I had low self confidence and no longer do. I've studied psychology of mental health and am training to be a therapist, so I will be discussing things through this lens.

So while low self esteem is annoying to experience, it is important to understand that it has a function. You are not experiencing it due to chance, it is serving a purpose. You have to remove the need for it to exist and it will go.

Typically, the function of low self esteem is to protect you from the brain's idea of conflict - this was the case with me. It is important to note that the brain's idea of conflict does not fit with the the standard definition - while it includes obvious examples of conflict (e.g., getting angry with a friend who has done something out of order) it also includes situations which are more subtle. For the brain, conflict is breaking the expectations of others (or rather, your own idea of their expectations) - for example, let's say you've been learning the guitar and haven't ever played anything in front of your friends, breaking the flow of conversation with "guys, I've been learning guitar and I want to play you a song I've been working on" is a 'conflict' in the eyes of your brain; even though you aren't doing anything negative, you are disrupting everyone's expectations of that moment. Your brain knows it would be "safer" (less disruptive) for you if you didn't pause the conversation to play guitar. From here on I'll refer to 'the brain's idea of conflict' simply as 'conflict'.

Feeling low self esteem helps you avoid conflict. Let's look at how:

1) Conflict exists in relationships. Low self esteem makes relationships difficult and makes you feel insecure in them. This means they are harder to construct, harder to maintain and as the one's you have feel insecure, if a conflict were to emerge in them you would take the submissive path. "You don't DESERVE to have this relationship, so of course you should shut up and agree!"

2) Conflict exists when expectations are broken. Low self esteem means you don't want to try (and definitely don't want to share) your creative endeavours. Unless you are painting by numbers, creation is pretty much always disruptive - it adds something new and potentially uncomfortable to the world. Your brain knows this, so to keep you safe from conflict it would rather you feel shit about yourself and hide your creativity, than feel good, create and risk disruption.

So, how to break the cycle? You need to remove the fear of upsetting others - and this means practicing it. It means catching yourself avoiding this and making yourself do it again and again. Even if the experience does not go well your confidence will grow. The need to avoid conflict is learnt in infancy, where you really are dependent on other people loving you to survive - so your brain just needs to know that you will survive conflict, rather than it ending up with everyone too happy on the other side.

Broadly speaking, all anxieties are functional in this protective way, and all are resolvable through focused action. Though it was a bit unusual, during therapy developing a new way to interpret dreams which enabled me to know where to focus my action meant my progress improved rapidly. I wrote a paper on it which is available here: https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz

Happy conflicting :)