Self-doubt is a fear of humiliation that breeds indecisive and fearful behavior. This is an “echo” of a deep feeling that something is fundamentally wrong with our person, and even with our life - like a deep crack that has grown on the body of the soul, like a terrible, ugly flaw, demonstrating its own fundamental defectiveness. That is, it is such a feeling, as if at the very foundation of the soul there is some kind of original, incorrigible marriage, and therefore our person is useless, unnecessary and in this life - superfluous. Freedom from this difficult experience can be called natural self-confidence.
Self-doubt arises in childhood, when there is no clarity for what our naive person is awarded love, and for what, on the contrary, indifference and punishment. For what - we do not know, but our unconscious makes its own vague conclusion. Love means - good, do not love - bad.
Please note: we do not evaluate our qualities, actions, or even appearance. These conflicting assessments are taken at its own expense by the very core of personal reality - our "I".
The very premise that our insides can be somehow assessed forms a psychic scale of possible dimensions - from the last insignificance that absorbs all the suffering of the world to the divine star that absorbs admiration and adoration.
You can imagine this in the form of a thermometer, where zero division denotes a neutral, natural state, and other links are responsible for illusory deviations towards worse and better.
The "connection" of this mental mechanism is the main cause of self-doubt. The understanding that one’s own “I” can be assessed as you please, gives rise to natural anxiety and hypertrophied caution. This is the starting point for the entire life drama of a person stuck in endless proofs and justifications of their right to love and respect. We cling to the dazzling chance of happy approval, unaware of its monolithic inseparability from the potential of endless fall.
This self-importance scale built into the mind is the volume of all possible fixations of self-esteem. And the whole problem is that in general no one succeeds in strengthening self-esteem at a certain satisfying level so that it does not sink lower. And as long as the assessment of oneself flutters like a weak-willed flag in the wind, there can be no question of any self-confidence.
As a result, we have such a wonderful picture, where every action can threaten a complete and final failure, and small victories inflate the ego to heaven. Claims can be royal, and determination - like a baby. Where does calm self-confidence come from in such dramatic circumstances?
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Compensating for uncertainty
At the top of the psychic scale of self-importance are ideals - all the highest limits of personal realization that our fetishes aim at: falling in love, mania, fanaticism, perfectionism, admiration - these are phenomena of the same order. We cling to ideals, believing that we are making a choice for a better life, but practically in this way we are only rooting ourselves on the psychic scale, the opposite pole of which promises severe suffering.
As a rule, gaining self-confidence interests us only as an opportunity, without breaking away from the scale of importance, to approach its highest polarity and feel like a star who has realized his ideal version of life. That is, we strive not so much to heal from self-doubt as we hope to compensate for it with gilded crutches of high self-esteem.
Imagine a prisoner sitting in a dungeon with no doors or guards. He dreams of freedom, of flowering meadows at the foot of the snow-capped mountains, but continues to decorate and comfortize his dungeon so that the public will appreciate his “successes”. Likewise, we, trying to solve the problem of self-doubt with the help of love and respect for important people, only strengthen the potential of our own humiliation.
Compensating for uncertainty with external fetishes is not a mistake, but a compulsory measure with which everyone is familiar from experience. For mental health, self-affirmation should not be suppressed, but investigated in practice in order to get fed up with the "disease" and get "immunity", and not just another bigotry grimace.
It's useless to discard your sense of self-importance by reading clever texts. All volitional attempts to become simpler and more confident are nothing more than a continuation of the old game of pride. Previously, the degree on the scale of importance was increased by show-offs, now - by getting rid of them. In this sense, overt show-offs are much more honest.
And yet, it is advisable to understand that self-affirmation "heals" not the disease, but its symptoms. Therefore, you should not confuse natural self-confidence with pride and conceit. The latter do not relieve uncertainty, but only cover it with "beautiful" masks. On progressman.ru, practical methods of this camouflage were voiced in the article "ChSV II". They all boil down to the external demonstration of their own importance.
Self-doubt is a consequence of fluctuating self-esteem. Self-affirmation does not solve the problem of uncertainty, but as a drug it only temporarily calms the "withdrawal", as a result aggravating the situation, with an expanded amplitude of fluctuations in the degree of self-importance. Therefore, the healing process follows a route where self-esteem first stabilizes, coming in line with realities, and then disappears altogether, like an illusory fiction.
At least a relative stabilization of self-esteem is a much simpler matter than complete liberation from this built-in mind thermometer of its own importance. Therefore, you can start simple - with an honest assessment of real abilities and capabilities. Such realism reduces the degree of uncertainty, because the need to pose tensely and show off when the whole truth is already on the face disappears.
Complete getting rid of self-assessment for me personally, for now, is a largely theoretical topic. But there are some glimpses. I know from personal experience and observations of clients that the occupation of the mind by the scale of importance can be at least noticeably reduced. That is, feelings about their inferiority can be reduced at times, up to states where one has to look for mental stress, and the insides are perceived as simply as the weather outside the window.
Natural confidence
Can we really assess the epicenter of our own personality - our "I", using the yardsticks of "good" and "bad"? Can we, in general, somehow really assess ourselves, without even knowing who we are? What is our "I"? How can it be good or bad?
In a sense, we all have an innate intrinsic value that cannot be measured. That is, our "I" a priori can be neither bad nor good. Arrogant importance and insecure inferiority are equally deceitful. Even understanding our uselessness in the eyes of others does not make our person useless and bad "in general".
But as long as the mind is tied to a scale of importance, it perceives the hallucination of its inferiority, like a real sentence passed by the highest instance of existence. In other words, personal inferiority is not some real fact, but only a strong, irrational belief. We hold on to this illusion because we hope for the highest level star win on the importance scale. This topic was covered in the article on the deal with the evil one.
“Bad” is not some kind of real universal given, but the assessment of the mind is just a thought about something subjectively superfluous. It is impossible to be objectively a bad person. Even world-famous tyrants receive the most controversial external evaluations.
You can be sure that mistakes and miscalculations are definitely “bad”. But why on earth? Is there a spiritual growth without experience learned from mistakes and miscalculations? Are errors in this vein a blessing?
Self-doubt is treated by awareness and an analytical hunt for private beliefs about oneself and one's life. The emphasis is on catching the mirages that underlie the fear of feeling superfluous in this life. Finding and neutralizing them is not an easy task. We, against our conscious will, bypass our own fears, so even just to feel the roots of insecurity is a whole art.
What do I call natural self-confidence? These are any states without the chilling fear of humiliation. Any action done spontaneously without any hesitation or hesitation is an example. Do you need any great confidence to sit on a potty at home? Are we taking on importance by picking our noses? It just happens without any adjustment to the "correct" standards. I deliberately took classes familiar to everyone as an example.
And confident people are usually called those who remain calm in situations where anxiety and fear are perceived as the general norm. As a rule, these are situations where evaluating viewers participate, in whose eyes our person is afraid to screw up and lose personal ratings. This is why so few people can perform in public, take responsibility, knock on closed doors, organize and lead others.
One should not evaluate oneself, but investigate.
