How many times have you been told to "just believe in yourself" or "fake it till you make it"? If you're a millennial woman navigating a career, a household, relationships and possibly perimenopause all at once, I would guess it's been more times than you can count.

And yet here you are, still second-guessing yourself in meetings, still holding back the idea you know is good, still wondering why some days you feel capable and other days you feel like the whole world will see through you.

The problem isn't that you haven't tried hard enough to think positively. The problem is that you haven't worked on your confidence beyond mindset.

Confidence lives in your body as much as your mind, it was shaped in your childhood and it gets triggered by the people in the room with you and the experiences you face daily. Until you understand all of that, no amount of affirmations are going to transform your approach.

Is Low Confidence Really Just About How You Think?

A meta-analysis of 108 studies published in Current Research in Behavioral Sciences confirmed that women consistently score higher on measures of imposter syndrome than men. A separate study of 4,000 adults found that 62% of women admit they have rarely experienced true confidence throughout their lives.

That's not just a mindset problem, it is systemic, it's personal, and it starts much earlier than most of us realise.

The way we understand confidence has been oversimplified for a long time. We have been told it is about positive thinking, about pushing through the fear, about telling yourself a better story and affirming your success. And while mindset work is genuinely valuable, it only does so much, because underneath your thoughts, there is a nervous system that has been learning what is safe and what is not since the day you were a child.

How Does Childhood Shape Your Confidence Levels?

Research shows that parental warmth, secure attachment and consistent encouragement are the strongest predictors of healthy self-esteem in children. On the flip side, chronic criticism, emotional unavailability, or growing up in an unpredictable environment can lead to what researchers call "negative self-schema", a deeply held belief that you are not quite enough.

Here is the key thing to understand, your nervous system was shaped in those early years. It was taking notes on everything. When you got praised, it felt safe to try again. When you got criticised harshly, or were made to feel silly for speaking up, your nervous system filed that away as a threat. Over time, certain situations such as presenting your work, voicing a disagreement or being the centre of attention started to feel threatening, even when rationally you knew they weren't.

It might show up for you as that feeling in your chest before a big meeting to the way you go blank when someone challenges your idea It's not you failing to think positively, it is a nervous system doing exactly what it was trained to do.

Think about it this way. Two women could be exactly the same height. For one, her height has always been something she felt quietly proud of, it made her feel visible and capable. For the other, she was teased for it as a teenager, and now it makes her want to shrink. Same physical fact but two completely different nervous system memories attached to it. That is confidence in a nutshell. It is not about the thing itself, it is about the story your body learned to tell about it.

Why Do Certain People Make You Feel Less Confident?

Have you ever walked into a room feeling perfectly fine, and then one particular person walks in and suddenly you feel small? Or notice that around some people you are articulate and funny and yourself, while around others you become quiet and unsure?

This is not imaginary, and it is not a personality flaw. It is your nervous system doing a very fast threat assessment based on past experiences.

Our bodies are constantly scanning for cues of safety or danger, a process called neuroception (a term coined by Dr Stephen Porges in his Polyvagal Theory). It happens below the level of conscious thought. So if someone in the room reminds your nervous system of a critical parent, a bullying colleague, a teacher that shamed you or a relationship where you didn't feel good enough, your body responds before your brain has even caught up.

The result is that your confidence is not fixed. It fluctuates depending on who you are with, what the environment feels like, and what old experiences are being triggered in the background.

One woman I worked with was a senior leader who presented confidently to large audiences but completely shut down in one-to-one conversations with her line manager. On the surface it made no sense. But when we explored it through a nervous system lens, she realised her manager had the same communication style as a parent who was never satisfied with her efforts. Her body was responding to an old threat, not the present moment.

Learning to identify your confidence triggers and to regulate your nervous system in those moments is one of the most powerful things you can do.

What Role Do Limiting Beliefs Play in Low Confidence?

While your nervous system holds the emotional memory of past experiences, your mind builds a story around them. Those stories become your beliefs and some of them were formed so early and repeated so often that they feel like facts.

"I'm not the kind of person who speaks up." "I don't have what it takes to run a business." "Who am I to charge that much?" "People like me don't get opportunities like that."

These are limiting beliefs, and they are incredibly common. Research shows that negative internal dialogue not only reinforces low confidence but actively shapes the decisions we make, the opportunities we pursue, and how we show up in the world.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP, is one of the tools I find really valuable here. NLP works with the relationship between your thoughts, your language, and your behaviour. It offers practical techniques, like reframing, anchoring and timeline work, to help you identify the beliefs that are running in the background and begin to replace them with something more resourceful.

