Why is self confidence so bad?

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Arrogance, aggression, narcissism etc, are the accompanying negative comorbids of self confidence

A healthy self confidence is quiet, not noisy

Come all you lost atoms scattered far and wide
back unto your sun
subside

So are you actually differentiating between those who are self confident and a**holes and those who are self confident and not?

Every type expresses either positive or negative expressions of their type. Depending on the health of that type, the level of negative[and positive] expression will be either great or small

I think here on WP, so many aspies have been previously burnt, that expressing self confidence can trigger bad mammaries

Like being around a scared dog who has been hit, one must move slowly and carefully and not make too much noise......

Overt self confidence triggers earlier bad experiences..... people are wary of me too because of this..... so dont take it [too]personally, none are saints either

Well, just because someone else reads negativity into the fact that someone else has self confidence is no reason to want it universally labeled a bad quality!

Hell, I've got small boobs and been overlooked many times for girls with big boobs. It would be ridiculous for me to go around whining that all girls with big boobs are b*****s and should be ignored and that big boobs are a terrible thing. That would make just as much sense as some guys here whining because some other guys have self confidence.

Whining about not having it sure doesn't give it to you. Putting people down who have it sure doesn't give it to you. Nor will that help at all in attracting any women.

Fair call. I suppose it could be said, that affected others baggage brings confident people down.

It call also be said, that self confident people are insensitive to the needs of others here, on a site for people with autism spectrum disorders

Each side of the argument has they're own truths on the matter.

[I just did 'they're' on porpoise, to be one of 'those' men ]

This ^^ for me, too. I didn't date anyone (though college was a challenge since it was a single sex school). And Boo, you know what I look like, so you know that it probably wasn't my looks.

My ex claimed he had self confidence but he was very paranoid about what people thought of him and cared too much what people thought. It effected his self esteem and our relationship. He thought I was out of control about me not caring what others thought of me. I didn't worry nor was I paranoid about what people would think or may think. I also wonder if it was all projection he was doing. He was a very bigoted and judgmental person so he assumed others would think the same of me and him if he did this or that. One time he told me if I listened to kids music or hung out in the toy aisle, people would think I was a pedophile. I told him those people would just be stupid if they made that assumption because how do they know I am not in the toy aisle because I am looking for a toy to get for my child or niece or nephew or friend for their birthday? I wonder if that his what he assumes about other people when he sees that because then that would mean I basically insulted him by calling him stupid and didn't even know it. But I don't care if I insulted him then or not because he was very ignorant and judgmental so I feel he deserved it.

He also put people down too and whenever he go and deliver newspapers to these nice homes up on the hill, he said people there were snobs because they have nice homes. He wanted a good home too and a good income and hated his apartment and what he had. He wanted nice things and it gave him low self esteem so he felt better if he called people snobs who had nice homes. He put me down too and my family and he was very negative. Like one time I pointed out a crappy pick up truck to him and told him that car is in worse shape than his and his car is fine. He then said "I bet that guy just got through going to the dump and he has a wife and kids at home and a nice car waiting there for him to use." That was just his assumption and he acted like he knew peoples lives without knowing them. He acted like he was psychic about how people lived even though he had never me them and didn't know who they were.

I also think he may have been jealous because that would explain his critical opinions about my parents and what he called those people up on the hill behind their backs because they lived in those nice homes. Sometimes people need to out others down to make themselves feel better and to me that is a sign of being jealous. Low self esteem will do that too and that can lead to jealousy if they feel the need to put others down because they have something they don't have. Like someone on the spectrum may play the internet doctor and un diagnose someone saying they don't have AS because they have a wife and kids and are self employed. That could just be due to ignorance, not jealousy. But hard to tell sometimes if someone is just jealous or just ignorant.

I guess there is good self confidence and bad self confidence. My mother said he had none because he was so negative about himself and about life. But according to Wikipedia, it can be positive or negative. So that would mean everyone has self confidence.

Last edited by League_Girl on 30 Aug 2012, 12:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

Very good post - I had to look twice just to make sure you weren't my ex-wife! I don't think I was quite as extreme as the guy you talked about but there's a chance I was (self-perception and all that.) It's something I've been working on now that I can finally see what she'd been saying for so long.

Another thing for ME (and others, I imagine) to be cautious of is that just because some overconfident jerkwads have made our lives hell, doesn't mean the quality of "high confidence" should be avoided. I'd like to see a few more examples of confident people who AREN'T abusive though... as a mentor of some kind.

Thanks for the great post, L.G.

Last edited by BlueMax on 29 Aug 2012, 5:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The problem with confidence is that for some people, it can develop into a false idea of superiority and will do anything to benefit themselves, regardless of what and who is in their path. There is a fine balance, you can be confident without being a narcissist about it. I've known a number of people that project confidence in themselves without being dominant or aggressive. I'm not particularly confident myself, but I don't envy these people. Having this trait does not make them worth more than I am as a person, but it does help with certain things.

