My Self-Love Story: Learning to Let Go of False Confidence

TW: Mentions weight loss, diets, BMI

Understanding what ‘false confidence’ is and the crutches that we use is an important step towards self-love, and I wanted to tell you some of my story. My confidence journey was far from linear, and there were many ‘bumps in the road’ on my way to becoming who I am today. I hope that my story helps you to self-reflect, and see areas of your self-confidence that you can work on to feel more positive and empowered in your life.

There was a time early on in my confidence journey where I had become more secure in my appearance. I was happy to wear what I like, I thought I looked good, and I knew I was attractive to other people. However, I still had many insecurities and coping mechanisms. In fact, I wasn’t as confident deep down as I often liked to project to the outside world. 

I was deeply embedded in diet culture and I dropped my weight a lot! I was obsessed with my BMI. Trying to reach a weight which, in hindsight, I know now is unrealistic and unhealthy for me.  

Not only that but I always wore makeup and styled my hair. I was confident… provided I was wearing makeup. I felt amazing… provided people didn’t see me with my natural frizzy hair. I was particularly self-conscious about the dark circles around my eyes, which were likely a result of a vitamin deficiency from not eating enough!

‘Beauty’ was a crutch that I used to boost my self-confidence.

It is only now I can see how some of my personal growth in this time was ‘false confidence’. This is when you use something external – makeup, a partner, clothing, alcohol – to promote a sense that you are confident without the deep, internal work required to reach authentic self-love.  

True self-love is when you can remove these external validation techniques, and still remain as confident as before. When all of that is stripped away, do you still feel like a bad ass?  

I didn’t, not without the shield of my makeup and hair.  

Then makeup became a little less convenient. I wanted to save time on getting ready, and because my skin was oily, wearing makeup all the time was causing me to break out more often.  My hair was dry and damaged from regular heat styling, and I was becoming more and more frustrated with how difficult it was to reach the standard of ‘beauty’ I had imposed on myself. 

The real change for me happened when I started going out without my face on, and realising that NO. ONE. CARED. I could go shopping, or teach pole, or meet friends without foundation, and eye makeup, and contouring. My experience doing these things was not negatively impacted by me not being as ‘polished’. Sure, people might judge me for not wearing makeup, but I realised that I didn’t care anymore what other people thought. 

Now, my transformation from insecure glamour puss to happy goblin did not happen overnight. It was a slow, gradual process that culminated in the last few years. In fact, as recently as 2019 I still wore powder and mascara everyday – this only changed when I started having a mild allergic reaction to mascara, and found I was losing eyelashes when I wore it too often. I was forced to release my final crutch.

It takes time to reach your confidence goals, for me it has taken 10 years from when I first started my self-love journey to feeling confident going out without hair and makeup on a daily basis, to not constantly diet and be happy in my body. To drop my ‘people pleaser’ tendencies, and be happy in asserting myself. 

This isn’t to say that I never wear makeup now. If it is appropriate for my work, if I have a photoshoot, or if I’m having a day where I’m feeling insecure about how I look (yes, I still have these days!), then I will get out my makeup and wear it.  

I am not anti-makeup by any means. I love feeling glamorous, well put together, and slick. There’s something empowering about a perfect cat eyeliner look. The difference is now I’m not wearing it because I think I have to, but because I want to. 

This is also not to say that these tools can’t be really valuable and important to our self-love journey. Wearing makeup, feeling beautiful, and feeling desirable, were all important parts of learning to love myself. I needed to first feel validated, before I could validate myself. I needed to first feel superficially beautiful, before I could appreciate my inner beauty. If you want to wear makeup, take selfies, use ‘facetune’ and filters, or have a cocktail to boost your sense of confidence, then that’s perfectly natural. Just know that you don’t have to rely on these things. You can get to a point where they are a fun little extra in life! There is a future for you where you can feel a deep sense of self-love without them.

Believe me, because I’ve done it.

Makeup may not be one of your things. You may even be thinking ‘Peach looks great without makeup, what the f*ck is she on about?’ To which I say…. True! *hair toss*  

My point is, that whatever is YOUR insecurity, whatever is your crutch, that is what you need to work through in order to discover that deeper level change that will help you to authentically love yourself.    

This was MY confidence journey, what will yours be?