Confidence is a positive feeling arising from an appreciation of one’s own abilities, which means that you are resilient and able to able to beat all the challenges in your life! 

 

Confidence is about:

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• Believing in yourself, your abilities and ideas – this could be knowing a suggestion you have in class is a good one, feeling like you can learn a new song your band wants to perform, or knowing you can ask someone out without getting cold feet.

• Understanding and accepting yourself for who you are – like being proud of your sexuality or hair colour, being okay with not being great at sports, or not wanting to change yourself to fit in with others.

 

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Confidence doesn’t mean being ‘outgoing’. You can be quiet or shy and still be confident. 

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Confidence is a skill that can be learnt and developed. When we feel confident, we believe in ourselves and our abilities. Individuals who have healthy levels of self-confidence are often more optimistic about their skills and have a more positive view of themselves, whereas those who lack this quality generally have negative thoughts about themselves and their abilities. 

 

Self-esteem is your opinion of yourself. Everyone lacks confidence occasionally but people with low self-esteem are unhappy or unsatisfied with themselves most of the time. It takes attention and daily practice to boost a low self-esteem.

 

Your self-esteem is how you think and feel about yourself. Your self-esteem can affect how much you:

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• like and value yourself as a person

• believe in yourself and the things you can do

• stand up for yourself when under pressure

• are willing to try new or difficult things

• move on from mistakes without blaming yourself unfairly

• believe you matter and are good enough

• believe you deserve happiness.

 

Self-esteem and self-confidence overlap, but they are different. Self-esteem refers to whether you appreciate and value yourself. Your self-esteem develops and changes as a result of your life experiences and interactions with other people. Self-confidence is your belief in yourself and your abilities.

 

We face many different challenges from relationships, work, health, education, finance and planning the future. If we don’t have an abundance of confidence we can find that small things throw us off track, slow us down and cause stress and anxiety. 

 

A lack of self-confidence stops many people from reaching their true potential. Hypnotherapy changes patterns and beliefs allowing people to do things that previously would have been out of the question.  A one to one session of Hypnotherapy identifies and rectifies any self-doubting, boosts self-esteem thus helping you to move forward with improved self-confidence in any situation.  By improving your confidence it leaves you ready to get on with living and feeling good about yourself.

 

Acting confident teaches your subconscious, a new behaviour, in a natural way that integrates into your normal way of life. We need confidence in ALL areas of our life, from getting up in the morning until we go to bed at night each and every day. 

 

Hypnotherapy for confidence helps challenge negative thought processes and limiting beliefs and can eliminate self-doubt allowing you to generate a more positive future, improving self-image and increasing determination.

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Lack of confidence can be rooted in negative experiences as a child or teenager, or significant difficult events in our adult life. When thoughts start reinforcing  negative experiences they can start having a detrimental effect on your confidence. 

In our hypnotherapy sessions for confidence help you create a more positive self-image.

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Symptoms of low self-esteem and lack of confidence

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If you have low self-esteem and a lack of confidence, you may experience some/all of the following:

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• ongoing anxiety and worry

• comparing self negatively with others

• strongly self-critical

• perfectionism, need to be in control

• negative thinking

• aversion to change

• frustration

• procrastination

• low energy, disturbed sleep and digestion

• negative effects of harmful coping mechanisms eg (comfort eating/drinking, smoking, working too much)

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It's worth noting that a lack of confidence and low self-esteem is often a key element in the formation of stress and anxiety, phobias, depression, weight control and eating disorders, and addictions. So, increasing your self-esteem and building your confidence can be the start of positive changes in many areas of your life.

 

I combine CBT with Hypnotherapy to help improve confidence and self-esteem by getting you to focus on your positive aspects and retraining the brain to think from the left pre-frontal cortex, which is where all the ‘feel-good’ neurotransmitters are made.

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CBT for lack of confidence may include the following interventions:

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Cognitive restructuring: is a method of identifying  unhelpful patterns of thinking, or untrue assumptions, and learning new, more helpful ways of thinking about difficult situations. Cognitive restructuring for lack of confidence generally targets assumptions of lack of ability or about others’ judgment, and helps people consider more helpful, realistic ways of thinking about things.

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Systematic exposure: works on the theory that avoidance of situations we fear prevents us from realistically evaluating whether they are as bad as we assume. By exposing ourselves to situations we would otherwise avoid, we learn that they are not as bad as assumed, and our anxiety diminishes. Exposure for lack of confidence usually includes planning those activities we are not confident in, such as speaking up in a meeting, and doing so repeatedly, using coping techniques to make mastery more likely.

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Mindfulness: is a skill designed to help people contact the present moment, and not get so caught up in thoughts and worries. Mindfulness can help people be less hard on themselves and reduce second-guessing their own performance in difficult situations, thus improving confidence.

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Problem solving: helps people take a more active role in proactively solving problems, rather than feeling like a victim or passively allowing the unhelpful status quo to persist. Problem-solving can take the form of actively seeking to target factors that result in poor performance and remedying them. 

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Assertiveness: People with poor self-esteem often have difficulty asking for what they want, saying no to requests, or making their true feelings known.  It is a way of helping people learn to effectively and skilfully get what they want from others without sacrificing their relationships

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We combine the above CBT methods with Hypnotherapy called Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy.

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The goal of CBT is to help people understand how their thoughts and feelings produce unwanted behaviours or responses. They then look into alternate more positive ways of behaving and responding.

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Then these positive ways of behaving and responding are reenforced under hypnosis to create long lasting changes.

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The difference that self-confidence can make is astounding, and once your new confident behaviour has become second nature, you may find yourself able to do things you hadn’t even considered before.