stare at yourself naked in the mirror

my relationship with confidence

i’m still not sure whether posting this on a public forum is a good idea, but yeah this article is probably the most personal and closest to me, and my fundamental existence.

and if people that know me irl read this, they’re probably gonna gasp when i say i was bullied a lot as a kid.

right now i know i’m perceived as the confident one. communication is my strongest pursuit. confidence, extroverted, going up to people, socializing with strangers, singing out loud, dancing whenever and wherever i feel like it. the loud, unapologetic woman. i’m the person that people just know. i run into people at college and they say hi and i obviously smile back but half the time i genuinely do not know who they are. so well. i wouldn’t say famous. but i’m known.

i’m known for owning rooms i walk into. for leadership. for wit.

i. the past

but it wasn’t like this. at all.

as far as i remember, Nush in 10th grade wanted to unalive herself because of how much she hated herself.

man, i was ugly. i had no friends. i had crushes obviously. but not a single guy liked me. whenever it came to Anushree the reaction would be “ew.”

i was kicked on my butt by two guys in 8th grade. just for shits and giggles. no agenda. people used to not touch me because there was a joke that ran for entire two years. we studied pseudopodia in 8th grade, the amoeba one, and there was a joke that whoever touches Anushree will turn dark skinned, and the disease is called “kaalo-podia.” translated to “black-podia.” and the funniest part? the people bullying me weren’t exactly objectively ‘fair skinned.’

i would be crying in school and not a single person would come console me. i used to hate myself. it was to a point where if even a random stranger smiled at me i used to think to myself, oh. people would smile at me? oh. people would want to be my friend? oh. people would want to even interact with me?

for the longest time i genuinely believed i wasn’t even worth looking at, forget interacting with or being friends with. i swear on all my ambition. people that know my current version absolutely refuse to believe i could’ve been bullied like that.

guys and girls, the so called “cool” group would upload pictures of me with extremely disgusting, disrespecting captions on the school memepage which the entire school followed on instagram. and i would cry. i didn’t have the courage to do anything about it. i did nothing.

it was bad. really bad.

i was two to three shades darker, fatter, no fashion sense, no skincare, no idea how to do my hair. i would put on a tinted lip balm thinking it would somehow fix all the “flaws” in me and i’d look pretty like the cool girls.

trying to copy them. failing miserably. wanting to gouge my eyes off. wanting to rip my skin apart. somehow bleach it white. overcompensating with a fat thick line of eyeliner on my partially hooded eyes, blushing the fuck out of my cheeks as if it was gonna change my skin colour, thick layers of foundation. (i still overcompensate with a full face of makeup on the days i feel low. some things don’t fully leave)

i was obsessed with: how to get fair in 2 days. what treatments to get to look fair. homemade face masks everyday as if it was gonna magically change my skin tone.

i COULDN’T look at myself in the mirror without feeling extreme disgust that was projected onto me by everyone around me.

im dirty. im disgusting. ew. who would wanna touch me. who would wanna be my friend.

ii. what insecurity actually felt like inside my body

people think insecurity is a thought.

it is, but it’s also physical.

it’s shoulders folding inward before anyone even says anything, walking faster through corridors so no one gets a good look at you, scanning reflections in windows without meaning to, laughing before speaking so people stay comfortable, choosing seats where fewer people can see you, adjusting yourself constantly like you are apologizing with your posture.

but here’s the thing right, insecurity is rarely irrational. it usually began as adaptation. something in your early environment taught you that being sure of yourself was risky. being corrected for your tone, laughed at for an opinion that felt sincere, being told you were too much, too sensitive, too intense, too dramatic, too whatever-word-they-used-when-they-meant inconvenient.

in this process, self trust gets invalidated. constantly. consistently.

over time, external readings of who you are begin to carry more authority than your own. instincts are run through the world first, checked for acceptability, adjusted before they’re ever acted on.

