Meet Lila Galustian

We were lucky to catch up with Lila Galustian recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Lila, we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?

That is such a beautiful and loaded question. In different stages of my life, my confidence and self-esteem have come from different avenues and places. Most of my confidence in my early childhood and early development came from my mom pushing me to do the things that made me feel scared or uncomfortable. I went through a phase in my teenage years when my mom couldn’t even help with my confidence, and what helped push me forward were my teammates and coach on my basketball team. Then came my twenties, where sports and my mom did the best they could, but my confidence was shattered from so many overwhelming things happening and so much failure. That was the phase where Kobe Bryant took the lead in helping me accept my failures and challenge myself to keep moving forward with my goals. For a while, I felt insecure, and my self-esteem was visibly low in my late 20s; that was obvious based on the men I dated and the friends I kept around me. That was when my mom reminded me how to gain confidence in myself; I had to challenge myself again in the place I felt most insecure, which was my education and career path in life. So I went back to school for my master’s, and what my mom taught me in my early childhood returned and provided me with the confidence I needed to go into the next phase of life with a new sense of insecurity, becoming a quality mental health clinician. While I was learning about how to be an ethically and legally sound marriage and family therapist, I learned dialectical behavioral therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy, and everything made sense to me. How does confidence and self-esteem build in the brain scientifically? By doing the hard things we don’t think we can do and providing evidence to the smartest and dumbest organ in our body, the brain, that we are capable of doing hard things even if our inner dialogue says otherwise. It’s something I sort of knew, but now I have scientific and factual evidence on why I have been able to overcome so many different stages of insecurities and lack of belief in myself in life, and continuously rebuilt and grew my confidence and self-worth.
In different stages of life, we will go through many insecurities and low self-esteem, because we do not know everything, and when change arises, we will feel a lack of confidence and low self-esteem. Sometimes, that will even trigger old self-esteem issues, and we will go into a dark hole of low confidence and low self-esteem. If you can remember one thing, in that phase, it’s to do the hard thing that is in front of you. If the hard thing is controlling yourself and not responding to the text of the person you want to be with, but who is visibly not treating you right? Then do that hard thing and tolerate the discomfort of losing them, and maybe don’t give in to the thoughts that are trying to justify why you should not experience the pain of feeling alone. Consider not giving in to the thought, “This might be the time they change and will love me the way I want”, and don’t respond to their text. It’ll be emotionally hurtful to accept they aren’t the one for you, and doing that hard thing will open up so much more confidence and self-esteem. Or maybe you know you made a mistake and hurt someone, feel ashamed for your actions, but can’t get yourself to admit to your wrong and apologize to the person you care about because you are afraid of feeling embarrassed, do the hard thing and say it out loud to yourself first. Tell yourself you made a mistake, then do the hard thing and apologize to the person. In the moment, it will feel horrible, and in 2 days, you will build confidence and self-esteem that you can make mistakes and overcome them. Maybe the hard thing is motivating yourself to get up and take a small step towards your future goals and purpose, even though you “don’t know if it will work or if it’s the right thing?” Do that hard thing and just take any actions knowing you will not see the outcome today, tomorrow, or next month. Or is the hard thing asking for help or putting in the changes, because you are struggling with obsessions, self-esteem, delusions, addiction, depression, or even being homeless, and you “don’t think anyone can help me, and I don’t have the money for it anyway?” Do the hard thing and call the first non-profit that comes up on Google. Our confidence and self-esteem growth is tied to doing the “hard thing,” and tolerating the emotional pain and discomfort that comes with doing the hard thing.
The more you push yourself to “do” something, the more you build confidence and self-esteem in that area. It’s like getting hired at Target, your first job ever; you have no clue how to do the job the first day, you will make many mistakes learning, and it will feel embarrassing and difficult to tolerate when you are getting feedback for doing something wrong or being written up by your boss for a huge mistake, and then you learn. In 6 months, you will know how the schedule works, where the go-backs are, and how to use the register.
How I continue to develop my confidence and self-esteem daily, in every avenue of my life, is to do what my mom taught me to do, what Nike taught me to do, what my teammates and Kobe taught me to do, “Breathe, and just do it.” In time, my confidence in myself goes up, and my confidence in handling life goes up, which then means my self-esteem goes up.
My confidence and self-esteem have lacked in many phases of my life in so many different aspects, school and “being smart enough”, sports and being “good enough”, boys/ men and being “worth it”, work and being “capable”, family and being “strong enough”, friends and being “lovable enough”, life and being “capable enough”, or “strong enough”, each time and phase I did the hard things, after making mistakes of course. I challenged my belief by doing actions to prove the evidence that goes against what I believed. It worked every time, even if I failed once or twice, I kept doing it, to then one day hear others tell me “wow you are so confident!” or be in the middle of a conversation to realize how far my self-confidence has grown. Trust me, “just do it” works. It’s hard, challenging the excuses that come to avoid the thing that is going to emotionally be tough, and when you get to “just do it and breathe”, you’ll see the shift happen in your confidence and self-esteem. So I hope you choose next time to hear the inner dialogue that says a negative thing about yourself and your ability, and decide to just do the opposite of what it’s telling you “you cannot do”.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I am a licensed marriage and family therapist and the owner of an outpatient program called Re-Discovering You. We specialize in helping those with personality disorders and traits, ADHD, and generalized anxiety disorder. Our specialty is helping using behavioral modalities like dialectical and cognitive behavioral therapy. What I love most about my job is helping anyone who has been deemed a “difficult and tough case”. I love helping parents and kids understand why their “defiance” and “hyperactivity” are a strength and how to begin changing their negative behaviors in a way that develops confidence and self-esteem, rather than hearing what is being told to them and allowing others’ judgment and lack of understanding to diminish their confidence and self-esteem. I love providing a space for an adult who has been diagnosed with a personality disorder to find hope in themselves and their ability to learn to believe in themselves again and live within their values, rather than keep engaging in actions that detach themselves from their self-worth. I love being able to help adults and children understand their anxiety and how to accept the presence of it while learning when to listen to it and when to ignore and push past it. At Re-Discovering you, we love helping people build confidence and self-esteem, with individual therapy and group therapy by teaching and implementing behavioral skills that change behaviors that are not working for them.
I also teach and provide training, which I think adds so much to my self-esteem. Teaching other providers (mental health and medical), teachers, and the police force about mental health, development, and how to be better supports for those whose behavior seems “difficult”, “crazy”, and “very frustrating”. I love being able to teach others, show up for the mentally fragile with more understanding and less judgment, because then I hear about the confidence built in those providers and protectors, and how much better they feel about the work they do every day when they have successfully helped a very “difficult case” instead of causing more harm.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

