Confidence vs Insecurity

[Que]

So many rabbit holes in this thread already.

Submissive tendencies does not denote necessarily a lack of confidence. A lack of confidence does not always accompany submissive tendencies. I suspect it may happen more often than not.

Over sharing is something to avoid for a lot of reasons. As mentioned above it's a burden and a wedge. It also reinforces your self-doubts when you voice them.

The sub-set of submissive that lack confidence are attractive to some. Those people tend fall into two subsets white knights and those that prey on the vulnerable. Both groups of people can be a problem. White Knights, because despite their yen to do so, no one can "fix" another human, and the latter group for being creepers in general.

fake it til you make it is real, and valuable.

I watched a very interesting Ted Talk on posing. I can never find them again because I don't know any of the people or the titles.

Blind people make that 'winner' pose when crossing a finish line, even if they have never seen it. Making power poses for as little as two minutes can measurably change hormonal levels. Things like arms outstretched, or the Superman pose.

I never believe social "science" percentages, so I don't commit them to memory well, but something like 85% of human communication is non-verbal. Even if you are scared to death, concentrate on not letting your body language reflect that. don't hunch your shoulders, don't turn inward. Mirror someone's posture that you admire. It makes a huge difference. Try it in a mirror. You will feel silly, but you will also feel differently about yourself when you stand or sit differently. I had a job on the phone. I wore a tie to work even though no one else did because it made me sit up straighter and project a stronger tone.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

So many rabbit holes in this thread already.

Submissive tendencies does not denote necessarily a lack of confidence. A lack of confidence does not always accompany submissive tendencies. I suspect it may happen more often than not.

Over sharing is something to avoid for a lot of reasons. As mentioned above it's a burden and a wedge. It also reinforces your self-doubts when you voice them.

The sub-set of submissive that lack confidence are attractive to some. Those people tend fall into two subsets white knights and those that prey on the vulnerable. Both groups of people can be a problem. White Knights, because despite their yen to do so, no one can "fix" another human, and the latter group for being creepers in general.

fake it til you make it is real, and valuable.

I watched a very interesting Ted Talk on posing. I can never find them again because I don't know any of the people or the titles.

Blind people make that 'winner' pose when crossing a finish line, even if they have never seen it. Making power poses for as little as two minutes can measurably change hormonal levels. Things like arms outstretched, or the Superman pose.

I never believe social "science" percentages, so I don't commit them to memory well, but something like 85% of human communication is non-verbal. Even if you are scared to death, concentrate on not letting your body language reflect that. don't hunch your shoulders, don't turn inward. Mirror someone's posture that you admire. It makes a huge difference. Try it in a mirror. You will feel silly, but you will also feel differently about yourself when you stand or sit differently. I had a job on the phone. I wore a tie to work even though no one else did because it made me sit up straighter and project a stronger tone.

Much of social science are scams. When I was a boy mothers made their sons queer and schizophrenic, by 1990 the culprit was a virus. Sugar usta make kids hyperactive, then it was food dyes, followed by daddy's drinking, now a gene mutation.

I watch animals and they seem much smarter than we are.

 

[Laurel]

I really like that way of explaining things. I think I really under value the positive things about me, so that's something I'm going to work on. Just because my likes/dislikes etc are different to most, doesn't make them any less interesting or admirable.

Absolutely. We all like to be liked, and in the big picture that's a good thing. But you can't let your feelings about yourself be solely determined by other people's opinions. You need to have an internal and realistic sense of what a good/worthy person is all about, then make sure that you do your best to be that.

I also don't know if I've ever looked at my concept of discloser as a burden before like that. I've always gone with the school of thought that if I'm honest from the get go, people know what they're signing up for. I never really considered how that might make people feel, especially those who's natural instinct is to try and help.

Yeah, same here. It took a friendship going kablooey to make me realize that I wasn't "sharing", I was "inflicting". And to be honest, for a while I was pretty pissed at the person who told me this. It took a lot of turning the words around in my head for me to realize that what they were saying was in fact true - that in fact I felt the same way about people who heavily unburdened on me.

In bad times, we always go to our friends for support and help. That's normal and right. But we need to handle the day-to-day support ourselves - or with a therapist if needed.

(TBH therapy for me was of limited value. I have a friend who goes to therapy every week and basically cries for an hour. That's cool - it's her life - but I didn't find revisiting my childhood wounds over and over again to be anything but tedious. At some point I just decided I was sick and tired of being wounded all the time. But I think a short stint with a good therapist who can teach you how to evaluate your thoughts/retrain your thinking is not a bad idea.)

