How increasing confidence can help overcome anxiety

It can feel difficult to think about increasing confidence when you have anxiety

But it’s a bit like what came first the chicken or the egg in that you could fix the anxiety first or work on your confidence levels first. They are closely interlinked.

As confidence and self esteem plummets, anxiety increases. Or as anxiety increases, confidence and self esteem plummets. Improving either can feel very challenging in this situation.

Working on your confidence levels can change your life. Being confident affects your physiology, your attitude, your motivation, how others respond to you… the list goes on. . But most of all it affects your belief in yourself.

And if you believe in yourself then tacking that anxiety feel much more acheivable.

Examples of where self confidence and anxiety can work against you

Some more typical examples of where people feel both anxious and lacking confidence are:

• Driving anxiety which makes you feel less confident to drive or take your driving test
• Anxiety at work which means you are not confident to speak at meetings or go for interviews or promotions
• Lack of confidence with public speaking or presenting which causes anxiety (usually before the event)
• Anxiety abou taking exams which can lead to a lack of confidence in taking the exam or passing the exam
• Dating anxiety which affects confidence and self esteem whilst trying to find a partner

The funny thing about confidence is that it is not linked to ability! How often have you had a friend that you know is really good at something but they won’t go for an opportunity which is perfect for them because they say ‘oh I can’t do it’ or ‘I just don’t have the confidence’.

Everyone has the opportunity to grow their confidence with the right support.

Quick confidence exercise

When looking around for tools to increase self confidence, it’s best to try a few. It may be easier than you look to make a difference to your self confidence.

Try this now. Write down now, a couple of examples of where you would like to have more confidence and how if you had more confidence, things might be different. Go. Come back and read the rest when you have done that. Did anything come up in your list that surprised you?

Confidence is linked to many things. For some they may have received negative messages in their life which they have grown to believe. Or for some people they may have had some bad experiences in their life (like being rejected) and this has left a scar of their confidence. And for others, they maybe don’t like themselves very much and this has affected their self-esteem.

Hypnotherapy is the most effective treatment for increasing confidence

Confidence can be increased significantly with hypnotherapy, which relaxes your mind and accesses your subconscious where all your beliefs are ‘coded’. Here changes can be made to make you feel different. You are also given suggestions to help your confidence grow and keep growing.

One way to describe how it feels when your life starts changing when you feel more confidence is …. say you’ve kept in the house and told you can’t go outside. But one day someone comes and open the door and shows you the outside. And you say ‘wow’, I never realised I could come outside and all this was here waiting for me’.

Let’s chat about increasing your confidence

If you or your teen want help or other strategies and techniques to help increase your confidence and self esteem, let’s chat 

If you need help right now

I realise that it might be out of working hours, but you need help right now so I offer Hypnosis downloads which you can buy and download for immediate relief. I recommend ‘Confident Me’ which you can buy here