Diminish the Doubts That Corrode Your Confidence

If you reach adolescence or adulthood with little or no self-confidence, what do you do? Faking it (confidence) until you make it is a stretch for those with high or abnormal anxiety. It can be done if we desire something enough to go forward in fear. Yet, desire is not always strong enough to carry our doubts.

• To lack confidence is to doubt your ability to competently meet or manage the circumstances life brings.
• Because you distrust your own capabilities to protect and serve you, other people and situations will appear more powerful than yourself.
• Feeling under-powered breeds anxiety.

Diminishing Doubt to Create Confidence

Skills Diminish Doubt

Not everyone grows up in a family who is good at communicating because there are few of them. Fortunately, skills we do not learn through childhood osmosis we can acquire as adults. The best way to do this is through individual or group therapy, or in a communication skills group.

It is true that communication skills can be self-taught. However, those who are very anxious will need to practice the skills with safe people in a safe environment which therapy provides. Practicing can create enough confidence to eventually use the skills elsewhere.

Anger Diminishes Doubt

Our anger alerts us when we are being treated with disrespect. Without trust in our anger we lack the courage to answer the alert. It is not that you need to act angry to be confident. You need to feel and acknowledge the anger, then choose how to respond.

When our anger indicates that we are being walked on or manipulated, assertiveness is a healthy response. Knowing you can and will stand up for yourself by speaking assertively creates confidence.

If you have been stuffing your anger for years, you may need individual or group therapy to notice and trust the anger alert. There is also a need to acquire effective assertiveness skills.

Self-Approval Diminishes Doubt

One humongous confidence killer is putting your self-worth in another’s hands. Needing a person's approval to feel good about yourself requires you to focus on pleasing them, or on pushing them away before they hurt you. Either way, they have all the power.

Until you see your worth reflected in another person's eyes, you may never believe it is there. If reading self-help books, or listening to CDs or DVDs about self-esteem has not helped increase your self-worth, consider finding a good therapist.

Photo by Segopotso Makhutja from Pexels