Confident people who say they are not confident 🙄

[Mls1984btc]

Have you ever come across confident people who say they are not confident? Would you call that pure self deprecation?

Like many on this thread, I present a carefully crafted confident facade to the world in order to socially survive (and even thrive). I also experience constant self-doubt and sometimes crippling anxiety (think headaches and nausea) while trying to maintain the facade. I feel like an acrobat on a tight-rope when interacting with people: graceful, with a smile on my face, and a constant fear of the gaping void under my feet. My fear translates into intense concentration, and skillful verbal delivery. It's all an act, and it's exhausting.
I can strongly relate to all of you "fake it till you make it" people out there .

I don't understand people like OP at all. Sounds like they can't imagine for a second that someone may not feel the way they act. Such a shallow understanding of other people is alien to me.
Or maybe they understand the concept of faking, but don't believe it's possible to do so when feeling sad or scared. I find the idea insulting. Feelings can be difficult to handle, and very intense, yet a lot of people have enough inner strength to act despite them (or may even harness these negative feelings to spur themselves into action).
I'm not confident at all. But I am extremely strong-willed. It's a very different trait. People like OP probably lack both, which is sad. But doubting (perhaps even resenting) other not-so-confident people because they happen to have strong will, is not on.

@Grasping

It’s similar with people who appear extrovert, and yet claim to be introverts.

Are you sure you know what these words mean? I bet you think an extrovert is someone who talks a lot, and an introvert is quiet.

The real definition is: does being around other people energise you (extrovert) or sap your energy (introvert)
Some people can be very talkative, while their energy is being slowly drained. They're introvert, no matter how you perceive them.
Some people may be happy to just sit there and listen, enjoying the energy boost. They're extrovert.

@christingle2

For me, confident people are the ones who can swiftly bounce back from setbacks eg breakups, losing their job/getting a new job. Like they truly don’t let things knock their confidence

That's not confidence, that's resilience... Would really help to communicate if people knew the meaning of the words they use... Lots of people confusing different character traits on this thread!

OP, you would think I am the person you are describing. As many posters have said, people often have to mask their 'inner quake' just to get through situations, so you wouldn't necessarily know. Please don't judge us for this, it's hard enough without also being called liars!

I live by the 'fake it til you make it' rule with confidence.

Lots of deep breathing and hiding my real fear of doing new things.... new job, going new places etc.

Not everyone who appears confident is... we are just good at producing an outward vision of confidence while crapping our dacks on the inside.

I have the opposite - I feel quite confident generally but have had many people, mostly who don't really know me that well at all, tell me I'm NOT a confident person.

It gives me the rage.

Masking the inner quake is such a good way of putting it.

I'm a mixture of confident and not confident. Because I AM confident until I'm excluded/rejected or I fail at something.

So, I suppose, ordinarily drifting along I'm confident and that is a higher level of confidence than I used to have I know. But when I'm faced with a rejection or a failure I have to work very hard to dialogue myself back up and mask the quake.

I wonder if the OP is confusing being an extravert with having confidence.

I used to do that when I was much younger. I used to think that introverts lacked confidence. I was about 30 before I figured out that extraverts can lack confidence and it was a confident introvert who made me understand this at last!

I can 'do' confident when I'm painted into a corner and have no choice. But it's a million miles away from my default. I imagine some people just extrapolate this experience across more of their lives than I do, so can appear confident on the surface, while stressed and uncertain inside.

Fake it til you make it. I can appear confident when I’m not. I am also quite introverted but people think
I’m extroverted.

@Theawkwardblonde

I have terrible social anxiety and GAD. I put on my "people face" and I come across as very chatty, confident, great at public speaking etc. people are shocked when I say I lack confidence. It's emotionally draining. I have little confidence and do not have much faith in myself. I have low self esteem and use my "people face" to mask this. Spend most of my time overanalysing everything and worrying. Goes to show you have no way of knowing how people feel on the inside.

This. Pretty much word for word.

@christingle2

For me, confident people are the ones who can swiftly bounce back from setbacks eg breakups, losing their job/getting a new job. Like they truly don’t let things knock their confidence

My mum would call that being "a coper" in that you accept the cards that you are dealt and not fall apart publicly. Resilience, as opposed to confidence like a PP said.

