Feeling more confident sometimes feels like a lifelong struggle, I get that. Struggles with confidence can impact your work and home life. A lack of confidence can even impact other areas of your sense of self, making it hard to have self-compassion and love.

As we know when we don’t love ourselves it is hard to love others and be there for them in the way we want to. Addressing your confidence issues can really transform the quality of friendships and family relationships that you have. You deserve a life where you are not constantly in your head thinking about how you are not good enough. Keep reading and I will share tips that I have learned as a practicing Fresno EMDR therapist and inner child wounds expert who often addresses issues with self-confidence.

Three simple things you start doing right now to feel more confident.

Positive affirmations
The mindful practice of noticing when you have done well
Remembering that failure is part of progress

Positive affirmations can really help you with improving your self-confidence.

The key is to make sure they don’t sound like toxic positivity and come of as gaslight. Start small. Say things that are qualities you hope to have and are working on having.

Seven Examples of positive affirmations for self-confidence

I am human and doing the best I can and can keep doing better
I am capable of handling things that make me uncomfortable
I am intelligent and like to learn
I am working at practicing what I preach
I am changing and that is hard
I am valuable even if I mess up
I am likable even if some people don’t like me

Establish a mindfulness practice where you notice what you are good at.

Our brains are really good at noticing the bad, it is just how our brains are wired. It kept us safe from predators and now it keeps us safe, or at least tries to keep us safe from missed bill payments and keeping our relationships healthy. Thinking errors can really get in the way of having a healthy relationship. Having too strong of a negative brain is like your brain being in the danger-danger-run-orf-fight mode all the time. It is so important to practice seeing the positive things in life, especially focusing on the progress and things that you are good at.

The goal is not to be oblivious to the areas on where you need to keep improving but to instead have a more balanced perspective. Odds are you are pretty okay and doing pretty okay at work, life, and all the things. But it is hard to stay in that space with out a daily practice of noticing the good. I encourage you to practice a gratitude journal, corny as it sounds, it really works!

Remember that failure is part of the process.

When life doesn’t go our way, we don’t get that promotion, the person we were dating turns out to be terrible for us, or we poorly invested our money, we have to remember that this is all part of the process. You will not always get that work promotion and you are still working towards becoming a better career person. You dated someone and it didn’t work out, great know you have information for the next time around. You messed up with that investment, well know you know more about investing.

It is not about the silver lining of the problem or the thing that is causing you pain. No. It is about embracing the fact that life works like this. It has its ups and its downs. Just like your favorite hiking trail. It would be so boring if it was flat and you never got to those amazing peak views.

Those are three simple things you start practicing now, but sometimes our confidence issues run a little deeper. This is where therapy can really help because the worst is trying the stuff above and it not having it help. Therapy can help you identify what is really getting in the way of your confidence. Here is a great list of all the other things you can bring up at your next therapy session in Fresno with your therapist. As a BIPOC therapist these are the things I have noticed in my private practice that impact confidence the most and hopeful these tips can help you gain insight and prompt you to consider if therapy might be what you need to finally feel more confident.

Longer lasting tips for improving your confidence.

Learn to embrace the journey, not just the destination.

Spend some time learning about other people who failed but then became really successful. Lots of famous people actually struggled for a while before they finally made it. It can be easy to forget the struggle and only notice their success right now. A great example is Oprah. Believe it or not, Oprah failed a lot until she became who we all know and love so much.

It is important to reframe what success means to us and to really embrace the struggle and the failure as part of the progress toward where we are heading. Life is full of ups and downs. Confidence can be built by improving the relationship that we have with the journey itself, not the outcome or endpoint. This is not a quick fix mind-shift and often takes people a lot of work to truly feel this, not just think it. This is where therapy can really be helpful.

Go to therapy to address inner child wounds and trauma that might be getting in the way of confidence

Often people who struggle with confidence have unprocessed trauma, getting fired from a job or being told by an ex that they are useless. Sometimes this trauma can be deeper, like childhood trauma. This can be struggling with school, lack of support from parents, and not having a positive environment to fail and keep trying.

For me, swim was the sport that really helped me with my confidence. I was no Katie Ledecky, but there was potential that the coach saw that helped me get through the worst of it. Looking back, I really think that is what makes a great coach, mentor, and parent when someone sees your potential and helps you to see it yourself. While making sure you don’t get trapped in that comparison game. Swim taught me life skills that still help me today as I navigate this messy world.

Addressing childhood traumas and inner childhood wounds can be the key to unlocking your confidence and ability to perform at the level you dream of. This can improve your productivity at work, strengthen your relationships, and improve your self-compassion.

How do you address inner childhood wounds and trauma in therapy in Fresno?

There are a lot of different ways to do this. Meditation, yoga, and self-help books are great places to start. Going to therapy with a therapist who is trained in trauma approaches will be a game changer for healing inner child wounds and improving your confidence.

As an EMDR Latina therapist in Fresno, I work with lots of BIPOC folks struggling with traumas that get in the way of their full potential. It is often eye-opening to clients just how deep trauma can affect you, even if you seem to be doing okay on the outside. EMDR therapy is great for addressing a lack of confidence and improving your over sense of self.

Other types of therapies that are really good at treating childhood wounds are EMDR therapy, IFS therapy, and other therapies that allow you to really connect with the feelings and not just the thoughts that get in the way of having self-compassion and confidence in your abilities. Trauma therapies help your brain get unstuck, trauma has a way of getting in the way of being adaptive, or in other words being in a loving relationship with yourself. Here I talk about all the things that can be trauma, you might be surprised. This will skew your values and it will dramatically impact your ability to live a life that is healthy, sustainable, and the one you really want.

With Warmth,

Elisa Blair