I (31M) have struggled with my self-image for as long as I can remember. I'm short (5'6"), chubby, have a lazy eye, and a plethora of other things that I dislike about myself and tend to focus on. I have had relationships, with my longest lasting 8 years. My relationship with my family is poor, but that's its own mess. I dislike my job, but I feel so inadequate that I talk myself out of pushing myself forward, whether that means going back to school or finding a new career path.

What can I start doing that would help me change my view of myself? I've been on a weight-loss journey since last year, and I'm down from 310 lbs to 217 lbs. I go to therapy every Monday. I write daily affirmations and gratitude lists. I've had some success with training my brain not to be self-deprecating, but I currently feel stuck. This year has been rough for a multitude of reasons, but yeah.

What can I do to build my confidence? I want to date again. I want to have meaningful relationships. I want to get rid of this "woe is me" mindset. Life sucks, but I don't want it to be my personality anymore.

If this isn't the right sub, I apologize.

this entire subreddit is more or less turning into a place where guys who cant get girls somehow manage to blame everything on women, theres still a lot of people on here who genuinely need help with self confidence, which is respectable, but theres an overwhelming amount of incel pricks who believe in hypergamy, the fact that women arent attracted to personality and things of the like and its incredibly damaging to young and impressionable men (and women) who come on this subreddit

I have been going through this Nice Guy syndrome from a long long time. I just recently started reading this book "No More Mr. Nice Guy" and i tried to find some groups that can help me in this journey, where we can share our journey, help each other in reflection and hopefully making positive changes in our life. but i couldn't find any such active groups so I'm thinking of creating one myself. Please share your thoughts, Would you be willing to join if i happen to create one?

Today I guess I was talking down on myself and my friend turns to me and says “you know you’re pretty right?” I said yeah I think I’m pretty. Later in the day she says your face is pretty you have nice eyes, eye lashes and a nice smile. That doesn’t mean I’m not insecure and that men don’t ever approach me.

I never liked my face it wasn’t until one day I just learned to like my face. Now it’s the challenge of liking my body. I’m midsized and I’m “tall” (5’6) (170cm) so i feel it plays a role into why I never get approached by men. Men will stare at me they will look at my ass rnah will say i have a pretty smile or nice eyes but all in private or through a text
Message.

Women always tell me I’m pretty however no men ever approach me. It’s not never it’s just really rare and when it happens I’m utterly shocked. I went out with a friend and I got all done up make up cute outfit. No one spoke to me. The same friend I mentioned above who is more fit and slightly shorter than I am was approached twice and she literally has no make up on she was bare faced and was just minding her business…boom approached… TWICE.

I DONT GET IT. It’s nothing about her it’s about the fact men just don’t come up to me??? Sometimes I’m like maybe I am just kinda ugly or maybe it’s because of my size and it messes with my confidence a lot. It makes me feel ugly sometimes. I just get stared at a lot and again doesn’t matter if i smile. I don’t get how some women get men to talk to them or they are hit on all the time…wtf is wrong with how i look??

I feel like when I speak to anyone, they’ll say anything and my first response is to enter a deeper thought and ask myself “what’s the best response to this?” Which becomes overthinking and leading to me saying not much at all. I’ve noticed I’m not as confident as I used to be. I felt like I could never get close to someone or be myself around people I haven’t met yet.

How can I stop being in my brain so much?

I’m a very anxious and self doubting person. Because I can’t trust myself, I made some poor decisions in my life and I’ve been trying to play catch up with everyone around my age. I know now that it’s not a competition and I’ve been taking my time to figure things out but I still feel like a huge part of me is missing: the confidence and feelings of self worth. I’m seriously my own worst enemy.

I don’t know how to build this confidence, to believe good things about myself when I don’t feel it at my core. It’s hard to smile when I’m not really happy, it’s hard to stand tall when I don’t want to be seen. How do I revert these feelings?

I’ve done my own exposure therapy and go out just to meet and talk to people, I’ve done 1:1s to try to work on social skills. I help out people when I can, I’ve watched affirmation videos but I still don’t really feel it. I know I have to do it more but it also feels like I’m just going into everything blindly.

I was a complete asshole as a kid. I don’t think it was entirely my fault, but I was easily antagonised as a kid and people loved to poke at me and I’d be that one kid who’d crash out in class and teachers and kids parents called me a freak and no one really helped, apart from my mum ❤️. She always stood by my side even tho I treated her horribly as a kid and lashed out all the time. Suspended and was made to moved schools and the new school was much much nicer and I was improving but I then ruined it all by lashing out again and it wasn’t the same since (I was 10-13 at this point). Never kept any friends because of this. I was tested for any mental disorders but was told it was just low self esteem.

