Here’s my advice for a reader who would like to get her sexual self confidence back after self harming. Content note: the reader mentions self harm, but there is no detail about the type of harm or any injury in the question or in my answer.
“I need some advice around self confidence and sex”
Hi,
I need some advice around self confidence and sex. I am in a relationship and I trust my partner. I’m a female, he’s male. We have been together for a few years now. I relapsed with self harm a few months ago (I am safe, therapist and gp are aware etc). But it has destroyed my self confidence. He still finds me attractive and wants to have sex and he never made me feel bad or self conscious of them it’s just my brain that does that. I really enjoy sex and we used to have a very active sex life which I want to get back to. How do I learn to believe him when he says he doesn’t mind and get past it in my head to enjoy sex again?
Thank you for your question
Thank you for your question and for trusting me to give you, and any other readers, a helpful answer. I’ll do my best. I’m going to use some ideas from Solution Focused Brief Therapy to try and help. This is something that you could ask your therapist to help you with too perhaps? This means focusing on the resources you already have. Then we’re going to imagine what your preferred future will look like and see how far you’ve come already. Then at the end there will be a bit of philosophy. You might want to get a pen and paper, or find a space to be able to answer my questions out loud. The advice here is not about the self harm, but if you find it useful you might want to chat with your GP and therapist about it. Here’s some great advice from Young Minds about how to cope with self harm.
Sidenote. Thank you to all my supporters who are paying me to answer this question. If you can support BISH (either with money or with promotion) please check out the support BISH page.
How are you coping with the relapse?
When we are low on confidence it can be very easy to only pay attention to what we are lacking. To spend a lot of our time thinking about what is wrong with us: what we can’t do. When we do this it can be easy to get into a negative spiral. So this is why I’m going to start by asking you about what resources you do have.
How have you coped since your relapse? You are safe, your therapist and your GP are aware, how are you doing this? Also you still have your partner, who you trust. How have you done that? What does this say about you that you can make use of this support? That’s not a rhetorical question (a question that doesn’t need an answer). What is it that you have you been doing that has helped you in dealing with this this so far? You’ve sought out BISH and you’ve asked me about it, what does this say about you? Maybe it says you are determined and resourceful?
Once you have found these words, see if you can tell yourself a little story about each one. About how you cope, how you are now safe, and you have this relationship?
Reader, you could also try this activity about Big Ups.
You will wake up tomorrow full of sexual self-confidence and belief
This next bit is what we call ‘imagining your preferred future’. It’s sometimes also called ‘the miracle question’. I invite you to imagine that you will go about the rest of your day, eat your dinner, watch Hollyoaks or something like that, and then you go to bed to sleep. When you are soundly asleep this really amazing thing happens, all of your best hopes come true.
You will wake up tomorrow full of sexual self confidence: you could not feel more confident in yourself.
Your recent relapse is totally behind you and is no longer messing with your present life.
You will also wake up fully believing that your partner finds you attractive and you will be able to feel sexy again.
No-one has told you that this miracle has happened overnight: no-one has left you a note or anything. However, as you wake up, you will start to notice that something really big has happened. You will be full of self confidence and belief. How will you know? What will be the very first thing you will notice? From the moment you open your eyes, to the moment you will start to get out of bed, how will you know that this miracle has happened? Will you notice something in your body? What about your emotions and thoughts? What are the kinds of tiny little things you will be doing?
You could also read this about how you feel about yourself.
As you go about your day
Continuing with the miracle, as you go about your morning, what will you be pleased to notice? How will you know that you are full of sexual self confidence and belief? If you live with someone, what will be the very first thing they will notice about you? Will it be something different about your body, or how you are moving? What will they notice? How will they respond? How will you respond back? What differences will they notice about you?
Let’s say you see your partner: what will be the first thing he will notice? How will he respond? What will your response be? What will you notice about him? Think about his face, shoulders, arms: what will they be doing? Imagine this interaction unfolding between you and see if you can imagine the tiny details, the little differences, things you will be pleased to notice. Also try this for different interactions with different people throughout the day.
It’s all about noticing tiny little things that are different
I know this sounds a little repetitive but it’s how this approach works. It’s all about noticing the tiny little things that are different that tell you that this miracle has happened. The important thing is to imagine what will be happening, rather than what won’t be happening. When I do a solution focused session with someone, they might say ‘well my shoulders won’t feel tense’, and I’ll say ‘what will your shoulders be doing if they are not tense?’ So it could be the very first feelings of horny-ness, for example. How will you know you are feeling horny? What will your partner notice? How will you respond to that? It’s all about noticing tiny little things and the difference that they will make, and what difference that difference will make. What will you be pleased to notice?
Here’s my resource on how to enjoy sex.
