I often refer to insecurity as the cause of people becoming unhealthy compulsives rather than healthy compulsives. It’s as if life were a test and, fearing we will fail, we resort to rules, rigidity and control to prevent failure. It can be so prevalent, yet so hard to see, that it’s like the air we breathe.
This test we fear failing can take many forms, but it most often manifests in three fears:
Fear of not being loveable,
Fear of not being morally good,
Fear of not being competent.
The three overlap. We might fear that if we are not competent or good we will not be loved. Or we may take the disapproval of others as signs that we are not good or competent.
Feeling insecure about how morally good you are might sit on top of a deeper fear of not being loved. But even if it does, many people don’t experience it that way. Not being a good or competent person are often the fears that really drive them to compensate with over-controlling, over-working, over-pleasing, over-thinking, and over-perfecting. People who fear that they are not morally good may come to value and seek respect over love and belonging.
But these feelings are not always clear to us. Insecurity may be displaced onto concrete issues outside of us instead of dealing with the fact that on some deep level we don’t feel ok.
But in most cases, there is some sense on the part of the individual that they are not just right. Too often that assumption is based on a very unrealistic standard of what it means to be just right.
And here’s a hint: it’s not what you see on Instagram.
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Insecurity About Being Wrong, Wrong, Wrong
For a window into this sense of being somehow “off” I consulted, through a medium, New Orleans’s pre-eminent existential philosopher and Voodoo musician, Dr. John. Here’s what he had to say about his own sense of insecurity, and his feeling that no matter what he did, he was wrong:
I’ve been running trying to get hung up in my mind
Really got to give myself a good talking to this time
Just need a little brain salad surgery
I got to cure my insecurity
But I’ve been in the wrong place
But it must have been the right time
I been in the right place
But it must have been the wrong song
I been in the right vein
But it seems like a wrong arm
I been in the right world
But it seems like wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong
Slipping, dodging, sneaking, creeping, hiding out down the street
See my life shaking with every who I meet
Refried confusion is making itself clear
Wonder which way do I go to get on out of here
This of course is from Dr. John’s enduring 1973 hit, Right Place, Wrong Time. It seems to have struck a lot of people’s insecurity nerve.
While he was a very successful musician, Dr. John knew the dark side of life painfully well. This song was one way that he tried to come to terms with his frustrations about the difficulties he experienced, exposing what it was like inside for him, and letting it hang out to dry. So, if any of this resonates, you are not alone in this perpetual sense of being wrong.
Fixing the Outside and Neglecting the Inside
Most of us have some insecurity. It’s what we do with it that makes it problematic or just part of a realistic life.
Too often we try to remedy our insecurity by fixing the outside rather than healing the inside. It’s like you’re studying frantically for an organic chemistry exam, when the real question is whether you love and respect yourself.
It’s like trying to solve a serious gastro-intestinal problem by compulsively making more detailed spreadsheets about upcoming house repairs—which does nothing for that chronic nausea you’ve been suffering from.
Displacing the insecurity doesn’t work very well. And it takes energy away from where it would be most effective.
More effective approaches to solving the insecurity problem involve recognizing the voice of insecurity, questioning it, and allowing yourself to focus on what’s most important to you, including what you naturally have to offer. These are more likely to cure the nausea/insecurity than that glorious spreadsheet.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Let’s look at what leads to insecurity, what function the displacement serves, and what you can do to aim your compulsive energy more effectively.
Causes of Insecurity: Extremes of Order and Chaos
There are lots of ways that people get to this point of insecurity. I describe them in more detail in my book, The Healthy Compulsive, but here, in brief, are some of the situations that can lead to the type of insecurity that leads to maladaptive obsessive-compulsive tendencies.
Please note that these are all based on your experience of your parents and environment. Whether or not they were exactly like that is less important than your experience of them and the strategy you adopted to deal with that experience.
Parents and Caretakers
- Controlling and perfectionistic parents needed to have everything a certain way. Overachieving parents, ostensibly confident in who they were, left you feeling you had to be just as good as they were.
- Anxious, needy, unreliable or disorganized parents left you feeling you had to hold things together. Anxious and overprotective parents implied that the world is a dangerous place, and you were not up to handling it.
Parenting and Caretaking
- Caretakers were so positive and encouraging that you feared you could never live up to who they thought you were.
- Caretakers criticized or shamed behavior and feelings that were messy, playful or exuberant. Any love that did come your way seemed conditional, based on compliance.
