When our dating life isn’t flowing it is very easy to begin taking it on board and internalizing that we aren’t worthy or desirable. However, our results in dating have more to do with our skills than our worth, and learning how to date and what works makes all the difference in the world.
Have you been ever felt a lot of anxiety around not feeling good enough and looked for others or men to meet your need for validation and self-worth?
According to Giordana Toccaceli of the
Embodied Feminine Woman Institute, you might not even realize this is what’s
happening until you feel like your world takes on a two-tone existence that
looks something like this…
Scenario #1
A man you are attracted to responds to your text in a positive way and all of a sudden you feel on top of the world, you are now projecting images of your future wedding and kids together in your mind and your whole day takes on new meaning.
You feel loved, satiated and everything seems right in the world.
Scenario #2
Alternatively,
A man doesn’t respond to your text and you have a huge crash. Your self-esteem
feels tanked, you want to go hide away and give up dating for good.
Where Does Insecurity Come From?
Insecurity comes from feeling ultimately unsafe in the world. We can feel unsafe to be ourselves, unsafe in feeling like we will have our basic and vital needs met or that there will be enough in this world for us.
We all have these fears deep within all of us; fears of not being good enough, not having enough of what we need (love, support or validation), or not being safe.
Insecurities come from moments where we felt unsafe and not secure and internalized those moments as beliefs about ourselves and the world instead of having processed and moved through that pain towards a healthy conclusion about what that really meant.
Many insecurities become ingrained during childhood and when we are unaware of where they truly come from, they can easily be re-triggered in everyday life.
Instead of feeling somewhat down, allowing for the possibility that this man has a life and it just wasn’t a fit for us, an unprocessed insecurity can lead us to all sorts of unhealthy assumptions and a deep seated feeling of rejection we carry for days and weeks, perhaps even years which then paralyzes us from taking the action we need to move our lives forward.
Children often develop insecure attachment styles with their parents where they do not feel safe. A child can feel unsafe because of direct danger (abuse) or indirect danger (neglect). A child might feel his or her environment isn’t a place where his or her needs will be met leading to feeling insecure in the environment and incapable of knowing how to meet those needs.
This then can turn into co-dependency and unhealthy attachment patterns as adults leads to a tendency to anxiously attach to men during the dating process and come across as very insecure which ultimately sabotages love and relationship.
With inner work, conscious effort and perhaps a dose of expert help, you can parent yourself into a secure attachment style and shed the constant fear of being abandoned. You can also root out the core of your own personal feelings of insecurity and begin to experience feelings of wholeness and security. Most of all do not be ashamed for feeling “unsafe” or insecure in the world, there is a reason for it and the more you work to heal those valid reasons the safer you will feel thus the more secure you will become.
For even more advice, refer to the Embodied Feminine Woman Institute.