How do you become confident about something you have feared?

[Jim_Bergerac]

I have made brilliant progress with my SA of late by desensitising my insecurities and negative beliefs which I guess you may have read about in my other posts. But I am wondering what it takes to be confident in a social situation?

Tomorrow I have to show a new employee how to do my job and introduce him to a few people in two offices. I am absolutely amazed that tonight I am not anxious or worried about it, usually I am having panic attacks at this stage, definite proof that I have made good progress.

However, I still don't have confidence in myself about tomorrow, I have niggling worries about me having to do loads of speaking and explaining and having to talk and introduce in front of people watching in other offices - something I have always found so difficult that I always avoided it. I still have these anxious thoughts but I suddenly think positively by relating that to a feeling of bliss and thinking wow I love feeling anxious, such a great feeling. hehe.

But, this is the question - how and when will I feel confident and believe in myself in these situations, rather than only thinking worst case scenarios and dread the situations? Has anyone experienced overcoming a fear in social situations and now having confidence in themselves?

Its just stupid all these worries - I mean they serve no purpose and I am realising just how irrational, exaggerated and biased they are - and these fears and negative beliefs which trigger anxiety - trigger more anxiety and worries by worrying how things will go wrong when I am anxious - i.e. cannot get my words out and what people will think of me if I can't get my words out - it all just escalates, whereas if I didn't think anything of the situation and didn't pay any attention to the situation I would be calm and have no problems - which is how I should feel - because these negative beliefs are so wrong and are only fears because of irrational, wrong biased negative exaggerated thinking, they are not real fears if you think rationally.

But how do I become confident? What will it take? Do I have to think positively, tell myself I can do it and believe it. I would love to be confident in these situations - because when you are confident in your abilities to do it, you don't mind doing those things. That would be quite amazing!

 

[Reholla]

Um, If I knew how to be "confident" I definitely wouldnt have this SA problem. Except the way my SA developed, a few years ago I was "confident" except it was false confidence. I was trying to cover up the fact that I wasnt confident, and people that knew me from when i was a child thought of me as shy. So I constantly tried covering up my shyness, but as I was doing this my anxiety snowballed into full blown panic attacks, the whole 9 yards.

So in a way, I am just starting over, and persuing REAL genuine confidence.

But the truth is, we are all human, and all are full of insecurities. You may never be confident in EVERYthing...and thats probably good! No one wants to be around some one who knows it all.

But my advice is to just enjoy your time tomorrow! That seems simpllistic, and before my anxiety issue came up, I would have said, Of course I enjoy everything! But the truth was, I just made it appear as though I was. I appeared to be positive, and together for others. But on the inside I wasnt. I didnt enjoy anything. I forced my way through life, and thats no way to live.

So about your worries that you may mess up somewhere along the lines of talking tomorrow, just forget about your "task", your responsiblity, and just try to enjoy talking. Focus on being in the moment. And you wont be focusing on messing up.
Let me add I think youre really brave and youre already confident for just showing youre capable of being outgoing in this way.

 

[SamVons]

Here's what's worked for me:

1. Concentrate on the most negative scenario possible, run it through your head... then go do the action (of course you were prepared for the worst) so it wasn't that bad in relation. This boosts confidence normally.

2. Make the realization that it's another day wasted worrying if you keep doing that. Also, everyone else is probably just as worried and nervous.

3. NLP exercise: Feel where the worry stems from, for me it was my chest. I'd visualize the worry emotion as a ball and "suck it up" mentally so i had to go and do the action.

In reality, only repeated action gives you true confidence

 

[savage_beagle]

visualize, practice and chip away .

How to become a little more confident and fear a situation or thing/place/person a lot less? ok....first, eduacate yourself about whatever it as much as possible. If you have fears of not knowing what to say or do in an office setting , ask friends, c0-workers and whomever for tips and advice. Go online and do a search on it and see what results pop up. We are living in this incredible age of information, where if you really want to learn about any subject, there are magazines,radio and tv programs, dvds, school courses and a shitload of online resources. It is always fear of the unknown that holds us back...fear of the ego being anihilated. So if you are scared of snakes for example....study snakes as much as possible, then ever slowly introduce yourself to them at a zoo, or talk to a person who owns one....slowly chip away at your fears by understanding what exactly you seem frightened about. The more you know and understand whatever you fear, the less you will fear it. Once, long ago...man most likely feared fire. He knew it burned and hurt like hell....but closer and closer he got to it..then slowly he mastered fire and put it to all sorts of uses. A very important thing to do also is VISUALIZE...visualize whatever fear you tend to conquer...see yourself doing whatever scares you...see yourself effortlessly doing it and succeeding. That is a positive way to think, and not negatively..as in: ''what if i fail? if people mock me?''...instead, think ''i can, i will ''----expect only favourable consquences, rehearse success in your mind..do not rehearse failure in your mind...because you GET WHAT YOU THINK!

 

[Jim_Bergerac]

Thanks for all your positive comments, I do appreciate them and read them in taken a lot of benefits from them.

Am off to work in half an hour, I am so gutted because I do feel anxious and I keep reassuring myself how ridiculous this fear is - its the fact that I have to do so much speaking and have these negative beliefs that I always struggle when speaking and people see how unconfident I am - shake, trembly voice, the need to swallow, and the worry my voice will completely go. I find it a humiliating experience if those things happen - yet I know even if the worst happens and I completely go to pieces, it won't change my life for the worse, if anybody thinks bad of me its only things like 'He is really nervous' 'He is very unconfident' 'He seems a bit unstable' and the daftest thing is I don't care if people think these things, so what point is there in worrying? If I didn't worry about this I would be fine - its the worrying that is making the task seem so difficult - because I struggle when am anxious.

