at the level of core beliefs, rather than only individual thoughts, addresses the pattern generating those thoughts in the first place, which supports more lasting change.
How To Do It: Introduce the concept of core beliefs and provide a few common examples. Ask group members to identify a core belief that feels familiar, and begin gently examining where it may have originated and what evidence does or doesn’t support it.

5. Negative Self-Talk and Its Triggers

Negative self-talk rarely appears out of nowhere — it’s usually triggered by specific, identifiable situations.

What It Is: This activity helps clients explore their experiences with negative self-talk and identify the situations that tend to trigger it.
How It Helps Clients: Recognizing a pattern of triggers gives clients the ability to anticipate and prepare for moments when negative self-talk is more likely to show up.
How To Do It: Ask the group to identify their experiences with negative self-talk and how it affects their feelings. Explore what tends to happen right before it begins, and look for common triggers across group members.

6. T-Chart: Negative Thoughts to Positive Affirmations

Pairing a negative thought directly with its counter-affirmation makes the reframe more concrete than working with either one alone.

What It Is: This activity uses a two-column format where clients list a negative thought on one side and a corresponding positive affirmation that counteracts it on the other.
How It Helps Clients: Seeing the negative thought and its reframe side by side reinforces that a more balanced alternative exists for each distorted thought a client identifies.
How To Do It: Provide materials for a T-chart. Ask group members to write negative thoughts they experience in the left column, and a positive affirmation that counteracts each one in the right column.

7. Daily Affirmations Practice

Affirmations are more effective as a consistent practice than a one-time exercise, so building a simple daily routine matters more than the specific words chosen.

What It Is: This activity helps clients select a small set of personal affirmations and build a daily practice of reciting them.
How It Helps Clients: A brief morning and evening practice is realistic enough for most clients to sustain, and repetition over time supports the affirmations becoming more genuinely believed.
How To Do It: Provide a list of sample affirmations and ask clients to identify two or three that feel meaningful to them. Discuss reciting them in front of a mirror, in the morning before their day begins, and in the evening before bed, and process their experience in a future session.

8. Self-Compassion Practice

Self-compassion and self-esteem are related but distinct — and building self-compassion tends to be more protective over time than chasing higher self-esteem alone.

What It Is: This activity introduces self-compassion as an alternative, or complement, to traditional self-esteem work, focusing on how clients treat themselves in moments of struggle rather than how they evaluate themselves (Neff, 2003).
How It Helps Clients: Because self-compassion isn’t contingent on performance or comparison, it tends to hold up better during setbacks than self-esteem rooted purely in achievement or external validation (Neff & Vonk, 2009).
How To Do It: Introduce the concept of self-compassion and its three components: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. Ask clients to practice responding to a recent struggle with a self-compassionate statement, and discuss how it felt compared to their usual self-talk.

9. Perfectionism and Self-Esteem

Perfectionism is one of the most common — and most overlooked — drivers of chronically low self-esteem.

What It Is: This activity explores the connection between perfectionistic standards and self-esteem, helping clients see how impossibly high personal standards can guarantee repeated feelings of failure (Hewitt & Flett, 1991).
How It Helps Clients: Naming perfectionism directly helps clients recognize that the problem may be the standard itself, not a personal shortcoming in meeting it.
How To Do It: Discuss what perfectionism looks like and how it can quietly erode self-esteem over time. Ask group members to identify one area where they hold themselves to an unrealistic standard, and explore what a more reasonable standard might look like.

10. Social Comparison and Self-Esteem in the Age of Social Media

Comparing ourselves to others is a natural human tendency, but constant exposure to curated images of other people’s lives has made this harder to manage than ever (Festinger, 1954).

What It Is: This activity explores how social comparison — particularly through social media — affects self-esteem, and helps clients identify their own patterns of comparison.
How It Helps Clients: Naming social comparison as a specific, common process — rather than a personal failing — helps clients approach their social media use more intentionally.
How To Do It: Discuss the concept of social comparison and how social media can intensify it. Ask group members to reflect on their own social media habits and whether certain platforms, accounts, or types of content tend to affect their self-esteem more than others.

