Confidence: How Do You Hold It, Lose It, and Re-Build It?

Photo by Miguel Bruna

A quiet girl is seated on the backside of her bed, leaning against pillows, staring out into the nothingness of her room. The space she holds is minimal. She is absorbed in what ifs and whys. She often finds herself moving through life alone as if standing in the middle of a road while life zooms past. High school is no different. She keeps to the back of the class when she can, just like she keeps to the back of her bed. She finds safety and security in being able to see everything and everyone in front of her so that she doesn’t miss something.

This girl is afraid to be herself. She has reduced herself to a speck on the social scale and would rather hide than step forward and take up space. She would rather barely exist.  

This girl was me.

She wasn’t always me, but she was me from twelve to about nineteen. Even now, when I find myself engaging with people from that era of my life, I fall back into those quiet patterns of being obsolete and small.

This version of me was afraid to be herself. She was afraid to speak her mind and too afraid of what others would think. This version of me held no confidence.

I was engaged in a conversation with some coworkers about doing activities alone and my brain started piecing together how I got so good at being on my own. I am rather impeccable at doing things by myself. I take myself to the movies, the beach, comedy clubs, bars, coffee shops, restaurants, different gyms, and the list goes on. This skill was learned. It did not come naturally to me. It was like my pre-programmed confidence wiring had short-circuited and I was still waiting for the technician to come fix it.

If we run it back a bit, it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I started to explore the idea of doing things on my own. One day I took the chance. I stepped outside my comfort zone and edged my way into the confidence zone.

Beyond my personal experience, I started to ask myself a few questions. Where does confidence come from? Why does it sometimes slip away? And how do we keep it?

Where does confidence come from?

Have you ever stopped to think about it? Did it develop over time or have you always just had “it”? That feeling of overwhelming courage to do what you want to do or have thought about doing without a second thought to follow. You were just certain it was right and certain that it wasn’t going to be a mistake.

There is a debate in the world of psychology about the origin of confidence and how it comes to be. Initially, it was thought to be a subjective feeling built by beliefs about the world stemming from experiences and the beliefs of those we grow up around. The only way to access this sense of confidence is through introspection – taking the time to reflect on your own beliefs. If you believe something to be true you are more likely to act in accordance with it (Ott, Masset, and Kepecs 2018).

The most common example used is driving. You come to a T in the road on your way home, a road you have driven so many times before. You know if you go right you will get there and if you go left you will not. Imagine sitting in the car with a friend and they tell you how to get to your house. They say go left. Your thought response might be instant. Absolutely not. You’ve been driving this road your whole life. It’s never been left and that wouldn’t change now. You are confident in your answer and choose the direction you have proven to be right over and over again.

This is statistical quantity. This is the likelihood that a belief is correct based on the constant reinforcement of being correct every time the same decision is made (Ott, Masset, and Kepecs 2018).

Now imagine they are doing construction work on that street and you have to take a detour. To get home you have always gone right, but now you have to go left. You’re less certain of the directions after that since it is not a route you have been taking your whole life. You know the roads to some degree but you’re slower to respond to the following consecutive turns, second-guessing each one in the hopes you remember correctly. You are inherently less confident.

Confidence builds itself into the orbitofrontal cortex, the space in the brain where reward value is represented. Amongst several other areas of the front of the brain, these spaces are key for computing situations and acting in confidence.

Why does confidence sometimes slip away?

Imagine you are at work and you are going to send a fax to a major account for your office. This is one of those accounts that can make or break the company and if they don’t get this document they will lose thousands of dollars. Sending a fax is something you have done hundreds of times. Recently your office acquired a new fax machine, one you have not used yet but since you have used several throughout your work life, you can’t imagine there are any major differences. When you go to send the fax you learn later that you missed a button and the fax didn’t go through. This machine required one extra step you hadn’t learned. You were so confident in the process that there wasn’t a second thought.

Not only does the receiving party lose money, but your office loses the account altogether for the mistake. Your job is on the line and suddenly this simple act you’ve been doing forever is terrifying. Your confidence is gone.

