I’m Stanley, I’m 14. My mum’s a confidence coach, so I’ve grown up hearing about brains and why we feel the way we do, and I have taken the best bits for you to help you build confidence.

Here are seven of the most helpful tips I’ve been given.

1. Nobody is watching you as much as you think

Let’s start with the big one, because it changes everything else. You know that feeling that everyone’s looking at you, clocking every little thing you do? Psychologists have a name for it: the spotlight effect.

In a famous experiment, researchers made students wear a really embarrassing T-shirt into a room full of people. Afterwards, the students were sure loads of people had noticed and judged it. When the researchers actually asked the room? Barely anyone had. The students had guessed roughly double the real number.

The reason nobody’s watching you that closely is because they are all convinced the spotlight is on them. Everyone your age is starring in their own stressful little film, worrying about their own hair, their own spot, the weird thing they said in maths. They don’t have the spare brainpower to analyse you the way you analyse yourself.

A psychologist called David Elkind even named this teenage feeling of being permanently on stage: the “imaginary audience.” And that’s exactly what it is: imaginary. There is no audience, because everyone else is busy worrying about their own stuff. Most of them didn’t notice, and the rest already forgot.

2. Your brain is loud on purpose, you are not “too sensitive”

If your feelings have been hitting you like a truck lately, there’s a reason. Deep in your brain is the amygdala, your smoke alarm. It spots danger fast and makes you feel it. In teenagers, it’s fully switched on.

Right behind your forehead is the prefrontal cortex, the calm, sensible bit that says this isn’t a real emergency, you’re fine. In teenagers, that part is still being built. It doesn’t finish wiring up until your mid-twenties.

So you’ve got a loud alarm and a calm voice that’s still learning its lines. That’s why everything feels turned up to full volume right now. Your brain is basically mid-upgrade. (Neuroscientist Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore has spent years proving how different, and how brilliant, the teenage brain actually is.) It’s also why you sometimes feel like nobody gets you. Your brain is changing faster than it has since you were a toddler, quicker than the people around you can keep up with. That gap is normal and it closes eventually.

3. Getting embarrassed genuinely hurts, that’s normal

Ever thought about something cringe you did years ago and physically flinched? There’s a proper reason. In 2003, scientists Naomi Eisenberger and Matthew Lieberman scanned people’s brains while they were being left out of a game, and found that social pain lights up the same part of the brain as physical pain. Being embarrassed, rejected or left out doesn’t just feel a bit like getting hurt. To your brain, it more or less is.

So when you go bright red and want the floor to swallow you, you are running a real pain response, and so is everyone else; the popular kid, the teacher, the influencer you follow. Every single one has a brain that treats embarrassment like an injury.

4. Wanting to fit in is ancient survival wiring

You are wired, right now, to care intensely about what people your age think of you. It’s a survival mechanism. 

Thousands of years ago, being part of the group literally kept you alive. Get pushed out, and you didn’t make it. So evolution built teenagers to be highly, highly tuned to belonging, because for most of human history, belonging was life or death.

So when you desperately want to fit in, it’s literally an ancient system doing exactly what it was designed to do. Once I knew that, I stopped being annoyed at myself for caring. You’re running software that once kept humans alive.

5. Making mistakes is how your brain levels up (and people forget them anyway)

I used to be so scared of getting something wrong that I just… didn’t. Didn’t put my hand up, didn’t try out. Two things fixed that.

First: mistakes are literally how your brain grows. Every time you try, get it a bit wrong, and adjust, your brain constructs a stronger connection, it’s called neuroplasticity. Getting it wrong isn’t the opposite of learning, it is the learning.

Second: remember the spotlight. Think of the last time someone else messed up in front of you, got an answer wrong, tripped, said something awkward. Can you even remember it clearly? Probably not. That’s exactly how everyone is with your mistakes, because their brains are busy with themselves.

A brain that never gets it wrong is a brain that never grows. So try things, if you get it wrong the only thing that will happen is you will grow.

6. Your subconscious is always listening, and it believes whatever you repeat

Here’s the part my mum goes on about most. And she’s right.

Most of what you do runs on autopilot, from a deeper part of your mind called the subconscious. A huge amount of what drives us happens below the level we even notice.

