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I feel very insecure


Feeling Insecure? 5 Tips To Build Confidence

Feeling insecure may mean experiencing a sense of inadequacy and signs of anxiety when it comes to performing or interacting with others.

Most people have felt insecure at some point in their lives. You might think that you just can’t measure up or doubt yourself or your abilities.

These signs of insecurity can turn into negative actions which can prevent you from connecting with others. You might notice you’re also overly critical of others or worry about the state of your relationships.

But it’s possible to stop feeling insecure and improve your self-esteem and relationships.

The American Psychological Association describes insecurity as a feeling of inadequacy and the inability to cope.

People feeling insecure lack confidence and have anxiety about goals and relationships — and their ability to be successful in them.

Feeling insecure fills your mind with self-doubt which may then lead to negative thinking or a negative outlook on life.

There are many reasons why someone may experience insecurity. They may:

  • have experienced one or more traumatic events
  • lack support at home
  • have been judged in childhood primarily on achievements, rather than values
  • have anxiety or depression, which involve symptoms like worthlessness and insecurity
  • work in an office that doesn’t promote psychological safety
  • have absorbed societal messages about how you should be acting and aren’t (especially relevant for women and minorities)
  • have an insecure attachment style
  • be living with social anxiety symptoms
  • have a cluster C personality disorder
  • be in a relationship with an abusive or controlling partner

Dr. Nereida Gonzalez-Berrios, a certified psychiatrist, says the following are common signs of insecurity:

In yourself

  • low self-esteem
  • self-consciousness
  • desire to be alone
  • perfectionism or never being satisfied with yourself
  • anxiety and excessive worrying
  • dulled emotions

In other people

  • being overly critical of others
  • appearing awkward around other people
  • taking jokes too seriously or in a negative way
  • lacking emotional and social connection with others
  • having high levels of anxiety
  • making unhealthy comparisons to others

If you think you may be dealing with strong feelings of insecurity, there are many things you can do to overcome them.

If feeling insecure is impacting your relationships and the way you live your life, consider reaching out to a mental health professional. They can help you explore the root cause of your insecurity and develop coping skills.

Like anything in life that’s challenging, learning self-respect and self-acceptance takes patience and time. As long as you’re willing to put in the effort, you can overcome your insecurities.

Here are a few tips to help you cope and feel more secure:

1. Try to embrace your differences

To find peace of mind and be well with your insecurities, try to accept what you cannot change.

“If you feel awkward, accept it as a part of you,” says Gonzalez-Berrios. “Remember that people are watching your inner goodness, and not how you look or showcase outwardly.”

You may even start to appreciate your quirks. Try to find ways to embrace what makes you feel uncomfortable, such as taking risks and trying new things.

2. Consider self-compassion

When you’re feeling insecure you may engage in negative self-talk, which can have an impact on your mental health. Gonzalez-Berrios suggests being kind to yourself and letting your inner strength come out slowly.

Working through insecurity is a vulnerable experience, so you may want to take things slow and praise yourself for your efforts.

Try to challenge your negative self-talk by looking at the facts and whether what you’re saying to yourself is actually true.

Self-compassion goes a long way.

3. Try to care for your physical health

Taking care of your physical health can help improve the way you see yourself.

A 2016 study found that engaging in regular physical activity is associated with an increase in self-esteem. Consider going for a walk or dancing to your favorite playlist to help boost your mood and confidence.

Getting quality sleep and eating a balanced diet are also part of caring for your physical health. These small acts of self-care can have a major impact on your daily life and your sense of security.

4. Consider developing your social skills

Sometimes feeling insecure is linked to not knowing how to interact with other people. But you can develop people skills. The more socially adept you are, the more secure you’ll feel with yourself when you’re around others.

Gonzalez-Berrios suggests developing skills like holding eye contact and verbal communication. She says to note your body language when you’re around others and try to bring a positive attitude to social interactions.

Remember, it will take some practice to feel more confident and comfortable around others in social situations. Try to be patient and have compassion for yourself and how hard you are working to overcome your insecurity.

5. Seeking support from a therapist can make a difference

While doing things like learning to accept your differences and having self-compassion can be helpful, sometimes you need perspective and support from an outside source.

A therapist can give you insights into your challenges and help you digest your feelings of inadequacy and find their source. Often, facing the root of the problem is the most effective way to deal with feeling insecure.

Feeling insecure may involve a sense of not being enough or not having the skills needed to perform in some aspects of life. Most people feel insecure from time to time, but when insecurity starts to interfere with your daily life, you may want to get to the root causes.

Insecurity may come from your attachment style, a personality disorder, living with anxiety, or not having emotional support.

Working with a mental health professional can help as well as working on embracing your differences and developing specific skills like non-verbal and verbal communication.