The thing about limiting beliefs is that they are not based on facts. They are perceptions that feel real because we have repeated them so many times, to ourselves and about ourselves. When we start to bring those beliefs into the light and question them, the issue of low confidence begins to shift.

Can Somatic Work and Positive Psychology Actually Help?

The short answer is yes, and I believe they work better together than any single approach alone.

Somatic work is body-based. It recognises that your nervous system stores experiences physically, in the tension you carry in your shoulders, the way your breath shallows when you feel watched, the feeling in your stomach before you speak up. Somatic practices help you complete those unfinished stress cycles, release the physical patterns of anxiety or shutdown, and build a felt sense of safety in your body.

Positive psychology complements this by focusing on what you already do well and building on it. Instead of spending all your time analysing what is wrong with you, positive psychology asks: when do you feel most like yourself? What are your natural strengths? Where does confidence come naturally, and how can we use that as a foundation?

Together, these approaches work on both the body and the mind. You are not just changing your thinking, you are changing the physical patterns that hold low confidence in place.

5 Practical Strategies to Build Confidence at a Nervous System Level

1. Learn Your Confidence Triggers

Start paying attention to the moments when your confidence drops. Not just what happened, but who was there, what the environment felt like, and what it reminded you of. Keeping a simple journal of these moments, just a sentence or two, starts to show you the patterns. When you know your triggers, you can start to act on them.

2. Regulate Before the Moment, Not After

Most of us try to manage our confidence in the middle of the hard moment. But your nervous system responds much better to preparation. Before a situation you find challenging such as a presentation, a difficult conversation or a networking event, spend five minutes doing something that brings your system into a regulated state. Slow breathing (particularly extending your exhale), gentle movement, or even humming all activate the vagus nerve and signal safety to your body.

3. Identify and Rewrite One Limiting Belief

Pick one belief that you know is holding you back. Write it down. Then ask yourself: where did this come from? Is there actual evidence for it, or is it a story that was handed to me? What would I believe instead if I felt safe? Write that new belief down too, and start noticing every time real evidence supports it.

4. Build Micro-Moments of Confidence

Your nervous system learns through repeated experience more than it learns through thinking. Every time you do something outside your comfort zone and survive, you create new evidence that you are capable. Start small and intentional. Speak up once in a meeting where you normally stay quiet. Send the email you have been overthinking. Each small act builds a new pattern of safety around being visible.

5. Work With Your Body, Not Against It

Notice how you physically hold yourself in moments of low confidence. Hunched shoulders, crossed arms, avoiding eye contact, these are not just results of feeling low, they also reinforce it. Research by social psychologist Amy Cuddy found that open, expansive body postures can actually shift your internal state. Before a challenging moment, stand tall, take up space, breathe deeply. You are sending your nervous system a signal, and it listens.

What Can You Do If Confidence Has Felt Out of Reach for a Long Time?

If you have been struggling with low confidence for years, it is worth understanding that this is not a character flaw and it is not a fixed trait - you can change it.

The nervous system is extraordinarily adaptable. Research in neuroplasticity confirms that both self-confidence and self-esteem can genuinely be developed at any age with the right support and consistent practice. The patterns that were laid down in your childhood, or reinforced in difficult relationships and environments, are not permanent. With the right tools, you can create new ones.

This is exactly the work I support women through. Not quick fixes, not affirmations that don't last, but real, sustainable change that starts in the body and moves through the mind.

Confidence Isn't a Personality Trait, It's a Skill You Can Develop

If there is one thing I want you to take away from this, it is that your confidence levels are not a reflection of who you fundamentally are. They are a reflection of what your nervous system learned to expect from the world, and what beliefs your mind built around those experiences.

The good news is that none of that is fixed.

When you start working with your nervous system through understanding your triggers, regulating your responses and releasing the beliefs that have been holding you in place, confidence stops being something you pretend and starts being something you feel.

You deserve to take up space. Not because you have earned it by achieving enough or being impressive enough. But because you are here, and that is reason enough.

Ready to understand what's really driving your confidence patterns?

Take my free nervous system quiz to discover how your nervous system is currently affecting your confidence, energy and wellbeing — and get personalised insights to help you start shifting things.

Or if you are ready to go deeper, book a free discovery call and let's talk about what's really going on and how we can work together.