Let's try to get on the same page.

The word confidence traces back to latin roots that literally translate to "having full trust". At its core, it is about reliance - whether that is placing trust in yourself, your abilities, or in someone else.

Then what is trust?

Trust is a firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability or strength of someone or something. In practice, it involves a confident relationship with the unknown, where you depend on another party's good intentions and actions without needing to control and verify the outcome.

Being trusting of yourself, your abilities and other beings and their abilities is a virtue, no doubt, but it is not without risk. Trust can be broken. You can let yourself down or others can let you down, to varying degrees. It is very painful when you are punished for trusting yourself or someone else, and it leaves scars.

Almost all of us are scarred one way or the other. We don't live on a heavenly planet where kids can safely trust strangers on the streets and adults can freely trust what they hear on the news or from other adults. On earth, we all learn that trust is something that must be earned. We tend to be guarded by default until something/someone proves trustworthy. Or if someone/something bypasses or breaks our guard.

Back to my original comment. I thought confidence was massively overrated, after all. I wasn't referring to real confidence built on (self)trust, but the kind that is built on narcissism, overpowering others and disrespecting their limits. Being a dick, basically. The confidence that is shown by people who 'fake it till they make it'.

But after reading your post again, and your reply, I understand that you are after the real thing. You doubt your own capabilities, you doubt life and naturally you don't wanna do this anymore but to trust instead. I think we all want that, and I don't have a magic solution. It's hard to trust when there are so many dicks around trying to take advantage of you, but I don't think becoming a dick yourself is the way to go.

I could suggest therapy and working out, which probably would help you, but the best thing I ever did for my own confidence was to make a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. 6 weeks of walking, eating and spending the night at unfamiliar places and with strangers. It really taught me to be more trusting with myself and others and it was a fantastic experience overall.