Main issue
Does it make sense at all to approach women if you are lacking confidence and don't believe in yourself? Should confidence and self-belief be build up before approaching women or can it grow while doing it? How can it be developed effectively?

My personal background

Early childhood
By my mom I was physically and emotionally abused as well as humiliated up till the age of 7 when she was murdered (I'm 23 yrs now). The main suspect had all possible evidence pointing against him, he still wasn't convicted. It got in the media a few times, and it is among the top cases in my country with strongest evidence against the main suspect but without any sentence. She was still my mom, and it hurts never getting to know what exactly happened to her (only good guesses) and of course the stinging pain of not getting justice for my mom. He got away because of his highly elaborate and complex lies, because he had the best criminal lawyer in the country and as there was wrongly a focus on some irrelevant pieces of evidence while all the rest was mostly left out. For 4 years long after her death the suspect lied that she went back to her home country, the Philippines, while actually he had hidden her body in a cement floor. My mom was strongly Catholic, but shortly after I lost her I became atheist. Injustice hurts like a motherfucker, even after over 10 years.

High school
My 5 years in high school were terrible. Only had 1 friend, though a good one, and still my best up to this day. When I just entered high school I was a sociable kid who comfortably and often approached strangers, but there I strangely choose to not take initiative to make friends after elementary school. As a consequence I got isolated to only that 1 friend from elementary. I began to feel very insecure, unconfident and depressed as I got bullied and was not able to deal with it. Often I would feel as stiff as a wooden plank and move awkwardly due to all the nervous tension in my nerves and so was called a robot because of it.

University
When I finished high school at age 18, I got into uni and began living on my own. I started backpacking by myself in another countries, and I have been doing so every year for several weeks or months. Before I travelled with family.
However, I was still dealing with severe depression, and to some extent worse than during high school as I was able to isolate myself more due to living on my own and having way more suicide thoughts. I never actually carried out a suicide act, only thought of it. Though, I got over severe depression up until last year while I am still prone to feeling sad, negative thinking, loneliness. Still, thinking of death, a nothingness without stress, pain, worry or sadness seems so nice and peaceful. Since February I went traveling around the world until July last year I moved to Sweden from the Netherlands to start a new Bachelor program, after several failed attempts at uni in my own country due to depression, but so far it is going academically great with high marks and I may very well get the degree much sooner than usual as well. My social circle is a bit better as well, but still small, however I am more socially active than during my high school and uni life in Netherlands.

Experience with women
Up to this point, I have never ever gotten into a relationship with a girl, did not have any intimate encounters, not a single date, or not even kissed a girl. I have been complimented on my looks several times by strangers of both sexes several times, and also had girls fancy me though not the ones I liked or I just did not know how to deal with it if I did like them. Often I would only get interest in a girl after a while, but by the time when she had probably lost interest in me. I just believe that the biggest thing that is holding me back on having any success with women, and truly enjoying life, is my lack of confidence and believing in myself.

Any help, advice would be highly appreciated!

You don't get good at anything without trying. If you want to be good with women, you have to put in the effort. The better you get at it the more confident you'll be. On the flip side, get good in all of the other aspects of your life and then you'll be able to have the confidence in knowing that women will be attracted to you because you have your shit together.

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So you recommend to both keep approaching women and improving all other life aspects?

Edit: but can you really be confident with women, while not at all confident in the rest of your life? If one would do much better with purely approaching women and not much else

I recommend one or the other but why wouldn't you want to do both?

To your edit: Women will go on how they feel about a guy. If you make them feel good, then they'll ignore the other aspects of your life for a while.

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Yes it makes sense, because success with women builds up confidence. On any tough day I tell myself "You know, there was this moment where you thought all was fucked; then, a few months later, you were fucking five girls on a rolling basis. So no matter how fucked up the situation is, eventually things are gonna be okay."

What are the kind of ideas that you have, that justify your lack in self-esteem? What thoughts do you have, that say to you "you are not an amazing person"?

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We do what we have to do in order to do what we want to do.

I think Jack and Stoliar addressed your concern rather well. I'll just add this bit of science which will likely help you feel more confident.

A group of scientists asked a bunch of people to jump down on a high ledge with a pool of water below. One set was asked to raise both their arms in V-form before jumping; the other set jumped as they pleased without the V-form. Those who did the V-form jumped faster while those who didn't either chickened out or hesitated for a long while.

A second set of test was again conducted by the same scientists. This time, instead of asking people to jump down a high ledge, they measured their testosterone levels. On average, those who raised their arms in V-form had 20% more testosterone than those who didn't.

It's a simple exercise that doesn't take much time and effort. Try it. If it works for you, incorporate this exercise into your lifestyle. If not, try something else.

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Approach. Open. Escalate. Isolate

Here are my two essential rules on texting that will save you tons of time and money:

general-questions/topic137931.html

Write down a few goals, whether they are related to pickup or not, and go accomplish them. Doesn't have to be about running a marathon either. Write down some small goals you can do in a month, and some that may take longer. Only requirement I'd tack on is that they should all be ones that don't require other people to say have been accomplished. For instance, you can make it a goal to not eat fast food for a month. Then thirty days later go "tada!"

And pickup is a skill. If you want to get good at it, you have to practice the absolute basics until they are automatic for you. Otherwise you're going out doing the same shit because you are trying to play basketball without learning how to dribble let alone shoot.

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These hos ain't loyal

Note: didn't read the sob story.