iii. the random shift

when the lockdown hit, i was in 8th grade. we joined online meetings on zoom. i kept my video off because i was extremely insecure about them screenshotting me and making memes off it. the teachers never understood this so naturally i was forced to turn on my video. and of course memes were made. of course.

but this time i had a different coping mechanism. instagram gcs. discord servers. making random friends across the world. they had no idea how i looked and they’d still talk to me. slowly my perception of myself changed as i got to know things about myself i’d never heard, and mind you not physically but about my personality. being funny. being smart. being “mature.” LMAO.
you come across the creeps as well, duh. but yeah.

i was chronically online. entire world inside my phone and laptop. no real connections in real life. an absolute ugly loser with no friends and self esteem that touched hell.

you grow sick of shit at times. lockdown went on. by the time it got over i was in 10th grade. puberty had hit properly. taller, skin cleared up, 3-4 shades lighter from staying home for almost two years, weight lost automatically. i wasn’t as ugly anymore physically.

but mentally, i was the same person. covid took a toll on all of our mental healths, so i ended up in a meditation camp for 5 days once it was called off, by art of living, somewhere near pune. beautiful place btw.

that was transformational for me.

i met a girl there. Aahee. angelic. absolutely stunning woman. way more beautiful than any girl i’d ever seen or interacted with. way cooler and more beautiful than any of those “cool” girls back in school. why would she wanna be my friend? right?

hi beautiful soul, can’t wait to see you

the first or second day of the camp, this girl tells me she thinks i look pretty.

i have absolutely lost it by this point. because what do you mean a girl like YOU thinks I’M pretty? YOU wanna be MY friend? ARE YOU SURE?

and over the span of 5 days, probably the most transformational 5 days of my life, this woman made me feel so seen, so heard, so valued, so appreciated. it was hard to believe her at first, i mean at all

beautiful people create beautiful art. i miss you aahee, i love this painting <3

iv. the first moment i realized something had changed

there wasn’t a day where i woke up and suddenly liked myself. but post that, something inside me had shifted. clearly.

but here’s the thing. i didn’t love myself. but i didn’t hate myself either. i was intrigued. what did she see in me? what did she like about me? am i pretty? her adoration for me projected back onto myself - an intrigue about myself. i felt worth something. i mean if she feels that way about me, i must have something to me, right?

here’s where the mental journey started. i wanted to understand me better. i wanted to be able to stand myself. it started with intrigue.

and then something i understood much later. for a long time i thought what happened to me was normal. kids are mean. schools are cruel. people grow out of it. that’s what i told myself. but at some point i realized none of that was normal. none of it was deserved. and the silence i kept back then wasn’t maturity.

it was survival. confidence began when i stopped explaining their behaviour kindly. stopped thinking it was bound to happen because i was like that.

v. the work

by this point i had analysed myself enough to understand that a lot of my own narratives about myself were so fucking wrong. i understood that i felt the way i did because of the things i went through. that’s valid. but taking things into your control and reclaiming your power is also entirely your thing to do

here’s where it all started. googling things. reading articles. instagram reels from confidence coaches. not all of these tips are original. but this is exactly what i experimented with, and here’s what worked.

the most frustrating thing is that when you try to explain it to someone it sounds like something off a pinterest board. it sounds obvious. cliche. like something a life coach would charge you three hundred dollars to say. but it changed my life so i'm gonna say it anyways.

1. staring at yourself naked in the mirror. every. day.

every day i stood there a little longer. at first i only noticed what i hated. my skin. my stomach. my posture. my face without angles or lighting or eyeliner doing damage control.

then slowly something strange started happening.

neutrality.

not love or confidence. just neutrality.

and neutrality is powerful because hatred needs drama to survive. it needs commentary. it needs narration. it needs a story. the mirror gave me none. just a body. just a person. just me. raw.

this was about ownership. autonomy.

this gave me permission to stop apologizing for the face and body i already had. and some days i still have to remind myself of that. every single time i pass a mirror.

