Hoping to start a discussion about overcoming insecurity

Focusing is one of the books that I think should be a much larger part of LW's emotional life than it is, as I discussed a while ago, and so I'm happy to see someone mention it.

I think that, for most things in psychology, studying the healthy is better than studying the unhealthy- rather than asking what causes insecurity, I would ask what causes security.

I suspect the difference between security and insecurity is basically expected value of acting- I seem to be insecure in areas where I think on net my actions are likely to have negative consequences or in areas where I can't tell between helpful and harmful actions, and secure in areas where I'm confident in my ability to accomplish goals and distinguish options.

I've struggled with insecurity for a while. Here are my most effective two techniques.

First, whenever I become self conscious I remind myself that I think mostly about myself. Other people are probably like me, so they are probably uncaring about whatever I'm concerned with.

• Oh my gosh, I didn't wash my face this morning, everyone will think I"m a slob.

When I see someone with a dirty face it doesn't change my opinion of them. Other people will also not care how dirty my face is.

• Hmm, this guy isn't responding to my text. Maybe he could have come to the conclusion that I'm a vicious racist!

I don't think about whether acquaintances are racists all the time. Other people are also not thinking about me when I'm not talking to them.

• I'm not going to be on time. Everyone will think I'm being deliberately late in order to emphasize my own importance by making them late.

I may not be the latest one, and most people will be concerned with their own reasons for attending. My tardiness will be overlooked, or I will be asked for an explanation.

My other trick is that if I'm in a private place (and most often when I'm insecure I'm at least mostly in private. I have little time for such ruminations when I"m distracted by socializing.) I'll verbalize my insecurities. Then I'll respond out loud to the insecure statements.

Doing so seems to activate the parts of my personality that decide who I back in an argument, and the response is invariably more confident/assured than the insecurity (almost by definition). I find my thoughts falling into agreement with my responses rather than my insecurities.

To put it more simply, many insecure worries sound really odd when spoken aloud. This springs from the same root as the first tip. My insecure thoughts are not the sort of thing I imagine that other people have, so hearing them out loud makes explicit the contrast.

Insecure Walter: I spent too much on that online game which I didn't play very much. That'll become a trend and then I'll go broke and lose my house and die in a gutter. Response: I've spent too much before and never spent everything, and even if I went broke I could take out a loan. Principle of Mediocrity says this won't be too different. I'll just spend less in the future. Thoughts: Yeah, I shouldn't spend so much.

Hope this helps.

Semantic quibbles:

Insecurity is when someone perceives that they are not secure - i.e. they are in danger of being harmed by others or deprived of an essential resource be it money, social standing, a relationship, or self-esteem. It more refers to abstract and long term things that cause anxiety rather than fear - so any problem significantly more abstract and long-term than say, a bear, can cause insecurity.

I think that what insecurity is, is inhibition of feelings of disappointment/loss because of an implicitly learned belief that to express these feelings will have negative consequences (ie – it will only make things worse).

I think that what you have described are the compensation mechanisms that some people use in response to a specific type of insecurity.

When one's insecurity centers around self-esteem / self-image, the defense mechanism is to try to avoid admitting certain things about yourself to yourself which might contradict a proud self-image. It's a form of self-deception, similar to belief in belief.

One might also have similar behavior because they are afraid of people hurting them, and so avoid relationships with people and avoid exposing vulnerability to others. Since its hard for many people to fake social cues one might to some extent hide one's vulnerability from oneself as well.

There's plenty of other insecurities, with different ways of dealing. People feeling insecure about money will have stronger emotional reactions to losing it. People with insecurity about losing a relationship might get clingy, while people who are afraid that they will be harmed by others will avoid forming attachments. Not all of these insecurities involve deception to self/others about negative emotions.

I think that what insecurity is, is inhibition of feelings of disappointment/loss because of an implicitly learned belief that to express these feelings will have negative consequences (ie – it will only make things worse).