Your subconscious is a giant storage system for what you believe about yourself, and it doesn’t argue, it just believes whatever you tell it, over and over. So every time you think I’m so awkward or I always mess this up, it’s not that you are just having a thought, you are actively handing it an instruction. And it goes, ‘got it’, and starts making that feel true.

There’s even a system in your brain (the reticular activating system) that decides what you notice. Decide you’re awkward, and it hunts for proof you’re awkward while ignoring every time you were fine. It’s like learning a new word and suddenly hearing it everywhere.

You’ve been programming yourself by accident for years, now you get to do it on purpose. So from now on, never tell yourself “I’m so dumb”, or “I’m so cringe”. Instead, try saying good things like “It’s good that I tried”, or “I’m proud that I did/said that”.

7. Right now your brain is wet cement, this is the best chance you’ll ever get to be more confident as a teenager

I saved the most hopeful one for last. Your brain will never be as changeable as it is right now. That neuroplasticity I mentioned, in your teens, it’s turned up to the maximum. Your brain is like wet cement, whatever you press into it now sets into the shape you carry into adulthood.

That sounds intense, but it’s the best news going. It means confidence isn’t something a few lucky people are born with and you missed out on. It’s a skill, a set of pathways that get stronger every time you use them, like a muscle, or a path through a field that gets clearer the more you walk it. You have the chance to shape your adulthood!

The nervous kid who makes themselves put their hand up anyway is building the brain of a confident adult. Every small brave thing is a rep, you’re building the brain you’ll have. 

In practice: 5 things that actually rewire your brain

Reading this won’t change anything on its own. Small actions, repeated, are what update your brain. Start with one.

1 • Do one small brave thing a day. Answer one question in class. Say hi first. Send the message. Each time, you’re telling your brain “I can do that”, and building the pathway that makes it easier next time.

2 • Talk to yourself like you’d talk to your best mate. Catch yourself thinking “no one likes me, I’m a loser” and stop and think. Would you say that to a friend feeling like this? Probably not ‘yeah such a loser, no one likes you’ . Think of what you would say to them and say that to yourself instead.

3 • Ask “and then what?” I put my hand up and get it wrong. And then what? People hear a wrong answer, and then what? They forget by lunch. Chase the fear to the end and it usually goes away.

4 • Catch your brain hunting for the bad stuff. When you notice yourself collecting evidence that everyone hates you, deliberately look for the opposite; the person who smiled, the mate who saved you a seat.

5 • Sort your body out first. Stand a bit taller, drop your shoulders, and take one slow breath out that’s longer than the breath in. That single long exhale tells your nervous system the emergency’s over.

Pick one, just one and do it for a week.

You’re not weird and you’re not behind unless you tell yourself you’re behind. You’ve just got a brilliant, half-built brain that cares too much what people think, because that’s exactly what a teenage brain is designed to do.

Now you know what it’s up to, and that changes everything. The spotlight was never really on. Go and do the thing anyway.

Get Some Support

If feels familiar, please know you don’t have to figure it all out on your own.  Talk to someone you trust, a parent, a teacher, an older brother or sister, a school counsellor. It’s not embarrassing to need help, 28% of teens see a therapist or counsellor, whilst an astonishing 55% of teens face barriers (such as embarrassment and the fear that people will find out) when trying to reach out to someone. Saying the worried stuff out loud takes away a surprising amount of its power (that’s a brain thing too, naming a feeling actually turns the alarm down).

You’ve got a whole confident adult in there, being built right now, be kind to them while they grow.

— Stanley, 14

Where this science comes from

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, research on the developing adolescent brain (amygdala and prefrontal cortex). Naomi Eisenberger & Matthew Lieberman (2003), “Does Rejection Hurt? An fMRI Study of Social Exclusion.” Thomas Gilovich, Victoria Medvec & Kenneth Savitsky (2000), the spotlight-effect studies. David Elkind (1967), “Egocentrism in Adolescence” and the imaginary audience.

About the author

Stanley Dempsey is 14 and wrote this for anyone his age who’s ever felt like the whole room was watching. This is a guest post on his mum’s blog.

About Chantal Dempsey

Chantal Dempsey is a multi-award-winning confidence coach, Master NLP Practitioner, clinical hypnotherapist, EMDR therapist, and former criminal profiler with over 20 years of experience. Featured in The Times, Forbes, and Psychologies Magazine, she works with high-functioning women and men across the world.