The Difference Between a Person With Insecurities and an Insecure Person

Learning to spot the difference between a person with insecurities and an insecure person is such a great lesson for everyone to learn. It’s important because it will save you so much time, confusion, and aggravation in your life. Trust me, I spent far too long wrapped up in everyone else’s insecurities rather than simply focusing on my own, and all it did was mess with my inner compass so much that simple decision-making gave me hives. When you’re so overly focused on making sure not to contribute to another’s self-doubt, the result is to typically contribute to your own.

This is what it’s like to be a people-pleaser. Our aim is to help in an effort to take burdens off of other folks without even thinking twice about taking them on ourselves, even when they clearly don’t belong to us. We also, for some reason, instantly believe that the root of every problem is us. If someone tells us we’re the problem, we typically believe it until a few days, months, or even years later when we stop dead in our tracks and say out loud “Wait a minute!” < — This has happened to me countless times.

We stunt our own experiences when we take on insecurities that don’t belong to us and take away the real and necessary opportunity for others to deal with their own shit. No one comes into this life shit-free and it’s overcoming our own shit that helps us rise out of our buckets of shit so that we can move onto better-smelling pastures. Make sense?

We all have insecurities. We can’t live this life without them. While we can learn and transmute them, we cannot escape this life without experiencing them.

Now that I have you all set up with the warm fuzzies, let’s talk about the difference between folks with insecurities and insecure folks.

A person with insecurities is every single person you pass on the street. Period. We are all our own individual little snowflakes and while this makes for a unique and interesting world of people that all look and act differently in their own ways, it can also create a toxic breeding ground for Comparison Syndrome (this isn’t really a syndrome, or not that I know of. It’s just so prevalent, I felt it needed a cozy little name).

If you could just have her hair, his nose, their bank account, his sense of humor, her brain, their house and job, you could finally just get down to being happy. The statement, “The grass is always greener on the other side” came into existence for a reason.

We aren’t all healthy with our insecurities and I’d venture to say that most folks with insecurities (a.k.a everyone in the world) don’t take the time to learn and grow from them. For the most part, they are our own little, darling, sweet, baby monsters that we do our best to keep hidden for our own torturous entertainment. We have been known to torment others with them as well, but most of the time we’re perfectly happy to slop around in our own bucket of self-imposed insecure misery. Just a little more warm fuzzies for you.

On the other hand, an insecure person tortures everyone, but least of all themselves. They do this because they believe they got life right. They believe they know what’s best and they have the answer. Not just the answer, all of them. They may or may not know you, but they know exactly what you’re doing wrong in every area of your life and if you just allow them to tell you what to do, you can finally just get down to living the life they want you to live.

This is the hard part of insecure people; they have no idea that they’re an insecure person. They truly believe that their opinions are an act of love for you. They are looking out for you. They simply want what’s best for you and they just so happen to know what that “best” is.

However, since they have no idea that they are an insecure person, they have little to no understanding that it’s their own insecurities that they are projecting onto everyone else. An insecure person subconsciously knows they are insecure. They can feel that a lot of personal work of some kind needs to be done and they feel this because they are so uncomfortable in most aspects of their lives, yet they don’t know why. Because they refuse to accept that the issues they are forcing down your throat are their own, they spend all of their time trying to fix you and your life rather than their own. Their level of personal discomfort leaves them unable to not meddle in others’ lives because they have no idea that they actually need to turn that energy inward.

Not only that, but they also somehow make everything about them. Make some statement about yourself or someone else and watch as they instantly make it about them, or worse yet, use your statement against you because they somehow manage to make you feel like your statement is a dig on them.

You: “I met this new friend and she’s amazing! She’s so smart and witty, and oh my gosh she’s so funny!”

Insecure Person: “Well, I’m no dummy you know. And lots of people tell me how funny I am.”

All of a sudden you feel like you did something wrong and in an instant you find yourself apologizing. For what you have no idea; you just know that you’re being made to feel as if you hurt their feelings and you’re an asshole in that moment.

It can be hard to exist in such a world of insecurities because not only do we have our own to contend with (party time!) but we are always bumping into and out of everyone else’s at the same time (double party time!). That’s rough.

Just remember that your only responsibility is to yourself. You are not a trash can for everyone else to toss in what they don’t want to confront. If you’re on a crusade to rid the world of its pesky insecurities then I would consider, at most, turning your trash can into a mirror and actively reflecting what someone tries to send your way, that simply does not belong to you, right back to them (with love and forgiveness, of course).

Knowledge = Choices = Power. < — Don’t forget it.

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If you’re ready to confront your insecurities, reach out. I can help with that.