You now double and triple-check whether the fax was sent and follow up with clients multiple times to make sure they received it. You find a small amount of panic holding your body every time you are asked to send a fax.

This can happen in a multitude of ways and when it does, it sucks. This happens when we get overconfident. When we commit so hard to an idea or a practice or a thought that we blind ourselves to any other possibility. We almost start moving through life on autopilot in those areas and that’s where mistakes can happen. That’s where we watch our confidence falter. Once it starts to teeter, it doesn’t take a lot for it to disappear, but it takes a lot to build it up. So…

How do we keep it?

You know those people that are unabashedly themselves. That will make a mistake and frame it as a ‘whatever’ and ‘it’s not a big deal’. Those people that will still stand back up the next day and preach the next thing and just be committed to what they think they know even if they are wrong?

When you’ve been rattled it’s hard to come back from it. It’s hard to maintain an ‘it is what it is’ attitude and move on, especially if that’s not who you have been.

So how do we keep our confidence even when it’s been challenged?

Let’s go back to the fax machine example. The natural reaction for someone with low confidence is to retreat, maybe even quit. But what if in that moment you were able to look your director in the eyes and say “I made a big mistake and I’m so sorry.” Instead of letting the mistake own you, you are owning the mistake. You are releasing the shame of what happened by taking it head-on. This builds confidence.

This is the start of how you become a grounded, confident individual. This one small action of owning it grows your confidence. Next time you go to send a fax, you are going to check and confirm it went through. Then if your office gets a new fax machine, you are going to double-check the instructions on how to send one. You are going to make sure you know because you already made that mistake. Your confidence initially moved into overconfidence and that is where the mistake was made.

Confidence may be built into our DNA or it may be something we can build and learn. We may stumble and fall and lose the confidence we once had due to overconfident moments. We may build it back through repetition and owning our part in where it went wrong.

I believe there is a line with confidence. If we go too far, we jeopardize others. If we don’t give enough, we jeopardize ourselves. But if we fall right into that perfect balance, we can maintain the most important level of confidence. The one where you stand tall, shoulders back, and are totally unabashedly yourself.

Love always,

Riss

The Dark Side of Love

Photo by Cherry Laithang

I am an optimist, a learned skill that I have sought to obtain and hold close to my heart. A skill that has not been easy to tame because of the challenges and life-altering riddles that have been thrown my way. Still, I choose to find beauty in a glass-half-full world and if you haven’t gathered from my work yet, I love love.

While a lot of the things I have written lately have aired on the side of the darker parts of love. My experiences have reverberated from my heart onto the page to share with those willing to read and yet I want to get into the pieces that I still consider love even if they are painful.

It’s no secret my previous relationship did a number on me however, I still find so much love in it. I know some people will think that it’s probably closer to trauma bonding. Or that there is mass manipulation to the highest degree- and still, I choose to look at that relationship through the eyes of love.

So today, I want to dive into the dark side of love. The love that comes with broken promises while heartbreak runs on repeat. The love that gives everything and gets just enough back to keep you on a hook. The love that defies instincts and has you aching for peace. The love that thrives on insecurity and has you bracing for impact every moment of the day.

This may not be the healthiest version of love and yet, I still believe it is.

Joshua was a lot of things. I could sit here and list off all the angry awful things I have thought about him, but honestly, I have already written that letter and burned it. I have braved the pain and I continue to work on the healing process every single day.

When I fell in love with Joshua, it wasn’t for his games or charm or indication of the size of the package he was carrying in his pants (which between you and me was fine and not very giving if you know what I mean). No. Those things have never impressed me. Those things have never been high on my calling card. It was flattering to be wanted.

The pieces of him I fell in love with were humble and kind. I saw his passion when he picked up garbage off the streets. The way he connected with animals. When he got excited about making a new recipe or letting me into his world of video games. I fell in love with the gentle hugs and small thoughtful gestures. All these little pieces snatched my heart and I let it float safely to the bottom of a jar that he held.

