What is “confidence”? What does a person want with the request “I want to become more confident”? I will try to answer these questions from the point of view of the Gestalt approach and my own experience. What uncertainty looks like: - it happens that a person knows what he wants, knows from whom, but does not dare to ask for it; in a group he feels constrained, embarrassed to show himself as he is; he holds back, stops himself, and then scolds himself; in loved ones relationship with an important person, cannot open his mouth, declare his desires, and just be relaxed and himself. If you reformulate the request “I want to become more confident,” it will be: - I want to express my feelings directly, - openly declare my desires, - to be free, relaxed, as I am, to defend my position if it is important to me now. What can stop you from satisfying all these needs? To summarize, what stops me is fear: - fear of being ridiculed, - hence the fear of being rejected, - fear of losing a relationship, - fear that the person who is important to me may not like me as I am. Consequently, you have to change yourself, create a different image that is desirable for others. All these fears are projections taken from past experiences. I was once ridiculed and rejected. Most likely, in adolescence, when relationships with other people (not parents) came first. The teenager tried to be like his peers, to behave in the way that was customary in the group, and it seems that this then became adaptive. This behavior took hold, but the fear of being oneself remained. So how can you now overcome this fear and become more confident? 1 step. Recognize and accept these fears. This means exploring what could be stopping me. Well, at least ask this question for a while. The main thing is to be honest with yourself at this moment. Step 2. Check my projections - will my self-expression really be rejected, ridiculed and I will lose the relationship? How to do it? For me, a safe space is the therapist's office, and then the therapy group. For the first time, it was there that I consciously encountered acceptance and understanding of my feelings and desires. Here you can try new ways of behavior, so that it is not traumatic. And then transfer them to your real life. You can solve the problem without going to a psychologist. Stop generalizing that EVERYONE will not accept me, remember when it was different. Or maybe start doing what you want, tracking other people’s reactions to it. Surely, not everyone will react negatively to your behavior, but for many it will cause the desired reaction. The most difficult thing here is to step over your fear. To do this, it is important to realize and accept it. If it doesn’t work out, then the work of a professional psychologist can help you. In life, you can indeed encounter situations where you may be rejected, but having a positive experience of acceptance, it becomes much easier to adapt to them and express yourself, no matter what.