Sugarcoat

Nicely written. Will reflect on it

Yea I was unsure where to post it. I’m gonna wait and let the moderators move it if they want

Hello, first time ever posting! I’m an eighteen year old female and for my entire life I’ve been struggling with low self-esteem. I was very narcissistic as a young child, later becoming more of a people pleaser, probably due to growing up with neurotic parents. Its improved significantly due to spiritual work (meditating since 16 years of age) and other practices. I’ve gotten rid of the vast majority of my people pleasing tendencies, nowadays I have zero trouble saying no and setting boundaries. But one aspect of the people pleasing “mindset” that’s left is the tendency to put people on a pedestal. In particular highly social extroverts. I’m currently in high school, and I’m basically surrounded by a bunch of high energy extroverts (my school is known to be rich socially so we’re not talking about the average person here). Meanwhile I’m this low energy introvert, still struggling with self esteem. so I have this unhealthy tendency to put my peers on a pedestal. Their extroverted energy gives off the impression that they: • are confident (sign of maturity and high conscioussness) • don’t take themselves seriously (once again sign of the same things) • are well developed ego-wise It fascinates me because let’s say I’m surrounded by a group of people who all have much higher IQ than me, I wouldn’t feel insecure because I have self-distance to my IQ so I don’t take it personally and put them on a pedestal for it, because it’s not like they are superior to me because they are logically smarter. But I’m struggling to apply the same mindset to these extroverted socially competent people at my school. Shyness tends to be associated with children, meanwhile more confident and outgoing behavior is associated with confidence which is what an adult is “supposed to be”. So I’ve subconsciously judged myself for not being that way, while at the same time overestimating how developed these people at my school are. It seems like extroverted behavior can when expressed in a friendly way, give of the impression of “having ones shit together”, causing a person to seem more stable and grounded than they are. I know on an intellectual level that these people also have insecurities, and that just because they are highly socially competent doesn’t mean they are highly developed and mature. But it’s hard to feel this on an emotional level. Also since I’m non-Swedish from the suburbs going to a school with a lot of rich inner city Swedes I can’t help but feel a bit different. Basically I'm trying to find confidence in my low energy introverted “nature”, but it’s a struggle. My question is, does anyone relate? How come some people can be so extroverted and seem so confident? im just venting at this point lol but just felt like sharing this. No matter what I’m working hard on building self esteem as I strongly genuinely feel the desire to actualize the confident version of me that I know is somewhere underneath the layers of fear and social conditioning. thank you for reading

In those situations I find that you just have to force yourself to say it anyways. Simply force it out. Period. Sometimes it might happen that you mistakenly interrupt someone, that is okay. Sometimes you won’t get the reaction you desire and it will sting in you. That is okay. Sometimes you might even get a negative reaction. That is okay too. Sometimes you get into a “flow” where you say something, a conversation starts and now you act spontaneously, that’s the point you want to get to. But drop the idea that you have to be super energetic like a stereotypical extrovert. The goal here is to get comfortable, overcome fear and express yourself authentically, not to fit some societal idea of a confident fun person. If you say something and it didn’t turn out how you wanted and you cringe and feel awkward. Allow yourself to feel that. Feel into that emotion. See it positively, the more you get triggered the more you can accept it and become immune to judgement. How can you get over the fear of talking if you don’t talk? How can you get over fear if you don’t face it? A couple of days ago, my crush came up to me and said good morning. I said it back but then I kept silent, because I’ve stopped forcing myself to speak when I have nothing to say (it’s been helping my confidence actually). He noticed my nervousness it seems and he was like “hello?” and smiling. I felt nervous and so damn awkward, but afterwards it felt good in some weird sense, becuase I realized that it wasn’t as scary as I thought. Yes it was awkward and so what? Did I die? No. You can do this. I’m struggling too, we’re in this together.

Yea I feel like there is this tendency when one does spiritual work to overestimate how much one has grown in consciousness so I try to be brutally honest with myself.