11. Self-Esteem and Body Image

For many clients, self-esteem and body image are deeply intertwined, particularly those with a history of disordered eating.

What It Is: This activity explores the connection between self-esteem and body image, without focusing on specific numbers, weights, or appearance-based comparisons.
How It Helps Clients: Naming this connection directly can help clients understand why body image struggles are affecting their broader sense of self-worth, and opens the door to addressing the underlying self-esteem work rather than only the appearance-focused symptoms.
How To Do It: Facilitate a discussion on how body image and self-esteem influence one another. Keep the conversation focused on function and self-worth rather than appearance specifics, and refer clients showing signs of disordered eating for appropriate additional assessment.

12. Strengths Inventory

Clients with low self-esteem often struggle to identify their own strengths without prompting.

What It Is: This activity helps clients build a structured inventory of their personal strengths and character traits, drawing on established frameworks like the VIA classification of character strengths (Peterson & Seligman, 2004).
How It Helps Clients: Having a structured list to draw from makes it easier for clients to identify strengths than being asked to generate them from scratch, which many clients with low self-esteem find difficult.
How To Do It: Provide a list of common character strengths. Ask group members to identify three to five that feel true for them, along with a specific example of each strength in action.

13. Five Compliments Exercise

Receiving compliments can feel uncomfortable for clients with low self-esteem, which is exactly why practicing it in a supportive group setting is valuable.

What It Is: This activity asks clients to write five compliments about themselves and share them with the group for support and reinforcement.
How It Helps Clients: Practicing both giving and receiving genuine compliments in a low-stakes setting builds tolerance for positive feedback that clients may otherwise deflect or dismiss.
How To Do It: Provide materials for members to write five compliments about themselves. Allow time for members to share their compliments with the group, and encourage the group to offer support and additional observations.

14. Letter to Self

Writing to a specific version of themselves — past, present, or future — can help clients access a more compassionate perspective than they typically use in the moment.

What It Is: This activity asks clients to write a letter to a younger version of themselves, their current self, or a future version of themselves.
How It Helps Clients: Writing from a place of care toward another “version” of themselves often unlocks a compassion clients struggle to extend to their present self directly.
How To Do It: Provide time for clients to write their letters individually. If members are comfortable, allow time for sharing, and explore what they felt was important to include and any connections that surface between group members’ letters.

15. Journaling for the Positive

Clients with low self-esteem often have a strong recall bias toward what went wrong, while overlooking what went right.

What It Is: This activity introduces a journaling practice focused specifically on what clients did well each day, including things they felt good about, goals they accomplished, or challenging behaviors they successfully avoided, such as negative self-talk.
How It Helps Clients: A consistent practice of noticing the positive helps counterbalance the negativity bias that often accompanies low self-esteem.
How To Do It: Encourage group members to journal daily about what went well. Process their experience with this practice in the next group session.

16. Gratitude Practice

Gratitude and self-esteem are closely connected, particularly when gratitude is directed inward as well as outward.

What It Is: This activity introduces gratitude as a regular practice and invites members to share what they’re grateful for in their own lives.
How It Helps Clients: Regularly practicing gratitude has been associated with improved mood and life satisfaction, both of which support a healthier overall sense of self.
How To Do It: Discuss the concept and benefits of gratitude. Ask members to share what they’re grateful for, and review ways they can build a gratitude practice into their regular routine.

17. Mindfulness and Breathing

Mindfulness helps clients notice self-critical thoughts as they arise, rather than becoming fully absorbed in them.

What It Is: This activity introduces the benefits of regular mindfulness practice, including deep breathing techniques, as a tool for supporting mental health and self-esteem.
How It Helps Clients: Learning to observe a thought rather than automatically believing it is a foundational mindfulness skill that supports nearly every other cognitive activity in this list.
How To Do It: Discuss the benefits of regular mindfulness practice. Review several mindfulness skills, such as deep breathing, and allow time for the group to practice together.

18. Meditation Practices

Different meditation styles work for different clients, so exposing the group to a few options increases the odds each member finds one that fits.

