Is insecurity really a character flaw?

This world equates attractiveness with confidence and independence.  There is a constant disparaging of insecurity.  People call it being clingy and needy, a character flaw that needs to be "fixed" and anyone who cannot "fix" it or at the very least hide it semi-successfully is a failure on top of the crime of being insecure.  This concept is no more than a hold over from when mental health care was electroshock therapy and real men didn't cry.

Lets break down the word itself.  Insecure means "not secure" and secure in this instance means "not subject to threats, certain to remain safe and unharmed, stable, and free from anxiety."  So basically being insecure means you do not feel safe, stable, and free from threat.

Say you are walking along and suddenly, with no warning at all, the ground gives out as you place your weight on it.  You fall.  It hurts.  You try to figure out what happened so you can avoid falling next time.  You pick yourself up and go on with a shrug.  A while later, it happens again.  Then at another point, again.  And again.  It gets to the point you never know which step will give out.

There is no pattern you can discern.  You just know that every time you walk there is a chance you will end up losing your footing this way.  Over time you learn to adapt somewhat.  You figure out how to catch yourself up short when you feel the ground give way.  You learn to walk more carefully, more slowly, always testing the ground.  You see other people running freely without a care in the world because the ground never gives way for them, and you are envious and at the same time glad they have safe footing even if you do not.

Now you know what it is like to be insecure.  You do not feel stable, or free from threats.  You never know if the next step is safe or not.  It does not make you a bad person.  It does not make you less than or not good enough.  It simply means that you are not in a space where you feel safe.

People with anxiety are by definition insecure.  Anxiety is a glitch in the brain, an over active fight/flight response, which in many cases is caused by a history of trauma.  You can move past insecurity (and anxiety) with time and patience, but it involves learning to trust that the ground will not give way without warning.  That is a hard thing to do when the ground keeps randomly giving way.  Think about the levels of courage and trust it takes someone to keep taking that next step knowing each time that it may be the one that drops them to the ground in pain again.

Many people can get from a place of insecurity to a place they feel secure if they work on it and if they have help and support, but insecurity is more often than not a symptom of lack of safety and stability in a person's life or past, not a character flaw and should be treated as such, not demeaned by the people who do not bother to understand it.

Talk to Your Kids about Suicide and Depression Before It Is Too Late

As a parent who suffered from suicidal ideation when I was a teenager, I would like to bring something to the attention of all the parents out there. We tell our kids to talk to us if they get hurt, have weird physical symptoms, or are being bullied. They know that blood coming out of their bodies where it's not supposed to is bad. They know that there are medications to help various physical health problems, inhalers for asthma, etc.


How many of you have told your kids that thoughts like, "No one would care if I was gone" or "I'm useless and just cause problems" are symptoms of depression and not actual, real, true thoughts? That no matter what those thoughts whisper deceptively in their minds, you and their friends would absolutely miss them and be devastated if anything ever happened to them?


How many of you have explained what suicidal ideation is? Not just, "If you ever want to kill yourself you should tell someone," but pointing out that wanting to give up on everything, losing interest in things that you used to enjoy, and so on are also very dangerous symptoms of depression?


How many of you have told them that symptoms like that are caused by brain chemical imbalances and that there are medications out there that can help? That you will always take them seriously and take care of them even if the symptoms are mental and not physical?


Bringing up depression and suicidal ideation will NOT cause it. It will, however, give your kids a baseline of what is healthy and what is not when it comes to their mental health. They will know those thoughts are false and symptoms and not real and something to act on.


Just like it can be hard to talk to them about abuse and kidnapping and other things we, as parents, never want to happen to them, mental health discussions can be hard. We all want to think it will never be our kid. A lot of people keep thinking it won't be their kid until their kid acts on the symptomatic thoughts though. Please don't put yourself in that position.