I struggle a bit with the idea of accepting myself since I feel like I’m constantly changing, how can I accept my introversion when in another moment I’ll feel energetic and extroverted, what is it I am accepting? I tend to try to accept specific emotions I’m feeling or specific situations instead. I’ve had a hard time resonating with the term creative since I associate it with artsy aesthetic stuff which I don’t find myself passionate about. I know it’s a broader term though. I’ve never thought about it that way. I do find though that when I do activities that feels in alignment with my vision for my life (eat healthy, meditate, study effectively etc) I feel that it helps my confidence so perhaps.

@Batman very true. Everything you wrote hits home for me. I’ll keep trying to express myself authentically more and more, so I can finally break out of this cycle, seriously. “You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens” - Rumi

This is what keeps me going honestly.

I’ve contemplated this a bit. I want to spend more time contemplating but my time is mostly consumed with studying lol Well well. The thing is that I’ve overcome a big part of my shyness. So when I meet new people, even if they seem very social and extroverted, I won’t be particularly anxious although a bit of fear can come up. Why? I guess my ego wants to identify as a confident, fun, interesting person. To be able to do that there has to be something happening in reality that validates that I am that way, such as people laughing at my jokes. A newbie tennis player might feel insecure around pro players because they think those players judgements are true, since if you are good at something you can detect if someone is bad at it. The newbie thus trusts the pros judgements. This seems to be similar to my case, I’m insecure around some people since I consider them to be good at socializing, thus being able to detect when someone is bad at it. So I’m afraid of saying or acting in a way that could potentially bring about their judgement, let’s say a look of disapproval. If they give me that, it must be true that I’m bad socially right? So in that moment when I’m getting bad approval or a lack of approval , I’m identifying/feeling like an awkward person, which hurts my ego becuase I don’t want to identity as that. what causes the lack of confidence from the beginning? Why can’t I just go into the situation confidently from the start? Something went wrong in my childhood I guess. Insecurity started as a young child and has since become an self fulfilling prophecy or whatever that fancy term is. Feelings of Insecurity from whatever unknown cause -> acting awkwardly -> receiving feedback from others that I’m awkward-> idea of myself as awkward strengthens, on and on . so I have to break out of this cycle in some way, by self inverting as you say. I try to express myself more and more just for the sake of it. It’s been giving me some progress actually. When it comes to disconnection from sensory experience, I have this a lot from a young age. It gets stronger from my daydreaming addiction, but the more I express myself the less the impulse to daydream becomes it seems.

That’s true in a way, since in certain situations I feel more energetic and extroverted compared to the other people I’m talking to. I’m trying to let loose and relax yes. I just feel like there is some mental block in my head sometimes.

@bloomer Nice to know somebody relates. As you say, extroversion isn´t special, and they also have flaws, but its hard to realize that sometimes. I think as long as one has a flawed perception of oneself, one will have a flawed perception of others. So the solution here is to work on ourselves, and it will translate to how we relate to others, I think. When it comes to small talk, thanks for the advice you linked, but I personally think I´ve come to a point where listening to advice on how to socialize does more harm than good to me. Because it makes it seem like my problem is a lack of social skills, but I´ve realized that it´s rather a problem of fear. When I am relaxed I can small talk easily. So I suggest you to ask yourself the same. Is the problem that you lack social skills and need to learn how to small talk better, or is it that you can small talk when relaxed, but fear gets in the way sometimes? Perhaps both, one can always improve social skills of course. But as of now, is your biggest obstacle fear/low self esteem instead of lack of social skills? If it is the case, you might have to reconsider how to go about your problem Thank you for your kind words.

Hahahhahah I wish I could have that mentality irl

@Gesundheit2 That’s where I’m slowly heading. I’m working on myself so I can come to a point where I’m comfortable enough to express myself authentically. It’s going but it’s going slow, which frustrates me. Anyways beautiful analogy.

@Leo Gura Thank you for your straightforwardness. I’ll try my best to think like that