183

Lately, I have been wandering around wondering if the basic premise of faith is the same as confidence. Are they essentially the same? Several of my posts mention that faith, when stripped down to the basics, is just about believing that everything is going to be okay or that everything will work out for the best in the long run, no matter what bites us in the BLEEP in the short run. Isn’t that basically the same as what confidence is? Walking around believing in oneself and our ability to handle… life? 

Well, I turned to ye ole favorite source of information, and Merriam-Webster tells me that confidence is the following: 

1 a: a feeling or consciousness of one's powers or of reliance on one's circumstances

1 b: faith or belief that one will act in a right, proper, or effective way

2 : the quality or state of being certain

3 a: a relation of trust or intimacy in which personal or private information is shared

3 b: reliance on another's discretion

3 c: support especially in a legislative body

4 : a communication made in reliance on another's discretion

I have written here a few times that the opposite of insecurity is not confidence, it’s safety. We live in a world full of negative messaging and fear mongering, so it’s no wonder many people are walking around like emotional porcupines or completely lacking in faith. 

But faith and confidence are not quiiiiiite the same. The more I think about it, the more faith seems like a precursor to confidence. I think the feeling that some people are just born being confident is false - there are people who are born into significant safety and/or privilege, and the right combination of nature and nurture reinforces a feeling of well-being, security, and faith in themselves and their ability to handle potential future outcomes that enables them to be resilient. Kudos to them and the systems in which they operate. 

There are also a lot of unhealed people, and I do mean A LOT, mucho, the majority walking around masquerading as confident when they (we?) feel horribly unsafe and unwell inside. And let’s get one thing really straight, here, people: cruelty does not equal confidence. Inflicting harm on others in order to bolster ourselves up does damage all the way around, and sadly, we’ve probably all done it at one point or another in life. Unfortunately, I recently learned that some of us might actually be getting a dopamine hit every time we’re nasty to someone else, which explains all the hate on the internet and all the cruelty in real life. There are some souls in so much pain they are literally addicted to being awful. Yikes. 

Endocrinology and brain function aside, my life got exponentially better when I started prioritizing safety for myself in the form of setting boundaries and re-evaluating how much energy I put into relationships that were causing me harm. Once I started to feel safe, I was much less likely to criticize or blame or judge anyone else, but I really had to commit to putting my own sense of safety first. 

I will confess that I have spent time in my life feeling pretty irritable, defensive, and angry and it was exhausting. I also struggled to have any empathy for the people who were clearly inflicting harm all the way around them, because I was standing too close to the fire. Let’s be honest, unhealed people (lately I have been trying to use the word “unhealed” rather than “toxic”) wreak a lot of havoc. With some distance and boundaries, it became (a little) easier to see and understand what that harshness was all about - feeling terribly unsafe, trying to feel better when feeling insecure or small, inflicting harm to feel powerful. 

I recognize that many of us are in situations where we cannot get enough distance from unhealed others, which is why therapy, seeking out support, contacting resources, and being real about harm or abuse or neglect we may be experiencing is so important. Venting to a supporter within a broken system often isn’t enough, action may be required to fortify ourselves internally or externally. 

Faith has helped me make really hard choices to feel better and be more safe, and I genuinely hope it may do the same for you, too.