Letter #17 - Insecurities are a funny battle

Dear readers,

Insecurities are a funny thing, as the title suggests but they're the awful side of funny. They make people seem twisted and insensitive and self absorbed when they highlight their insecurities. It's almost as if it's assumed that they should know better, and they're just being silly, except that when it's our turn, we want our concerns to be acknowledged.

I feel like that's just human nature and while that's not really an excuse, it is used as one. That we're just not understanding. But sometimes I think it's more that we're not trying to understand; we just don't want to.

I deal with my fair share of not feeling good enough or like I'm not on the same level as other people. For that reason, I love to praise people and give them compliments; I try to do so to at least one person in my life every day.

But I think it can then be disheartening when you are constantly feeling like everyone else is in this amazing place and you're not as accomplished or as capable or as well liked and it can all add up until you have an outburst. Outburst seems too harsh a word but just releasing those feeling and talking to someone when they ask if anything is wrong or they notice a change in you can be both a blessing and curse, I feel. They ask. But then they dismiss and put it down to your irrationality of the situation. And I think that that hurts the most.

Because we all know on some level that we're being irrational and these insecurities are tricking us into feeling bad when we have a lot to be grateful for, but in those moments, all you really want is support. You want someone to listen and let you get it out without holding it against you. They have to have felt something similar at some point. I can guarantee you they have.

I think at times we don't even feel insecure or unsure of ourselves until a situation or a phrase triggers it. Something will click in your head and you'll feel a little bit worse than you did the moment before.

While I'm always the first to encourage that you talk your feelings out, I've found that if there isn't someone around to talk to (or at least someone who would understand), the next best thing is a scrap of paper. Not a pretty pristine notebook, but a sad little leftover. You write down the bad thing, the sad feeling, and then you screw it up and you throw it away.

It might sound weird but I've found it to personally work for me. Just the act of throwing the thought away, does make me feel calmer, as strange as that may be. It may just be the placebo effect, but it does the trick. 

I don't really know where I'm going with this as with most of my posts, it seems! But I do want to just highlight, that if you do ever feel any kind of an insecurity, I promise that it isn't just you. Others will feel the same about a situation or a person or just their general being; the difference is that they maybe haven't voiced those feelings.

Don't ever feel bad for feeling what you feel. It will pass and you will go back to your positivity and happy thoughts again. We are all so much more than the negative. We're complex, developed individuals who have the insight of independent thought and with that, the ideal that we can't always just see the two-dimensional happy side of life.

So you there, you can be sad. For about a half an hour. And then you pick yourself up and you move forward from whatever it is that you feel you aren't good enough for and you make yourself good enough.

I don't really know if this is going to help anyone or if it's just my nonsensical rambling once more. But I shall hope for the best that it did help and have a great week everyone! 

Until next time, be inspired...

Love, Z