what about just owning your own lack of confidence as a strength? performative confidence seems dishonest and a bit like cheating to me. also on that matter, why is confidence == good?
Speaking from experience as an introvert who suffered social anxiety...
A lot of people (probably extroverts) don't respond well when you're expressing anxiety and/or doubt. Clients won't want to work with you. People won't want to be around you at parties. Co-workers will speak behind your back about the weird person. Etc.
Especially with other neurospicy folks, it's a very easy way to bond. My issues might not be the exact same, but it's close enough that they can empathize and grow closer as friends/coworkers.
I'd rather own my mistakes than be a walking contradiction.
To be fair he's probably overconfident. But picking up any sense of false confidence(not a shy buddy attemping to 'fake it til you make it', more serious matters) is a massive red flag to me that I can't trust their judgement of their own knowledge or capabilities. Someone who says straight up it will be difficult gets a lot more trust from me.
And confidence is good because it's a signal of competence, or at least that things have gone well for you in the past in similar situations.
For example, I can't unconsciously read expressions. I scored worse than blind guessing on the "Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test". So I consciously learned to read and mimic expressions, literally using a textbook for theater performers. So now I can score at the upper range of neurotypical people.
Other introverts often have problems recognizing social cues or initiating conversations. Purely because it's not _natural_ for them, even though they might _want_ to actually speak to people.
So is it kind of performative? Yes. But think about this, extroverts are doing a lot of same tricks subconsciously. Does it mean that they're _always_ performing?