The bigger they are the harder they fall

I honestly think the bias against guys who have self confidence stems from jealousy. I would say that only about 25% of guys with self confidence are just all around jerks, and the other 75% aren't (although anybody can be a jerk in some situations) but that a lot of guys without self confidence feel that they don't do well with girls because they don't have confidence and they see the confident guys as having something that should rightfully be theirs, so they see them as jerks all the time. Or they conveniently forget the confident guys who are nice and focus only on the real jerks.

Self confidence isn't something that anyone deserves, and it's something that even if you lose it, or have never had it, you can get it back. Also, something that needs to be pointed out is that there are two kinds of self confidence, negative and positive. The positive kind is where the guy is confident that most people will like him, or at least not dislike him, and he acts accordingly. The negative kind is where the guy is confident that most people will dislike him, or at least not like him, and he acts accordingly.

I had negative self confidence for a very long time and it made me pretty much a horrible person to be around. When I met people, I automatically assumed that it would turn out bad so I either came across as too quiet and shy, almost scared to open my mouth, or I came across as if I disliked them because I didn't want to like someone and then be hurt when they didn't like me, or if they were nice and showed me the smallest bit of friendship I'd go overboard and act overly grateful and almost grovelling in gratitude that they spoke to me. Those things are extremely unattractive. They were my default settings and I would act that way without knowing it.

I had to learn to fake being confident. I had to pretend to be somebody else at first when I met people. I'd have this whole character made up in my head that I wanted to act like. I don't mean I made up things about myself and told them, I mean that I made up somebody in my head who was likable and pretty and confident and I acted the way I thought she would act. It didn't always work, but it worked more and more over time and I actually gained confidence. After a while I didn't have to make up somebody to act like anymore because I actually did have the confidence I needed and it was me, not some character that I wanted to be.

Complaining about people who have personality traits that you don't have won't make you have them, nor will it make most people dislike those traits and like yours. It makes you bitter and unlikable. Nobody wants to date somebody who is constantly negative and always bitter about things. I'm not saying you shouldn't feel them, I felt them and still do sometimes. I'm saying you shouldn't show them. You won't have to fake it all your life, in fact you won't even have to fake it for long. When you are successful, you gain some confidence. When you aren't, you lose some. Eventually you start gaining more than you lose and thats when the faking stops. It's still a struggle for a while, but it's worth it to be able to be yourself, fully, and be confident enough to not let one rejection or a few failures bother you so much that you lose it all.

I am not a pretty girl by any stretch of the imagination. I used to hate pretty girls because I thought they were b*****s because they were pretty. Well, they aren't. That was my perception of it based on some experiences I had, and I only focused on the negative rather than the positive. As I started getting more confidence, I found that out. I still do not think I'm pretty by a long shot, but I have several very pretty friends and that doesn't intimidate me anymore. I just fix myself up to the best of my ability and I tell myself that I am pretty, my husband certainly thinks I am, and I've had my share of boyfriends back in the day so they obviously did too, and that if I'm smiling and nice and confident, that people will think I'm actually prettier than I am. It doesn't matter anymore if I'm pretty or not, being old and married and a grandmother and all, but it matters to me. It makes me feel better to think I am, and the confidence adds as much to my "pretty factor" as would a facelift.

So, I guess what I'm saying is, rather than spend time complaining about what other guys have that you don't, why not work on how to get it yourself so you can get the other things you want that you don't have that require confidence? It's harder with AS, but it's certainly not impossible.

OP, how exactly do you define self-confidence and why do you believe so many people here are against it?

Is it possible that some of the self-confident men you find yourself attracted to are also bullies and jerks, but you excuse this behavior or say it's just bundled with their self-confidence...therefore you need a reason to justify it, as in this post?

In other words, what's the point of this dissertation?

i think this is exacty the point of the post.

Why is it always assumed that confident people must also be evil?

The point of it was exactly what I said in it. That it's not a bad thing, and it's possible to gain self confidence. Having negative self confidence is unattractive and it's a detriment to finding a relationship and probably most friendships. Negative self confidence isn't something that should just be accepted, it's something that should be overcome, because it makes the person completely overlook their own good qualities and only focus on the bad ones. It causes unhappiness and leads to lonliness because it's very hard for a person with negative self confidence to get anywhere with a relationship.

Or was that a bad thing too?

It's only assumed that by people without self confidence, because they feel that the confident people are being seen as somehow "better" than they are. Confident people aren't seen as better, they are just able to be fully seen by others. Without being seen, you get overlooked. When you get overlooked you start to think it's something bad in you that causes it. When you feel that you are inherantly unlikable you stop trying. When you stop trying then you are pretty much locked in to being lonely and unhappy. All because you mistakenly think you are unlikable. Faking and then building self confidence helps you to not be overlooked and helps you to show others your good (or bad) personality traits so they notice you and then make a decision to be your friend or in a relationship based on your actual self and not some false idea.

Because some people are passive aggressive self proclaimed nice guys that think they can look at people from a moral high ground and become bitter or throw their toys out of the pram when they don't get what they want.