What is Low Self Confidence?

When a person believes in themselves and their abilities to succeed in life we describe them as “being full of confidence”.

Self confident people tend to have certain characteristics associated with them such as the ability to be:

• Successful in their chosen career
• Highly sociable
• Popular with others
• Unruffled by problems
• Un-phased by illnesses
• Relaxed

Many people will experience low self confidence at some point in our lives and this is a perfectly normal experience to have, but there are some people whose entire lives seem to be experienced with these feelings of low self confidence, often expressed as feeling “not good enough” and for them, life can be challenging on a daily basis.

It could be, for example, that they do not feel good enough to mix with people and so become socially withdrawn, or perhaps the idea of going for a job interview seems so pointless as they already “know” that they aren’t good enough for the job and so what’s the point in attending.

People with low self confidence or low self esteem have been shown to also suffer from a high degree of social phobia.

In fact, there is a known correlation between low self-esteem (low self confidence) and high social phobia. (The degree to which you feel judged by other people)

The more social anxiety you suffer, the more low self confidence you experience and the higher your self-confidence the lower your social anxiety.

What causes low self confidence?

There are a large number of things that can result in low self confidence, but as far as we are concerned they probably fall into two main categories:

1. Some sort of negative or emotional experience that has taken place, normally where you failed to live up to some “standard” and felt, or were made to feel, embarrassed or “small” as a consequence.

It is particularly important to note that this “standard” which was not achieved may be real, or simply imagined.

This experience may be buried or “repressed” into the unconscious part of the mind, or you may be fully aware of it, the problem is that it is having a direct effect on the way that you feel NOW.

2. The slow development, over time, of negative thinking patterns that start to impact more widely on the way you feel about yourself.

We call this a “cognitive distortion” and it is well known that thoughts actually directly affect feelings. In other words the “way you think” determines the “way you feel”.

These thinking styles can self-reinforce and lead into a downward spiral of low self confidence that get worse over time.