Sometimes the hardest person to believe in is yourself.
You might question every decision you make, compare yourself constantly with other people or focus on everything you think you’ve done wrong while overlooking everything you’ve achieved.
A compliment gets dismissed.
A mistake stays with you for days.
You might know logically that you’re capable, yet still have a voice inside telling you that you’re not good enough.
Low confidence and self-esteem can influence how we see ourselves, the opportunities we take, the relationships we have and the way we respond when something goes wrong.
At LilyAnne’s Wellbeing, we provide a supportive space to explore self-doubt, confidence and negative feelings about yourself without judgement or pressure to simply “think positively”.
What’s the Difference Between Confidence and Self-Esteem?
Confidence and self-esteem are closely connected, but they aren’t quite the same.
Confidence often relates to how capable you feel of doing something.
You might feel confident at work but uncomfortable in social situations. You could be confident driving somewhere familiar but anxious about travelling somewhere new.
Self-esteem is more closely connected to how you feel about yourself and your sense of worth.
Someone can appear incredibly confident while privately struggling with low self-esteem.
That’s why we shouldn’t assume somebody feels good about themselves simply because they appear confident on the outside.
What Can Low Confidence and Self-Esteem Look Like?
It can be different for everybody.
You might:
- Constantly question your decisions
- Compare yourself with other people
- Find compliments difficult to accept
- Focus heavily on mistakes
- Feel that you’re never good enough
- Avoid opportunities because you’re worried you’ll fail
- Assume other people are more capable than you
- Struggle to speak up for yourself
- Worry excessively about what other people think
- Apologise frequently, even when you’ve done nothing wrong
- Put other people’s needs ahead of your own
- Find criticism particularly difficult
- Feel uncomfortable setting boundaries
- Need reassurance that you’ve done something correctly
- Dismiss your achievements as luck
- Speak to yourself in ways you’d never speak to somebody else
Sometimes these patterns become so familiar that you don’t notice how much they’re affecting you.
Where Does Self-Doubt Come From?
Low confidence rarely appears from nowhere.
Our experiences can shape the way we see ourselves.
Repeated criticism, bullying, difficult relationships, rejection, discrimination, experiences at school or work, family expectations and significant life events can all influence self-esteem.
You may have heard messages such as:
“You’re too sensitive.”
“Why can’t you be more like them?”
“You’re not trying hard enough.”
“You’ll never manage that.”
When messages like these are repeated, they can eventually become part of your own internal voice.
Long after the person who said them has disappeared from your life, you may still find yourself repeating them.
Understanding where those beliefs came from can be an important part of questioning whether they actually belong to you.
When You’re Constantly Comparing Yourself
Comparison can make it incredibly difficult to recognise your own progress.
We often compare the parts of ourselves we’re least confident about with the parts of somebody else’s life they allow us to see.
Social media can make this particularly difficult.
You see somebody’s achievement without seeing the years of work behind it.
You see photographs of somebody looking happy without knowing what happened before or afterwards.
You see somebody else’s destination while judging yourself for still being on the journey.
There will always be somebody doing something differently.
That doesn’t make your progress less meaningful.
The Voice Inside Your Head
Pay attention to how you speak to yourself when something goes wrong.
If a friend made the same mistake, would you tell them:
“You’re useless.”
“You ruin everything.”
“Everybody else can manage this except you.”
Probably not.
Yet those statements can become automatic when they’re directed towards ourselves.
Building self-esteem doesn’t mean pretending everything is wonderful or ignoring things you’d like to change.
It can begin with recognising when your internal voice has become unnecessarily harsh.
Instead of:
“I always get everything wrong.”
You might begin with:
“Something went wrong. That doesn’t mean everything I do is wrong.”
Small changes in language can gradually challenge deeply established beliefs.
When Fear of Failure Stops You Trying
Low confidence can create a difficult cycle.
You’re worried you won’t be good enough, so you avoid trying.
Avoiding the situation provides temporary relief.
But afterwards, you may use the fact that you didn’t try as further evidence that you aren’t capable.
Sometimes confidence doesn’t come before doing something.
It develops because you’ve done it.
That doesn’t mean throwing yourself into situations that feel completely overwhelming.
It can mean taking smaller, manageable steps.
Making the phone call.
Attending somewhere for ten minutes.
Applying for something even though you’re unsure you’ll get it.
Saying what you actually think in a conversation.
Every experience doesn’t need to be a success to have value.
Trying itself can be progress.
Confidence and Neurodiversity
For some neurodivergent people, confidence and self-esteem may have been affected by years of feeling different without understanding why.
You may have struggled with things other people appeared to find easy.
Perhaps you were criticised for being forgetful, disorganised, emotional, quiet, loud, distracted or overwhelmed.
You might have experienced social rejection or spent years masking parts of yourself to fit in.
When somebody repeatedly receives the message that the way they naturally experience or interact with the world is somehow wrong, that can have a significant effect on how they see themselves.
Understanding neurodiversity can sometimes provide a different perspective.
Instead of asking:
“What’s wrong with me?”
You can begin asking:
“What do I need?”
That shift can be incredibly important.
Setting Boundaries Doesn’t Make You Difficult
Low self-esteem can make saying no particularly hard.
You may worry that people will be disappointed, angry or stop liking you.
So you agree to things even when you’re exhausted.
You remain available when you need time for yourself.
You accept behaviour that makes you uncomfortable because challenging it feels harder than tolerating it.
Boundaries aren’t about controlling other people.
They’re about recognising what you need and what you’re willing to accept.
Learning to communicate those needs can take time, particularly if you’ve spent years putting everybody else first.
Recognising Your Achievements
When confidence is low, achievements have a habit of disappearing.
You reach a goal and immediately move on to the next problem.
Or you tell yourself:
“Anybody could have done that.”
“I just got lucky.”
“It wasn’t a big deal.”
Try noticing those moments.
An achievement doesn’t need to look impressive to somebody else to matter.
Getting through a difficult week can be an achievement.
Asking for help can be an achievement.
Setting a boundary can be an achievement.
Returning to something after struggling can be an achievement.
Progress deserves to be recognised even when it doesn’t look dramatic.
Building Confidence Takes Time
There isn’t a switch that suddenly turns confidence on.
It develops through experiences, relationships, understanding yourself and gradually challenging beliefs you’ve carried for a long time.
Some days you’ll feel stronger than others.
A difficult experience may temporarily knock your confidence again.
That doesn’t erase the progress you’ve already made.
You don’t need to become the most confident person in the room.
The goal can simply be reaching a place where self-doubt no longer makes every decision for you.
You Are More Than Your Difficult Days
At LilyAnne’s Wellbeing, we’re here to provide somewhere you can explore how you feel about yourself and the experiences that may have shaped those feelings.
Through our counselling, listening, neurodiversity and wellbeing support, we can help you explore confidence, self-esteem, relationships, boundaries, identity and negative patterns of thinking.
You don’t need to arrive feeling confident enough to ask for support.
You don’t need to have the right words.
And you don’t need to prove that you’re struggling enough to deserve somebody’s time.
Sometimes rebuilding confidence begins with being somewhere you’re listened to, accepted and able to speak openly about how you really feel.
You don’t have to become somebody else to feel better about yourself.
Sometimes the journey is about beginning to recognise the value that was already there.
LilyAnne’s Wellbeing is here to listen, understand and support you without judgement.
Related support and resources
Explore our counselling support, browse more mental health resources, or make a referral. You may also find our guides to relationship support and anxiety support helpful.
