Self conscious

LegacyUser

i am a self conscious person and worry what people think of me - if they like me etc. it is quiet restricting at times when im constantly worrying about people. how do you just not care what people think? advice from confident people will be appreciated thanks

echosound

The best advice I can give (and that I try - and sometimes fail! - to follow myself) is to realise that every other person (bar a lucky few) most likely feels the same way - i.e. selfconscious and wondering what other people think of them.
Which in turn means that most people are so pre-occupied with being self-conscious and wondering what others make of them, that they are not paying a blind bit of attention to you

Think about it for a minute - when you are out, or with your friends etc, are you so busy worrying what you look like/how you act/how you come across, that you don't really notice many "bad" or flawed aspects of other people, and just accept them for who they are without question because you're too busy worrying so much about what they think of you? Yes? There you go

I have my little points/habits/mannerisms that I am hyper-critical about, yet if I happen to mention it to someone they normally look at me like I'm mad and say it's something they never noticed, or something they never thought was a fault in the first place. Same goes vice versa - often my friends will complain about some aspect of themselves that gets them down and they're self-conscious about, and 99% of the time it's something that had never even registered with me at all, let alone as a flaw.

You will always be your own worst critic, and the mirror you view yourself in can be distorted through over-analysing whatever aspects you are self-sonscious about.

One other little piece of advice - if you mean that you worry what others will think of you and therefore try to please them before you please yourself you will end up unhappy as you can't please everyone all the time. If you are happy enough in yourself it will show, and you will exude an air of confidence and appear relaxed and at ease with yourself and with others, and this will go a long way with other people.

If all else fails, pretend you are playing a part - act as if you are chilled out and relaxed and confident, even if you feel uptight or self-conscious, and after a while, you will become relaxed and lose the self-consciousness without even realising it.

It might take a lot of "reprogramming" IYKWIM to try and think like that, and you will slip at times and feel self-conscious, but believe me, it does work if you work at it yourself. Best of luck!

Oneironaut

Best way to over-come that sort of thing (though it may not seem like it at first) is to engage in social environments. Something like, a drama course ('' Nah man that's well gay" reactions aside!) as it encourages to develop a skill that you may not have known you had, whilst interacting with others, so your skill and confidence in those skills will improve. Hopefully, you'll be able to go up in front of an audience at the end of it all and do something with utmost confidence.

As the above poster said, everyone is self conscious in some way, shape or form, and it's perfectly normal for you to have insecurities - but it doesn't mean that it should limit you from enjoying life. There are plenty of things in this world out of our control that can do that job, no problemo!;)