Key points

Ambivalence is the state of conflicting feelings toward something, such as our desire for feeling confident.

Confidence feels threatening if we believe it would sabotage us or that others will look down on us for it.

Increasing confidence often necessitates a restructuring of our understanding of how life operates.

As counterintuitive as it may sound, some want to become confident, even attempting to learn how to increase their confidence , while simultaneously resisting their own attempts. We see this in treatment when a patient vehemently expresses that they have little reason to feel good about themselves (a forcefulness that speaks volumes). So, we may do the work of exploration, prevalent in cognitive behavioral therapy , searching for evidence for and against the

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