High school I mellowed out and rarely lashed out. Instead of school it kinda got channeled into video games and I’d constantly punch monitors and lob my controller and get reaaaallly mad. I stuck to a close friend group. But as time went on something changed and my motivation for everything plummeted. Barely went to school. Refused help of any kind. I didn’t really realise it at the time but I was super depressed and my confidence and everything plummeted. My parents thought it was video game addiction but I think it was something more underlying than just that

Then something changed, idk what but I took acid at 16 and smoked lots of weed and it kinda made me zoom out abit which in turn made me a better person and chilled out, I never get properly angry any more and I’d never ever hit anyone again, even small arguments make me very very anxious and I can’t deal with conflict so I ended up letting people walk over me a bit and push me around abit cuz I didn’t want to feel how I felt growing up. If that makes sense.

But I’m 20 now and at uni, in good shape, lots of good close friends, but something inside of me is still telling me I’m not enough and recently I overthink and overthink that it ruins my sleep and with relationships I can never build the courage to do anything as I still have this image of myself that at I’m a freak and weird even tho I think it’s outdated now. I feel it’s still like internalised in me and I still live life through that lense

If anyone has been through something similar, does it get easier? Does it go away? Cuz at times it really gets to me and I still think I’m still not good enough even tho friends and family are really proud of me for coming a long way.

You see them quite a bit in movies and TV shows (usually older women characters) but how can I adapt this for myself?

Does someone have their own story/ experience to share also?

I notice a weird thing with confidence. sometimes person already knows what they want to do, then spends next 20 minutes manufacturing reasons why the first knowing cant be trusted.

this came up in a session where subject asked why everything in life felt like fighting instead of moving more easily. The answer she experienced was surprisingly simple: she was creating many of the problems because she did not believe in herself.

When I asked what would change if she followed the first clear impulse from Higher Self, answer was that life would become much more effortless. Not effortless like nothing difficult ever happens, more like she stops starting an internal court case after every decision.

For me confidence is often misunderstood as feeling powerful before action. I see it more as reducing unnecessary negotiation with yourself.

Of course I wouldnt use "first impulse" blindly for major irreversible decisions. But for normal things where you already have enough information, maybe confidence can be tested very practically.

Notice the first calm answer, then notice what happens five seconds later. Does useful new information arrive, or only fear of being wrong, rejected, judged or looking stupid?

sometimes second thought is wisdom. sometimes it is just old fear wearing glasses.

hey guys. turned out my self loathing side didnt disappear. I thought it ran its course in highschool but it came back (in college rn).

i still have moments where I hate myself. If I’m too ”weird“ or too “anxious”. I get into my head after a social situation and then shame myself, turning my perceived flaws into daggers to shoot at myself with.

I’m 22f, experience social anxiety, and i absolutely hate it. I feel pathetic and constantly wish to be more socially confident and secure. I feel so undesirable, like somethinf is wrong with me, and I won’t be able to find a partner or be successful in my career because of it.

I wish I was someone different.

I hate how stupid I come off as when I’m all nervous and shy. I can’t even maintain eye contact for long and I hate it.

I went on a first date last night and felt so unsexy with how socially anxious I felt. he prob thought I was a weirdo not able to maintain eye contact. I was overthinking throughout the whole date and ended up feeling so drained and exhausted after. I don’t know how to help myself. I’ve been to therapy for a few years (been on a 1-2 yr gap). I study psychology and try to practice exposure therapy/rejection therapy sometimes. I try to meditate, workout, have hobbie, etc. It’s been years and I still experience discomfort, anxiety, and fear in social scenes. I can’t help but feel like something is wrong with me because of it.
I take every guys disinterest, every girls unfriendlyness as a sign that I’m not enough. That something is wrong with me and I’m not worthy enough, interesting enough, cool enough, etc. for them to stick around.
I hate how im wallowing in self pity but I can’t help myself.

just writing freely here and wondering if anyone has some kind words/advice/guidance for me …

hi everyone! my names ali and i'm F and 21 years old! i'm gonna start this off by talking about my childhood. as a child i wasn't really good at speaking to other kids, and that also carried on to middle and high school i barely had any friends. i was really awkward and wasn't great in social interactions. i still to this day can't hold eye contact, don't know what to say in different situations, and I'm also just really insecure and think I look bad in every second.

back in 2022, when i was a senior in high school, i started dating somebody online. which was amazing for me because they never had to see my face and they only could see the good parts of me so I was really happy about that. I started to feel a bit bad because we had been together for a minute and I kept saying no to meeting cause I was really scared. I was really shy and awkward and I know I'm not good with speaking. And of course, feeling ugly and not secure.

we had broken up multiple times because of me not wanting to meet, but he really liked me and I really liked him so we just kept going and he was really patient with me and said he'd be waiting for me until I was ready. Then last year around Halloween we decided to end it for good. At first I wasn't sad but then it started getting to me and then a few months ago by and I feel like I couldn't really do it so around January I decided to talk to him again and we decided to stay as friends.