My love for this man was real. My love for him may have been manipulation at play, but the way I felt, was genuine. I saw the heartbreak in the story he told me about his family. I saw the hurt that he felt from some lived experience in his past. I felt the ache in his heart when he spoke about the challenges he had endured. In those moments, I felt it with him. I hadn’t learned how to put up emotional boundaries yet. I hadn’t figured out how to safeguard my heart and my empathy, to feel compassion without taking on someone else’s pain.

So, there was love. There was a lot of it. And in some demented way, I think he had love. Maybe not directly for me rather than for what he was getting out of the situation, but maybe love for him is this way of life he has chosen. Maybe he loves the struggle to some degree. Loves the pain. Loves to want love but doesn’t know how to believe in it. I have no idea.

In the beginning, I gave him the most loving parts of me. I let him pile them in that jar he had, the one holding my heart, sitting on a shelf somewhere in his subconscious mind. All those things I fell in love with were set on display as reminders. Reminders he would set. Like all he had to do was say ‘Hey Marissa, set a reminder for why you love me tomorrow at 9 am.’ So it would be done. It was that easy.

After the first time I found out he cheated on me, which was a devastating night given the history I have with my family. He took a walk and came back with everything I needed to hear to let him stay. I wanted to prove to him that someone in his life could love him even if he made a mistake. I knew then it wasn’t going to be me, but he had owned his mistake. He had said that his relationship with women stems from his relationship with his abusive mother. That he sought attention from women to give himself security that he was, in fact, desirable. That his actions were not a reflection of me, but of himself.

The perfect response. The response I needed to keep him around. So, I did.

That was the last time he owned up to his mistakes like that. Unfortunately for me, my love had become soaked in desperation and I was just trying to hold onto love from him. When he did it again, I wasn’t going to let him go and he knew. He had me figured out.

I was taking a walk on the dark side of love. A love with a one-way road that only led to one place. There was no detouring, there were only strategically placed alternate routes. Routes that led back to the same road. To get off that track, I had to start inside. I had to take back my heart.

I didn’t know how to get it back. The only way off that meticulously paved road was trekking through the mangled forest surrounding me. Somewhere in there, was my heart. As the crazed forest grew, I could feel the light in my life fading.

For years, people had told me that they thought of me as a ray of sunshine. Joshua said it too. After dating him for long enough, I started wearing my ray of sunshine as a façade. A mask decorated in yellow rays that shone to no end. I was desperate to hide the heartbreak I was feeling inside. The loss. The shame.

Joshua saw it though. He saw me breaking.

He never asked if I was okay. He didn’t need to know. I was his and that was what he wanted. I was his bottom line. Someone to support him and pick up the slack when he couldn’t carry his weight. It was dark over there.

On the dark side of love, I didn’t get an “I am your father” moment. There wasn’t a blanket realization that shoved me in the right direction. I had to ease myself out of the darkness just like I had been eased in.

The dark side of love takes. It takes everything. It takes your spirit, your heart, your soul. It takes the goodness and covers it with an (un)welcome mat coated in shame. It takes the feelings of joy and shoves it in a zip-lock baggie, leaving just enough space in the bag to gasp for breath. The dark side of love kicks you when you’re down. It bares all its weight on you so standing up is like trying to lift a car. The dark side of love will touch you and use its hands to beat you down to make you feel like you need the darkness to survive. The dark side of love will always apologize but will still blame you. The dark side of love hurts.

It hurts.

And it is also the hardest thing to break away from.

Once the dark side of love takes hold of your mentality, finding yourself, the person you have always been, is like entering a 5000-yard maze. Somewhere in there, you exist - you live, but the cage that holds you blends into the surroundings and your soul hides in fear of the evil lurking around every corner. To get out we have to brave that first step inside. We have to choose to save ourselves first.

The dark side of love will be there to tempt you out. Will be there to challenge your thoughts and have you second-guessing reality. It will have you thinking about whether your memory is playing games or if it is just the darkness taking hold. It will blind you from that straight path home, the one everyone else can see. The dark side of love will feed on your weakness and target your deepest fears.

