Confidence game
Confidence. As in, I CAN. Why do some people have it and others don't? There are plenty of terrified artists and violin players-- an occasional Tony winning actor or actress has a drink before going on stage. Concert pianists have been known to take beta-blockers to control their anxiety. Keeps the heart rate in check, I think. People with skills and traits that make them special sometimes have it, but not necessarily.
This post is less about stage fright than it is about social skill. I make a serious leap, an assumption that CONFIDENCE IS ALL ABOUT SOCIAL SKILL, sin qua non, bar none, the single most important element in self-esteem. (Oh NO, what do I do if I haven't got it???) There must be some genetics, after all, you have to put out words, requiring some verbal acumen, and there are disorders that are most likely genetically determined.
But I posit that ENVIRONMENT RULES when it's about confidence, and it's more than having been loved by parents. Parents and care-takers who understand the importance of being assertive, who are socially skilled themselves, have the tools to teach their children, and those kids are just plain lucky.
Behaviorists call engineering traits like confidence "shaping". Shaping social skill can be accomplished by rewarding children, or even manipulating them, perhaps psychologically bullying them, into engaging others socially and/or going after what they need. We reward them or trick them, even hypnotize them (if you're me), to be proactive. Once kids are proactive they realize 1) it's not hard, 2) others like you more, and 3) you really do get what you want.
My favorite example of this is the Uncle Max story. I have this vague recollection being a small child, maybe three, four or five. What I'm about to tell you, by the way, didn't stop at that age, in fact has never stopped, I still get social behaviors pushed on me from my parents— I'm grateful, don't get me wrong.
The Uncle Max story goes like this. As the only girl I had my own bedroom, but I was a little phobic (ghosts, mainly, and home invaders) and very shy. So when Uncle Max and Aunt Goldie visited (or ANYONE else, for that matter, my parents had lots of friends and relatives) my mother would come into my bedroom and say, "Come on out and say hi to your Uncle Max and Aunt Goldie" (or whoever had come to visit).
This wasn't a request, "Would you like to come on out and say hello to Uncle Max and Aunt Goldie." This was a demand. There was no saying, Uh, no, I'm too shy. So then, after I've done this, kissed, too, in the case of aunts and uncles, it was like being on display. Oh, you got tall, or Oh, your hair is so long, or Oh, I hear you have a pretty voice, isn't that nice. I was TERRIFIED.
But never thought twice. There was no exit. There was no saying NO. Just become a social creature, because you have to. This is what people do. They socialize. They reach out, kiss, say hi, or even freaking sing sometimes. And others smile back.
As I got older, it was, "When you see so and so, ask her about herself. She's a painter (social worker, writer). She plays tennis (solitaire, Mah Jong)." "Ask her about her daughter (son, brother, boss)." "Go to so and so and ask for a recommendation." "Ask your teacher why you didn't get a better grade." "Get a job." The social tasks got more complicated.
Enough about me. I had to learn the hard way how to say NO. NO, too, is a most marvelous social skill. Today I saw a client who wanted to know how to help his kid become more confident. It was a little boy who refused to serve mass. My client, the boy's father, has tremendous social skill and confidence and can talk for hours about how his mother made him go to the bank for her when he was nine to make deposits (nine!) and had him navigating the neighborhood at six, grocery shopping at seven, ironing at eight. (these facts, like most anecdotal stuff on my blog are never quite true)
So basically my client already knows what to do with this kid. He has to shape the behaviors, encourage him, reward him, tell him that doing the job is reward enough in itself. He'll tell his kid what his mother told him, YOU CAN, I KNOW YOU CAN. JUST TRY. I'M BEHIND YOU ALL THE WAY.
There's more to shaping. It gets harder the older we are, but we can learn pretty fast as adults, and assertiveness training is a science. But does knowing behavioral engineering help with individuals who have real pathology, mental disorders characterized by severe social withdrawal and sometimes near- psychotic anxiety? People who suffer from schizoid and schizotypal personality disorders, schizophrenia, depression, and social phobia, for example, have tremendous difficulty in social situations. When I discuss these disorders and others in What's this, a Diagnosis? Or Why Some Therapists Hate Labels like Poison I'll focus on differentiating between serious pathology and simply lacking social skill.
