Insecurity, Leave Us Alone!

Intensity is a key factor in insecurity. A fissure in a relationship might sting one person but devastate the other. Obviously, the latter party is most likely the least secure. Insecurity is not just about how many of the qualifications you possess. It’s about how much the ones you own really get to you.

The length of time you’ve been plagued by insecurity is another key factor to consider. Maybe you caught the repetition of the word chronic in the specialist’s definition of insecurity. This was originally a medical term coined by Hippocrates from the Greek word chronos, meaning “time.” It referred to maladies that persisted for many days. In modern medicine, the term is still used to describe conditions that have lasted three or more months. Humor me here for a moment. Have your insecurities bothered you for more than 90 days? Mine have. Then they’ve been chronic. Enough said. Let’s press forward.

Let’s lock in for a few moments on the element of self-consciousness from our earlier definition. At the mention of the term, our minds once again start sketching an image of what a self-conscious person looks or acts like, and we know we don’t want to be her. After all, we have too much pride to be her. But the truth is, she’s not nearly as easily pegged as that seventh grader in the locker room who perfected the art of changing into her gym clothes without first taking off her dress. I hate to state the obvious, but all it takes to be chronically self-conscious is to be chronically conscious of self. Self-consciousness is acute self-awareness and a preoccupation with self, no matter how it’s externalized in life. Suddenly the broader scope changes everything we picture about her.

The self-conscious person may protect herself with plainness and try to blend into the paint, but she also may dress herself to perfection and stand squarely in the spotlight. In either portrayal—or anything in between—she is ordinarily more aware of herself than she tends to be of any other person in the room. Whether she feels inferior or superior, she takes a frequent inventory of her place in the space. She may like it or hate it, but she’s rarely oblivious to it. Never think for a moment that pride and self-centeredness have no role in insecurity. Since she keeps confusing her insecurity with humility, however, she never recognizes the self-centeredness so she can turn from it.

Now for the part of the specialist’s description of insecurity that had me at hello:

The insecure person also harbors unrealistic expectations about love and relationships. These expectations, for themselves and for others, are often unconscious. The insecure person creates a situation in which being disappointed and hurt in relationships is almost inevitable. Ironically, although insecure people are easily and frequently hurt, they are usually unaware of how they are unwitting accomplices in creating their own misery. (Joseph Nowinski, The Tender Heart: Conquering Your Insecurity)

That’s me! Or at least it was me. It’s becoming less and less descriptive, only because I decided to declare war on it and let God get to it if it killed me. Here’s the confusing catch: I’ve rarely been called out on this issue. As the definition suggests, I was not consciously aware of putting undue pressure on the relationship, nor was I accused of it, but in retrospect it is embarrassingly obvious. Let’s face it. Many of us appear far more together on matters of the heart than we are.

Like you, I’ve been confident and secure in many relationships while others were nearly the death of me. No matter how healthy some of my associations were, the ones where I harbored unreasonable expectations caused me considerable pain and innumerable disappointments.

Can you say the same thing? How honest would you be if it were just the two of us and God talking? Let’s try to relate like that through these pages. What does your own relational track record look like? Do you tend to put a fair amount of pressure on some key relationships? Do you have a few unrealistic expectations?