The dark side of love can be terrifying. It can be a matter of life and death. But it exists and it is very real.

I have seen many versions and lived through different forms. My relationship with Joshua is only one.

Still, when I sit back and shift my perspective into a different gear, I see that maybe the dark side of love isn’t so dark after all. It’s light, aching to break free. It’s this opportunity to find inner strength you never believed you had to walk away closer to the person you were always meant to be.

I believe we need the dark side of love so that we can see how much light we actually hold.

If you are there, sitting in the darkness, waiting for the light to break, I want you to know it’s already there. Find that sliver first and hold on to it and you’ll be surprised how fast the darkness fades.

Keep on shining you beautiful, beautiful soul. I see your light even when you don’t.

Love Always,

Riss

My Ex is a Con Man

*Please note that in the past I have opted to leave out names for the privacy of those individuals, however, this is my life and my story. I am not insensitive and also I know that we all have a role we play in each other’s lives. Sometimes we are cast as the villain and sometimes the hero. It depends on the stage of life we are in at that moment in time. I take great consideration in the names of the people who do get mentioned out of respect for them and for myself.

My entire life, I have believed that people are inherently good. Despite the various costumes and charades “bad” people put on, there is a reason for it. Something happened to them that hurt them so badly, this is how they learned to survive.

While I still believe that and will always look for the other side first, I have come to realize that at a certain point, it is no longer a built-in habit but a choice to be the way we are every single day.

I have days when I wake up and I am grateful for everyone, everything, and their brother’s sister’s mother. Then there are days I wake up in a fighting mood. That doesn’t mean I’m about to go out and start fighting people. It means I CHOOSE to figure out what the heck is going on that has set off this extreme attitude of aching to cause conflict in my life.

I had a conversation with someone recently, asking about my ex. Asking about how he treated me because there is concern for one of their family members. When this individual reached out, I was honestly skeptical. And then I thought about it, what is the worst that could happen? Worst case I hang up, best case I have an opportunity to help someone and share my experience.

I opted into this conversation. Part of me needed closure, but the bigger part needed to share my knowledge of this hurtful individual.

Oh Joshua, what have you done you fool?

After hearing a bit about her story, internally I was fuming (the details I will leave out because that is theirs to tell when and if they are ready.) There are so many lies that he has been spewing to this family. Mistruths. Added bits and pieces taken away. It’s disgusting. I have never felt more wronged in my life. I was played by a con man.

He manipulated me so badly that it didn’t make sense mentally. I couldn’t comprehend what was happening in my relationship because of the false reality he had created for me.

For the first time in my life, I can openly admit that I was in an abusive relationship. The physical was limited, but the emotional was every single day. Joshua knows how to play the game and he plays it well. Unfortunately for him, his charade will not end in good taste because he picks people with families that care too much.

My story with this con man is much longer than I will be able to write out here but after hearing how he has impacted this new family he wormed himself into, I can’t stay silent any longer.

When I left Maine, where we met, I moved back to the West Coast to surround myself with family and a safe space. Something he doesn’t have. He conned me out of thousands of dollars, which yes, I willingly paid with the intention he would pay me back. He took over my apartment and my space. He threatened to leave me on multiple occasions but, I can see he never would have because that would have put him back out on the streets. He just wanted to create that power dynamic.

Every time we argued, which was rather frequent, it was my fault. It was my fault for wanting to talk. My fault for wanting to have a conversation. It made me dramatic for wanting to understand and be understood. It meant that I wasn’t listening to him and I wasn’t hearing him and I wasn’t respecting him. Those were his vices every single time.

When I finally pulled the trigger on what I had wanted to do for years and spit out the words that would inevitably be his doom, I should have seen the calculations building in his head, but I still didn’t understand this man. I still didn’t understand who he is or what he is. How could I? I was still in it despite being out of it.

We stayed in the same apartment that he couldn’t afford for about a month until it started to get even more toxic. In hindsight, I can tell you that he probably wanted space for himself so he could start looking for his next victim especially, because I wasn’t under his control anymore to an extent. His words became more derogatory. He made home as dark as it could be energetically that I eventually moved in with a friends family that I was so blessed to have in my life.

