Tips For Overcoming Insecurity And Learning How To Deal With It

Insecurity can lead to self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy in various parts of life. Although it can be challenging to live with persistent insecurity, it may be possible to overcome it. You might start by setting realistic expectations, seeking healthy forms of validation, building and maintaining trusting relationships, and focusing on positivity. It may also be helpful to evaluate and address the sources of your insecurity and set goals for progress rather than perfection. A licensed therapist can help you through the process of overcoming insecurity and gaining healthy self-confidence.

What is insecurity?

Insecurity can be a familiar feeling for many people. It generally involves uncertainty, anxiety, and a lack of confidence. It can cause people to doubt themselves, their competence, worthiness, value, and desirability as a friend or romantic partner. Your relationships may be just one of the areas in which insecurity can impact your life. It can originate from many sources, spreading into multiple aspects of your life. 

Types of insecurity

• Relationship Insecurity: Common aspects of relational insecurity can include jealousy, an inability to trust others, a need for constant reassurance, and controlling behavior.
• Job Insecurity: You may feel inadequate at work and experience overwhelming self-doubt, anxiety, hesitation, and imposter syndrome (perceiving yourself to be a fraud or that you don’t belong), often resulting in poor performance. 
• Body Image Insecurity: Common characteristics of body image insecurity can involve spending excessive time and energy worrying about your appearance. Body image insecurity may involve the whole body or a specific part and can often lead to an interpretation of being judged by others for your appearance. 
• Basic Needs Insecurity: When you must worry about the bare necessities, the chronic high-stress environment can make it challenging to devote energy to the other parts of your life, and you may find yourself feeling insecure about having a variety of needs met. 
• Social Insecurity: Doubting your ability to succeed in social situations can lead to worry about appearing awkward, not understanding jokes or conversations, or saying something inappropriate. Over time, this insecurity can build on itself and make it tough to engage with others in meaningful ways.

How does insecurity affect your relationships?

Insecurity can put a strain on relationships, romantic or otherwise. Someone who is insecure in the strength of their romantic relationship may become controlling or jealous. Relationship insecurity can present as one partner being unwilling to make themselves vulnerable, trust others to stay faithful, or follow through on their promises.

An insecure person may put down their partner in front of others or consistently ask for reassurance that they are attractive, intelligent, and loved because they may derive their sense of value from others rather than from themselves. 

Insecurity may also cause a person to develop grudges and have difficulty with forgiveness because it usually takes a certain amount of internal security to be able to self-reflect, accept responsibility, vulnerably divulge your feelings, and offer forgiveness. It can be important to remember that insecurity challenges can affect both people in the relationship. 

What causes insecurity?

Research suggests that there may be a genetic component with insecurity as an inheritable trait. Many psychologists also believe that a person’s attachment style can influence their tendency toward insecurity.  

Anxious, avoidant, and disorganized attachment styles in adulthood often involve insecure behavior. 

For most people, past life experiences can affect security levels. If you experienced a difficult childhood with abuse*, neglect, or inconsistent care, you may have an insecure attachment style, which could make it more difficult for you to trust the people in your life to be there when you need them. 

Your past experiences can leave lingering effects. It can be important to identify and understand the underlying causes so you can overcome your insecurities. A therapist may be able to help you through this process. 

How can you overcome insecurity?

Shifting your perspective or making lifestyle changes may help you overcome insecurity. If you’re struggling to make progress on your own, a therapist may be able to offer guidance and teach you effective coping strategies to use when you notice insecure thoughts and behaviors in yourself. This process can take time, and it may help to be prepared to commit to maintaining your efforts to see long-term results. 

Set realistic expectations

As you’re working to overcome insecurities, remember that people are often their own harshest critics. It can be helpful to set realistic expectations for yourself. Setting and attaining “SMART goals” that are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound can help you build confidence. 