I hate days like this, but at the same time I will look at it as two things - 1 - a test to see where I am currently at with my SA/confidence, and 2 - as a learning experience - I try and learn and understand more about my fears and beliefs - to try and fix them in the future. I just wish I could believe in myself and if I have to think about this task - then to think positives. One thing I have noticed is that this situation of training a new person has been on my mind almost non stop since I was told last week. It feels like my mind has recognised a situation I have always really struggled in and had traumatic experiences and is on high alert to brace myself for the danger. Maybe I need to look at desensitising these situations that I seem to have attached fear and danger to? Yeah I think that is probably the reason I worry so much - identifying the situation as being a situation that I have had traumatic experiences in - I just need to make the situation seem pleasant and no trouble!

 

[Jim_Bergerac]

I am at work now and feel more confident again and chatting to people no problem, infact I am incredibly confident right now without taking anything. I am just worried though that when the situation comes and I am introduced to the new person, I will just become automatically anxious and its that trigger of anxiety which will start that vicious cycle of becoming more anxious off - and then I will struggle.

I know its silly but I have a really nice bottle of champagne chilling at home - I bought it as a reward if I do well today. Can't wait to crack it open!

 

[scatmantom]

I can totally relate. As I had to leave my job to return to Uni, my replacement needed to be introduced to all the people I work with and I had to show him all about the systems and processes I had put in place.

Before I got to work it was awful and I felt totally terrified, but as soon as I got to work I realised that I had a great understanding of my job as I had done it for a year. All I had to do was try to help this new person out. It helped me to remember that this new person is feeling a thousand times worse as he didnt know any1 at all, and that it was important for his sake that I kept it together. He told me how nervous he was and it was nice to have som1 similar to me at work.

 

[Jim_Bergerac]

Well things were a bit awkward showing the new person around. I did well in the morning - I showed him what to do fine and introduced him fine. But in the afternoon I had to introduce him to this girl and I just worried about it too much in advance because I knew people would be watching me - and I know when I am anxious I find it hard to speak - and I managed to get through introducing him and say 'This is Rachel who we have to give these reports to each day - and this is Paul who is taking over'. I felt uncomfortable - I was like so needing to swallow because I was anxious that my voice was really struggling, but I got through it, but I was quite unhappy - made me realise if I had to do public speaking for instance, I just couldn't cope whatsoever but it wasn't about my appearance - it was nothing to do with that or my job. My appearance I have always been insecure about and had no confidence about, but I am hoping that has changed now. But the problem is that I have no confidence in my confidence and I am very insecure about people seeing me act all unconfident. I have also always struggled to speak when anxious - things like interviews, public speaking, chatting to a girl I like who I don't really know, meeting someone new, introducing myself or introducing someone new, etc - I have had so many disasters in these situations - disasters because of the anxiety - I have always been so scared in these situations because I was anxious originally because I hated being looked at, hated people seeing me as I felt so ugly, but what has happened is that because I was anxious in these situations due to being anxious because of people looking at me and seeing my perceived flaw of my perceived ugliness - I found the situation so frightening because I was having panic attacks in these situations which was so scary and so humiliating, so I started avoding these situations, I feared these situations because I know when I am anxious I find them impossible. I just don't want people to see me go to pieces and struggle - its so humiliating when you are speaking and are shaking and voice goes trembly, you need to swallow every 5 seconds, and your voice just goes - its something I am so scared of. So I think I have done well so far to desensitise my appearance issues, but there is the problem that I have attached fear to these situations and am still insecure about my own confidence - I don't believe in myself that I can do it, I worry that people will see me act all anxious and I will go to pieces and I am so scared of that. So I need to desensitise these things - desensitise worrying if people see me act all anxious and desensitise these situations. I mean if someone said to me that next week at work I will have to go on a training course and in it you have to do a 5 minute presentation at the end on what I have learnt - I just would go to pieces and have panic attacks from the second I am told. That is just my beliefs on the situation - which are wrong - and they are wrong because people do presentations every day, people speak to people every day in groups - I mean a teacher or a lecturer would, a tv host, students have to do them, etc - and no one has ever come to any harm. I have had the worst ever experience - I was shaking violently and my voice went - I was just have a total panic attack infront of 25 people. I mean that was awful - but at the same time - no one ever said anything nasty to me, people were so kind to me, giving me a really big clap and saying I did great - after like 5 minutes of total struggle to speak. So why I worry what people think if I can't get my words out does seem irrational, no one will be horrible to me. So desensitising these situations - to desensitise fears of appearing anxious are next on my list.

I am very confident I can do it - its just a matter of having time to really go at it.

And I think this situation I had been afraid of people seeing this insecurity about my lack of confidence and recognised the situation as dangerous because of past bad experiences - and I was just automatically nervous.

 

[Reholla]

It sounds like you did well!! Don't focus on your voice or you needing to swallow, those are things they probably didnt even notice. If they did notice they wouldnt think twice about it. We really are our own worst enemies sometimes.

I am in the same boat as you as far public speaking. I had a really horrible experience, and people just kept saying that i did a good job, and that what i read had a good point, etc. But of course i didnt believe them becuase i was embarrased and thats all that mattered. But with that poistive feed back youd think i could see that people arent "out to get me" in any way. I'm to the point where now becoming anxious and worrying is such a habbit that its hard to break. It's "eaiser" to worry for me and let that be my excuse than for me to really go above and beyond and just think of the best possible outcome. Before i started getting better i didnt think i had any excuse to have anxiety. I really felt like i was the victim, and i thought if there was anything i could do to get over this i would. But now that im a little more recovered and can think about it ratinally, my anxiety let's me excuse a lot. I think having this excuse is holding me back, and its something i have to get over to really recover.

I think your attitude about this is really great, just keep that outlook because it will truly lead you to recovery