The entire moveout process was hell.

Joshua yelled at me, calling me all sorts of names that I can’t even remember anymore, and kicked me out of an apartment that I was still paying for. Even when I moved across the country, I continued to track the rent payments because my name was still on the lease.

The bottom line is this, if I removed my name, he would have to reapply. If he reapplied, he wouldn’t be able to stay because he didn’t have sufficient income, he didn’t have a co-signer, and he didn’t have good enough credit. Winner, right? So, in my empathetic mind, staying on the lease was the least I could do.

I’ll tell you, he weaseled another $3000 out of my family because he couldn’t “afford rent”. But those new shoes look nice…The only reason I paid is because I was still attached to the unit and I didn’t want it coming back to bite me in the ass.

From the moment I broke up with him, he tells the story a different way, he was calculating his next move. For one, he knew I still “loved” him because of who I was raised to be. I come from a family of kindness and graciousness, and he knew he could work it to his advantage. All he had to do was keep me on a hook so that he had a place to stay, after all he had spent two years with me so he knew me inside and out.

As soon as I told him that I was taking my name off the lease, he panicked. He freaked out on me and even at thousands of miles away, he reverted back to what a terrible person I was. Trying to manipulate me by saying things like “You said you would come back” and “You just want to put me on the streets”.

My distance and space had made me realize that he was an adult man who lived before me and would either choose to live after me or not. I know it’s dark, but it’s the survival of the fittest babes.

So I worked with the property company to get my name off (a far more complicated process than it needed to be) and he went quiet. He didn’t talk to me. He didn’t talk to the property company. He stopped showing up to work and got fired. He went into a pit of despair.

What he later told me was that he held a gun to his head multiple times but was still too weak to pull the trigger. It’s sad and after I saw him when I went to pick up our cat, I believe it.

The con didn’t end there.

We moved him down to my aunt’s in Virginia where he lived. My mom’s family are some of the most amazing passionate people you will meet. All they want to do is help anyone and everyone that needs it, Joshua included. My aunt tried to help him find work, but nothing stuck or it wasn’t in the field that he wanted. What field is that is my question because frankly, I don’t think he wants to work at all. He wants someone else to bum off of.

One of the conditions of his living there was he had to seek mental help. He was diagnosed with Bipolar, but if I know Joshua, his opposition to medication is profound. Hey, I get it, medication can be numbing and that can’t feel good but that means that without it, we should be searching for alternate options to tune down the parts of us that are a little out of our control. That, he wasn’t willing to do.

It was in the fall that he told my mom and aunt that he got a job at a resort in Montana or South Dakota and was moving. I now know that was 100% not true.

This con man had run his course in my life and unfortunately found someone else who is kind, empathetic, and vulnerable to the desires and wants in her life. A personality he looks for and latches onto.

This story is short. This isn’t even half of it and I’m only one side of it. But today I can say, I dated a con man. A master manipulator. A man lost to the lies he has told himself for far too long.

I hope one-day things change, but more than that I send love and support to the family he is affecting now.

If you can relate. If you are in one of these right now, know that it’s okay. It happens. I was so ashamed of how deep I went with this person that I was terrified to walk away because of how other people would look at me. The truth is, my family and friends, supported me and held me and cared for me. Not a single person pitied me or looked badly at me. They waited for me to rise out of my shame and guilt because that was the only place it was coming from.

One of the biggest lessons I learned in this relationship, is it is okay to be wrong. It’s okay to own it, to hold it, and to accept it with grace and patience. We are all in this world learning one step at a time. As long as we are going forward, we aren’t going back.

I love you all so much and I hope if this is a situation you are in, you find the courage to walk away for yourself because you deserve so much more.

Love Always,

Riss

If you want to hear more about my experience dating a con man and the emotionally abusive relationship I have lived through, let me know! We grow from other people’s experiences as much as our own. And while I don’t believe my story is special, it is unique because no experience is the same <3