08/10/2026
Confidence Isn't Built by Positive Thinking
My daughter asked me last year why I never mentioned starting my own practice back when I still had the energy for it. I gave her the easy answer — timing, money, the kids were young. The real answer was that I didn't trust my own judgment enough to bet forty years of savings on it. I had the credentials. I had the experience. I still deferred to people with half of both.
I didn't lack the idea. I lacked the trust that my own judgment was worth acting on.
For years I believed my biggest problem was confidence. If I could just become more confident, I thought, I'd have spoken up sooner. I'd have trusted my own read on things. I'd have stopped waiting for permission I was never going to get. I'd finally feel like everyone else seemed to feel.
Confidence wasn't the real problem.
The real problem was that my brain had spent decades collecting evidence that I couldn't trust myself.
Every idea I sat on until the moment passed.
Every decision I handed off to someone louder or more certain than I felt.
Every time I told myself I'd get to it eventually, and eventually became never.
Every plan I shelved because I doubted my own read on the risk.
I treated every one of those moments as proof that my judgment couldn't be trusted. I wasn't building confidence. I was building a case against myself.
Psychologist Albert Bandura's research on self-efficacy explains why that case matters. Belief in your ability to handle life isn't built by positive thinking. It develops from repeated experiences of success. Each accomplishment updates the brain's expectations about what's possible. Those experiences become evidence.
Very late diagnosed autistic and ADHD adults have spent the longest time collecting a different kind of evidence. Some of us — baby boomers, late Gen X — didn't get a name for any of it until our fifties, sixties, or seventies. We built entire careers, raised families, ran households, all while judging our own instincts by expectations that never fit our wiring. A slower processing style looked like hesitation. A cautious read looked like weakness. Decades passed before we had any language for what was actually happening in our own brains.
The diagnosis didn't hand any of us back those decades. It changed what happens next.
Instead of asking whether I looked confident, I ask whether I acted on what I knew.
Did I say the thing I'd already worked out in my head?
Did I take the step I'd already decided was right?
Did I trust my first read instead of waiting for someone else's permission?
Those moments matter because they become new evidence.
That's what my book, *365 Days of Rewired Confidence for Spicy Thinkers*, is built on. I don't wait until confidence magically appears. Each day is one small, deliberate repetition that strengthens self-trust, one acted-on instinct at a time. It's not too late for the brain to update the story it tells about what you're capable of, no matter how many decades it took to get here.
NeuroDraw Growing Neurons
autistic, autistic adults, autistic
supports, autistic adults exist, autistic adults rock, transgender, media, autistic adult, autism, chronic pain, autistic women exist, ableism, intersection, systemic racism, unmasking, autistic transgender, autistic identity, burn out, thwarted belonging, q***r, gender-affirming, neurodivergent, autistic professionals, intersectional, healthcare, auti stic culture autistic language, autistic leadership, nonbinary, autistic joy, autistic language, autistic meltdown, autistic sensory overload, autistic
communication, conversation, stigmas, bias, autism and Igbtqiat, Igbtqia+, social
acceptance, disability, baby boomers, gen x, latediagnosed
