Self-confidence means having trust in oneself and holding oneself in high esteem. It's about feeling "I'm OK."
What is self-confidence?
While everyone struggles with confidence occasionally, some people seem generally more confident than others. People with a healthy level of self-esteem often believe in a set of values and feel secure in these principles. They tend to trust their own judgement and do not feel threatened by other people holding different opinions. They also trust in their capacity to solve problems and face difficulties, and they do not generally feel inferior or superior to others.
Low self-confidence can be debilitating. It may involve an underlying sense of not being good enough or inherently unworthy. People with low self-confidence may avoid difficult situations because they do not believe they can handle them. They may also let others dominate or make decisions for them, trusting another person’s judgement more than their own.
Build your self-confidence through counselling
Low self-esteem often originates in childhood or adolescence. Some people will be able to trace their confidence issues to events such as bullying or to critical messages they received from their parents, for example. Others will be unaware of how their self-confidence problems started.
Counselling for low self-confidence includes exploration of the origins of the issue. This helps people to understand that the negative beliefs they hold about themselves are distorted or untrue.
People with low self-esteem may have recurring negative thoughts like:
- I’m a failure
- I’m not good enough
- I’m not as worthy as other people
- I’m stupid
- I’m unloveable.They will typically be able to point to lots of ‘evidence’ to support these negative beliefs. When we believe something, we look for evidence to support that belief and discount evidence to the contrary. In this way, people reinforce their self-doubt, generating a powerful, relentless, negative internal voice.
Our counsellors help clients to challenge their negative internal voice. Once it has quietened down, they can be more compassionate with themselves.
Improving your confidence through counselling can have a positive effect on many areas, including your social life, intimate relationship and work. Counselling can be open-ended or time-limited to 10 sessions. Both face-to-face and online counselling are available.
One of our therapists will be able to help
Confidence is not just something other people have. Self-confidence is attainable for us all.
Meet our therapists working with confidence and self-esteem issues
