Most people who drink in social situations say that alcohol helps them feel more relaxed and at ease. They are not wrong. That feeling is real.
The brain has a structure, called the amygdala, that acts like an alarm system. This alarm system is connected to all your senses. So if something that looks, sounds, or smells like a threat, it will send your body into high alert. Humans are very social creatures that rely on each other to survive, and so this alarm system is sensitive to physical threats (like a predator or a burning building) just as much as social threats (like judgement or rejection).
In most social situations, this system is active in the background. You are aware of potential threats, so you can act in the right way. That awareness of social threats is what we call self-consciousness. If you are very self-conscious, your alarm system is very active in social settings.
So our self-consciousness drops and we feel less inhibited. So we dance in the way we feel like or tell the joke that just popped into our head - we do things we’d actually stop ourselves from doing if we were sober, because we’d be aware of all the social risks.
Now that feels like confidence, like we aren’t worried about judgement from others, and choose to do what we want. But you haven’t become more confident, your alarm system still detects the social threats, but alcohol has turned the system down. It’s the alcohol giving you temporary confidence, not true confidence.
True confidence is when that alarm system isn’t so active in social settings. You are less self-conscious and feel free to do what you want without fear of judgement from others. You are aware that people will judge, but you aren’t scared of it.
We can build this true confidence if we train our alarm system to be less active. Our brain has to learn that the social threats we’re worried about aren’t as big as we thought they were. The only way to learn is through repeated experience.
For example, if you want to be more confident dancing in social situations, you need to be courageous and go into those situations and dance. Then you will realise that no matter how bad (or good) your dancing is, you’re still standing and nothing has changed. The social threat you were worried about isn’t real.
Having those experiences over and over again help to train your alarm system to be less sensitive. Over time, you will be truly less self-conscious, without the need for alcohol. Relying on alcohol interrupts that learning process, because the brain never gets the chance to discover that the situation was manageable without it.
Social situations without alcohol might not feel easy at first. You will be self-conscious and be worried about many social threats. You need to be brave and you will train your brain that you don’t have to worry about them anymore. That is the difference between feeling confident and being confident. Feeling confident is instant, but fades quickly. Being confident needs to be built over time, and stays for life.