That's almost the opposite of what I would consider feeling "insecure". In the predictive sense, it's being pessimistic. In the emotional sense, It's not inhibition of feelings, but having them. Expecting something bad to happen to you and feeling afraid and anxious is to feel insecure. Generally usage of "insecurity" usually applies this to your own competence or other's perceptions of you.

Reading through your post, I kept waiting for a some kind of delineation of what you were referring to with "insecurity" along those lines. What you've given above seems very idiosyncratic to me.

Have you read Feeling Good, or any other books on cognitive therapy?

I've found that thinking of my mental phenomena in terms of words like "insecurity" and "learned inhibition of feelings" and finding the root causes of my emotions based on my childhood and so on... doesn't really help very much with feelings of insecurity/anxiety, but that cognitive therapy techniques do help some.

Also, cognitive therapy has been shown scientifically to work well in a lot of people. I'm skeptical of a lot of other therapy techniques, because many are not as well tested; not that I'm against trying things and finding what works for you, but it is probably a good idea to try the most well-proven techniques first.

Could you link to a source that describes what primal therapy involves?

Um, would you mind changing your font to the LW default?

There seem to be some good books on avoidant personality disorder. I'm going to check one out that I saw on Amazon.

The blurb may convince some of ya'll to give it a go:

The avoidance reduction techniques presented in this book recognize that avoidants not only fear criticism and humiliation, but also fear being flooded by their feelings and being depleted if they express them. Acceptance is feared as much as rejection, because avoidants fear compromising their identity and losing personal freedom. Kantor describes the different therapeutic emphasis required for the four types of avoidants, including those who are withdrawn due to shyness and social phobia, such as people who intensely fear public speaking; those who relate easily, widely, and well, but cannot sustain relationships due to fear of closeness; those whose restlessness causes them to leave steady relationships, often without warning; and those who grow dependent on―and merge with―a single lover or family member and avoid relating to anyone else.

The basic idea of 'focusing' is that if you pay attention to the feeling in your body, and don't distract yourself with too much thinking or paying attention to other things but just 'stay with' the feeling

This 'focusing' reminds me of my understanding of meditation, where the sitter "watches" his thoughts and how they are moving around in the mind and being manifest into emotional states. With practice, this allows a detachment from negative thoughts & emotions as they are recognized to be operating in a system separate from the sitter's source of observation.

In effect, one could stop saying "I am insecure and depressed and anxious!" and say rather "This cognitive-emotional system is insecure and depressed and anxious. I am watching it so I am aware of that now. Hm. Unfortunate & interesting."

The shift in itself can be rather cathartic as it releases you from the sort of "self-blaming" attitude that can accompany low mood states. Further, it can perhaps provide the basis for a more objective, non-shame-filled investigation of how to improve your mood. (Or rather "how to fix that insecure cognitive-emotional system you have succeeded in identifying")

I'd point you to Eckhart Tolle and his book The Power of Now, but I'm not sure that is on the approved reading list here at LW. It is filled with a lot of woo woo, but there is a baby in that bathwater. I think it does a good job of Westernizing some Eastern philosophical concepts that may be valuable in your pursuit. (The first two chapters will give you the gist...)

I don't intend this to be a personally revealing post so I'll just sum it up by saying that being insecure has had a profoundly negative impact on my life. I feel that it is the single biggest reason why I've failed to reach my potential in all ways. That's fine though, I'm not really bitter but I remain very frustrated and I want to solve this problem. I want to 'crack the code', if you will.
[...]
I've developed my own understanding of insecurity, which, admittedly, is a synthesis of other people's ideas, but I haven't found any book or therapy or system that puts it all together in a way that I fully agree with.
[...] Since Jr High at least, I've been frustrated by my insecurity. I don't intend this to be a personally revealing post so I'll just sum it up by saying that being insecure has had a profoundly negative impact on my life. I feel that it is the single biggest reason why I've failed to reach my potential in all ways. That's fine though, I'm not really bitter but I remain very frustrated and I want to solve this problem. I want to 'crack the code', if you will.

