The student news site of Antioch Community High School.

Sequoit Media

The student news site of Antioch Community High School.

Sequoit Media

The student news site of Antioch Community High School.

Sequoit Media

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What it Feels to Lose Self Confidence

Sydney Parker // As told to by Sydney Parker
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Ashley Lubkeman

Accepting the fact that I had lost confidence in myself was hard. After regaining it, I felt like a new person. Every day, I would look in the mirror and tell myself that I needed to change because I was not pretty enough for society. The hardest part about it was keeping it all to myself and not telling anyone for months. Having to fake a smile and pretend I was happy all the time was difficult. Not having family or friends to reassure me made it even harder to become confident in myself again.

Because I was locked in the house for months, I tried to change how I looked and how I acted. Trying to change the way my body looked and the clothes I wore led to more problems. I would shop at different stores and try to dress differently. I wanted to look like the models on the runway, but I knew that was not going to happen. Knowing that I would not look like runway models made me feel worse about myself. I knew the only way I would look like them as if I lost weight.

My weight loss started to plateau, and this ended up making my confidence drop to a very low point. I began to hurt my body by not giving it enough food and drinking an absurd amount of water. I knew deep down that trying things that were not healthy for me could cause serious health issues. Luckily, I realized that I was hurting my body and stopped before anything negative that could result from these destructive habits.

Working out helped me gain some of my confidence because I started to see changes after doing it for a while. The changes were minor, but as I continued to work out, I started to see positive progress. I began to workout every day for a long period of time. Since I was working out too much and not eating enough, I stopped seeing changes. After I saw that nothing was happening anymore, I lost the confidence that I had regained.

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As time went on, I figured out how to maintain a healthy workout schedule. I am eating enough and still working out a lot. Even though I workout a lot, I try not to overdo it. I am now eating a healthy amount of food for my body. I now know how important it is to fuel my body with good food and still be able to workout.

I had to act like I was happy and everything was perfect even though it was not. As a child, I was never good at sharing my feelings and opening up to people. To this day, I still do not open up to my friends and family about how I am feeling. I thought keeping everything to myself would make things easier, but it did the opposite. Not telling people made it even harder for me to regain my confidence because I had no reassurance. I was too afraid to open up to people and tell them what was going on. I was scared to tell people because I did not think anyone would listen and understand what I was going through.

I was never myself around people because I thought they would judge me for me being me. I always thought people would stop being friends with me or that they would not talk to me because I was myself. The scariest part about all of this was acting like everything was fine, even though it was not. I pretended like I was confident and happy with myself when I was really putting on a mask to hide that I was hurting and did not love myself. The worst part is that no one noticed that I was pretending; no one noticed that I was hurting. Not having anyone to open up to made gaining my confidence back harder.

Seeing my friends who were confident in themselves was difficult because I wanted to be just like them. I wanted to have the confidence they had, but I did not, and I could not push myself to gain it. I wished that I could be as confident in my body as they were in theirs. It took time to be confident in my body, but I finally started to like how I looked. Now that I am more confident in my body, I can stop worrying about what people think of me.

As much as I wanted to love myself again, I could not; deep down, I knew I was not good enough to. I wasn’t good enough to think I was perfect or I was pretty. I had to accept the fact that I could never love myself again. It was a struggle because I thought I could only love myself if I was pretty enough. Since the beauty standards are high, I knew I could never be as pretty as other girls. Trying to love myself again was a challenge because I did not have enough self-confidence.

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About the Contributors
Sydney Parker, Sports Writing Editor
Sydney Parker is a senior and this is her fourth year on staff. In her free time, Parker is either spending time with her friends or shopping. Parker plays travel softball, but is also on the school’s golf team and track and field team.
Ashley Lubkeman, Tom Tom Staff
Ashley Lubkeman is a senior and this is her second year on the Tom Tom staff. She is captain of the golf and bowling teams and can be typically found out and about at the school in one of her ten extracurriculars. Lubkeman enjoys expressing herself through photography, poetry, managing a variety of school social media accounts and hating Emma Poklop.
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