Confidence issues, please help me?

[fivefootfour]

I'm 23 and I'm not happy at the moment. My ex girlfriend split up with me over 5 months ago and tomorrow would have been our 2 year anniversary. I've recently found out that she's got a new boyfriend and it's torn me apart again.

Since we broke up the past 5 months have been hell for me and I miss her alot. I'm trying to move on but haven't made much progress. I think this is down to confidence issues. I've never had alot of confidence and now it's been knocked completely. I've started thinning quite badly on top of my head and this doesn't help matters. My mates, work mates and people I don't know like to point this out all the time and it kills me when there laughing.

Not only this I'm quite a quiet sort of person and just can't see how I'm going to get back into dating or find someone who's attracted to me. My ex was my first serious girlfriend and the only girl I I've been on a date with, we got on well but she said there was too much silence in our relationship.

I've joined a gym, been out with friends alot but nothing seems to help me.*Can anyone help me out and give me some advice?

Thanks.

[AirbenderAang]

It sounds like you started going to he gym. That sounds real good and I advise you to continue that. Strength training is great for your health, appearance, and also confidence. As long as you do a mediocre job workout out, nutritionally, and resting, you will improve. Now I advise you to try improving yourself in other areas.

I think the best cure for low confidence is to face your fears and reach for improving yourself. How can you improve yourself physically, spiritually, career wise, hobby-wise, educationally, relationally, socially, etc? Another approach is to take the time to write out all of the reasons you have low confidence. Make it a free-write and just keep on writing until you exhaust yourself. This activity is great for starting to accurately assess your issues. You will probably notice that it is somewhat of a relief to put it all on paper. Once it is all on paper you can start to deal with it. If you keep it all unexpressed in your mind, you are telling yourself that it is scary to face. Then once it is written out look at each issue and ask yourself, "How can I improve in this area?" If it is overwhelming, break down the problem into manageable baby steps. Pretty much all meaningful accomplishments are accomplished by a series of baby steps. Once you break it up into manageable steps, you can make improvements. As you make improvements, your confidence will naturally rise.

With your thinning hair, you can always get a really short haircut. This will most likely stop your friends from teasing you about your hair. With a really short hair-cut (buzz cut length), you are saying "yea my hair is going away, but so what? Who needs hair?" If they continue teasing you, then just shrug it off. You will probably find it bothers you a lot less with less hair. You mere act of cutting your hair so short forces you to accept the thinning hair.

Also at 23, you are very young. Part of your problem is that you are probably being extra hard on yourself. You say that you were quiet at the beginning stages of your last relationship. Well that behavior obviously was good enough to get you the girl. If you are more naturally quiet, well own up to that. You don't have to be a master conversationalists to get girls. The best way to get a girl, is to be persistent with girls. Not all girls are going to like you and that is fine. Yet, some will.

Just work on improving it.

[DoesntMatter]

Cocaine is supposed to increase confidence, according to the medical literature

[karmaa]

Cocaine does increase your confidence but it reduces your life expectancy. What do you want? Confidence or a good Life

[Local747]

She quit the relationship because there was "too much silence"? Now there's a one dimensional lame excuse if I ever heard one. It sure didn't take her long to get over you either. Doesn't sound too bright to me. When I was your age but at 20, my girlfriend of one year liked this other guy she was seeing on the side, while I was working night shift. She went on this "friendly get together" to the pool hall with her other friends and where this guy was also present. I thought it was just an innocent "get together"- didn't know he liked her and was planting "seeds" in her head to convince her to feel the same way for him. When she told me that she liked him, I kicked her out of my life. Two days later the "dingbat" started going out with the guy. I look back at that and conclude that she was a very stupid woman and I was a very stupid man for even wasting my time with a "waste job" such as her. Looking back, I not only realized that she was not anything to write home about, but that she also was "dead weight". You see, you learn from these things and realize that it's her loss. If she is stupid enough not to make things work, you have to decide, on your own, whether or not she was truly worth your time and ask yourself "just how shallow she really is". True, I'm sure she had her good moments. However, the problem is, whenever any of us come out of the relationship, we often think of the "good things" in the relationship instead of what "split us up" and why the relationship "no longer is". It's better you find out now then years down the road when you are really attached. Try having women cheat on you or lie to you or use you for your money, time, compassion, vehicle etc etc etc. Then tell me how you feel.

You're young yet. Try being in your 40's and going through heart aches and ***holes trying to take your girl when she says not to worry and that nothing is going on. You get more sensitive as you get older but you also get more wise. Pretty soon you have your own rules and boundaries. Once you have these, congratulations. You have quite the self confidence streak in you. You know what you can tolerate and what you can't tolerate. You become more "no nonsense". Why? Self preservation for one. Survival and self respect for the other. Also, you start thinking of the future and begin to ask yourself whether or not your partner is a good fit for you- whether or not the two of you have a future. If you decide that there will be nothing but headaches, but a part of you wants to "hang on", begin to weigh the pros and cons. If the cons outweigh the pros, you have got to give her the "pink slip". There is simply no other way if she does not want to work it out. Others may call it ego. I call it vigilance. I hope that some of this has been helpful. And please, don't be "friends" with your ex either. Alot of women want this. Don't be foolish. Being friends with her would just pour salt on your wounds, plus it would get your hopes up of getting back together. In my opinion, if it was meant to be a solid relationship where she was "the one", there would not have been a break up in the first place. Nowadays, women get just one chance with me. That's it. When an ex girlfriend wants to be "just friends" after the break up, that would be like this: metaphorically speaking, you don't "club" someone in the head with a bat and then ask them if you can dress their wounds while you keep clubbing them with that bat. That's just silly, if not stupid.