insecurities:(

“To me, beauty is about being comfortable in your own skin. It’s about knowing and accepting who you are.”

Am I insecure? I know I definitely am when it comes to certain physical features and personality traits of mine. I have recently been feeling a little more insecure than usual, so I’m writing about it.

Having insecurities isn’t fun, because when you’re insecure, you’re always second-guessing the things you do, say, the way you dress, the way you act, etc. You feel like you need assurance from others, and that is never a healthy way to base your self-worth. If you keep relying on your friends or family for assurance, you will lose your confidence and happiness when they’re away, which usually means you were never really happy in the first place. You become a vehicle dependent on the fuel of others’ reassurance to keep you going.

How do you prevent yourself from relying on others for love, confidence, and happiness? Honestly, it’s something I’m still figuring out and haven’t found an answer to yet. But what I have learnt about dealing with insecurities is the need to examine why you have them in the first place.

What triggered you to think about yourself in this way? Was it your negative thoughts? Was it your inability to fit some impossible societally-imposed standards?

For me, it turned out, some insecurities came from my own negative thoughts and others came from my friends’ unhealthy standards. If someone is telling you that you need to change who you are, kick them out. They don’t deserve one more chance to make things worse. If they are telling you to change, it means they want you to become the person they love, instead of them loving the person you are.

When it comes to your own negative thinking, you can’t necessarily stop it. We’re only human and it’s natural to get insecure from time to time.

But, we can control how we react and prevent our insecurities from turning into self-hate. The most important way to do this is to be kind to yourself. If I had a teacher that told me I couldn’t succeed in life, pass my classes, or am not smart enough, I would get demotivated and I would start to see myself in that way. Allowing your own internal monologue to be overly self-critical without recognizing the beautiful things that make you yourself creates a similar spiral, in which you berate yourself until you don’t believe in yourself anymore. Insecurities will always be with you, confidence will be too, choose which one is louder.