Again, one needs a certain amount of genetic substrate to assert and be proactive—there is some verbal skill involved, but much is learned, and can be learned at any age.
That NIKE advertisement has the right idea. It's all about JUST DO IT.
Most of the time, if it's a social thing, You can.
But you might need assertiveness training. A post for another day.
Copyright Therapy Doc, 2006
This post is less about stage fright than it is about social skill. I make a serious leap, an assumption that CONFIDENCE IS ALL ABOUT SOCIAL SKILL, sin qua non, bar none, the single most important element in self-esteem. (Oh NO, what do I do if I haven't got it???) There must be some genetics, after all, you have to put out words, requiring some verbal acumen, and there are disorders that are most likely genetically determined.
But I posit that ENVIRONMENT RULES when it's about confidence, and it's more than having been loved by parents. Parents and care-takers who understand the importance of being assertive, who are socially skilled themselves, have the tools to teach their children, and those kids are just plain lucky.
Behaviorists call engineering traits like confidence "shaping". Shaping social skill can be accomplished by rewarding children, or even manipulating them, perhaps psychologically bullying them, into engaging others socially and/or going after what they need. We reward them or trick them, even hypnotize them (if you're me), to be proactive. Once kids are proactive they realize 1) it's not hard, 2) others like you more, and 3) you really do get what you want.
My favorite example of this is the Uncle Max story. I have this vague recollection being a small child, maybe three, four or five. What I'm about to tell you, by the way, didn't stop at that age, in fact has never stopped, I still get social behaviors pushed on me from my parents— I'm grateful, don't get me wrong.
The Uncle Max story goes like this. As the only girl I had my own bedroom, but I was a little phobic (ghosts, mainly, and home invaders) and very shy. So when Uncle Max and Aunt Goldie visited (or ANYONE else, for that matter, my parents had lots of friends and relatives) my mother would come into my bedroom and say, "Come on out and say hi to your Uncle Max and Aunt Goldie" (or whoever had come to visit).
This wasn't a request, "Would you like to come on out and say hello to Uncle Max and Aunt Goldie." This was a demand. There was no saying, Uh, no, I'm too shy. So then, after I've done this, kissed, too, in the case of aunts and uncles, it was like being on display. Oh, you got tall, or Oh, your hair is so long, or Oh, I hear you have a pretty voice, isn't that nice. I was TERRIFIED.
But never thought twice. There was no exit. There was no saying NO. Just become a social creature, because you have to. This is what people do. They socialize. They reach out, kiss, say hi, or even freaking sing sometimes. And others smile back.
As I got older, it was, "When you see so and so, ask her about herself. She's a painter (social worker, writer). She plays tennis (solitaire, Mah Jong)." "Ask her about her daughter (son, brother, boss)." "Go to so and so and ask for a recommendation." "Ask your teacher why you didn't get a better grade." "Get a job." The social tasks got more complicated.
Enough about me. I had to learn the hard way how to say NO. NO, too, is a most marvelous social skill. Today I saw a client who wanted to know how to help his kid become more confident. It was a little boy who refused to serve mass. My client, the boy's father, has tremendous social skill and confidence and can talk for hours about how his mother made him go to the bank for her when he was nine to make deposits (nine!) and had him navigating the neighborhood at six, grocery shopping at seven, ironing at eight. (these facts, like most anecdotal stuff on my blog are never quite true)
So basically my client already knows what to do with this kid. He has to shape the behaviors, encourage him, reward him, tell him that doing the job is reward enough in itself. He'll tell his kid what his mother told him, YOU CAN, I KNOW YOU CAN. JUST TRY. I'M BEHIND YOU ALL THE WAY.
