I slowly started building confidence during highschool and university.

It was not a conscious process, however. Since I had never been confident, I had started to accept my insecurity as part of my personality. I thought it was just “how I was” and how I would always be. My so-called “confidence” was completely built on external validators, like my academic performance and supportive friends.

Until a facilitator-led peer-to-peer session opened my eyes.

I told the group that I wanted to feel more confident, particularly at networking events. I would always find an excuse not to have to mingle. My insecurity was most painfully present whenever I had to approach a group of people that was already caught up in conversation together.

My peers asked me lots of questions to get more context, including whether I had an idea of why I felt shy to approach others. I told the group I had previously considered it might be linked to my primary school past, but that I had discarded that since “it hadn’t been that bad. Never anything physical.”

I thought that was that topic covered and we would be looking for the why behind and solution to my problem elsewhere. But to my surprise, I returned to it myself when the facilitator started to ask how I really felt when looking at those groups. I replied, almost instinctively, “what if I don’t belong, again?”.

I did not immediately register the tears running down my face. They were not tears from sadness. They were just the only outward expression that my body could think of to reflect what was going on inside me. And that was a an internal puzzle piece suddenly falling into place.

It took me tons of processing and a few coaching sessions afterwards to fully grasp I was still carrying the beliefs of a little girl that didn’t feel accepted by her classmates.

That little girl had grown, but those beliefs had sadly not grown with me. Until I identified them and started working on them actively. I also finally accepted that I had been bullied, where previously my own mind would have protested with “but there was no violence, don’t be such a wuss.”