u/superbird42789

Fresh into college, and for a long time I've struggled heavily with socializing, communicating with others, asking for something/help, stage activities and in general suffer low from self worth

Ive often heard stories of people becoming more confident over time by faking it, steps like walk and stand straighter, dont look down at the ground all the time, but for me it doesnt work as well cuz

1. I have to be mindful to keep up the act 24/7, and thats difficult when I feel like an alien creature is wearing my skin when I am putting up the act and not forgetting about it, like the awareness of my artificiality eats at me

2. It always crumbles when I end up having to interact with people, my voice is deep to the point where its incomprehensible at low volume but if I say it louder to make it clearer I sound like I'm yelling (inherited this from my father ig) and that makes me feel bad, doesnt help when my words echo throughout the room and everyone starts staring at me

I aint wanna be no damn main character and if I were to guess I have a lot more problems to solve than this, but my inability to confidently communicate and hop on stage is impeding my life too much, and I want the biggest roadblocks out as soon as possible

For reference, Im new to college and I've always struggled heavily with socializing, talking to people (even 1-1) especially asking for help, anything on stage and in general suffer from low self esteem and chronic negativity

While my 1-1 communication skills are improving as in I can at least open my mouth and say what I want, long as its restrained to a sentence or two

Often times I see opinions like "ape other confident people and eventually you'll become one", and is this actually valid?

I try my best to do the basics like walk and stand straighter, dont look at the ground all the time etc but main issues are

1. Its an act - I'm not a good actor, it takes a lot of conscious effort to put up this facade all the time, and the awareness that I'm putting up a very fragile show eats at me

2. Crumbles when I actually have to interact with people, especially with my voice, I have a voice thats deep enough that its borderline incomprehensible at low volumes (just sounds like rumbling) and I'll have to raise it really loud for it to be clear (and ofc "sounding confident") but yea that just makes me feel like I'm yelling at them (voice does sound aggressive) and my words echoing in a room and everyone staring at me also makes me uncomfortable

I'm not even trying to be the "main character" or whatever, my inability to socialize and communicate with confidence is actively hindering my life and I just want to function like a normal person