The 3 Most Common Causes of Insecurity and How to Beat Them

Source: Stefano Tinti/Shutterstock

Do you find yourself feeling filled with self-doubt and short on confidence? Despite your accomplishments, do you feel like a fraud destined to be exposed? Do you feel that you don’t deserve lasting love and that partners will inevitably leave you? Do you stay at home, afraid to venture out and meet new people because you don’t feel you have enough to offer? Do you feel overweight, boring, stupid, guilty, or ugly?

Most of us feel insecure sometimes, but some of us feel insecure most of the time. The kind of childhood you had, past traumas, recent experiences of failure or rejection, loneliness, social anxiety, negative beliefs about yourself, perfectionism, or having a critical parent or partner can all contribute to insecurity.

Following are the three most common forms of insecurity—and how to begin to cope with them.

Type 1: Insecurity Based on Recent Failure or Rejection

Recent events in our lives can greatly affect both our mood and the way we feel about ourselves. Research on happiness suggests that up to 40% of our “happiness quotient” is based on recent life events. The biggest negative contributor to happiness is the ending of a relationship, followed by the death of a spouse, job loss, and negative health events. Since unhappiness also influences your self-esteem, failure and rejection can deliver a double whammy to your confidence. In his book Emotional First Aid: Healing Rejection, Guilt, Failure, and Other Everyday Hurts, Psychology Today blogger Guy Winch states that rejection inevitably leads us to see both ourselves and other people more negatively, at least for a time. And those of us who have lower self-esteem to begin with are more reactive to failure. It’s as if an experience like losing your job grabs old negative beliefs about your self-worth and activates them. It may help to understand that failure is a nearly ubiquitous experience: Before becoming president, Abraham Lincoln lost his job, was defeated for nomination to Congress, and failed at least twice in Senate bids. Persevering despite setbacks can lead to eventual successes—which raise your self-esteem.

Below are some tools you can use to overcome failure- or rejection-based insecurity:

  1. Give yourself time to heal and adapt to the new normal.
  2. Get out and engage with life, following your interests and curiosity.
  3. Reach out to friends and family for distraction and comfort.
  4. Get feedback from people you trust.
  5. Persevere and keep moving towards your goals.
  6. Be willing to try a different strategy if necessary.

Type 2: Lack of Confidence Because of Social Anxiety

Many of us experience a lack of confidence in social situations like parties, family gatherings, interviews, and dates. The fear of being evaluated by others—and found to be lacking—can lead you to feel anxious and self-conscious. As a result, you may avoid social situations, experience anxiety when you anticipate social events, or feel self-conscious and uncomfortable during them. Past experience can feed your sense of not belonging, not feeling important or interesting, or just not being good enough. Many of my clients describe how being bullied or excluded from a group of friends in middle school or high school continues to negatively affect their confidence as adults. If you grew up with critical parents, or parents who pressured you to be popular and successful, you may also be over-sensitized to how others perceive you. This type of insecurity is generally based on distorted beliefs about your self-worth—and about the extent to which other people are evaluating you. Most of the time, people are more focused on how they are coming across than on judging others. Those who do judge and exclude are often covering up insecurities of their own and so their opinions may be less than accurate; they may value superficial attributes instead of character and integrity.

Below are some tools to combat insecurity in social situations:

  1. Talk back to your inner critic. Remind yourself of all the reasons that you can be interesting and fun or would be a good friend or partner.
  2. Prepare in advance. Think of some things you can talk about—current events, movies you’ve seen, hobbies, your job, or your family.
  3. Avoiding social situation just makes things worse. So go to a party or on a date even if you're nervous. Your anxiety should decrease once you get engaged with others—if not the first or second time, then once you get used to showing up.
  4. Set yourself a limited, realistic goal. This could be anything from talking to two new people or finding out more about one person’s work and hobbies.
  5. Deliberately focus on others to combat intense self-focus. Put on your observer hat and notice what other people seem to be feeling and doing. Do you notice any similarities or skills you can learn from them?

Type 3: Insecurity Driven by Perfectionism

Some of us have very high standards for everything we do. You may want the highest grades, the best job, the perfect figure, the most beautifully decorated apartment or house, neat and polite kids, or the ideal partner. Unfortunately, life doesn’t always turn out exactly the way we want, even if we work extra hard. There is a piece of the outcome that is at least to some degree out of our control. Bosses may be critical, jobs may be scarce, partners may resist commitment, or you may have genes that make it difficult to be skinny.

If you are constantly disappointed and blaming yourself for being anything less than perfect, you will start to feel insecure and unworthy. While trying your best and working hard can give you an advantage, other aspects of perfectionism are unhealthy. Beating up on yourself and constantly worrying about not being good enough can lead to depression and anxiety, eating disorders, or chronic fatigue.