@RobotValkyrie
Are you sure you know what these words mean? I bet you think an extrovert is someone who talks a lot, and an introvert is quiet.

Yes, I’m sure I know what those words mean.

People thing I'm confident. I'm not. I'm terrified most of the time but seem to hide it. I'm painfully aware of how ugly, boring and stupid I am but manage to mask that awareness.

This actually makes me feel shit. I really struggle, I'm not being self deprecating I force myself out of my comfort zone, its not confidence it is bluster. Inside I am dying.

What everyone else said!

But also: I don't think confidence has anything to do with how you fee on the inside. It's all about how you make other people feel.

A confident teacher is one who makes the students feel sure she knows what she's doing. A confident speaker is one you can relax listening to, trusting they are in control. A confident socialiser is one who puts others at ease.

It's got nothing to do with how you feel inside- resilience, self esteem and so on.

For me I know that the less confident I feel in a situation often the more confident I act. It's a defence against being challenged!

Once someone said to me "you do this-you're much more confident than I am". That was a person I would have said was far more confident in that situation than I was. We had a bit of a chuckle afterwards about each thinking the other was more confident.

There's also confident in one place doesn't mean confident in another. My dd will happily go on stage and sing in front of 100s of people without appearing to even be nervous. Ask her to knock on a door of someone she knows reasonably well and hand over the parcel that's been wrongly delivered and she's a bag of nerves.

I sort of see what you mean OP. Yes, someone can act braver than they feel. But really that is confidence. It's an action. If you have acted confident, that is confidence.

Also see models who "were so ugly as teenagers". Compared to who?!

I think there’s two types of confidence. An inner confidence and an outer confidence.

If I believe I am good at something or worthy of something then I feel confident – have that inner confidence in myself - and can take “emotional knocks” with a pinch of salt / laugh it off and it doesn’t bother me.

If I don’t believe I’m good at something or worthy of something then I fake confidence – display outer confidence - to get through the immediate situation and the “emotional knocks” hit harder.

Most of the time we (as onlookers) can intuitively tell the difference between someone faking confidence because they’re shy/nervous and someone faking confidence because they’re an arrogant braggart. The former wouldn’t ping up any flags, the latter would.

@UserBot9to5

You might say that about me. I function well at work. I'm friendly. I keep going.

But I am de-railed emotionally by failure and rejection and exclusion.

I think a certain type of person will actually pick up on that in me. A few people who are more confident than I am will set out to exclude me (and succeed!). Nobody notices. I keep going because you only look crazy if you do or say anything.

I took so many goes to pass my driving test and go up a grade at work and every single failure had me having to ''dialogue'' myself up out of a depression.

I always managed to talk myself back up again.

But somebody who left our work told me I was confident and extrovert recently and I thought, what........... who?

Probably not helpful at all but it's helpful to see failure is a fact of life. I don't see failure as failure but as an attempt. If the first attempt doesn't work, subsequent ones most likely will or I will change direction and attempt something else. I have no fear of failure because I haven't got a concept of what failure should mean.

Unfortunately, I'm sensitive to rejection and exclusion though but failure does not feature for me. Weird, isn't it? I wish I wasn't sensitive to rejection, it's quite a grim feeling.

@Mls1984btc who are you to decide they are confident. People tell me my DD is confident, yes she is until she gets home. She’s had panic attacks including palpitations. She will break down if she thinks she did something wrong or upset a friend but on the face of it she acts confident. Unless you walk in their shoes you’ll never truly know.

I've always wfh. Even pre-covid. Everything's done by email. I come across as very confident and good at what I do. Even on the occasional phone call, I can fake it by doodling whilst talking or even smoking (in years gone by) like something out of Mad Men. Then, an American publishing company asked me to speak at The London Book Fair. I was so nervous, I had to be medicated. They had no idea. I zombied my way through it.

Masking lack of self confidence is a thing, and a very tiring thing.

There is also a big difference between self confidence and self esteem. You can be self confidence and still have low self esteem.

This is a mean thread.

I'm good at looking confident but I'm really not. It's all fake and I'm dying inside.

You won't ever know what's really going on so don't judge: