Confidence

Confidence is a concept, an idea. It cannot be traded or borrowed or lent. It does not exist as a thing. It only comes to existence when we act either confidently or without confidence, or do not act at all in a certain circumstances or situations.  You can confidently do something (like driving) at the same time not act that way in another area (like public speaking). Or you can be an excellent public speaker and afraid to drive. Which means that acting with or without confidence is a learned behavior and you know that whatever is learned can be unlearned.

You act (or do not act) with lack of confidence or low self-esteem when you have self-doubt, feel fear of failure, feel unworthy, feel unloved, is sensitive to criticism, feel overpowered and act submissively and so on. In short, you are not acting confidently when you are not feeling comfortable in your own skin and so on. It is when you do not do or act and feel the way you would love to and the will power is a little of help.

There are mainly two contributors into feeling and acting (or not acting) without confidence. One of them is fear: for example fear of failure, being judged, fear of criticism, fear of loneliness, and so on. The other contributor could be any previous negative experience or bringing up like trauma, broken heart, abusive or controlling parents and so on. It can be and become a habit as well.

What to Expect

After an initial short phone or e-mail consultation we schedule an in-person (or via Skype) assessment session. But before the assessment session I send you a simple intake form to fill out and send me back by e-mail or post mail. Or, if you prefer, we fill it out together during the assessment session. However, when I have it before the assessment session it saves us a lot of time.

The assessment session is free of charge. During that session we have a chance to get to know each other. Then I gather information about the issue and your conscious and unconscious reactions to it. Finally, I use couple of techniques to find out if I can help you or not. The assessment also highlights how many sessions you would need. If I can help you, I describe how the process goes, how many sessions it might take and what is your investment. Then you receive answers on all your questions and make a decision.

We start with understanding what you want. Despite its extreme unpleasantness, often fear or negative memories as contributors to a lack of confidence have some very important informative or protective function. Mostly it is variation of protecting you from something or warning about something. In general, most of the time, any feeling, emotion and behavior have a positive intention and do something positive for us. But when it is too intense we cannot get the message. I explain, teach and then guide you through simple, easy to do and fast working techniques to reduce the intensity of the fear or a negative feeling to a manageable level. Then we find out and maintain positive intentions behind them.

Sometimes it can be just a habit to act without confidence. The habit can be formed after several repetitions and, as any habit, can be happening automatically without any message or a protective function. If it is just a habit we deal with it with an appropriate set of techniques.

Then I guide you through a special set of technique designed to help recoding your body/mind in a way that you act in a way you want to act. You also learn how to use those techniques to act more and more confidently in any situation you want to.

It takes mostly one or two sessions and you are equipped with knowledge, skills and strategies for the rest of your life for confidently dealing with challenges in your life.