2. confidence is something you build by doing.

i think a lot of people misunderstand what confidence actually is. they imagine it as a feeling that comes first, something steady and certain, something that makes everything easier. as if one day you simply wake up and stop hesitating, stop overthinking, stop caring so much about how you are perceived.

but confidence does not come before action. it follows it.

and because of that, it feels uncomfortable almost every time. there is always a moment right before you do something slightly out of character or before you speak a little more honestly. in that moment, you feel exposed, slightly unsure, like you are stepping into a version of yourself you have not fully grown into yet.

that feeling is easy to misread. it can feel like you are doing something wrong, or like you are pretending. but i think this is actually where confidence begins. in unfamiliarity.

think of it like a muscle. at the beginning, everything feels strained and unnatural. but that resistance is exactly what allows you to grow. if you avoid the discomfort, nothing changes. if you keep stepping into it, something begins to build.

it’s a series of small, almost unnoticeable decisions. speaking when you would normally stay quiet. letting your words exist without over-editing them in your head. holding eye contact for a second longer than you are used to. none of these moments feel powerful. most of them feel awkward.

but that awkwardness is the ENTIRE POINT.

you are trying on a version of yourself and slowly growing into it. at first it will feel unnatural and fake. you are aware of everything - your voice, your posture, your timing. but over time, that awareness softens. what once felt forced starts to feel familiar.

and somewhere in that repetition, something shifts.

3. you can literally choose how you decide to see yourself.

confidence does not come from people’s perception of you. it stays with you regardless of how they perceive you. one of my biggest lines to live by is “be unapologetically yourself.”

when you stop spending energy hiding yourself, you suddenly have energy to be yourself.

i think confidence quiet literally rewires your life. quietly.

it makes you easier to approach. before confidence, every interaction feels like an evaluation. after confidence, interactions become exchanges. people can feel the difference. they speak longer. they look at you differently. they assume you belong in spaces you used to hesitate entering.

and once people assume you belong somewhere, doors open without announcements.

when you don’t believe you are enough, you accept whatever version of attention comes your way. you tolerate being the second option. you tolerate silence where there should have been care. confidence isn’t gonna magically make people treat you better but here’s what it can do - make you stop staying where they don’t.

the strangest part? nothing external has to change first. the same face. the same voice. the same background. the same body.

the moment you stop negotiating your existence with the world, the world starts negotiating with you differently.

you have to understand that you can literally think whatever the fuck you want about yourself. you can be delusional about who you are and what you are. you need to embody whatever it is you think your highest version is instead of comparing yourself to it from a distance and pointing out how far you are from it.

4. self-trust.

think of a person you know with real, deep, unshakeable confidence. where you can tell it is not just faked. chances are you can think of maybe a couple of people at most.

it starts with learning to trust yourself.

for so many people, and i was absolutely one of them - the default is to seek external opinions before making any decision, big or small. should i get that haircut. should i switch careers. should i send that text. always consulting someone else before trusting your own verdict.

i did this for years. i try not to, but i still do sometimes. outsourcing my own opinions on my own life to everyone around me because i had been trained to believe that what i thought about myself was wrong. that the room knew better. that external was more reliable than internal.

self-trust is also not about being right. it is the quieter belief that when you are not right, you can course-correct, repair, adjust, and keep moving without it becoming a referendum on your entire character. a lot of second-guessing is just this: the terrifying belief that certainty is required before action. when in reality most people move forward without it. they decide, live with it, revise as they go. it only looks seamless from the outside because you are not watching the negotiation happening internally.

what changed for me was small. i started noticing where i compulsively added disclaimers. “i don’t know.” “maybe i’m overthinking.” “this might sound stupid.” “i could be wrong.” sometimes those are true. often they are reflexes. the verbal equivalent of flinching.

dropping the disclaimer, even once, shows you it was never doing as much work as you thought.