Environment
- A rigid environment may have emphasized success over well-being, looks over feeling, and order over creativity. It emphasized “What will people think if you wear that skirt?” rather than, “Are you comfortable in that?”
- A fragile environment filled with natural disasters, health troubles, financial problems, and a vacuum of standards left you feeling powerless and helpless.
You may have noticed the paired extremes of order and chaos in this list. It’s the extremes that really get to us.
But please note as well, that despite common confusion to the contrary, there is no one-to-one correlation between the degree of deficit parenting and suffering of the adult child. I’ve seen plenty of folks come from decent homes who still suffered from insecurity, and plenty of people from pretty bad homes who were doing quite well, thank you.
In terms of you feeling better, the most significant issue, the one that is under your control now, is the strategy you adopted as a child, and are still using, to cope with your parents’ imperfections and your environment’s failure to support you. The common denominator for inducing insecurity in these situations is that you felt inadequate to the situation and that you decided you needed to overwork to overcome.
Cultural Causes of Insecurity: This is Not a Test
For many people, feelings of insecurity arise out of a deep sense that life is a test, a very difficult one at that. I can’t tell you how many times people have told me their dreams of going back to school and having to take a test they hadn’t studied for. The dream exposes their ongoing fear of not measuring up and how they are desperately trying to find a way to pass.
While family and environmental issues do contribute to this, cultural issues can as well. (Yes, environment and culture do overlap. But since this is not a test we don’t have to elucidate the differences.)
Our north American culture is certainly very competitive, which leads to the sense that life is a test, or a contest (note the possibility of being “conned” by the test). We all know that “He who dies with the most toys wins.”
But some Asian cultures, each for its own reasons, also exert pressure that can lead to a sense of being tested and a fear of failing.
This may resonate especially for those of you raised Roman Catholic. While many devout Catholics have an understanding of their religion that doesn’t make life feel like a test, many raised in the Church do. With good reason. Some clergy explicitly teach that we are here only as a trial. And that failure leads to literal hell.
But, hey, no pressure.
Other Roman Catholics would say that to march through life as if it were God’s test of their goodness misses the point: it distracts and prevents us from communing with the Divine in the here and now, and from participating in the community of saints.
It’s as if you went to a celebration, but spent the whole time off in a corner, soberly studying for the SAT.
While this dynamic may be most obvious in the Roman Catholic church, damning hell-fire and brimstone sermons in other denominations and religions have also led people to fear that they would not pass the test of righteousness.
In all of these cases, the danger is that the individual senses that they need to be someone other than who they are, and try desperately to pass that test.
People who have obsessive and compulsive personality traits are particularly vulnerable to the “life is a test” lifestyle. They are naturally good at delaying gratification. And the rewards of paradise, to someone who rarely lets themselves rest or enjoy life, seem like a pretty good tradeoff. As I explain in more detail in my book, our natural tendency to evolve and grow can get hijacked by the fear of failing the test.
Compensatory Strategies: The False Security Blanket
These parental scenarios and cultural messages leave us vulnerable to believing that our natural self is inadequate, so we enlist unnatural means to compensate. Those unnatural means include overcontrol, a need for order, and perfectionism. Many of my gay patients have told me that to compensate for feeling that there was something wrong with them, they committed to being “the best little boy ever.”
While it makes “sense” at the time as the best strategy for coping with their situation, children usually aren’t aware that they are adopting this strategy. So the “reasoning” behind it all gets stored implicitly, without words, which makes it harder to identify, question and alter.
Not everyone responds to these scenarios with control, order and perfectionism. Those who do were usually born with some perfectionist traits. Others might choose rebellion, avoidance, narcissistic competitiveness, clinging, victim mindset, or indifference, traits associated with other personality disorders. Those born with natural meticulousness are more likely to enlist it by using control, order and perfectionism in order to pass the test. And they may apply them to the outer world rather than their inner world, where the real issue lies.
If you think that the only skill you have is a hammer, you’re going to nail everything down.
Because this sort of behavior doesn’t address the real issue, no matter how “successful” the outer behavior is, the inner feeling of insecurity doesn’t change. In fact, compensation usually leads to greater anxiety, overworking, and imposter syndrome. Which ruins everything.
Seeing yourself as substandard was part of the strategy you used to motivate yourself and deal with feelings of insecurity. Because it felt like it protected you, like a security blanket, it’s hard to let go of.