If I understand you right you are saying: You are exposed to Arthus Janov ideas for 20 years and they ideas that you developed from that exposure haven't solve your issue. They had some temporal effects but the anxiety always came back.

Then you say that you haven't found any therapy that matches your understanding of the problem. If the therapy works well with the problem I would expect that it doesn't matches with your understanding of the problem.

I also don't believe that you will understand what a form of therapy is about by reading a book about it.

Exactly how they work is not something that is perfectly understood by anyone but I find it frustrating when discussing them with people who don't seem to understand that, whatever the rules are, there are rules.

There are rules but empathy can often be more useful for dealing with someone's emotional issue than trying to use intellectual rigor.

Thank you for raising this topic, ILikeLogic. I am sufficiently insecure that it has taken me quite some time even to post here. (It is my first time posting - not reading - on LessWrong.)

I have lately been looking for therapy to deal with matters, but two sessions with a therapist leave me with the impression (rightly or wrongly) that this person is less philosophically/scientifically acute than I am. From college experience, I got the impression that there is a lot of hollow conceptualizing going on in academic psychology (or it may be that I am so emotionally twisted that I did not get it, but I do doubt this). There may be empathy, but there must also be enough sharpness for me to let my guard down so that we can get anywhere emotionally. Consequently, while I will keep on looking for face-to-face therapy, my expectations are not too high; and the discussion here is stimulating, so let's see.

I have a few items:

• You say that with self-applied primal therapy, you (sometimes, I understand) "felt completely secure and free of anxiety for up to a few days". What happens then? Also, could you describe in a few lines what procedure you used -- or is there some sort of copyright issue with that? (I did follow the link to Janov's blog, but could not pin anything down in a reasonable span of time...)
• You say (I'm paraphrasing) that insecurity comes from distress made worse by negative responses to expressing that distress, and subsequent defensive reactions. Sounds true, also personally. But I wonder: are such responses bad for everyone, always? Does an order to "stop crying" (literal or in some other form) always lead to a defensive response? I would guess not -- some are able to find a proactive modus to overcome the distress. Maybe because they enjoy winning more, because they have different hormone levels, because of X, Y and Z? My point is: in what cases is it enough to 'rewire the emotional brain', and in what cases does that leave the person with a brain that is actually 'too optimistic' for him/her to handle, given his/her other attributes?
• I had a particular look at Coherence Therapy. Found this interview underwhelming. Most of it seems hollow academic talk to me. When Ecker finally reveals the heart of the matter at the end, it comes down to 'bring up negative past experience and emotion / associate with a positive emotion in relevantly similar situations / follow-up'. Sounds good by itself, but instead of all the vague talking, I'd like a short script of sorts that guides me through these steps. Where have you gotten with CT / "Unlocking the Emotional Brain" by now?
• In this annotated transcript there is an interesting case of a man who was insecure and self-sabotaging because of harsh treatment by his father (didn't want to 'win in life' because it would prove the father right); Coherence Therapy helps the young man to face the fact that his father is not going to apologize, and to move on. Now such a single damaging childhood figure, bad as it may be, is one thing. I feel I am more facing a probabilistic issue here: you never know who is going to stab you. Showing me that I should not be afraid of a particular person, or repeating this particular fear until I feel I 'own' it, etc. ... might not do that much good, because I know already that many people do not stab. I fear (!) that even if I go through a perhaps tortuous process of trying to identify and re-live and lay to rest particular negative experiences (and what about potential pre-memory, infant ones? they're out of reach), my rational brain will still ask of the next person I face: does this person stab? Because some people do stab. Is this sort of thing addressed in "Unlocking the Emotional Brain"?

Thanks again!

This will likely be better received if you change the font style to match LW standard. That's true for nonstandard formatting in general; in this particular case, though, it's being rendered into something difficult for me to read at my default resolution and browser settings.