I've been thinking a lot about how our insecurities and fears get locked into our bodies and lead us to unconsciously repeat patterns of relating to ourselves and others that only serve to reinforce the insecurity and fears.
I mapped this cycle out as follows:
When an insecurity of ours gets activated (e.g. Do I look okay? Does s/he like me? What do they think of me? I'm no good at this.) it is experienced by the body as a threat and the body responds accordingly, with the stress response. The stress response tries to activate our capacities to fight, flee, or freeze until the danger has passed.
What this can look like with an insecurity, is that we might try to argue with it, we might try to ignore it or block it out, or we might change something about ourselves (e.g. how we behave, how we look) or others (e.g. if you only did xyz I'd be okay) to try and nullify the insecurity.
Alas, the insecurities are rather persistent. And when our efforts to avoid them, manage them, or solve them inevitably fail, our body starts to feel more tense, our stress levels incrementally rise, and our energy gets drained by this whole process.
We end up with a body that feels lethargic, potentially full of nervous energy or anxiety, and an overactive mind. The survival responses (fight/flight/freeze) are in full swing but unable to get us away from the threat, and have entered a low level chronic activation that eats away at our internal resources.
This whole experience can make us feel even more insecure, in that we now also feel like we have been unable to 'overcome' the threat which we may even know on some level to be irrational. We feel defeated. And the cycle repeats.
So, how to exit from this cycle?
Let's say you have the exact same insecurities, they still activate the fear response system (fight/flight/freeze), but instead of being caught up in the most common (and unconscious) way of reacting, the following plays out.
The difference lies in how you respond to the whole process. Instead of trying to avoid, manage or solve your insecurities, you do something drastically different. Something so different that it seems like it won't work.
You do some things which you maybe have not experienced before, so I'll offer some explanation.
When the insecurity gets activated, you choose to attune to yourself with compassion.
Attuning to self: When you notice the insecurity arise, practice KINDLY saying to yourself "Oh, I notice I am feeling insecure about xyz (e.g. how I look, how I'm perceived). Have compassion: Face this experience from a place of love. This can be very tricky for many people, who experience insecurity around whether they are lovable or worthy of love. If that is your insecurity, you can still apply this process, beginning with 'Attuning to self'. Then, with compassion, you might say something like "I can understand why I might feel this way given what I have experienced in my life (you can be more specific here)". "It's okay that I feel this way, it's a difficult feeling, and I understand why it is with me." (These feelings tend to activate because they are trying to protect us from something - our mind has likely picked up on something very subtle or not so subtle that has made us feel unsafe emotionally, spiritually or phsyically in the past). Breathe: While you are aware (in a non-judgemental way) of the feelings or insecurities activated within you, as well as what led them to be present, try to relax your breathing. Stress responses make our body tight and our breath shallow. You can imagine relaxing around the feeling, making space for it, and then allowing your breath to GRADUALLY become deeper or fuller (don't force it, forcing it reactivates the stress response).
You can strengthen that practice by writing your reflections down. You may wish to journal on the experiences that contributed to you feeling this way. While you are journalling, you may need to repeat this process with new insecurities or new feelings or new fears that get activated.
Most of the time, to allow insecurities to begin to shift, you will need to work at a deeper level. This is where a therapist can be helpful.
The more you can remain attuned to yourself, with compassion, and breathe with the experience, the more you have a chance of allowing the experience to shift into another state. One catch here is, you can't do this practice with the intention of making the insecurity or feelings go away, otherwise you will re-activate the stress response when you notice it isn't working or put pressure on yourself to do it 'right' or 'better'.
This is a very hard process to shift into. It may take many attempts before you get the hang of it.
Attunement, compassion, and gentle breathing, signal safety to the body. It can tell that you are no longer fighting the experience, but being with it in a new way. This allows your bodies stress response to gradually relax around the experience. As the stress response to the insecurity settles down, you can be with the insecurity in a purer, less muddled / anxiety provoking way. This takes time and practice.
As you become more present with yourself and more understanding of yourself, you will slowly shift into a whole new way of being with yourself that in turns enables a new way of being in the world and with others (increased presence, increased compassion, increased kindness).
This might look simple here, but it is hard. We are so conditioned to respond to tricky feelings with judgement, criticism, harshness, and to get rid of them or suppress them as quickly as possible, that shifting into this new way of being with them will itself bring up a lot of insecurities.
Humans are complex, and our lives are complex. We have adapted as best we can, and most of the time these adaptations are born out of survival responses (fight/flight/freeze) which operate at an unconscious level (e.g. denial, intellectualising things, splitting off from these experiences entirely).
Any time that you are able to offer yourself, where you can be with yourself in a new way (e.g. reflective, compassionate, kind, attuned - being a good friend to yourself), is helpful. It can feel like a drop in the ocean, but every drop matters.
Written by Anna Wiederroth, Clinical Psychologist (Trauma and Psychodynamically informed therapist)