5. creating scenarios in your head. talking to yourself. forcing love upon yourself through your words.

visualisation. affirmations. whatever you want to call it.

you have to visualise whatever it is you want and feel how that makes you feel about yourself. you have to say those things out about yourself. you have to believe wholeheartedly in whatever you say.

now how can you have low self esteem and say those things while truly believing them? well. fake it. reinforce that shit into your brain. if you’re unable to feel it about yourself right now that’s fine, but at least be delusional about your potential.

here’s the thing about this that i think is actually deeply true beyond just being a motivational soundbite. your internal world is not separate from your external reality. what you genuinely believe about yourself changes how you move, how you speak, how you enter rooms, how you respond to rejection, how long you stay where you are not valued. everything. the belief comes before the evidence. not after.

when you believe in all of that about yourself, you naturally attract people that see you for all of that.

6. surround yourself with people that already see you for what you wish to be.

this is extremely important.

i am blessed with friends that support me on every little thing that i do. and you have to be extremely careful about what people impose their limiting beliefs and insecurities onto you, intentionally or unintentionally. the right company is a game changer.

growth rearranges rooms before it rearranges confidence. when you stop shrinking, some people don’t know where to place you anymore. some people still speak to me like i’m the girl i used to be. some people are uncomfortable with the version of me that speaks first now. some people preferred me smaller.

and that’s their problem. not yours.

7. actually put in work into yourself. whatever that means for you.

fitness. dressing. communication. whatever you think needs improving.

confidence comes from knowing you have put in the effort, whether it is visible to the other person or not, it really does not fucking matter. confidence needs to be practiced. it is not intrinsic.

here is something that took me a while to accept though. there is courage in acknowledging what you don’t like about yourself and taking actual action to change it. not wallowing. not toxic positivity. not writing a list of things you love about yourself when you are lying through your teeth doing it. real work. real discomfort.

and the things you genuinely cannot change? you don’t love them to death. you rebrand them. you rewrite the script around them until your brain believes the new story. your perspective is everything. how you view something about yourself is how it actually is. this sounds abstract until you try it and realize it is just true.

vi. the strange part about becoming “the confident one”

once people start seeing you as confident they stop imagining you were ever anything else. they assume it came naturally. they assume it stayed permanently. they assume you never doubt yourself anymore.

sometimes you become the person everyone expects to be strong. sometimes you perform confidence even when you’re tired. sometimes you are scared of slipping back into the version of yourself that believed everything people said about her.

i still overdo makeup on days i feel small. sometimes compliments still surprise me more than they should. sometimes i still scan rooms faster than necessary. sometimes i still remember exactly how it felt to be laughed at.

confidence is not fearlessness.

i still feel awkward sometimes. i still overthink sometimes. i still walk into rooms where a part of me wants to disappear. i just don’t obey those thoughts anymore.

confidence is not thinking you are the best person in the room. it is knowing you don’t need to be.

confidence didn’t erase that girl who cried in school washrooms while nobody came. it just stopped letting her decide everything.

vii. attention is not confidence

something changed when i grew older. people started reacting differently to me.

bullshit advice - that the better you look, the more money you earn, the more status you acquire, the more confident you will become.

as long as you believe confidence comes from external things it will always be just out of reach. there will always be another thing you need first. another version of yourself you have not become yet.

no really, think about it. imagine you got placed into a completely new environment. new people, new place, completely new surrounding. you could act completely different. with such confidence that they will never know you once lacked it. that tells you something. it tells you it was never actually about the external stuff. it was always internal. always yours to access.

ix. the only thing left to say

this article can go as long as i want it to be but i think those are the points i wish to convey for now.

i am extremely grateful for every single person who is and isn’t a part of my life anymore - who made me feel more myself & who loved me at my rawest. that was also a big part of the journey.

if 12 year old me saw me now she wouldn’t recognize me. she wouldn’t recognise the way i hold eye contact. she wouldn’t recognise the girl who talks first instead of waiting to be spoken to. she definitely wouldn’t recognise the girl who can look at herself in the mirror without looking away.

that is the whole point.

this was always possible. i just didn’t know it yet.

do it for your younger self. not anyone else.

no one can be you better than you.

yours lovingly,

Nush <3