Self confidence on a scale
You say that your relapse has destroyed your self confidence. That sounds pretty tough. However, you’re here asking questions, you think I might be able to help you. You’ve reached out and you really want to believe your partner is attracted to you and you really want to enjoy sex again. Let’s say that your self confidence is on a scale: 10 is you couldn’t be more confident and 0 is the opposite, what number at you at? How come you are that number and not one below? For example if you are at a 3, how come you are not at a 2? (Or if you are at a 0, how come you are not at a -1?)
For this one, see if you can come up with a few words, or list a few examples, that explain why you are (eg) at a 3 and not a 2. Jot them down, or say them out loud. See if you can get to 10 things. Take your time and be patient and kind towards yourself as you do it. Now see if you can get to 20 things. To help with this, go over your list and see if you can come up with smaller and smaller examples or words. For each one you could ask, ‘and the difference this makes is that I can …’ or ‘and my therapist said to me that maybe this means I am …’. Try to think of examples that involve other people too: partner, therapist, GP, anyone else? What might they say about you that says you’re at that number and not the number below? As you are writing this list, see if there are any thoughts or feelings that crop up that you are pleased to notice. What difference does that make? What else?
You could try this article about feeling a bit better about yourself.
Spiralling up
As I was saying at the top, when we’re not feeling great, it’s easy to get into a downward spiral. This is when the problems become so overwhelming that the problem becomes ‘the thing about us’. The approach I’m taking in answering your question is to notice the exceptions, the times when the solutions appear for you. When you get into this tiny noticing thing (which takes practice) you will start to notice these moments of your preferred future juuuuuuuust beginning to come true. The tiniest little signs of improvement, little things you are pleased to notice.
When you look out for these little signs, and noticing the difference this makes, and how other people around you notice these differences, then things can spiral upwards too. You don’t have to force it, but noticing the tiniest of improvements does something. Paying attention to it, and then paying attention to what that does, is the job of work. Then you will start to notice the differences this makes to your body, the differences to your emotional state, the differences to your thoughts, the differences to what you do, and the difference it makes to your body. It spirals upwards.
The old switcheroo
This is where the advice becomes a bit philosophical. Self confidence doesn’t exist inside you, it is produced between you and the other people in your life and the outside world in general. When I was asking you to imagine your self confidence returning, notice how I was asking you to think about how other people will respond to you and how you will respond to them? That’s because everything is produced from our relations with the outside world. We feel it on the ‘inside’ but I (and many philosophers) think it’s more helpful to think about your insides and your outsides being essentially the same. Like a mobius strip, or like The Beatles said in their song ‘Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey’: “Your inside is out, And your outside is in. Your outside is in, And your inside is out, So come on, come on.” (It’s a banger in my opinion.)
This means that rather than trying to work on your self confidence by yourself in order that you can believe your partner, you could switch it around. The olllllld switcheroo. Just believe your partner, and see what that does to your sexual self confidence. What if the miracle was ‘you will wake up tomorrow morning and believe your partner is attracted to you and is desperate to have sex with you’. What will be the very first thing you will notice? As words of affirmation come from his mouth, what if they were to enter your ears, fill up your head and the rest of your body with love, affection, and attraction? What will you notice in your body? How will he respond? What difference will this make? If you will feel horny, what will be the very first sign of that? How will he know? How will you respond? Then just start to notice the things happening between you: what will you both be pleased to notice?
Everything is moving ahead of you
It’s not possible to go back to a point before the relapse, but you can keep moving ahead and it will become smaller. So everything you have been doing since the relapse, to keep safe, to get support, and to work on the relationship, are resources that might help you in the future. Every single thing that you are doing that spirals upwards can just help you to move towards increasing your capacity. Increasing your capacity to act and increasing the possibilities for your relationship. Try to make the resources you have developed (and which I have invited you to reflect on here) the thing about you, rather than the relapse. See what else happens and what else.
You might like this on how to feel joy.
© Justin Hancock, 2026 Find out more about me and BISH here. If you’re an educator, head to my website BISH training, to find out about my resources for SRE and training for practitioners.
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BISH is run by me, Justin Hancock. I’ve been a trained sex and relationships educator since 1999. I’m a member of the World Association for Sexual Health. As well as BISH I also have resources, a podcast, and a coaching service for over 18s, as well as some of the best RSE teaching resources around. Find out out about my other work at justinhancock.co.uk. My work has featured (positively) in the media, like the BBC, Financial Times, The Economist, The Guardian, Sky One, and Novara Media.
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Other websites you might find helpful
There are other websites a bit like this one who have more funding than mine so they can do more and can provide more support. There’s Scarleteen who have lots of great advice articles and also moderated message boards where you can hang out and ask questions of other folk like you. Brook also offer sexual health services in person in the UK and online. The Mix are a UK online youth support service. For straight up advice I really like Go Ask Alice from Columbia University. Remember if you are in the UK and want some support there are loads of services near you, lots of them have their own websites.
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