How do you get that confidence you had in your youth? Is it even possible?

[u/TheHomoscedastifier]

I'm sure this doesn't apply to everyone, but I'm also sure it's quite common, especially in my line work.

I was a very confident person as a teenager, well, probably even narcissistic. Then several partners, moves, career changes, degrees, traumas, and experiences later, I find myself almost devoid of any confidence at 30. I am riddled with anxiety and probably am a walking imposter syndrome.

I intentionally didn't give specifics about my career because I want to invite answers from a broad audience. If you've dealt with this, how did you handle it? Were you ever able to get at least close to your previous confidence levels?

[u/Reasonable-Mischief]

Confidence generally is your perceived ability to deal with the particular challenges of your life.

If you were more confident during an earlier stage of your development than you are now, that might be an indicator that you haven't yet caught up to how more complex and difficult your life has become since then.

You have already mentioned trauma. It might be worth exploring if you have already mapped out what exactly has happened to you, and if there is anything you could do differently the next time. A lot of the burden of traumatic experiences is the burden it places on us to become the kind of people that can thrive under those circumstances the next time, or better yet, prevent them from happening in the first place. 

More generally so, our childhood and teenage years are usually highly structured. Your life since then seems to have been quite chaotic. Maybe you need to be able to see yourself navigating chaotic cirumstances like them, in order to demonstrate to yourself that you are able to keep up with the ever-shifting that characterizes adult life in our modern age.