Confidence in Teens - Accentuating the Positive, Eliminating the Negative

How this soccer goalie regained her self-confidence after remembering a past coach's criticisms

Self-confidence, the faith you have in yourself and your abilities, is defined by your values, beliefs and personal philosophy. It works hand-in-hand with your self-esteem – how much you appreciate and like yourself. Having a strong sense of self-confidence and positive self-esteem not only affects how you think and act, they affect how you feel about others and how successful you are in life.
​     Simply put, self-confident people have expectations that are realistic. Even when some of their expectations are not met, they continue to accept themselves and to maintain a positive frame of mind. Yet even the most self-confident person experiences a lack of confidence at some time or another.
     A lack of self-confidence isn’t necessarily related to a lack of ability or intelligence. It’s often the result of paying too much attention to the expectations of the people in authority in one’s life, the opinions of one’s peers, or on the standards set by society. But sometimes, it’s our hidden mind, our subconscious, that’s holding on to the cause of our lack of self-confidence.

Sometimes even the strongest self-confidence is met with debilitating self-doubt

Christie, a high school soccer goalie, came to me hoping that I could help her become quicker, faster, smarter and more confident as a player. She was clearly aware of her own natural athleticism as well as her ability as a goal-keeper to give good direction to her teammates and to stay one step ahead of everything happening on the field. In fact, she planned to make soccer her career, either as a coach, a manager or a sports psychologist. With a strong desire to be the best athlete she could be, Christie wasn’t sure what was holding her back from improving her skills. More striking to me, though, was when she lamented that, even with her many past triumphs over the years, she sometimes hesitated when the play of action was in the box.

Christie’s dad was a former soccer player, and her mom was a strong advocate for her daughter who attended every game and was her best cheerleader. Her parents weren’t sure if she was hesitating because she was afraid of being hurt or because she was afraid that she might make a wrong decision causing her to give up a goal. The fear of being hurt was warranted: she’d been injured multiple times, the last time resulting in a concussion. The fear of not being able to make the right call was also well-founded. Christie admitted that her occasional mistakes during soccer practices made her frustrated, resulting in her “going silent” and “beating herself up internally” instead of being able to rebound and continue to play well. Although, according to her coach, Christie had strong skills and was a smart strategic player, he noticed that she became suddenly indecisive after being scored on by the opposing team. Her coach was understandably hesitant to play her in important matches, where a goalie’s split-second decisions can be game-changing.

​'Many years ago, my hypnotherapy teacher warned me NEVER to assume I knew the cause of a client’s issues.'

Uncovering the root cause of an issue to remove stumbling blocks to success

We began Christie’s hypnotherapy with hypnotic suggestions to increase her motivation to exercise and practice her skills (outside of team practices) that I’ve had success using for athletes in the past. She left those sessions looking more determined than ever to work on her skills – but never seemed to get very far on her own. It was time to figure out what was holding Christie back from success: fear of injury or lack of confidence in her abilities. Personally, I also wondered if having a dad who was soccer coach was causing Christie to doubt her own talents. I had my suspicions, but many years ago my hypnotherapy teacher warned me never to assume I knew the cause of a client’s issues. 

In Christie’s case, the investigation into what the subconscious mind was “thinking” was ultimately revealing.

Using hypnosis to resolve inner conflicts through 'Parts Therapy'

The concept behind the hypnotherapeutic technique commonly known as Parts Therapy is that we all have many “parts” – happy and sad, courageous and fearful, silly and solemn – but that sometimes the parts are in conflict and working against each other, preventing the change the client wants to make. At the start of the session, we ask the client to consciously state the issue he or she is hoping to resolve. Then we begin by using hypnosis to relax the client’s mind and body, much like any guided-meditation. Once the client is comfortably relaxed, we ask the part of his or her mind that is motivating the client to change a feeling or behavior to tell us what it’s trying to achieve. Then we ask the part of the subconscious mind that’s preventing success to tell us what it is doing. My role as a hypnotherapist is to help the parts resolve the conflicts.
 
Christie’s goal was concise and to the point. She wanted to be “motivated, confident and consistent as a goalie.” Her hope was three-fold:

1. to be able to put in the effort needed to her improve her game,
2. to let her mistakes fuel her inner fire to improve, and
3. to be more confident that she is performing the way her coach wants.

 
Resolving the conflicts between motivation and self-sabotage
 
Her motivating part spoke to us first. It sang Christie’s praises as a teenage athlete who had the skills to be a truly great goalie. It admitted, however, that another part of Christie was “scared she won’t make it as far as she wants.”

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Her conficting part was younger and less sure of itself. Stuck in Christie’s middle-school memory, it recalled a previous soccer coach who was tough and often derisive, training the younger players as if they were professionals with stronger egos and tougher skins. This coach had split the team into the “better and worse” players – placing Christie in the latter group, saying she wasn’t good enough to play. Even though Christie was angry and determined to prove him wrong at the time, he planted the seed of doubt in her mind. Now, every time Christie makes a mistake on the field, the conflicting part reminds her of the previous coach’s scathing comments on her abilities. No wonder she shuts down and loses her confidence!
 
It only took minutes to get Christie’s conflicting part to agree with the motivating part’s assessment of her talents and potential. It took a bit longer to convince the parts that if they joined forces, they had the power to bolster her confidence and allow her to regroup when the opposing team scored on her. We named the new duo “Confident Goalie” and got its agreement to help Christie realize her objective to become more a confident athlete.  
 
Accentuating the Positive, Eliminating the Negative
 
Traditionally, hypnosis uses the power of positive suggestion to eliminate negative thoughts, feelings and behaviors. In the case of this amazing soccer-goalie, she had to dig deep to identify the negative message that was shouting so loudly in her subconscious mind before the positive suggestions could be heard.
 
When I was a child, Johnny Mercer and The Pied Pipers recorded a song called Accentuate the Positive. The opening lines have always stayed in my mind:
 
“You've got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don't mess with Mister In-Between”
 
After all these years, I still think it’s a great reminder on how to maintain healthy feelings of self-confidence.
 
Note: Names and details have been changed to protect the future of this star-athlete.
 
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In my experience as a Certified Advanced Clinical Hypnotherapist, Christie’s story about a lack of confidence in her abilities isn’t at all unusual. For some reason, our sub-conscious minds remember every mistake, embarrassment or failure rather than our successes, causing us to lose confidence in ourselves and our abilities. I’ve met struggling students who, under hypnosis, remember one particular teacher that criticized them unfairly, instead of the many teachers that have praised their accomplishments. I have treated a teen who had trouble socializing because of the one “mean” adult who embarrassed him in front of other children at a birthday party many years ago. And I’ve recently met a woman whose difficulty with weight dates back to being told by her mom that she was “too fat” to have dessert after dinner. It’s evident that even a seemingly innocent remark can cause children to doubt themselves. The ego is sometimes very fragile, and the words and actions of the adults in authority can have a profound effect on the self-confidence and self-esteem of a child. Those negative messages, buried (but not forgotten) in the subconscious mind, may be sabotaging us from living our best possible lives.
 
If you or a member of your family is suffering from an unexplained lack confidence, hypnotherapy may help uncover the hidden root of the problem. Conveniently located in northern New Jersey's Passaic County, my Ringwood office is just minutes from both Bergen County NJ and Rockland County in New York. For more information on how hypnosis can increase confidence and self-esteem, call me at 973-657-0571 for a free, no-obligation, phone consultation, or send me a message below.

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