How does emotional insecurity arise and what to do to manage it?

Have we ever wondered about the origin of this insecurity and how identifying it can help us overcome it?

As explained in our entry, it is an affective condition that causes let’s distrust our own ability, faculty either criterion.

It is very common for us to think that improving our security depends only on following a motivational step by step and we do not ask ourselves where and how this condition arises, which can be one of the keys to overcoming or treating insecurity.

Where does insecurity come from?

  1. Attachment type: In our article “What is attachment and what role does it play in our adult life?”, we explain the relevance of the type of attachment we form in our childhood in relation to our primary caregivers (according to proposals from Attachment Theory). Childhood is a stage in which our first symbolic formations (ours ideas and relations with reality and with ourselves, etc). These formations arise and develop in relation to the type of attachment.

    The so-called “insecure resistant attachment” (or “anxious-ambivalent”) is a type of attachment in which children feel valued or loved by way of inconstantwhich leads to their exploration of the world being tense or distrustful. The caregiver’s inconstancy causes the child to feel deep anguish in the caregiver’s absence and to appear angry or desperate when the caregiver returns.

    When this type of attachment is emphasized, in adulthood, person could be little given to reflection on one’s own emotionshave great fear of rejectionconstantly doubting the affections of others or of its valueI mean emotionally dependent, etc. That is, have characteristics of an insecure person.

  2. Cultural environment: Culture, understood as the set of economic, social, religious, political and historical phenomena in a specific place and time, is a determining factor in our personal development. The beauty standardsthe ideas about progress or the successthe traditionsthe religious beliefsthe prohibitions or taboosor others, allow us a certain range of action and certain mental constructions that limit or limit us. They require us to act in this or that way, and this affects our security.

    Many times, faced with an outlook that is not favorable to us, we can feel a great insecurity or frustrationbeyond the type of attachment that we develop, because there is a condition of external discomfort to us what has to do with the culture in which we live. Already Freud, the so-called father of Psychoanalysis, in a text on social psychology from 1930, precisely titled Discontent in culturetalked about the impact that the sociocultural organization system has on our psychic life.

  3. Traumatic episodes: During life, there are a large number of ways in which a person can have negative or traumatic experiencesamong the most frequent may be multiple types of violence (received or perceived consciously or unconsciously), either in macro areas (such as armed conflicts, wars, natural disasters, among others) or at the domestic level (domestic violence, mistreatment, abuse, etc.). These experiences, of course, are components of immense relevance in our emotional and affective formation. An event of this type can cause insecurity in a person in different aspects of their life.
See also  Do men also get postpartum depression? 13 symptoms to detect it

We also recommend:

How to treat insecurity?

  • Psychological therapy: the help from a professional of the health mental To find and learn to develop our psychic formations it is more than recommended. Define the type of therapy (cognitive or behavioral restructuring, etc.) will be part of the psychologist’s obligations and will help you find a way to improve.
  • Work with social skills: Since the interaction with others that insecure people have presents difficulties, in addition to identifying the causes with the therapist, social skills can be worked on in parallel, always without forcing interactions and above all being patient. We must know that self-confidence is a process.
  • Positive psychology work: he selfconceptthe self imagethe self-esteem and others are categories that we must evaluate in light of our personal history as well as with all the other factors already mentioned. The work on this own understanding will help to understand you and improve not only your safety but your emotional life in general.

You may also be interested in: