Welcome to Confidence Tuesday. Dedicated to everything confidence; Building it, learning about it, examining it in others and re-hashing/understanding some of my most uncomfortable 'lack-of-confidence' moments.
I had big plans to be posting a Vlog for this week's Confidence Tuesday post but I have quickly learnt that more goes into a video post than I thought so watch this space!
Instead, today is going to be all about a confidence problem that is still as real for me now as it was at 142kg... My fear of people!
I struggled with a way to concisely summarise this problem. It's not that I actually have a fear of all people. And fear may be a dramatic way of putting it. But what ever it is, its root cause is, as Danny puts it, I am "afraid of my own personality".
Today's example is one that still makes me tense up just thinking about it. Towards the end of my time in my former role at work, I had to attend a conference at a local function centre. I hated conferences of any kind, all these strangers around making small talk. It was the stuff my nightmares were made of but thankfully I was consoled because my co-worker was all set to come along with me, like a human security blanket. She was one of those people that could talk to anyone or anything and better yet, people actually listened! I had grown accustomed to following along behind her, letting her be the life of the party.
The morning of the conference, she called in sick.
This may sound ridiculous but the wave a nausea that went through me when I realised I was going to have to go it alone was like the moment you realise you've left your purse on a bus headed to the dodgy end of town.
I thought of (and tried) every which way to get out of the conference short of faking my own death but I was doomed! I called Danny in a panic but being the naturally confident person he is, he didn't understand. He just told me I would be fine. I called my sister and ended up in tears. There I was, outside the function room, crying and clinging to my phone like it was the last life jacket and I was on the Titanic.
Eventually my sister had to hang up and I could hover outside no more. I walked into the room and tried to at least act like I wasn't about to poop myself. Unfortunately, this was easier said than done. It was a hot day, the function room was a sauna and I was 142kg and nervous... It felt like there wasn't a pore on me that was not sweating. Now I was nervous and very self-conscious because I looked like I was actually melting.
I decided my best bet was to hide until they called us to the tables. This plan was foiled by an over-eager host who spied my desperate struggle and took it upon herself to introduce me to a group of people. They were all about my age but they were also all better looking, much thinner, über confident and not one of them seemed to be having the 'melting' problem that I was! To give them credit, they made the effort to make small talk with me but it was useless! As they asked me the usual polite questions the voice in my head was screaming,
"Stop sweating!" "You’ve stopped breathing!" "No one is interested in what you have to say!" "Wow! You're the fattest person in the room again!"
My answers to their polite questions were monosyllabic and they soon got jack of it and wandered off to speak with other, more interesting people. I resumed my attempts to hide with a new gusto because now I also needed to hide the tears that were slowly welling up in my eyes.
This particularly awful example of a social wipe-out is one of my more extreme but it really does show how these kinds of situations make me feel.
Lonely
Worthless
Scared
Stupid
I have tried to pinpoint exactly what it is that causes this overwhelming feeling. It has gotten significantly better over the last few years as I have lost more weight which makes me think a lot of it was based on how I thought people perceived me physically. But the fact that I still can’t imagine rocking up to a running group alone or joining a soccer team without having a friend tag along without feeling incredibly uncomfortable makes me think that there could be more to it.
I think part of it is the fact that I don’t want to be thought of as stupid. In High School I was never the pretty girl, or the thin girl, or the popular girl. I got my attention by playing the fool. I wasn’t even the class clown! I was the sad person making fun of herself or saying and doing stupid things. While it often got me the attention I was seeking, it took me a long time to realise it wasn’t a positive kind of attention and the people I was stupidly trying to impress and get to accept me (the popular, supermodel-esque girls) just thought I was ridiculous. It only served to increase their disdain. And to top it all off, it made them think that I, a person of perfectly acceptable intelligence, was a complete moron.
I fear, everyday, that this is how the world still sees me… And I have trained myself over the years to keep my mouth shut when around strangers because to me it is better to be seen as rude and distant rather than unintelligent. Why I didn’t think logically back then and realise that the more sensible option wasn’t quiet and aloof, but rather friendly and polite with a good dose of self-respect?
And honestly, if we want to get really deep into this lack of self-worth, the reason why I was so desperate for the attention I sought in High School, I guess we could get all Dr Phil and look at my childhood. After my Mum left, I truly believe that my Dad did the best that a newly single male in his 20’s could do with two daughters in those first few years. I was young and still in that chatty stage with lots of ‘whys?’, ‘hows?’ and random gibber-jabber about what my dolls and teddies were doing. I would often get told to be quiet or get sent to my room if I was feeling particularly talkative. I ended up feeling like what I had to say was neither important nor worth the time to stop and hear.
But this is a lot about how I feel and why I feel it.
But what about what to do to fix it!?
Like most things, I think the most effective way to change is to start with small baby steps. Manageable steps towards the bigger goal than one, huge, overwhelming task.
But what kind of ‘confident’ do I want to be? By no means am I aiming for ‘Life of the Party’ status. All I am looking for is the ability to walk into a room with strangers and have enough confidence and self-worth to be involved in a conversation that has me answering questions with more than one word answers and having smart and relevant questions to ask them in return. And I would like to be able to do it all without becoming a one-woman melting machine or shaking so hard from nerves that I turn my glass of water into a milkshake.
Here we go!
Next Week - Building Social Confidence featuring Yours Truly as the Guinea Pig!
Your Turn:
Help a girl out?! What's your number one trick for helping you feel cool, calm, in control and confident in a 'scary' moment?
