- How did losing your confidence affect your relationships with old friends?
- Did you start avoiding conflicts or arguments after that?
- How did it feel meeting new people when you didn’t feel confident?
- Did you notice any changes in how others treated you?
- Were there moments when you wished you could speak up but couldn’t?
- How did losing confidence affect your decision-making in social situations?
- Did you try anything to regain your confidence with friends or strangers?
- Did losing confidence make you more cautious or withdrawn in fights?
- How do you compare your old self (before losing confidence) with now?
- What helped you, if anything, to start feeling confident again?
What happened after you lost your confidence?
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One word, isolation.
I’ve never really been confident, but I can tell you when I feel the most incapable and least confident, I withdraw from everyone because I feel like I’m just a burden and not adding any value to their lives. I stop talking to old friends and cut off entirely what few newer friends I’ve made over the years. I don’t do anything because I believe I can’t do anything, so I just hole up away from everybody, not doing anything or going anywhere and just… stop functioning except on the barest autopilot.
And no, when I’m like that I don’t do anything to build up confidence or self esteem because you apparently do that by doing small things and racking up wins, because I don’t believe I can do anything worthwhile, I believe any succeses are flukes to ignored and failures are vindication of how much of a fuck-up I am. When you ignore any good you do and whip yourself with all the bad, it’s impossible to build up confidence and harmful to try, in my experience.
New rule. …you get one question per post.
Fuck it, I’m bored enough. I’ve gone through breakups, jobloss, health issues, and all sorts of stuff. For my life confidence has been a total rollercoaster.
>How did losing your confidence affect your relationships with old friends?
I lost friends. Not out of isolation, but more so ruminating in front of them.
> Did you start avoiding conflicts or arguments after that?
Physical fights? Yes. Verbal? No.
> How did it feel meeting new people when you didn’t feel confident?
I lost confidence, but never totally had social anxiety. While there was loneliness, I knida miss some of the days where I could just zone away in some code in a quiet coffeeshop. So I kinda liked/like being alone
> Did you notice any changes in how others treated you?
Sometimes. I more so remember people treating me way better when life turned around again.
>How did losing confidence affect your decision-making in social situations?
It didn’t. I think I was a little bit less willing to take it all of the way with a woman because I didn’t want them to get to know the real me.
>Did you try anything to regain your confidence with friends or strangers?
I regained it because of me. It wasn’t a friends or strangers thing.
>How do you compare your old self (before losing confidence) with now?
I don’t truthfully. I just think it’s a naturally occurring thing in life at times. The guy lacking confidence is no different than the person I am now.
> What helped you, if anything, to start feeling confident again?
Self love/compassion and respect.
I still have my confidence
honestly, i’ve never really been the confident type. was bullied and walked all over during my entire childhood. my only friend for most of my childhood looking back on it was hardly a friend at all, i was a pack mule for all our excursions and he basically dragged me around to keep him company. there was 0 reciprocity going on there. i was always, and by and large still to this day, a loner who doesnt like meeting new people and being around large groups. people tended to either ignore me or treat me as a weirdo, and while for some it kept them away for others…it led to the aforementioned bullying. the me today, i wouldnt say i’m much more confident its more i’ve stopped caring. i’m still largely antisocial, i involve myself in some groups here and there but i can only deal with groups of like 3 or 4, anything beyond that and i literally start feeling claustrophobic. like i went to an aquarium with someone a few weeks ago and it only took me like 30 minutes before the world started feeling like it was shrinking around me, and we were outside. the way i see things now is i have just simply stopped living my life looking at it from the outside and trying to fit in with any particular group. i tried to fit in with the “ghetto” groups, that wasnt me. i tried to fit in with the goths, and while i enjoyed the style that really wasnt me either. i just stopped looking for confidence from the outside world and just stopped caring. it did loose me a friend, the friend that treated me like a pack mule. got tired of his shit and told him to fuck off finally, took me something like 20 years but i finally had enough of his shit and sent him packing. i doubt i’ve gained any confidence, i still cant even ask women out, i just dont care about whether i’m confident or not. it stopped mattering to me.
You ever have one of those moments where you don’t even recognize yourself? That’s kinda what it felt like. Like… I stopped speaking up. Stopped showing up as me. Even little stuff, walking into a room, talking to people, I’d second guess everything. It’s wild how fast that spiral happens, right? And the worst part? You start settling in.