Setting healthy boundaries may be part of this. Holding yourself to an unrealistic standard may lead to burnout or disappointment, but setting healthy boundaries can set you up for growth. 

Seek healthy validation

Humans tend to be social creatures, and we usually seek validation from others out of a fundamental need to be liked and fit in with the people around us. However, with modern technology and the ability to digitally connect to anyone in the world, some methods of validation can cause harm. 

Recent research shows that heavy social media use can lead to increased sorrow, poor mental health, low self-esteem, and excessive validation-seeking through content. Social media can be an excellent way to connect with people, but try to be aware of its possible negative impacts on your mental health, and be sure to monitor your usage. 

Healthy ways to seek validation should start with yourself. For example, you can accept your limitations and flaws. You will likely make mistakes, so try to treat yourself with kindness. Acknowledge your strengths and celebrate your successes and progress. Validation from others is not necessarily bad, but it can become problematic when you give too much power over your self-esteem to someone else. 

Build trusting relationships and actively maintain them 

Insecurity can create uncertainty about the relationships in your life and make it difficult to speak up about how you’re feeling. A lack of communication can cause challenges in your relationships and make it hard for others to know how to relate to you and vice versa. Try to be open with those you trust about your struggles with insecurity and explain what they can do to help if they are interested in doing so. Ensure that you listen to their feelings and try to keep the relationship strong. The feelings of love, trust, and care that come from close social bonds can help increase your sense of security, so it may be worth intentionally building them.

Focus on positivity

Both your worldview and how you treat yourself can impact your sense of security. Try to focus on positivity and actively work on challenging negative thoughts and feelings about yourself. Instead, you might find the good things in your life and focus on them. This method usually takes time, but it can help you feel more comfortable and secure in your environment and relationships. 

Evaluate and address the source of insecurity

Try to make an honest evaluation of how insecurity affects your relationships, work, trust, self-esteem, mental health, and communication. When you feel insecure, try to identify the source of the feelings. While outside forces and situations can play a role in your insecurity, the underlying challenges may stem from past experiences, mental health conditions, or other sources. A licensed therapist can help you identify and address the causes of your insecurity. 

Set goals for progress instead of perfection

It’s probably unrealistic to expect to feel completely secure all the time. However, you can take each day as it comes and remember that no matter how you currently feel about yourself and your life, progress can be attainable. You might take the time to reflect on where you started after identifying your insecurity. Celebrate your progress and maintain your focus on where you want to be in the future.

Ways to track your progress

Journal

Keeping a journal can help you work through many of your feelings, and it can be a great way to keep track of your progress in overcoming insecurity. 

Set and celebrate milestones

Set realistic milestones for your progress and celebrate when you achieve one.

Find or develop a checklist to rate your insecurity level

A scale or checklist can help you evaluate and track how severe your insecurity is over time, which may help you identify additional triggers or recognize improvement over time. 

Build a network to support you

A network of supportive friends and family can provide immense strength and comfort. Friends and loved ones can help you shift your perspective and highlight the positives in your life. They may also provide support to encourage you and help build your confidence. A therapist can be a practical addition to your support network as well. 

How therapy can help you overcome insecurity

Many people cope with insecurity in one form or another. Your past experiences and genetics can influence your level of insecurity in yourself and your relationships, but a licensed therapist can help you learn practical strategies to overcome insecurities and build confidence to better relate to yourself and others. 

Benefits of online therapy

Some people find they prefer online therapy over face-to-face treatment sessions. Providers like BetterHelp can offer flexible appointment formats through phone, video call, or online chat, which can help you customize the therapy experience to your comfort level. Some people find it more comfortable to have physical distance between themselves and their therapists.

Effectiveness of online therapy 

Many therapists favor cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) as an effective treatment for a range of mental health conditions, including struggles with insecurity, which may also be related to depression and anxiety. A 2020 study supports “the acceptability and effectiveness of guided iCBT for the treatment of depression and anxiety in routine care.”