As of today, confidence in young girls drops about 30% when they hit puberty. Confidence in young boys drops as well, but girls’ confidence levels are 27% lower than boys’ once puberty hits (ypulse.com, 2018).
But what is causing this underlying trend?
Women have a more active prefrontal cortex. This means women are better at seeing the bigger picture, thinking deeper, and creating great strategies. When boys and girls hit puberty, the difference between the minds of boys and girls becomes more abundantly clear.
While the active prefrontal cortex is becoming more advanced, so is the anterior cingulate gyrus. This is where our worries form, and also a part of the brain that women get developed faster and earlier than men.
With a more active prefrontal cortex and a more active anterior cingulate gyrus mixed together at such a young age, young girls after are more prone to overthinking and crippling stress.
This calls for a time of urgency. Patterns of toxic thinking and rumination are formed instantly, and rarely are people aware of this (Kay, Shipman, Riley, “How To Help Young Girls…”, April 2018).
How does this connect to confidence?
Scientifically, women hold onto every little negative thing about themselves and throw out every compliment. There’s an area in the brain that is designed for negative thinking. It’s where every little bad thing people say about themselves occurs, such as the following: I’m fat, I’m ugly, I’m too short, I’m too tall. When you get bad feedback from others, the negative thinking part of your brain goes on high alert. It’s like a factory under attack, with flashing lights and sounding alarms pleading for safety and evacuation.
Another clear thing that science has uncovered is labels. Women’s brains are immediately labeling themselves and others. If you’re insecure when looking at another girl’s Instagram page, your brain may label them something like ‘prettiest’. This is especially true in adolescence for girls. Sometimes these traits and thoughts don’t leave because they’re racked so far into women’s brains at the ripe age of 8 years old (Lee, Aimee, “Why Women Have Low Self-Esteem”).
These traits single-handedly make it hard for women to be more confident in themselves.
What is confidence?
The idea of confidence is “a feeling of self-assurance arising from one’s appreciation of one’s own abilities or qualities”, as noted in the dictionary. Confidence, as a whole, is a state of mind. It’s not something that you are born with, but it’s something that you grow.
Obviously, for women, it may be hard to gain and maintain that state of mind, but it is not an impossible thing to achieve.
Confidence is not just a feeling, but a mindset that establishes good feelings. When you are confident, you are happier and brighter. Confidence is the ability to be the best version of yourself, and you wouldn’t change that for anything. There are many things that women can do to break the cycle of negative thinking and low self-esteem that diminish confidence. Often, people tell you to meditate; work out; change this or that about yourself.
But there are way better ways to establish your confidence without doing any of those things.
How can women really gain more confidence?
Confidence in women, or lack thereof, obviously stems from the deeper parts of women’s brains. Doing something simple like being social and talking to your friends can soothe that part of your brain.
While there are actions you can commit to, like journaling, there is one important thing that can help women and their confidence most of all.
To be confident is to love yourself as you are, and not to change yourself to be something you’re not. To shift this mindset of low self-esteem and to quiet the parts of your brain that attack you, you have to manage a change in your mind and maybe take a step to change the things about yourself that you tend to attack, producing an idea of who you’ve always wanted to be.
If you want to dye your hair with pink streaks, just go for it! If you want to dress the way you want, then go for it! Who you are is entirely up to you. You can do whatever you want about yourself to allow yourself to feel more confident. Confidence is a state of mind to acquire, and it all starts with you. There is no specific image of beauty or confidence, it’s just what makes you feel best.
What can we do for future generations?
People refer to the troubles of adolescence in young girls as part of growing up, and anxiety and overthinking is something everyone has to go through. It’s deemed as normal, but what little girl wants to go through a series of intense emotions and bad thoughts about themselves, especially when it’s taught as a normal thing?
The confidence rate is dropping each year, especially for young girls. Low self-esteem is something that’s starting to stay all throughout teenage years and even through early-to-late adulthood. There are preparations we can make for young girls, and things we can do to help them to grow as strong, confident young women.
The psychology behind confidence in women shows why we are the way we are and how we think about ourselves. Most of the time, the negative things women say about themselves are things that their brains made up.
Everyone has a part in helping boost confidence and self-esteem. As long as people target what’s causing both confidence and self-esteem to lower, they can help themselves and others around them.
