a way of interfering with our lives in very inconvenient and sometimes
frustrating ways. This is why the need to deal with them can’t be
overemphasized.
Jumia Travel shares 6 ways to
successfully deal with insecurities.
Vocalize Your Self-Critical
Thoughts
The primary fuel for insecurities is the critical inner voice
people have formed concerning certain area(s) of their lives out of painful or
difficult life experiences. You need to learn to vocalize these self-critical
thoughts or write them down in the second person, so rather than saying “I’m
fat. I’m ugly”, you would instead say, “You’re fat. You’re ugly”. This process
will help you separate these vicious attacks by seeing them as an external enemy
or force, rather than your real point of view.
Expose the Critical
Self Thoughts
What insights and reactions do you have when you separate
yourself from those critical self thoughts? Do they remind you of anyone or any
specific thing from your past? Asking yourself these questions will eventually
help you discover the relationship between these insecurities and early life
experiences. After this, it will be easier to understand why they are there and
will be much easier to address them, reject them and move on from
them.
Make Connections
After exposing the critical self
thoughts, you should settle down and make connections between the voice attacks
and your present day behaviors. You need to ask yourself, “How are these voice
attacks or critical thoughts influencing my behaviors?”, “What are these attacks
or insecurities making me do, or what are they holding me back from doing?”,
“What events trigger these voice attacks?”, “In what areas are my insecurities
most influential?”.
Stand Up to Your Insecurities
People often
struggle with this process, but it requires determination and a strong will to
be free of these insecurities. You have to decide that enough is enough. Once
you’ve exposed the critical self thoughts, it’s time to confront them and
respond to these critical voice attacks. You respond to these voice attacks
strictly and confront them with statements about who you want to be, not what
the voice says you are. You can also respond to the attacks the way you would a
friend – with compassion and kindness.
Your Feelings Don’t Dictate
Your Reaction
Standing up to your insecurities means that you understand
that the fact that you might still feel insecure doesn’t matter. Insecurities
aren’t feelings; they are mindsets you have to deal with. Stop being emotional
about it and concentrate on getting rid of that mindset. Keep saying ‘no’ to the
mindset, keep rejecting the insecure mindset until it’s gone.
Avoid
Your Triggers or Learn to Live With Them
Once you’ve identified your
triggers of insecurity, it will be easier to avoid them if you can. However, if
you can’t avoid them, the next thing is to learn to live with them. This is also
easy but requires a bit more effort. We are not born with insecurities,
insecurities are learned behaviours; it’s only that they are learned
unconsciously. Learning to live with your insecurities means taking active steps
to learn new behaviours around your triggers to override the ones that fuel your
insecurities. Over time (30 days according to scientific research), the triggers
will lose their effect on you. But you have to be determined and not give up
throughout the process.