Below are some ways to combat perfectionism:

  1. Try to evaluate yourself based on how much effort you put in, which is controllable, rather than on the outcome, which is dependent on external factors.
  2. Think about how much difference it would actually make if your work were 10 percent better. Would the time and energy spent in checking and re-checking or answering every email really be worth it?
  3. Perfectionism is often based on all-or-nothing thinking, so try to find the grey areas. Is there a more compassionate or understanding way to view a situation? Are you taking your circumstances into account when you evaluate yourself? Is there something you learned or achieved even if the end result wasn’t perfect?
  4. Perfectionists often have conditional self-esteem: They like themselves when they are on top and dislike themselves when things don't go their way. Can you learn to like yourself even when you are not doing well? Focus on inner qualities like your character, sincerity, or good values, rather than just on what grades you get, how much you get paid, or how many people like you.

Copyright: Melanie Greenberg, Ph.D., 2015. All rights reserved.

7 Effective Ways to Get Rid of Insecurity - HEROINE

Lack of self-confidence can easily destroy not only your mental health, but also relationships with others. You may be wondering, “Why do I feel insecure? Perhaps the fact is that someone said words to me that made me feel worse about myself. ”

These irrational thoughts can cause you to behave inappropriately, lose trust in others, and then move from jealousy to accusations. The truth is that these are just your own fears that you start projecting onto your partner or friends. Luckily, you can win the battle against self-doubt, and Heroine has put together a few tips for that.

1. Admit the problem

The best way to stop feeling insecure is to accept your instability with all your heart. When you've been hurt in battle, after you've recovered, you can start to show the scar with pride - do the same with insecurity. Take it as something that can be overcome in a matter of days and then remember with a smile: "how stupid we were once." Start turning the feeling that you are not worthy of such a life into humility. Remember that whenever uncertainty drags you down, you can only stay afloat by staying aware.

2. Keep in mind that only you can see it

Each of us feels that we need to look a certain way and act in a way that makes us appear confident. But if you are mired in instability and doubt, usually only you notice it. No one can see right through you, and your loved ones are not telepathic. Only specific actions can give you away, and this is always worth remembering if you are experiencing trust issues.

3. Stop communicating with those who unbalance

This is the easiest way to get rid of negative emotions, but at the same time it is extremely difficult to put into practice. If your boss tends to humiliate and insult you in front of your colleagues, you can't just start skipping work.
The same goes for your partner or toxic parents. But you can change your schedule, figure out how to better structure your work, and schedule some self-care rituals to help you recover from a tough conversation.

4. Work on your independence

This advice is especially important for those who are starting to doubt their relationships. Sometimes we mistake an unhealthy addiction for love. It's easy to forget that if you can't love yourself, you can't give someone real love.

Stop asking questions that you can easily find answers to on your own, such as what you should cook for dinner and whether you should change jobs. Of course, you should discuss important decisions together, but at the same time, you should not wait for someone else's approval to change your life for the better. Any relationship needs the independence of both partners and the air between them, so make sure that you do not lose your personality in this love.

5. Write down emotions

Analyze your self-esteem by regularly writing down how you feel after specific events. Can a compliment from a cashier cheer you up? And praise from the leader? What is the weight of a partner's approval?

Replace the question "why am I so insecure?" to “how can I be successful in the things that give me confidence?”. Convert negative thoughts into concrete actions and this will be your main strategy for dealing with doubts.

6. Surround yourself with a supportive atmosphere

Even the most outgoing people have only a few people around who fully understand them. These friends and family genuinely love and want to be around - so why not increase the amount of time you spend together? Whenever you feel unstable, call or make an appointment with your loved ones to gain strength, even if you have no more than 5 minutes of time.

7. Learn to value yourself

Every time you feel insecure, you focus on feeling what you lack. Try to remember more often how important you are to your company, to your circle of friends, to your family, and even to your blog followers. Remember that all people have different qualities, and when you are not alone, you can complement each other. Consider your contribution to this world and appreciate what you do.

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I feel insecure, how to get rid of it?

I feel …

16 responses

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#1

#2

004 uncertainty is an innate quality, working on yourself in your case will help for a while. Accept yourself as you are .

...

#3

#4

#5

#6

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#8

#9

I

Well, what kind of nonsense was said here at the beginning. Of course, you can become a more confident person. Here you are the author writing that you are a creative person, and how does this express itself? Personally, acting, singing, and dancing have given me a lot of confidence! Try it if you haven't done it.

#10

Sometimes I get so isolated, I don't know why, I can't say a word in the company..

#11

Guest

Me

Well, what kind of nonsense was said here at the beginning. Of course, you can become a more confident person. Here you are the author writing that you are a creative person, and how does this express itself? Personally, acting, singing, and dancing have given me a lot of confidence! Try it if you haven't done it.

But I don't, there were enough envious women in the theater who could offend. People like the author are strong in their environment, as soon as loving people disappear from the environment, their self-esteem immediately drops

#12

http://s08. radikal.ru/i181/1105/8C/3A5869613A8.jpg

# 14

#15

9000

Just described me, hey are you still here? were you able to solve this problem? how did life turn out?

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