Many people put themselves down before anyone else has the chance, and use self-attack as a cudgel to elicit better behavior from themselves. Severity seems like the ticket to enhanced security. We have research which contradicts this. But since our hearts don’t read academic journals, for me or anyone else to suggest you lay that severity to rest is like suggesting a soldier lay down his rifle when the enemy is 20 yards away.
Example: Melinda Retires the Test
Melinda was raised in an evangelical church wherein God’s judgement was emphasized more than His love. But when her own personal experience led her to believe that rather than God being so disapproving, He was primarlily loving, she chose to leave the church. Her more positive experiences of God led her to a different kind of Christian church, one in which she felt so much more comfortable that she chose to go to seminary and become a minister.
Anyone who’s ever tried to be a minister will tell you; it’s one hell of a job. It’s impossible to please everyone and there is always more you can do to serve your congregation. Still, Melinda had known what she was in for and could handle that part of the job.
What was harder to handle was the insecurity, the persistent sense that she was still taking and failing a test. Every time she gave a sermon, walked into coffee hour, or met with a struggling congregant she went into a mini-drama in which she wondered if she would be good enough.
Would she ever feel good enough? Any feelings of selfishness, anger or impatience led her to feel that she was falling short. She struggled to separate her sense of calling to ministerial service from her need to prove her goodness.
Intellectually she could draw from the theology of her chosen religion, but, like Dr. John, it was hard to feel the love when an old voice in her head kept saying she was wrong, wrong, wrong.
But, determined not to let the judgmental voice win, she enlisted her compulsive energy, went to therapy, found a spiritual director, and joined a ministerial support group. It turned out she was not alone in her experience of religion—both good and bad. She recognized and named the test, questioned whether it had any validity, and replaced it with the love she had come to value.
With this perspective and consistent support from others, she was able to build a stronger sense that while she was not perfect, she was good enough. That while she still believed in an afterlife with God, she could already experience the Kingdom of God on earth. And that while the critical voice didn’t go away completely, her sense of being loved was greater.
Challenging Insecurity
Here are three basic steps that can help you to shift toward a healthier approach to dealing with insecurity.
Recognize.
Question.
Replace.
Recognize Your Insecurity and Overreaching.
Watch out for feelings of mental or physical reaching, stretching or straining that come with trying to be someone other than who you are. This sort of overworking usually indicates a need not to fail, rather than a desire to be happy.
Notice whether this testing feeling comes up most around being loved, being good or being competent.
Recognize the “Oh NO!” feeling that signals a fear that you’re about to fail the test. Don’t try to ignore or destroy it, but do distance yourself from it. Don’t identify with it and collapse headfirst into it. Rather, say, “There’s that test thing again. I don’t have to believe it. Thanks for sharing. I don’t need you anymore!”
Question The Idea That You Are Substandard.
If you want to pivot to healthier, more satisfying life, question the standards you’ve set for yourself. What does it really take to be loved, good and competent? Are your expectations realistic? And perhaps more importantly, do they effectively work to reduce insecurity?
Think about this from the standpoint not of who you think you should be, but of who you actually are. Even if you do aspire to goodness, trying to be someone you are not sets you up to feel like you’re failing a test. If, in order to prove my worth, I had tried to become a doctor rather than a therapist, it would have been a loss. Certainly for me, and, I like to think, for my clients as well.
Replace the Test with What Gives Your Meaning
Replace the “life is a test” strategy with emphasis on that which has most meaning for you. One way to discern this is to ask what you originally wanted to achieve before the test took over your life. I would venture that many of us wanted to feel good about ourselves, secure, and fulfilled. Ask, “Does this way of thinking, and this particular behavior get me where I want to go, or is it a detour from my original intention?”
Another way of looking at this is to identify how you want to live and what your values are. Pivot from test-taking to pursuing the way you want to live, not just goals, but how you actually live day to day. For instance, do you want to live purposefully, generously, heroically, simply, joyously, securely, calmly?
This is not about giving up on dreams or goals. It’s about shaving off the layer of compensatory effort you tried to use to prove yourself loveable, good and competent.
Rather than looking to the future and getting the test over with, pivot to the present moment, and the process of living. Not just getting through the test. Each time you notice trying to be good to pass the test, come back into your body and the present moment. Then savor what’s good and have compassion for the difficult.
This is what leads to true security.
If this subject interests you, you might want to check out two related posts: What are you trying to prove by being so good, and, Enough already, why you need to know that you are enough already.
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