As for the opening paragraphs question:

Confidence is purely 'situational competence'

The more times you expose yourself to a scary environment/situation, the more used to it you will become. The comfortable you will be. The more naturally you will act and react (where real attraction starts to come from)

Just accept the first few sets you do will suck.

Happens to everyone.

But merely putting yourself in the situation is a step forwards. And believe me, you'll start experiencing little successes much faster than you could ever imagine.

In fact, it was exactly 9 days after my very first direct cold approach that I got my first Daygame lay.

Now I'm not saying that it took me 9 days to become super charismatic and naturally confident in these social situations, but I AM saying that by putting myself in these situations on a constant basis, I quickly lucked out and found a "yes" girl who basically slept with me despite my 'game' at the time.

Regards,

Daygame Australia .Com

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Yeah, I don't think anyone is reading my sobby story, seems like a waste of time writing it here.

How often did you approach at that time and how often do you recommend to do it?

I am not sure how small,specific goals can make me more confident if even traveling by myself for weeks, months or half a year every year since my 18th till my current 23 years old. During those periods I would take more initiative than at home to talk with strangers and make friends in hostels, street or public places, not every day but enough to not get socially mad of loneliness and to fill the need for human interaction, sometimes travel together with others I met during traveling. Why am I still shy as fuck after those experiences with no confidence, lack of self-belief? Could the shit that occurred during my earlier years explain that, my background? I was much more sociable as a child, is that normal or weird?

Self-esteem doesn't care about goals and what you've accomplished. When I had a depression last year, even though I had lived in three different countries, was speaking three languages, was studying in one of the best universities in the world, had a decent body, could hold interesting conversation, had had fancier sexual experiences than most people, could play the piano, had written a novel and was planning on writing another one, had a clear idea of what my goals where in life.... even with ALL OF THIS, I could still tell myself "I'm a fucking mistake, nobody would wanna spend time with this guy."

OP, it could help you to understand where you low self-esteem comes from, but it's not gonna solve the problem. Low self-esteem works like a dysfunctional way to analyze yourself: you start with a negative hypothesis (I am a fucking mistake), then you look for evidences, discarding the one that go against the hypothesis (ok, I've traveled a lot and I got interesting hobbies... but I haven't touched a girl in months and I don't have any close friends and I feel like shit), and finally you get back to and reinforce the negative hypothesis (that must be because I'm a fucking mistake!).

Which is why I ask you: what is your opinion of yourself? And being honest with yourself, can you find examples in your life that support that opinion, and other examples that negate it? What have you done that add value to yourself? What are you qualities and your strong points?

In that process you might stumble on weak points too, and that's alright, everybody has some. But there's an easy way to turn these into something positive: decide HERE AND NOW to ACT and change those weak points. Ask yourself how you can improve in these areas. Being on the journey to improvement is already a strong point.

And once you have this whole picture of yourself, keep it in mind. You will eventually return to the dysfunctional reasoning from time to time (I regularly do): when this happens, acknowledge that you're gonna be biased toward picking up negative experiences and negative points to prove the hypothesis, so force yourself to look at the positive aspects in your life. Almost always the conclusion should be "I'm not perfect, but I'm doing my best in life and I have valuable experiences and qualities that make me a worthy human being."

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We do what we have to do in order to do what we want to do.

Stollar, your comment was completely lacking in rational thought. If a person has legitimate mental health issues, as you indicated, then the solution is therapy. Pardon me for suggesting someone move forward with hard work rather than a bunch of psychobabble. Maybe if you took my advice you wouldn't have found yourself in that rut? Also nice humble brag, arrogant prick.

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These hos ain't loyal

Thanks man! I really like your advice as it feels more true to what I am exactly doing wrong by currently maintaining this poor self-esteem. I had been thinking of writing down my strong points lately as well, and I will when this week ends as I have exams till Friday

I also believe that making some goals and achieving them does not necessarily work in fixing confidence issues. There were loads of goals I had that I achieved, but still I feel a lack of self-belief. I appreciate the person who gave this advice, at least you tried and thanks for the effort

Can you give me an example of how you wrote your personal strengths and weaknesses? Is it kinda like a SWOT-analysis? If you are very unconfident and have strong negative self-talk, how can you start believing in the positive things you or others mention about yourself?

First off there's this little book that might be of help: Overcoming low self-esteem, by M. Fennell. It's less a self-help book and more like a "medicine" book. Don't expect nice design and entertaining writing style (though it's easy to read). But it will give you some tools with which to handle your negative self-feedback.

I don't know about SWOT analysis. If you are not able to state several experiences and qualities that make yourself a person of value, ask friends or family: what do you know about me that qualifies me as a special person? From your story, you backpacked in several countries, you're living in a foreign country (meaning you probably speak more than one language), you're strong enough to have survived a past that's tougher than most people experienced... Ask yourself how many people in the world had these experiences. I'm sure you can add a few things to that list.

About negative self-feedback, the first important thing is to ask the alternative questions. If you come to make a negative statement (I'm a fuck-up), ask yourself: what are the evidences (never dated a girl)? What are the evidences against this statement (I'm getting high grades, living in a foreign countries, I'm young and I have many possibilities in life still)? What alternative views are there (I'm actually in a pretty good situation, and I'm smart enough to make it as good as I want it to be), and what are evidences supporting these alternative views (I eat three meals a day, I'm making an effort looking for how to improve my life)?

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We do what we have to do in order to do what we want to do.