That is such a good question! I would say 3 helpful qualities are one, my high emotions, and being sensitive. Once I learned how to regulate it, I learned how emotionally intelligent I am and how to use my passion for good without allowing doubt to take it away from me. My second good quality is my stubbornness. There were so many times in life when it did not work well for me to be stubborn, and then I learned how to use it to not give up, instead of using it to fulfill my ego and run away. Lastly, my willingness to learn from anyone and everyone, even if in the moment I don’t want to hear what they have to say, even if afterwards I do not agree with what they said. My developed skill of willingness to listen and learn from anyone who is giving me solicited or unsolicited advice has helped me so many times. Sometimes, the person’s advice wasn’t even useful in the specific moment that was shared with me, and suddenly became a very useful memory that helped push me to succeed in a separate moment.
I truly believe all of these skills were developed and improved in me when I learned more about psychology and therapy. I highly recommend that anyone and everyone find a good psychologist or clinician, meet them once a week, and they will see how much their worst qualities will become their best. Self-help books, TikTok, YouTube, Jay Shetty, and Mel Robbins are truly amazing resources for someone to gain a little bit of understanding and knowledge, but they are not as good as having a clinician who has experience in helping people implement the “how to”. Each individual is different, with different reasons for behavioral patterns and development. A clinician will do you more justice than listening to a podcast or reading a book. If there was something you realized in yourself after reading a book and hearing a podcast, and if you seem to be interested in developing and improving yourself and learning how to implement the new skills you just learned about, please call an LCSW, LMFT, Ph.D., or Psy. D.clinician who specializes in the help you are looking for, find the one that matches your personality, wants, and needs, and begin your journey in learning and developing new skills to achieve the best version of yourself.

Alright so to wrap up, who deserves credit for helping you overcome challenges or build some of the essential skills you’ve needed?

I am truly a very lucky girl and woman who can say, my Mom has been my greatest ally, strength, believer, and teacher. My mother might not be a perfect human, because that is just the way we humans are, imperfect, and my mom has been the perfect mother for an emotional, hyper, passionate, and sometimes easily angered child like me. A perfect example of how my mom taught me confidence in speaking up for myself is in this short story. I was about 7 years old, and I had a second cousin who was 2 years older than me and loved bossing me around every time we saw them. One day, I walked into the kitchen, and my mom told me they were coming over for dinner. I began complaining and telling her I don’t want them to come over. She asked me why, and I answered, “She is always bossing me around and telling me to do things for her, so rudely, I don’t like it.” My mom’s response to me was “don’t do it.” We come from a Persian culture, which also taught me how to be overly nice to not come off rude, so my response to her was “I don’t want to be rude”. My mom then said, “If she asks you to do something and I see you do it, you are going to be grounded. So now you can decide if you want to be rude or get grounded.” Long story short, they came over, we were sitting around the dinner table and my cousin said “Lili, go get me water!”, yes, just like that! Trust me this is a very core memory for me and I remember every detail of it. I looked at my mom, who was sitting in front of me, staring at me with the look, “What are you going to do?” I took a breath, yelled “NO!” and got up so quickly and ran to my room to regulate myself and run away from what I had just done. My sister walked in and said, “Mom said we are very proud of you. So whenever you’re ready, you have a plate ready for you on the table.” She hugged me and walked away. Although it’s a story my siblings used to make fun of me for, it’s a testament to the kind of teacher my mom was for my siblings and me. My Mother has truly been my angel and my everything. I have so many more stories of how she helped me develop skills to overcome challenges. I have so many stories of her modeling skills of overcoming so many challenges in life, that have taught me how to be a better, stronger, and kinder human while staying true to myself. I truly am the professional and person I am today because of having a mother like Shiva Galustian, Mozzaffari. She has taught me how to let loose with humor and keep the child in me alive, while growing up and accepting myself as an adult. She has taught me to build confidence in navigating and handling life responsibilities, even when scary and hard. She has taught me to be kind and yet not to self-sacrifice. She has taught me to speak up and advocate while controlling my anger to be effective. There is so much I can say she has taught me, but then I think I will bore you, reader, with my immense love, gratitude, and appreciation of the woman I am blessed to call my mother. If there is a song that can describe my mom’s presence in my life, it is Celine Dion’s “Because You Loved Me”. Thank you, my amazing “Moder”, for being my teacher, my provider, my rock, my joy, my role model, my strength, my boundary setter, and my hope in life.

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