You don’t have the energy to overcome Insecurities. You feel embarrassed and make excuses when your boss gives you well-deserved praise. You feel shy in unfamiliar situations, and you don’t feel confident the first time you talk to a stranger. Everyone around you seems smarter, braver, and more successful. And you devalue your victories and consider them insignificant. This is a distorted perception of reality. And all to blame for the feeling of insecurity. Where it comes from, how it manifests itself, and whether it can be overcome?
What Insecurity Means
Psychologists define insecurity as fear of life circumstances, a sense of inferiority, and an inability to cope with possible difficulties. An insecure person is literally afraid to live. He doesn’t understand who he wants to be, where he is going, or what his goal is. He worries about the future and thinks that he isn’t worthy because he doesn’t know anything special and is inferior to the people around him in all respects. Often, it comes to social anxiety: insecure people find it extremely difficult to get along with people and, except for shyness, don’t experience anything when communicating. They consider themselves uninteresting, boring, and not erudite enough. As a result, they miss both profitable business contacts and a chance for a happy relationship.
Are they really like this? It’s hard to say because insecurity prevents you from objectively assessing your abilities, identifying weaknesses, and getting rid of them. Instead of constantly developing strengths, an insecure person grieves over weaknesses and puts down his hands — it seems to him that he isn’t capable of anything. He thinks so, even if he has achieved a lot in his life, e.g. he is successful at work, chooses the most profitable games while reading Canada online casino reviews, and has run a marathon. So, there is no point in starting something new because it won’t work anyway.
Insecurity doesn’t equal low self-esteem. Let’s understand the difference:
- Self-confidence means believing in yourself, being ready for challenges, being flexible, seizing opportunities, and overcoming difficulties that life throws your way. It’s the ability to interact adequately with the world and take responsibility for one’s own present and future.
- Self-esteem is the perception of the value and significance of one’s personality. It doesn’t depend on successes and failures, the presence or absence of knowledge and skills, or other factors. With normal self-esteem, a person considers himself worthy of respect and attention simply because of his existence, regardless of merit.
Insecurity and low self-esteem walk side by side. Usually, if there is one psychological deformation, it pulls the second. Which means that you have to overcome two problems at once. By the way, they add up to an inferiority complex.
It sounds unpleasant, but in psychology, there are ways to get out of this state. Shall we go straight to them? And then we will just lose time. If a man with a fear of conflict learns to fight, will he overcome his fear? Or will a woman who is afraid of relationships get rid of shyness, if she learns to communicate with men? The answer is unequivocal: no. To deal with psychological problems, work comprehensively; first, find out the reasons, accept that help is required, and only then start working on yourself.
Are You Sure That You’re Insecure?
The question may seem strange, but it’s important not to confuse insecurity with other conditions. Let’s compare the manifestations of this problem with how you feel. Insecure people are:
- Socially inactive. They try to avoid contact with the outside world and don’t like mass events. And if they have to participate in them, they behave modestly and withdrawn.
- Constantly anxious without reason, missing opportunities, and distorted perception of reality.
- Carelessness about themselves.
- Afraid of conflicts and not able to prove their own opinions.
- Pessimistic and fearful of the future.
This is the set of not-so-life-affirming qualities that insecurity brings. If it isn’t overcome, you may never know what you are capable of, don’t feel the taste of life in all its manifestations, and don’t reach your maximum.
How Insecurity Is Formed?
Are people born insecure in their abilities? Or do they become such under the pressure of social factors: the upbringing of parents, communication with peers, first unrequited love, inevitable failures and setbacks, to recover from which there is not enough fortitude?
In fact, insecurity is the result of all the above reasons. In the formation of blame and family upbringing, cultural environment, and relationships with the environment. Of course, the psychological characteristics of a single individual are the main prerequisite. After all, one person’s difficulties only harden, and the other makes you doubt yourself.
Of course, the first step to self-doubt is made in childhood during communication with parents. For a child to grow into a confident adult, it’s important to instill in him a sense of his own importance. To do this, parents support his initiatives and activities, give freedom for realization, choice, and even mistakes. The child believes in and encourages success. Adults respect the child’s personal boundaries and accept the child in all its manifestations. Thus, unconditional love builds normal self-esteem, and support builds self-confidence.
But there is hardly a perfect family because every parent was once a traumatized child too. That’s why we have generations of people who suffer from insecurity. But don’t let childhood experiences define the present and the future. You can overcome the problem by giving yourself the care and support that were sorely lacking before. You may be able to cope with insecurity on your own, or you may see a psychologist. The key is to work through the traumas and fill in the deficits from childhood.
Another trigger for insecurity is the endless information noise we live in every day. Companies broadcast ideals that we should all aspire to. We are endlessly sold goods and services without which the body, mind, and soul would be unworthy to live in this world. We are shown pictures of the lives of the rich and famous, who always have impeccable looks, careers, and relationships.
No wonder millions of people fall out of real life and drown in phobias, fears, and insecurities. Overcoming all these feelings is possible and necessary.
How to Deal With Insecurity
How to overcome insecurity?
Overcome the desire to please others. Before doing something, analyze whether you really want it. Allow yourself to do only what you like, even if it isn’t to the liking of others. For example, a coworker asks you to fill in for him on your day off. Shyness didn’t allow you to refuse, it was easier to agree than to suffer guilt. But now everything is different, and you must put your own desires, plans, and interests above others.
Learn to set goals and achieve them. It will be difficult at first, but practice small things. Introduce useful habits, start reading before bedtime or set a limit on “communication” with gadgets. Then you can move on to more global ideas that involve changing a hated job and mastering skills you’ve long dreamed of.
Overcome social anxiety and get out in public. Visit exhibitions, concerts, theater productions, or just walk around, and you will see that most people aren’t so bad. And if you find common interests, the interaction will become even more positive and interesting.
Don’t blame yourself or others, don’t have expectations, just take action. You know what you want, right? Other people don’t have to indulge, go along to get along, do what you expect them to do. Likewise, look less at other people’s opinions, conform, and compromise your own interests. You have a goal in front of you; take steps towards it every day. The rest is only the fiction of your mind.
Try to overcome the fear of failure. Take failures not as a collapse of the world and a reason to give up your dreams but as a useful experience. Now you know even more, and next time you will be smarter, more cunning, and less more competent. Is that a bad thing? It’s okay to fall. The main thing is to get up quickly and move on.
Learn to distinguish real reasons for anxiety from imaginary ones. To overcome insecurity, psychology advises getting rid of unreasonable anxiety in parallel. There are events that you can influence. And there are those that are beyond your control. So, what’s the point of wasting energy and emotions on them?
Learn to work with dreams, turn them into goals, and break them into small subtasks. Then the big and global will be perceived as achievable and close. Remember that dreams will remain non-existent illusions. And the goals are real and material; it remains only to find the shortest way.
Try to communicate with people as much as possible. Friends, colleagues, and new acquaintances — practice the art of dialog at every opportunity to make sure: there is nothing wrong with it.
Learn about emotional intelligence. Don’t be afraid to feel and live the full range of emotions, including negative ones. Anger and rage are just as normal as joy and falling in love.
