Self Esteem

Feel good about who you are

How To Deal With An Abusive Father

I just got this question about dealing with an abusive father from my article about How To Recover From a Critical Parent:

I have a 50 year old father who has always been over-controlling, mean, critical, manipulative, judgmental and border-line abusive. These traits are becoming more pronounced as he ages (except the abusive part) and he has tried to use psychological tactics to separate me from my girlfriend and to make me feel guilty for not spending time with him. I just want to move out but Sydney housing is the most over-inflated in the world at the moment. I’m not sure how much longer I can take it. I think the reason behind his issues is he never knew his father but it’s ridiculously unfair to burden your son with this cr@p. He has a girlfriend of 7 years who you can tell isn’t compatible with him. They fight all the time and she’s depressed. She’s cheated before as a form of escapism but he manipulated her to stay with him (probably because he feels lonely). The whole situation is so pathetic. Because of his emotional and physical abuse as a kid, I live with anxiety and depression. Do you have any advice?

Sounds like your father is a real challenge to live with, and you’re still carrying the emotional scars from how he treated you as a kid. The really important thing when you have a father who is emotionally and/or physically abusive  is good boundaries. That’s hard to do while you’re still dependent on him for your physical needs such as housing, so the first thing to do is to start working towards getting out of there and into a place where you’re living with sane, reasonable people. I get that Sydney is a nightmare housing-wise, which is why I did share accommodation for a long time when I first moved out of home.

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By Graham Stoney, ago

How To Overcome Your Fear Of Being Seen

If you’re anything like me, you feel self-conscious in front of other people. Last time I caught an airplane, I went to the front of the plane to use the toilet right behind the cockpit, and had to wait at the front because it was already occupied. I felt that rush of shame on realizing that the other passengers could see me waiting. Somehow in my head, I imagined them thinking the worst; even though they probably weren’t thinking about me at all.

In situations like this I like to pretend that other people are always thinking great things like “Wow, he’s awesome!” when they look at me, and while that’s helpful, it hasn’t entirely made the anxiety go away. One of my favorite hobbies is playing music, and it recently gave me the opportunity to confront this fear head-on.

I’ve been playing guitar for around 6 years now, and I can strum up a decent tune on my own or playing with friends. But I get nervous playing in public; I feel anxious and my mind wanders through a series of stressful thoughts like “I’m crap!”, “I’ll mess it up”, “They (whoever is listening) won’t like it”, “They won’t like the song I’ve chosen”, “My singing sounds bad” etc etc.

It’s exhausting!

The first time I played guitar for an audience was in my guitar class, and although I was nervous it went really well. The teacher wanted us to have a good experience playing in front of people, and the best way to conquer the fear was to play in front of a friendly crowd who were all in the same boat as beginner guitarists.

The next time I played in front of an audience was in a comedy club, doing a variation of American Pie with humorous lyrics. I was so nervous that my left hand couldn’t make the chord shapes, and the anxiety got worse the longer I played. One of the guys in the audience yelled out “You’ve killed a great song!”

Damn hecklers! Damn anxiety! Damn damn damn damn damn!

It was a few years before I wanted to play in front of an audience again.

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By Graham Stoney, ago

Sign Up For The World’s Greatest Shave

Here is yet another confidence building tip fresh from my backyard. And today I want to talk to you about changing your appearance because if there’s one thing that makes a big difference to our confidence it’s making a big change in our appearance and then going out in the world and experiencing what happens when we do that and how other people respond to us.

So there are two events that I want to recommend that you get involved in which help raise money for charity and change your appearance at the same time which means you get to feel good about yourself for two reasons: firstly, you’ll be helping other people; and, secondly, you’ll be building your confidence.

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By Graham Stoney, ago

Another Happy Customer…

I literally just got this email, unsolicited, from a recent purchaser of The Confident Man Program:

Subject: Thank you – this stuff is gold

I bought your program just earlier this week and my results have been amazing in the only four days I’ve used it. My confidence is booming and I can’t wait to see where I’ll be in the time I’ve gone through it all. Thanks for such a simple and straightforward approach that is so practical. You’ve done a great thing here and I wish you the best going forward.

Made my day. It doesn’t get much better than that!

Cheers, Graham… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

Do A Theatrical Improvisation Course to Build Confidence

Hey guys, it’s Graham here again, and today I want to tell you why you should do a theatrical improvisation course. Now, you may have heard of theatrical improvisation or improve or theater sports or theater games, and they all refer to the underlying concept of improvising.

Now, improvisation is an incredibly valuable skill to have, and so I want to tell you why it’s so great to be able to improvise as far as self-confidence goes. Of course, the first reason why you should do theatrical improvisation is it’s simply a lot of fun. You’ll get out there, you’re mixing with some really cool people, you’re doing stuff that’s just coming into your head spontaneously and it’s a really great space to be in.

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By Graham Stoney, ago

Do You Feel Like A Fraud?

Hey there, it’s Graham again here from The Confident Man Project, and today I’m coming at you live from my beautiful backyard here. As you can see, my backyard looks out over this beautiful bush land, and it’s way too nice a day to be stuck in the office this morning so, yeah, I’m here in my backyard. And today I want to talk about feeling like a fraud, and I have a confession to take and the confession is that sometimes I feel like a fraud.

Now, feeling like a fraud is very common so it’s quite possible that you might be able to relate to this. And often I’ve heard a lot of famous people, movie stars, celebrities, people in the spotlight, often talk about how they feel like a fraud. They feel as though they haven’t deserved their fame or they haven’t deserved what they’ve got or they feel as though there’s some kind of let’s call it incongruity perhaps between what they’ve got or how they’re perceived by other people and how they actually feel inside.

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By Graham Stoney, ago

How To Stand Up To An Adult Bully

Today I want to talk about how to stand up to an adult bully. This is particularly important if you are like me and you got bullied a lot when you were a kid at school. Adult bullies now are your opportunity to stand up for yourself and to heal the emotional damage that was done to you when you were a kid. Because although you might have felt unsafe standing up to the bullies when you were a kid and you might have been carrying that fear with you, now that you’re an adult it’s actually quite safe to stand up to bullies and so the adult bullies that invariably come into our lives are an opportunity to heal the bullying from the past.

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By Graham Stoney, ago