Low Self Confidence

Low self confidence is far more common than most of us know and, perhaps more importantly, it plays an intimate role in our most common psychological struggles including depression, anxiety and panic. When we suffer from low self-esteem we have developed beliefs about ourselves that are negative, critical and sometimes even abusive. Believing that we are unworthy, inadequate, incompetent, unloveable or unwanted causes us to feel a tremendous sadness about who we are and elicits intense fears about our ability to manage and negotiate our lives.

As you might expect, having such a self-defeating frame of mind impedes our ability to socialise with others, engage in healthy relationships, stand up for ourselves, step out of our comfort zones, professionally achieve, explore our interests and experience the world in a fulfilled and meaningful way. It’s not uncommon to cope with low self confidence by shutting down, shrinking and avoiding having to deal with the world altogether which tends to make the problem worse.

By identifying our negative self-beliefs and their origins we can learn more effective and helpful ways of thinking about ourselves, our choices, our actions and our abilities. This typically involves changing our judgmental attitudes towards ourselves to develop a more compassionate and accurate understanding, learning to step out of our comfort zones to try new ways of approaching the world and accepting that there is no such thing as perfection.