1 – Get to know yourself better

If you know what you’re usually like and how you tend to think you can catch those negative thoughts and challenge them with more positive thoughts.

2 – Concentrate on the things you enjoy

And don’t let these things suffer because you’re feeling self-conscious.

Jono Lancaster has Treacher-Collins syndrome (a genetic condition which results in the face not developing properly) and says:

“When I sit down and have a moment to myself, I can’t help but have a huge smile on my face. A smile that says – yeah I’m proud to be who I am – although it’s taken me a while to feel like this; especially during my teenage years. I think concentrating on other aspects of your life, such as work and fitness can help you feel good about yourself and help build confidence.”

Jono Lancaster

3 – Try not to blame every thing on your appearance

Not everything that happens is because of your appearance; so don’t allow yourself to think that every event, comment or stare is related to the way you look.

4 – Dwelling on the past doesn’t help!

Although going over events in the past is normal, if you dwell on the past too much it can make you feel miserable, just like Tom.

Before he got help, Tom said:

I was just going over and over everything and got stuck, kind of involved in this over analysing of everything, I was so down.

5 – Give people a chance but don’t put up with teasing and bullying

We’ve shown that the thoughts we have about others can be wrong and people’s negative responses can be because they are curious and not mean.

Sometimes people will be cruel and it’s important to remember that you don’t have to put up with this – it’s not your fault. If your gut feeling is that someone is being mean, teasing or bullying you, this would be a good time to stick up for yourself, ignore them, walk away or get help from your friends or someone you trust.

Miranda’s view on bad behaviour:

The people who are mean and their immediate reaction to your difference is just to swear at you or call you a name, then yeah, then I think you’re justified in writing them off. Because you know this will happen, I hate to say it. I’d love it if it didn’t and I would love it if I could say confidently for the next years that I’m alive, no-one will ever say some of the things they’ve said to me, but it will happen. There’s that pressure to be graceful and positive and by taking the moral high ground in order to preserve your relationship with society. But can you be sensitive and be positive? How can you not be defensive in the face of cruelty?

6 – Positive brain training

Train your brain to start focusing on more positive things. Think of 3 good things that have happened to you. These things don’t have to be large things that make you really happy, they can be the little things that made your life easier or made you smile. An example might be someone passing you something you dropped, holding a door open for you or smiling at you in the street. If you learn to look for positive things you’ll stop focusing on the negatives.

Tom talks about how positive thinking can help you feel more confident:

I’ve never had someone stare at me to the point that I’ve wondered what’s going on. If you feel, “they’re looking at me”, and that makes you feel worried, you should try and stop thinking like that because people are looking around and seeing things all the time. Just because they happen to be facing you doesn’t necessarily mean they’re looking. It’s all back to self-confidence and getting on with life

Like many people with a visible difference Blake felt that everyone was staring at him:

He kept his head down and avoided eye contact because he thought that everyone who looked his way and gave him eye contact was checking out his acne scarring. Blake and his therapist reviewed research on non verbal communication. Blake was asked to do a behavioural experiment by his therapist. He was asked to count the number of people who stared at him as he walked home, and to estimate how many people he passed. At the next session he was asked to report back. He had passed about 100 people and one person had stared. He then laughed. When prompted, he said that the man who stared had actually come up to him and asked him directions. This man obviously thought Blake seemed the most approachable and friendly person in the street. Blake was then able to rethink his ideas about people staring and to see that eye contact with others was simply part of everyday communication.