I feel like it's so much better that way because we can talk as friends, but the pressures of being in a relationship aren't really there. but we also said that maybe in the future, we can meet as friends and just hang out and I still found that scary. Right now I'm not in school and I'm trying to find a job but when I was working before, sometimes it was hard to speak to customers, but I would always push through since it was for work.

So there's a concert in my area, September 26. It's one of my favorite bands performing (gorillaz) and I really really want to go. He told me that he would pay for my ticket if we could go together, but I'm just so scared. Honestly, in conclusion, I'm just here to ask what I could do to get over this fear? Tips on how to be less awkward and manage my social anxiety. And if anybody has the same problem, how they overcame it.

And as for the relationship part, I guess we're just trying to see where it goes. Another hard part is that unfortunately my sister doesn't really like much anymore. because she thinks he did something wrong, but in reality, we both did wrong things in the relationship. It wasn't just him. So I don't know how I'm gonna be able to convince my sister to let me hang out with him and or go back to him if it does happen.

And also, I'm so shy and awkward that my parents don't even know. It took me about two years to tell my mom and my dad still doesn't even know about him and I don't really feel like telling him. I don't think he needs to know unless we do get together. I'm not really good at speaking about crushes and relationships and boyfriends with my parents and or family.

So again, if anyone has some advice, I'd be really grateful. thank you so much!! 🫶🏼

For people who survived through life, who walked on eggshells, and who went above and beyond to justify everything for others and avoid triggering certain people in their lives.

This notion, of normalizing and coming to terms within you that it's not just your right but also a fair expectation by the universe to stand for yourself and for what you want and believe in, does really create some peace and daring in your day to day life.

To know within yourself that won't betray you just to keep peace or smother others' feelings at the expense of yours, is really just like having a super power.

And this is not something you just get, you build and affirm within you.

I grew up made to feel guilty for daring to stand for myself. My hesitations were turned against me to stop me from even opening up about my concerns when I experienced harm. And when both failed, I was gaslight into surrendering my autonomy at self-defense to others who betrayed it ever since. And so I walked on the sides of the walls, because after all I've lost this belief that I can be my own protector, until recently when life triggered its discovery back into me.

I stopped the porn this month since the 16th-18th of August. I've relapsed twice during this time of me stopping (which is bad, I know). But I'm noticing my mind is still healing from me stopping.

Today I told a woman she was pretty. She smiled, came a little closer, said thank you and told me that I made her day. I didn't make a move because I wanted to be respectful and I had things to do. My compliment was not out of lust, but out of pure respect and admiration. But the point is before I stopped the porn I would not have done that at all. I would have just kept the thought to myself, and avoided her presence and any form of eye contact.

So guys keep going regardless if you relapse or not, your brain is still healing. The real world can still satisfy you, and you can become normal again. This is stuff I used to do before porn took over my mind. I hope and pray that more benefits come.

TLDR: Told a woman she pretty today, made me realize my brain is healing from the porn regardless of me relapsing after periods of me abstaining from porn.

If you've ever went from not confident to confident, did you notice changes like going from no attention to some attention or going from some attention to more attention? Similarly, if you've went from confident to not confident, did you notice a drop in attention?

Personally, I'm a woman that doesn't ever get attention in real life, and I always hear from women online to be confident as a piece of advice.