There's more to shaping. It gets harder the older we are, but we can learn pretty fast as adults, and assertiveness training is a science. But does knowing behavioral engineering help with individuals who have real pathology, mental disorders characterized by severe social withdrawal and sometimes near- psychotic anxiety? People who suffer from schizoid and schizotypal personality disorders, schizophrenia, depression, and social phobia, for example, have tremendous difficulty in social situations. When I discuss these disorders and others in What's this, a Diagnosis? Or Why Some Therapists Hate Labels like Poison I'll focus on differentiating between serious pathology and simply lacking social skill.
Again, one needs a certain amount of genetic substrate to assert and be proactive—there is some verbal skill involved, but much is learned, and can be learned at any age.
That NIKE advertisement has the right idea. It's all about JUST DO IT.
Most of the time, if it's a social thing, You can.
But you might need assertiveness training. A post for another day.
Copyright Therapy Doc, 2006
posted by therapydoc at 6:48 PM
6 Comments:
Aren't you oversimplifying this?
Yes, but when I write something like this it's to make only one point, this one was that if you're a parent you should push your kids a bit, and if you didn't have pushy parents, then learning assertiveness and practicing pro-active behaviors and social skills will help.
I fully credit my parents for my self-confidence as a child and adolescent, and believe such is the continued source of my accomplishments as an adult.
My dad never questioned whether I could handle Lake Shore Drive when I first got my license. He just handed me car keys and told me that if I wanted to take lessons at the Art Institute downtown, I'd better figure out the parking logistics. I never doubted I'd be able to, since he seemed so sure.
Just one small example...
I am curious, more so about social anxieties and lack of confidence. Growing up, I was plagued with the fact that nothing I did was quite good enough for my father. It caused me to quit alot of activities as a child, and causes me to quit many things as an adult.
my GAD doesn't help in the least. I am not crippled by this, but I definately suffer in life because of my social anxieties and such. I would love to read more on working on these skills later in life.
Hmm...someone signed me up for assertiveness training in middle (grade?) school...I was not invited back after bribing someone during an exercise.
As someone who is more self-reliant than what some would consider healthy (and is too miserly to bribe), I always wondered if it would have made a difference--I'm not afraid to ask for what I need, but prefer not to owe to or rely on others.
I must say, freely available knockoffs of the MBTI have helped a lot in accepting who I am. I was used to hearing people pathologize or otherwise denigrate behaviors I happened to exhibit--and perhaps the theory is flawed (or perhaps not)--but the fact remains that a large number of people, many of them successful and respected, share these traits and it is somewhat attributable to a unique perspective and way of interpreting the world. It has helped me recognize why I've always felt so different (the few others like me are similarly non-social so I've not seen any/many, people have trouble accepting women with intp traits, societal and institutional rules are made by those with opposite traits, etc.), and frankly most of the intp descriptions describe me far better than I could describe myself, with such nuance it's a bit disturbing (e.g. I mirror others' temperament, not cynically or deferentially but to feel them out, and not being just myself makes it even harder to feel at home outside of my own thoughts). Heck, it can even account for my behavior in the assertiveness training--I hate illogical rules (as in, one person must keep assertively asking the other to do something while the other must refuse, until someone buckles), I refuse to either lead or be led unless I independently determine that's what I want, I like to find ways around the system, and feeling that knowing I could do something if I wanted to is as good as doing it.....that, and I found my solution hilarious, despite what the counselor and other students assuredly thought. (Besides, I got my partner to publicly complain about my insolence!)
I suppose my point is learning that others' perspectives really are much different and that my own doubting nature makes me susceptible to entertaining their opinions of me helped partially correct some of the bad feelings I'd internalized about my behavior. I don't know that it's made me more confident, but I am happier. Also, ironically, the MBTI's label helped me better understand where my weaknesses are and gave me ways of mitigating them that are tailored to the way I think (which succeeded where self-help books and a therapist's efforts failed, though both of those avenues bore other fruit).
Okay, that's more than enough of my self-involved tangent.
Thanks much for the comment. For those of you interested, and why wouldn't you be, Perhaps is talking about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator .
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