What are Confidence and Self-Esteem?

Lets look at what ‘confidence’ is…

Confidence is where you are content with your place in the world and with what you have to offer others.

So, what is ‘self-confidence’?

Self-confidence is being happy in your own skin. Simply translated, the happier you are with what you have to offer the world, the more confident and content you will feel.  

What is it to ‘lack in self-confidence’?

When a person lacks self-confidence, they may have a ‘fear of being judged’ by people, or of being ‘found wanting’ by others. This can lead to a person feeling as though they are held back in some way, subsequently being unable to make the best of their lives or themselves.

What can ‘damage your self-confidence’?

Every person is different in how they interpret verbal and non-verbal external communication between themselves and others. To that end, confidence and self-esteem develop internally as a person grows from being a toddler to being a young child and on into being a teenager and an adult.

What has been shown to have a partial, although profound effect on confidence and self-esteem, are early caregiver or peer negative and critical responses to a child (even if the person is unaware at the time of what they were doing).

For example – a continuing series of negative inputs when young can cause someone to experience low self-confidence and low self-esteem that can last our entire lives.

Imagine this scenario: If you were continually told as a young child that you were ugly, that you ate too much and were fat, or that you were stupid; but then matured into an extremely attractive, slim and or clever adult, you may still believe you were everything you had been told you were when you were much younger, regardless of what you actually saw when looking in the mirror.

This negative input at such an early age formed your opinion of yourself, resulting in a long-term negative effect on your self-confidence and self-esteem.

Another thing to remember is how the vast majority of people naturally suffer from a degree of shyness, or social anxiety even if they don’t like to admit it and can quite easily deal with it.

However, moderate to severe social phobia and social anxiety can make the sufferer very uncomfortable in a work or social environment. It’s therefore not hard to see the knock on effect of this is low-confidence and low self-esteem.

Psychotherapy and Counselling are effective and gentle ways of resolving your low self-confidence and low self-esteem issues. They will help address the negative external input you have experienced, whilst moving you towards finding and addressing the root cause of what lead to how you feel at the moment. All the while working towards rebuilding your confidence and enabling you to have a more rounded understanding of yourself.

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