And if so, how long did it take you to realize it didn't work?
The advice does work, especially for neurodivergent people.
People who are neurodivergent in an uncomfortable situation, will typically deal with or process the bad situation by avoidant behavior (such as avoiding a social situation, or mentally checking out of it by being on their phone and so on), "fake it until you make it" is about trying to progress towards more instances of "suppressive behavior", which is where you try and engage in a situation (physically/mentally) even though it's uncomfortable, and hopefully enjoy yourself or learn a few things.
Avoidant > Suppressive > Reappraisal
It might work for making an autistic person more socially acceptable, but it fucks up their mental health. There's a whole host of negative psychological effects associated with masking.
That's certainly not the type of thing anyone can or should ever fake.
What helped me was 'imagine what someone who was successful with girls would do, and then do that.'
Totally fake. But it yielded real results. Thereafter i had real unfake confidence.
I thought of doing that but then my stupid brain got in the way and convinced me that people would laugh at me if I tried and scared me out of doing it. Fun times.
Worked fine at work. Everyone learns everything on the job/google anyway, and honestly I could have done this job just fine out of highschool.
It worked great for me. The neat thing about confidence is that it's incredibly easy to fake when you know the right signifiers. From the outside, someone who's genuinely confident and someone who is very aware that they have no idea what they're doing, but is a talented mimic who knows how to perform the rituals of self-certainty, are indistinguishable from one another.
it's particularly cruel advice because it is the entire ideological foundation for people upholding social norms that they don't even benefit from, and secretly know are bad and should be done away with. But because of sunk cost fallacy they keep upholding these norms, and telling people who don't accept those norms to "fake it until you make it." It's maddening.
I realized pretty late that it meant ignoring my boundaries and discomfort. Now it feels like I'm being inauthentic when I'm not masking.
Which is great because all that time I hated being thought of as fake
If you feel like it's not working, just push through and fake like it is
I think that it's better to gain confidence from within. A lot of people externalise their confidence onto receiving positive reinforcement from others. It's possible instead to internalise your confidence by seeking validation from only your own set of values and expectations which then enables you to stop being scared of the reaction of others.
This takes effort though, becoming conscious of the moments in which you are seeking validation from others and reminding yourself that you don't need it and can give yourself your own validation. It also requires a healthy set of values in the first place, a person with a bad set of values turns into a reactionary when they do this.