I think too that part of me felt like the insecurity/sadness was what made me special/unique/interesting, and if that were to go away I would be just another vapid smiling idiot. But that's not true at all. While dealing with pain and dysfunction can give you a unique perspective, being a mess in and of itself is not especially interesting. The whole "artists are tortured people" thing always made me feel like there was something profound about my self-denigration, but the reality is brilliant artists are brilliant because they are brilliant. Being miserable did not make me deeper or more intelligent or more interesting.

My boyfriend used to get so frustrated with me because when he and I were alone I was witty and eloquent, but in groups I would clam up/freeze/get nervous. But as I started working on my confidence issues, this changed. One time in particular we were all hanging out and someone said something, and a one-liner popped into my head. Instead of doing what I would normally do - which was decide that my thoughts were "stupid" and keep my mouth shut - I just said it. And everybody laughed - hard. It became the catchphrase for the night. From then on, I started just letting em fly. Sometimes I got groans, but that was fine.

I'd say it doesn't just happen one day, but it sort of does. It takes a while for your mind to really "get" that you don't have to insecure, that you're an okay person, but if you just retrain the way you think and act, one day you'll realize that you don't feel the way you did before.

And that's what I mean by "fake it till you make it". I'm not saying be "fake" - I'm saying that you can retrain your negative thinking via positive and production actions.

Try it. You'll see.

Oh and P.S I want a tiny elephant on a trampoline!

Me too, in RL.

 

[Laurel]

So many rabbit holes in this thread already.

Submissive tendencies does not denote necessarily a lack of confidence. A lack of confidence does not always accompany submissive tendencies. I suspect it may happen more often than not.

Absolutely. But if you happen to be sexually submissive AND you have confidence issues, that can leave you open to hardcore abuse. You're better off getting your confidence/self-esteem up so you can play safely.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I went thru all the popular psychotherapies: Psychoanalysis, Transactional Analysis, Gestalt, Rogerian, NLP, etc. My preference is Jay Haley's Brief Therapies and his Ordeal Therapies. I specialized training single moms to control their asshole boys. But I had some wonderful cases.

One kid shit his pants all the time. Encopresis is hard to fix. I collected info from his parents and gave him the cure: I advised the parents to file Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The kid stopped shitting.

A teen came in with cerebral palsy, his problem was suicide attempts. I made him watch MY LEFT FOOT and trapped him into an ordeal if he really wanted to stop the suicide nonsense. He agreed, and the ordeal was READ THE BIBLE ALL DAY ANYTIME YOU WANNA HURT YOURSELF. He stopped thinking about suicide.

A woman came in wanting drugs because she was depressed. I told her I could fix her in one visit but she'd hate me and never return. She had 4 kids and was pregnant with #5. Her husband abandoned her as did the daddy of #5. No job, no prospects, no support system. Her ordeal was to bring her 4 kids and sit and sit in a chair and take what I had to say. I told her kids that she was a wasted piece of humanity who wanted them to grow up and be losers like her. I gave her 50 minutes of it. At the end she was livid. She left and never came back. What she did was enroll in college and become an engineer. I saw her in the paper a few years later when she was hired to build roads for the county.

I usta piss off lotsa people, and I fixed most of them.

Patients rarely profit from ass kissing, they know theyre POS and you confirm it. Then you offer them a path to a better place without years on the couch.

 

[neci]

Absolutely. But if you happen to be sexually submissive AND you have confidence issues, that can leave you open to hardcore abuse. You're better off getting your confidence/self-esteem up so you can play safely.

wise words.

 

[Noor]

I get this, I really do. But the thing is that you're not giving them a fair chance. People are more likely to accept our warts once they've gotten to know us. Throwing issues at them first thing is a hostile act. It makes them feel unwanted. And making people "prove" their affection for you is a part of your personal insecurity issues. And TBH, it will never satisfy you - because once they've passed one "test", then you'll feel compelled to "test" them again ("can he handle this?" "what about this?"). He'll feel unwanted and leave, and you'll say, "See, he never liked me". It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Don't "test" friendships/relationships. Take people at their word. If they say they like you, then they like you. Understand that they have inner lives and concerns - just like you - and thus sometimes may not be there for you immediately every time. That doesn't mean they don't care for you. TRUST them. Don't push the river. Let them have other friends/connections. It doesn't diminish they're love for you in any way.

Connections happen slowly, day by day, over a series of shared experiences and conversations and emotions. Let things happen naturally. Don't try to "rush" things. Relax.



Truth. A big hint: confident people don't enjoy making others feel bad.

^This^ OMG yes!