Feeling confident but still struggle with Insecurities in Relationships?

So why do I feel confident at work and in other areas in my life but not in my relationship? Someone recently asked me this question.

What if I tell you that every confident person that you meet, has insecurities in certain parts of their lives? So it is absolutely normal for you to have insecurities in your relationship or any part of your life. But in today video, I will use relationships as an example to answer the question that I've received. However, if you have any other areas in your life that you want to know more about, please feel free to share with me in the comment session below or you can send me a direct message on my IG or FB page, I've put the links down in the description box below.

So let's get started.

What is insecurity?

Insecurity is a lack of confidence and protection. It is a feeling of not being good enough and uncertainty about oneself.

Insecurities cause us to feel anxious and negatively impact our mental well being.

Understanding our insecurities is very important because it will help us accept them, learn about them and manage them better.

What are the causes of insecurities in relationships?

1. Past traumas or bad relationship experiences cause us to feel insecure that the same thing may happen again. It could be that you come from a broken or abusive family that caused you to have trust issues and have distorted views about what a healthy relationship should bed. It could also be that you experienced an unfaithful partner in your past relationship or you got betrayed before which makes it really hard for you to trust someone fully.

2. Attachment style from our upbringings: Each of us has a different attachment style which was developed during our childhood, depending on how our parents interacted with us. The way your parents love you gives you an idea of how love should be and if you do not see that in your partner, you will assume that your partner doesn't love you.

For example, if your parents were very protective of you and always wanted you to be with them to be safe, you were not allowed to go anywhere or do anything. As a result, you would grow up to believe that love should be spending all the time together and your partners should not spend time with other people.

Or if either of your parents was abusive or they abandoned you when you were a kid, you would grow up feeling unloved, rejected, insecure and needy in your relationships. You would constantly feel the need to chase for love. As a result, you become clingy and emotionally suffocating your partners because of your anxiety. This may cause your partners to pull away and it makes you even more anxious in your relationships.

3. Lack of life fulfilment: If you are someone who does not have a clear life goal, it is easy for you to lose your identity when you are with someone. You may also believe only your partner can bring you happiness and life fulfilment so you would spend a lot of your time and energy on him or her. And as a result, you become reliant, needy and jealous when your partner is not able to fulfil your needs or when they seem to be happy with other people, besides you.

How to overcome the feeling of insecurity?

There are many ways to help us in this journey but today I will share with you 3 ways I have experienced myself:

1. Start with focusing on ourselves:

This can means practising Self-love and getting to know ourselves better so we can have a strong identity. This step is very important because it will help us improve our self-awareness, confidence level and life fulfilment. When we know who we are, our values and our purpose in life, nothing will ever take that away from us. And therefore, we will focus more on fulfilling our life and not rely on others

2. Spend regular time away from each other to set a healthy space for our relationship:

Everyone needs personal space. When we are in a new relationship, it is very normal for us to want to spend all the time together. This is fun at first but it is not realistic and can be unhealthy after. Spending too much time with each other will set wrong expectations of how much time we should spend with each other to be happy. And when we eventually spend time away from each other, we will feel insecure and tend to overthink. We will also become reliant on one another and often we are becoming our partner that we lose our own identity without knowing. E.g we will eat or do what they like instead of what we like. Spending time alone will give us time to reflect, maintain our own identity and keep a healthy space in our relationship.

3. Communicate openly and honestly:

A secure and healthy relationship will allow us to share our feelings and speak about anything. There will be arguments and disagreements but we will be able to speak your mind. If we often keep quiet and bottle all up, we will become more negative and worsen our insecurities.

Setting this culture of open communication will help us feel less insecure as we know we can share our feelings and talk things out openly anytime instead of living in the dark and keep guessing what is going on in our relationship. Being able to communicate openly improves our trust and also prevents a volcano eruption or sudden change of mind because someone is bottling up everything from the start.

So those are 3 ways that you can use to overcome your insecure feeling. Please do know that having insecurity is normal. Accepting them and learning about them will help us improve our relationships with others. However, do note that these tips will not work if you are dating a narcissistic or abusive partner who gaslights you intentionally. I will share more in another post.

I hope you have learned more about insecurities. Please let me know in the comment section below if you have any experience with insecurities in your life and what method you used to overcome them.