Ask a therapist > Relationships > Hi, I’m a 21 yr old female and right now I feel lost. How do I grow my self confidence and trust?

Hi, I’m a 21 yr old female and right now I feel lost. How do I grow my self confidence and trust?

For a while I’ve been questioning a lot of things, one of the main things is my relationship. I was/am in a 2yr relationship and it has made me lose a self confidence and self esteem due to the things that were going on in it. Genuinely I don’t think I am my happiest with this person but for some reason I can’t seem to detach myself. We have broken up a couple times and gotten back together and right now we’re in the same cycle again and genuinely I want to be happy. I want to be confident but it’s hard. This person is a nice person and I think that makes it harder for me. I also feel like I’m a completely different person from before I met him. Being with him sometimes I feel trapped not in a bad way but I feel like I can’t move from where I currently am. I also realized I have issues trusting people, I also tend to think people do or say things with an ulterior motive or with an expectation or they just don’t mean what they say. I also struggle to be empathetic and affectionate to people I care about. I feel like I’m not being good to them or I’m relieving more than I’m giving. I don’t know what is going on exactly but recently I’ve been trying to think about my childhood and recall why I am the way I am right now and it’s hard. I need help. I have set a lot of goals I want to achieve and I have not been able to do any. I lack motivation and sometimes I beat myself up about it saying “i'm just being lazy” but I don’t know if that’s the case.

Asked by Dee

Relationships

Answered

04/25/2022

Hi Dee

My name is Emma, I am so sorry to hear of your struggles. Thank you for describing what you are currently going through and all the thoughts and feelings that come with that.

This sounds like you are trying to make some tough decisions. At the age of 21 you have shown that you are capable of sustaining a relationship and maintaining it. This is great, however, at such a young age you are still growing as a person and it's ok that your feelings towards your partner can change in that growth. What is important is that you are happy and that you can find your happiness in life.

You may have thoughts of guilt towards your partner when you think of not being with him, this is very normal and the feelings can fluctuate for some time.

I recognize that you are in a pattern as you mention and it is challenging to break those patterns, sometimes the thought of letting go is just far too daunting. On the other hand, sometimes holding on can be more painful than letting go.

It is sad to hear that you feel your self esteem and confidence has dropped, I really enjoy working with clients to help build these two areas. To be honest, it's probably the first starting point, you need to love yourself first. Self care is so important for you. Perhaps that's something we could work on together?

You mention not being able to trust people, again this can come back to your self esteem and confidence. Perhaps we could look at building your resilience to negative behaviors of others.

Going back to childhood is a good start, as you can unpick events and look at your responses to those and explore the thoughts and feelings related to them. So it's interesting that you say you have started to be reflective of that.

It would probably be helpful to look at your relationship in the same way and unpick relevant occasions and explore your thoughts and feelings.

It's really difficult to be in the position you are in, and I'm sure you have a whole big bag full of emotions bouncing around.

I would really like to help you to unpick all this and move forward in a way that is really beneficial to you.

Mrs. Emma Wood

BACP