Rebuilding Confidence After Years of Being Put Down

Some people lose their confidence in a single bad moment. Others have it worn away slowly, over years of being called names, compared, ignored or told they will never amount to anything. If that is your story, you may have noticed that the voice in your head now says the same things those people said, even when they are long gone. The good news is that confidence can be rebuilt, one piece at a time.

How put-downs become your inner voice

Words repeated often enough stop sounding like someone else’s opinion and start sounding like facts. A child who hears that they are stupid or worthless does not have the life experience to argue back. They simply absorb it. Adults in controlling relationships, harsh workplaces or unkind families can absorb it too.

Jonathan Anthony Burkett describes this in his memoir, Neglected But Undefeated (2012). Growing up, the adult who should have protected him at home called him names, and by about eight years old he was telling himself he was ugly, stupid and unloved. Those were not his words to begin with. They became his by repetition. If a child is in immediate danger, call 911. In the U.S., the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline is 1-800-422-4453.

Proof that the words were wrong

Old words lose their power when you set real evidence against them. For Jonathan, one piece of that evidence came in his first year of middle school, when he and another student scored the highest in the school on the writing part of a state test. When he thanked his language arts teacher, she told him he was the only person he should be thanking. The boy who had been told he was dumb had earned that result himself.

Later, as a young man just released from jail without charges, he set a clear intention. He wanted to change his life and become “a total lover, not a fighter,” and he knew that meant becoming immune to the things people would say to discourage him. Confidence, for him, was not something he waited to feel. It was something he decided to build.

Practical steps to rebuild

You can start rebuilding your confidence with simple, repeatable steps:

• Catch the old voice. When a harsh thought shows up, ask, “Whose words are these?” Naming the source loosens its grip.
• Write the counter-statement. Next to the old line, write what is actually true, backed by something real you have done.
• Keep an evidence file. Save kind messages, good grades, finished projects and compliments. Read it on hard days.
• Keep small promises to yourself. Each one you keep, like a walk, a page written or a bill paid on time, teaches you that you can rely on yourself.
• Learn one new skill. Competence is one of the fastest roads back to confidence.
• Limit time with people who still put you down, where you can, and set firm boundaries where you cannot.
• Get support. A counselor or therapist can help you untangle years of messages faster than you can alone.

Choose the people who build you up

Confidence does not grow in isolation. It grows around people who see you clearly. Looking back on his teenage years, Jonathan wrote, “I felt that it was all about who you hung around with and whether they allowed you to become a follower, a leader, or just yourself.”

That last option, just yourself, is the goal. Notice who leaves you feeling smaller and who leaves you feeling more like you. Spend more time with the second group. Teachers, mentors, friends’ parents, coworkers and faith communities can all become part of the circle that helps you believe new things about yourself.

Be patient with the process

Years of put-downs are not undone in a weekend. You may feel strong one week and shaky the next, especially when you are tired, stressed or around the people who hurt you. That does not mean you are going backward. It means you are human.

Keep going anyway. Every time you choose the true statement over the old one, the new voice gets a little louder. Over time, it becomes the one you hear first.

Watch your progress in actions, not just feelings. Maybe you spoke up in a meeting, applied for the job, or said no without apologizing five times. Those moments are confidence in motion, even if you still felt nervous. Feeling afraid and doing it anyway is exactly how confidence is built. Write those moments down so you can see the pattern growing over the months.

Your story is bigger than their words

One of Jonathan’s best-known lines puts it simply:

You know my name, not my story. You've heard what I've done, but not what I've been through.

— Jonathan Anthony Burkett, Neglected But Undefeated (2012)

The people who put you down never knew your whole story either. You get to write the rest of it. To read how Jonathan rebuilt his life from the ground up, visit the Books page.

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