How the red pill damages your confidence and how to reverse it

O. Introduction

This post is based on wider reading into the topics covered, therapy and my personal experiences with the red pill. Hope this can be of some help to others who are leaving trp behind.

I. The Red Pill’s take on confidence

There’s a deluge of issues that people drawn to the red pill may be dealing with, but whilst codependency, trauma, etc can all live under the surface of awareness, one that is glaringly obvious and that the red pill promises to directly solve is a lack of confidence.

The red pill speaks to those who may be nervous around women, have anxiety in social situations, feel stuck and unable to live their lives as they want to, and tells them they can be freed from their dire state by following their philosophy. Their approach to raising confidence falls broadly under three areas:

  1. Go to the gym: and other assorted, obvious advice (eat well, push yourself, etc). This is perhaps the most useful approach, a little cliched but it can work to boost your confidence if you stick to it.

  2. Fake it til you make it: just pretend to be confident. This may work if you have a minor confidence problem in a specific area. For the generalised anxiety most of those who are new to trp have it won’t be enough and doesn’t address the core issues.

  3. Rewire your thinking: internalise misogyny. There are countless posts about seeing women for ‘what they really are’, encouraging you to depedestalise women by seeing them as inferior, ‘plates ain’t shit’, etc. The promise is that if you can accept these frames as your personal truth you won’t feel nervous anymore.

These frameworks are at best tired self help advice, and at worst will turn you into an unapologetic misogynist who see’s relationships through the lens of domination, only causing more issues for yourself and anyone unfortunate enough to partner with you in the long-run. They are fundamentally unsustainable and none of them can give you true confidence.

II. What confidence really is

Broadly, the idea of ‘confidence’ falls under two categories. One is based around competence, a concert pianist will be confident she can perform Happy Birthday at a friend’s birthday party because it’s a task well within her comfort zone.

The other, which the red pill promises and it’s adherents struggle with, is a general sense of confidence on a day-to-day level. This is based on an ease of being; it’s not context-dependent, it doesn’t rely on competence or performance, it’s a sense of ease with which one moves through the world.

There’s a mixture of things that go into operating with this kind of confidence, but central to them is a healthy self-esteem.

III. Self-Esteem

Self-esteem can be broadly summarised as a respect for the self, a self-trust that one is able to deal with any obstacles they may face, rooted in acceptance and love of oneself.

To provide a quick glimpse into healthy vs low self-esteem consider the following and keep in mind which rp philosophy would fall under:

High self-esteem calls you to express yourself, to follow your own inclinations and honour your own, true self; low self-esteem calls you to prove yourself, your self-concept is gauged relative to other people, the standards which you strive towards are societally set and limited to those that are pre-approved of (hot women, lots of money, etc)

High self-esteem encourages lightheartedness and sharing in social situations, because your validation comes from within; low self-esteem leads to adversarial approaches to social situations as it assumes threats of rejection, humiliation, etc.

IV. The Red Pill and the False Self

To summarise the above, a true sense of confidence and healthy self-esteem are based on a comfort with who you are, a sense of ease and peace with your true self. Instead of encouraging this, the red pill uses pseudoscientific evopsych theories to push the model of an alpha which actively undermines it’s followers confidence.

The red pill’s conception of an alpha is far-ranging but at its core it’s a model of a man who is fundamentally invulnerable. The ideal alpha, the man in his ‘prime’, is in great shape, has a good career, elite social access, endless sexual options, etc. On a micro-level he is always in control, of his own life but also of others in social situations as his ‘frame’ is unshakable. This model is fundamentally unobtainable, and in positioning it as a north star trp robs its followers of the potential to ever achieve true confidence.

Anxiety can be seen as the opposite to confidence, and with the model of alpha to judge themselves against, trp introduces a layer of anxiety where none had previously existed into their follower’s heads. On top of any anxiety that one might have entered trp with now exists further anxiety about controlling frame, being alpha, never appearing beta, etc.

The encouragement to strive towards this idealised notion of an alpha, and claims that it is getting in touch w the natural manhood that feminism or whatever else has obscured from you, only takes people further away from their true selves. Instead trp’s followers construct a false ‘alpha’ self which distances them from attaining true confidence and a healthy self-esteem.

True confidence can never come from a false self, think of the cliches of the womaniser who hates himself, the celebrity whose mired by self-loathing despite mass-validation, etc. The idea of becoming ‘alpha’ is at its core the birth of a false self.

V. How to be ‘confident’

Confidence does not come from perfection, which is fundamentally unobtainable, but is an ease with yourself that comes from self-acceptance. Someone who can own their slight social awkwardness comes across as more confident than someone who attempts to control social situations to prove their superiority.

The only way to regain a sense of confidence is by sinking into who you are, accepting yourself, and living authentically.

Value the expression of your true self over the fear of disapproval of others, or of appearing as a ‘beta’.

Drop the one-size-fits-all approach to attraction and socialising and realise that you don’t need to check off a box of cliched and retrograde ideals of masculinity to be accepted by others, in fact you will develop more meaningful connections with them once you have done so.

If you were deep in the rabbit hole of trp then it may take time. That’s ok. Take it at your own pace. You may have abdicated your true self for so long that you don’t know who you are outside of trying to impress and perform for others. If that’s the case start with the small things, start doing things only for yourself, things that you want to do for no other reason than that you enjoy them, and as your nourish yourself in that way you’ll soon be back to yourself.