What It Is: This activity introduces different forms of meditation, including progressive muscle relaxation and guided imagery.
How It Helps Clients: Practicing multiple meditation styles in a group setting gives clients a chance to identify which approach feels most accessible before committing to a personal practice.
How To Do It: Walk the group through a couple of different meditation styles. Review members’ experiences afterward and discuss whether they see themselves continuing any of these practices independently.

19. Coping with Difficult Emotions

Clients with low self-esteem often struggle specifically with emotions like shame and disappointment, which can be harder to sit with than other feelings.

What It Is: This activity asks clients to identify two or three emotions they find especially difficult to sit with or cope with, then explores what has and hasn’t worked for managing them.
How It Helps Clients: Hearing what has worked for other group members expands each client’s personal coping toolkit beyond what they’d generate on their own.
How To Do It: Ask members to write down two or three difficult emotions on a slip of paper. Compile them on a shared list and discuss as a group what coping skills have and haven’t worked for these specific emotions.

20. Self-Care Psychoeducation and Wellness To-Do List

Many clients associate self-care with occasional indulgences, like a spa day, rather than the regular, sustainable behaviors that actually support well-being.

What It Is: This activity provides psychoeducation on what self-care actually includes, then asks clients to build a personal to-do list of realistic self-care behaviors.
How It Helps Clients: Clarifying that self-care doesn’t require spending money or grand gestures makes it feel achievable for clients who may otherwise dismiss it as out of reach.
How To Do It: Provide psychoeducation distinguishing occasional self-care from regular, sustainable self-care behaviors. Ask group members to build a personal to-do list of one or two behaviors they could realistically add to their routine.

21. Self-Care Check-Up

A structured check-up across multiple domains helps clients see which areas of their life may be quietly under-supported.

What It Is: This activity asks clients to rate their current emotional, physical, spiritual, social, and professional well-being, then identify specific behaviors that could improve each area.
How It Helps Clients: Breaking well-being into distinct domains helps clients notice imbalances they might miss when thinking about their overall self-esteem in more general terms.
How To Do It: Provide a self-care check-up worksheet covering each domain. Ask clients to rate their current status in each area and identify one behavior that could support improvement.

22. Self-Care Collage

Creative, hands-on activities can help clients access self-care planning in a way that feels less clinical and more personal.

What It Is: This activity invites clients to create a visual collage representing self-care activities that address their emotional, spiritual, mental, and physical needs.
How It Helps Clients: A visual representation of self-care can serve as an ongoing reminder that’s more engaging than a written list alone.
How To Do It: Provide magazines, glue, paper, and writing materials. Ask clients to create a collage of self-care activities addressing each area of well-being, and allow time to share and reflect as a group.

23. Setting Goals: Short-Term and Long-Term

Working toward and accomplishing goals — even small ones — is one of the more direct ways clients can build genuine self-esteem over time.

What It Is: This activity introduces the importance of having both short-term and long-term goals, and helps clients identify behaviors that support progress toward them.
How It Helps Clients: Concrete goals, paired with specific supporting behaviors, give clients a tangible way to build self-esteem through actual achievement rather than affirmation alone.
How To Do It: Discuss the value of having both short-term and long-term goals. Ask group members to identify a goal in each category and the specific behaviors that support working toward it.

24. Vision Board

A vision board translates abstract goals into something visual and motivating clients can return to regularly.

What It Is: This activity has clients create a visual board representing their goals, the behaviors that support them, and their sources of motivation.
How It Helps Clients: Keeping goals visible in daily life reinforces motivation in a way that a goal written once and set aside typically doesn’t.
How To Do It: Provide magazines, paper, glue, and other materials. Encourage clients to include images representing their goals, supporting behaviors, and motivation. Suggest they display their finished board somewhere they’ll see it daily.

25. Boundaries Role-Play

Low self-esteem and difficulty maintaining boundaries often reinforce one another, making boundary practice a natural fit for a self-esteem group.

