“Fake it until you make it” is a phrase we often hear when we’re discussing mental health. While a lot of similar-sounding, rhyming phrases seem overly cutesy, this phrase can be useful. It can especially be useful when we’re treating mental health and substance use disorder conditions.

This phrase often seems to come up when people are discussing confidence. In this instance, the phrase means that even if people don’t feel confident—especially if people don’t feel confident—they should try to pretend that they’re actually confident. The hope is that this pretend confidence can help us achieve real, actual confidence.

As with a lot of things that sound easy, faking confidence and building real confidence can be difficult. Low self-confidence is common in people who abuse substances or are recovering from abusing substances. Substance use disorder could have lowered their confidence even more. To address such issues, treatments that address substance use disorder also address low self-confidence and other mental health issues.

Such treatments include different types of therapy. Therapeutic approaches are different, based on the therapists and their training, their patients’ needs, factors at the treatment centers, and other factors. The treatments might encourage their patients to practice self-confidence. This could involve speaking up for themselves, displaying confident body posture, and other tactics.

In short, these therapeutic tactics encourage their patients to project an outward image of confidence, even if they aren’t feeling such confidence on an internal level. They encourage patients to fake it until they make it.

The more I think about it, the more I think that everybody fakes it until they make it. Some people might seem more confident than others, but I don’t know too many people who are 100% confident 100% of the time. We all have to put on our masks and perform a show from time to time. But maybe, practicing some of this confidence can help us gain real confidence, a least a little bit.