Insecurity is really uncertainty about yourself. It’s not feeling good enough as you are, or feeling uncertain about where you fit in, in this world. And we all experience it some point in our lives. I consider myself fairly confident with myself, but I had periods of extreme insecurity. I really struggled with feeling good enough and needing external validation. And once it took root in my life, it became a very ugly thing. And it took a long time to undo it all and fix myself. I wrote about some of those struggles here.
When you feel insecure, you develop a lot of presumptions about yourself and the world. You are presuming that you aren’t good enough or liked. You are presuming things about other people, which may or may not be true. There’s a lot of speculation happening. And it’s born out of fear and uncertainty – which are not exactly reliable narrators.
These beliefs, whether true or not, can easily become facts in our minds. If we truly believe we are not good enough, our brains are actually wired to seek out information that will support that belief. It’s confirmation bias.
There are many causes to insecurity, and it’s totally normal and okay to have it every now and again. But when there are deep rooted causes, like past traumas, having a critical parent or partner, experiences of rejection or failure that really affected you, social anxiety or perfectionism, it can take some time to undo that kind of thinking.
In my worst struggles with insecurity, I completely lost sight of my value and chose relationships and situations that confirmed what I believed about myself – that I simply wasn’t good enough and probably never would never be. And I stayed in those situations trying to prove my worth. And in the process, I lost myself.
It wasn’t until I went to a therapist and really started to challenge the beliefs I had about myself that I began to undo some of my flawed thinking. I realized that I was surrounded by negative reinforcers and completely lacked the ability or fortitude to set healthy boundaries with others. I also learned that by needing external validation so badly that I was giving up a lot of personal power that I had.
I had always thought that I was a person who was super accountable and responsible for myself, but when it came to my own happiness and quality of life, I quickly learned that I was really not living up to it. I was allowing other people’s moods to affect me, and I had a hard time holding onto myself. I was taking on too much responsibility for others, and not taking enough responsibility for my own wellness.
Are you struggling with insecurity? How can you start challenging faulty beliefs that you have about yourself?
