Dealing with My Insecurities

Before embarking on my quest to achieve my goals and make my dreams a reality, I made a conscious effort to deal with my insecurities. I managed to address my issues and find viable solutions for each of them. Well, that’s at least what I thought! I believed I had got rid of them until I realised all I had done was put them all into my need to have a relationship. Recently, I’ve been making videos where I react to women’s online dating profiles and generally making a joke out of the whole thing. It then hit me, why am I making a joke of something I want so much?

I found myself spiralling down into an uncontrollable sea of irritation and dissatisfaction. I felt the thing I needed (a relationship) was so far out of reach and pushed out into the future. I was suffering from pure impatience. How long would I have to endure this empty space within me? There’s nothing but hurt and longing within me. Whenever I find myself feeling unhappy or irritated about something I always try to remind myself this: Dissatisfaction or unhappiness can either lead to productive or destructive thoughts.

So in principle, you can either be productive and take an honest look at why you’re feeling this way and examine the problem itself. Then you can begin to work out how to resolve the problem. Alternatively, you can end up continuing to spiral down an angry path which only leads to destructive thoughts. Obviously, the first option is preferable but it can take a while of bathing in your own anger to reach that rational point. I finally reached the point where I was ready to calmly look at why I even wanted a relationship in the first place.

I dug deep into myself. I wrote down all the things that I wanted from a relationship and the things I thought would make me happy as a result of it. After I had finished, I looked at what I had written. All that stared back at me were a list of my insecurities. They hadn’t been defeated, they simply had been placed into my need to have a relationship.

The majority of the insecurities were related to self-worth and validation. I also had the need to have traits I already knew about myself validated by somebody else, which seemed utterly stupid! — I wanted to be with someone who gave me the freedom to be myself. I then thought, why is this necessary? Why can’t I be my honest self around others? It’s the fear of judgement and that fear only exists because I’m valuing somebody else’s opinion above my own. It soon appeared as if I only wanted a relationship to validate and make me feel everything I already knew about myself. The traits I already know about myself exist and I don’t need to prove them to the world. My self-worth must be generated from within and not externally.

It made me realise that my most precious moments and achievements in life are the ones where my vision of how I see myself actually manifested into a reality. For example, being a Big Brother Housemate. I think that’s also a very good definition of what a dream should be. A dream should be the pursuit of making your reality line up to how you see yourself. The secret is not to be reliant on it manifesting in order to make those things about yourself real. You must generate your self worth from within and not be reliant on any external factors.

It was as if the relationship was only there to save me from myself. The truth is, I have to save myself. It wouldn’t be fair on my partner if I gave them the responsibility for my self-worth and happiness. Not only isn’t it fair, but it’s also very dangerous. If they ever leave or change, they’ll take my self-worth and happiness with them.

So what’s the answer? The first step is to not let the opinions or perceived opinions of others create insecurities within you. Your self-worth already exists within you and it only degrades if you start to value the opinions of others above your own. You can only feel alone in somebodies company when you’re expecting them to a fill a hole within you that you should have filled yourself. You must not suppress yourself for others.

I now look at relationships in a totally new way. My brand new perspective maintains that a relationship is not there to fulfil me or to complete me, it’s there simply to compliment me. It’s not essential but simply a nice addition that compliments the things I like about myself in a healthy and mutual way. This is how to cure the insecure: with your own grounded thoughts.