This type of self-esteem we call, "Confidence," is an action-taking, protective, defensive positive emotion, and an energy of action, akin to being "paternal" or fatherly toward one's self and others. It is the antidote to the other of the two types of stress, called, "loss." In terms of the laws of thermodynamics, it is a "kinetic energy," an energy of action. Confidence is then the ability to take action to withstand risk, change or loss, and is equal in exact amount to the amount of threat or loss that one can tolerate without falling into the negative emotions of anxiety and fear in response.
One's overall self-esteem in Romantic Dynamics and the second phase of human courtship - friendship, or the emotional attraction of love - depends on equal amounts of these two types of self-esteem: well-being and confidence.
To have a complete and well-rounded self-esteem, one needs both well-being and confidence in order to be fully happy, and capable of lasting friendship and love with others.
Warriors (Choleric personalities), as well as Magicians (Sanguine personalities), are dominant in this self-esteem type, and they are good at defending, physically protecting and lending works of action to others as an effective emotional resource of friendship and love, solving problems through targetted, specific actions (Warriors), or through large-scale, visionary strategies taken to action (Magicians, whose actions can seem like "magic.") Those who lack this self-esteem type are the King or Queen and Lover personalities, also called the Phlegmatic and Melancholic types in Galen's system of personality. In friendship and love, Kings, Queens and Lovers make good emotional matches for Warriors and Magicians.
The opposite of confidence's positive emotional energy is the negative emotional energy in the type of stress called, "Loss." Loss feels like an outside threat has come in to take resources from you, stealing, cheating or threatening to take your happiness, and can take any form from threatening words, financial dealings of a destructive nature, or even such threats as infidelity taking away the happiness of your former comfort with being a part of a couple or of a family. Since self-esteem and its subtype, confidence, are forms of emotional or chemical energy, the laws of thermodynamics rule over their dynamics, and so the exact amount of loss that stresses or threatens a person, and gets in through one's personal boundary, is the same as the amount of confidence that will be depleted by that threatened loss.
As a result, one may find themselves needing to recover from and rejuvenate from threats and losses, by transforming them into the positive, by a decision to use the courage that is described in the Anxiety Map. Warriors and Magicians may have a natural gift for doing this transformation if they are mature people, but if one feels anxious, fearful, impulsive or even tempted by addictions to hide from their anxiety and stresses of loss, the depletion of the energy of confidence needs to be recovered from. The personal boundary is the first line of defense against this, but even it can weaken.
Mastering these tasks, and of the Anxiety Map (viewed as a rescue map for getting away from threats in life), is one of the major steps of both friendship, love and emotional attraction, as well as forming part of step five of human courtship in general, "Finding Stress in Each Other."