What It Is: This activity introduces the importance of emotional and physical boundaries and gives clients a chance to practice boundary-setting through role-play.
How It Helps Clients: Practicing boundaries in a supportive setting helps clients build the confidence to apply the same skill in relationships where their self-esteem has made it feel especially difficult.
How To Do It: Discuss the importance of emotional and physical boundaries. Split the group into pairs to practice setting a boundary through role-play, and process the experience together afterward.

26. Healthy Communication Role-Play

Clients with low self-esteem often struggle to advocate for their own needs clearly, which practice can help build.

What It Is: This activity reviews healthy communication patterns and gives clients the opportunity to practice them through role-play in pairs.
How It Helps Clients: Rehearsing clear, assertive communication in a low-stakes setting builds the confidence needed to use it in real relationships.
How To Do It: Discuss healthy communication patterns as a group. Split into pairs to practice the skills discussed through role-play, and debrief the experience together.

27. Building Social Support

Low self-esteem often leads clients to withdraw from the very relationships that could help support their recovery.

What It Is: This activity explores the traits of genuinely supportive people and helps clients identify ways to build or deepen their social support.
How It Helps Clients: Naming specific traits of supportive relationships gives clients a clearer sense of who to invest more time in, rather than withdrawing from relationships broadly.
How To Do It: Review the traits that supportive individuals tend to have. Ask group members to identify ways they can build their social support or spend more time with people who already provide it.

28. The Cold or Virus Self-Care Metaphor

Clients often care for their physical health far more consistently than their mental health, and naming that gap directly can be a useful entry point.

What It Is: This activity uses the metaphor of caring for a cold or virus to explore whether clients apply the same consistency to caring for their mental health.
How It Helps Clients: The metaphor makes an abstract idea — “take your mental health as seriously as your physical health” — concrete and easy to remember.
How To Do It: Ask the group what signs and symptoms they notice when they’re getting sick, and what they typically do to care for themselves. Ask whether they follow a similar course of action on days their mental health is struggling, and explore any barriers that get in the way.

29. Unique Fact Icebreaker

Clients with low self-esteem often feel fundamentally different or “not enough” compared to others — this lighter activity can gently challenge that belief.

What It Is: This icebreaker activity asks clients to anonymously share something unique or special about themselves that others in the group might not know, and invites the group to guess who it belongs to.
How It Helps Clients: The activity builds connection and curiosity between members while subtly reinforcing that everyone in the room has something worth noticing about them.
How To Do It: Ask each group member to write down something unique or special about themselves on a slip of paper. Read the responses aloud and have the group guess who each detail belongs to.

Final Thoughts on Selecting Group Therapy Activities for Your Clients with Self-Esteem Issues

Self-esteem group therapy activities can have a lasting impact on your clients’ mental health and overall well-being. These activities serve a dual purpose — providing psychoeducation while also giving group members a chance to practice skills and behaviors that support healthier self-esteem over time.

Counselors who prefer to use written tools, such as worksheets, may find TherapyByPro’s self-esteem worksheets useful for guiding sessions. TherapyByPro’s self-esteem worksheet bundle includes 25 individual worksheets that can each support a group therapy session on its own. Customizing the activities in this article to reflect your specific group’s needs allows you to address the common struggles, fears, and concerns your members are already bringing into the room.

Resources

• American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed., text rev.; DSM-5-TR). American Psychiatric Association Publishing. Resource
• American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Self-esteem. In APA dictionary of psychology. Resource
• Neff, K. D. (2003). Self-compassion: An alternative conceptualization of a healthy attitude toward oneself. Self and Identity, 2(2), 85–101. Resource
• Neff, K. D., & Vonk, R. (2009). Self-compassion versus global self-esteem: Two different ways of relating to oneself. Journal of Personality, 77(1), 23–50. Resource
• Young, J. E., Klosko, J. S., & Weishaar, M. E. (2003). Schema therapy: A practitioner’s guide. Guilford Press.
• Hewitt, P. L., & Flett, G. L. (1991). Perfectionism in the self and social contexts: Conceptualization, assessment, and association with psychopathology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60(3), 456–470. Resource
• Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7(2), 117–140. Resource
• Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. Oxford University Press / American Psychological Association.