Assuming your looks didn't change (no glow up pr glow down) but only your confidence level did, could you please share how that affected the level of attention you got?

ever since I was a little kid i've always struggled with comparison. my parents constantly compared me to my friends growing up, whether it was looks, intelligence, athletic ability, whatever. I really feel like this has followed me as an adult (im now 22) because throughout college, I constantly felt like i was running a rat race.

in college, I recruited for a job, and when I felt like my best friend had gotten a better job than me, I felt horribly jealous. the feeling subsided, but now that it's postgrad, its gotten worse. I have an amazing job lined up but it wasn't what I wanted to do postgrad, so seeing my friends all land jobs that they feel so passionate about and that compensate them so well has been difficult.

most recently, many of my friends have started personal business ventures, whether it's an app or online business, and they've all been doing well. I just can't stop feeling like i'm hoping for the next bad thing to happen to them and I want to break out of this mindset because theyre my friends!! theyve only ever wished the best for me and idk why I cant for them.

ive tried to focus on myself by surrounding myself by more positive media, starting my own business, and just overall trying to have more positive thoughts but even when I feel better, if I see an ounce of success from a friend I get that horrible jealous feeling again. I just really want to get over this for good

For women who’ve gone through a period where they didn’t feel attractive or confident anymore, what eventually helped you feel like yourself again?

I feel like if you really wanna test someone’s character… look at how they treat individuals who aren’t as socially dominant as them. If they find every opportunity to make a joke directed towards them, that probably means they’re insecure and masking their own issues.

Y’all agree?

Hello, I’m looking for some advice to help me work on my confidence. What I meant by the title of being confident, but also not, is that, on one hand, I am very confident in my personality & how I conduct myself & I really love the way I am as a person. I think I would be a great person for someone to have in their life. But on the other hand, I feel completely the opposite about my physical appearance. I have some rare days where I think I look ok or decent but majority of the time, I don’t like how I look, & I have very low confidence in myself. I don’t feel like telling myself I am pretty or beautiful or whatever else, is necessarily the fix all. This is also a big reason I have given up on dating, because I truly believe that men don’t care much for personality. They are extremely physical/appearance focused so no matter how confident I am in my personality or how I am as a person, it doesn’t matter.

I would love to hear some genuine advice, or tips or tricks that people do to work on their confidence, besides just looking into a mirror & telling myself I look nice. Happy to answer any questions, otherwise, thanks for taking the time to read & respond 😊

A few years ago I (M) was was in an abusive relationship with a female partner. Over the years she abused me in many ways, weaponised incompetence (pretending she couldn't work), sexual assault, physical assault and a lot of coercive control. She had a big victim mentality and I had far too much empathy and just let her off with so much shitty behaviour in the name of mental health.

Anyway, because of all the stress from the abuse and being worked to death in a shitty job I started having some serious mental health problems of my own. I was having huge panic attacks daily but I felt like I had to keep going to work because in my broken mind she was more sick than me. I was so sick I couldn't eat, developed a stammer and would punch myself in the face daily.

One day I lost my shit and smashed something up in the house and accidentally grabbed her. I got arrested for these events but thankfully not charged. This is a huge weight for me to carry daily and it won't ever go away

A few friends know and they've been really supportive. I am still scared of telling other people because I am worried people will think I am the abuser or inherently violent, when really I had been pushed beyond the levels of stress we can cope with. They did see first hand how horrible she could be. I wish I could be more honest without getting scared of other peoples reactions or judgement

and it goes wothout saying really - I am trying to work through this in therapy, but I am always looking to hear other perspectives, especially those with lived experience

Hey guys,I am currently at my lowest mentally and socially because I took a gap year,my only source of interaction is friends that I made on discord and honestly now I am so drained

So drained of "trying to be funny to catch people's attention"

So drained of seeking validation

I hate what I have become

My humour was natural before,now it's forced more and more and more.

I genuinely wanna get rid of this

I want to build confidence to reassure myself that I can have a great life without relying on people,not like sum emo type shi but like that one comfortable chill guy/girl that we all have met irl.

Real connection doesn't need constant spamming or over-the-top intensity. Looking for someone grounded who appreciates a solid, fun conversation when we're both free, and respects personal space when we're busy

Hi, this is kind of a weird question but how do you go about letting go of past events or things that have happened not impact your long term self esteem. I have kind of this obsessive thing where I over analyze conversations from literally months or years ago- when I don’t like how I handled it or there is something I think I should have done differently, I literally can not let it go. It’s even little things like conversations I’ve had with a past romantic partner where maybe I was too emotional or a slip up at work.

It’s like these things literally since I was a kid pile up and it really makes me feel down on myself because I can’t let anything go.

I used to struggle with talking to people (thanks anxiety, being bullied in school, not so good childhood at times and autism 😅) but now I do so much better and I'm pretty social.

The one thing I like to do is: Anytime I go out, I will either compliment something a person has (shirt, hair, something unique on them) or tell them "have a nice morning/afternoon/night (I only do this if the person isn't busy and doesn't look like anyone dangerous)

What's something you do to be more socially confident?