How to Deal With and Overcome Your Insecurities

When we think about a solution to a specific problem, rather than taking a bandage approach and simply covering up the problem, my preference is to understand how the problem occurred in the first place because that’s when we can intentionally consider a solution. When it comes to insecurity — feelings of self-doubt, inadequacy, not feeling “good enough,” fear of failure, fear of rejection, or difficulty trusting ourselves — I think it’s important to ask not just how to cover it up, but where it came from in the first place.

Where does insecurity come from?

Most of our insecurities can be traced back to our past experiences-- the specific events that took place throughout the course of our childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood that taught us to believe certain things about ourselves and that impacted how we relate to ourselves, to other people, and to the world around us.

Think about your mom, dad, or whoever your early caregivers were. These are the people around whom your self-esteem and confidence in yourself and your abilities developed (or didn’t…).

Growing up, were you taught that you were enough just as you were? Or were you taught that you were only enough when you got good grades or looked or acted a certain way? Did you get more attention from your parents, for example, when you had the good grades and the socially acceptable and preferred looks?

Growing up, were you taught to believe-- directly or indirectly-- that you are loveable? Or did you instead see that your parents had many other priorities that, sometimes, came before you?

(I use the term “directly or indirectly”, by the way, because oftentimes, we adopt the attitudes of our early caregivers, whether or not they express those attitudes verbally. We viscerally feel things as children and we are apt to internalize them).

Growing up, were you brought up with lots of high expectations of who you should be? Were you taught that you needed to be perfect and perform better in comparison to others? Or were you taught that your version of good is good enough?

It isn’t difficult to doubt ourselves in a world that is always suggesting, through television, marketing, and products, that we could be better, smarter, thinner, more muscular, more successful, and so on. And many of us fall prey to this message that the world shares at large. I know I did. And while some people grow up with a stronger foundational sense of worthiness and security than others, many of us internalize these cultural and relational messages much more deeply than we realize.

Insecurity is often something we learn through repeated experiences, messages, relationships, environments, and the ways we came to relate to ourselves over time. You weren’t born insecure; your experiences made you that way.

You weren’t born insecure; your experiences made you that way.

The Solution

Repeated thoughts of “I’m not good enough” and “this won’t work out for me” lead to an internal dialogue and unconscious belief that supports those thoughts, meaning that we start to tell ourselves, time and time again, that we’re not good enough and we start to be our own harshest and most critical judge. And, guess what? You’re left feeling insecure. Not just once, not just twice, but repeatedly. If we want to feel more secure internally, we often need to begin understanding and healing the beliefs, emotional wounds, nervous system patterns, and protective responses that taught us to doubt ourselves in the first place. You learned to be insecure. In the same way, you can learn to be secure.

Insecurity often grows in environments where we don’t feel consistently seen, emotionally safe, valued, understood, supported, encouraged, or accepted for who we are. And over time, those experiences can shape the way we relate to ourselves internally. Security and a good sense of self-worth come from the opposite: being seen for who you really are, and from feeling safe, soothed, and loved. Here’s how you build it.

You learned to be insecure. In the same way, you can learn to be secure.

A brief note: As we get into this, I want to briefly note that insecurity doesn’t just look like low-self esteem and uncertainty. Really check yourself and invite yourself to be honest. Do you have insecurities that are preventing you from living the kind of life you want to live?

The reason I bring this up is that oftentimes, parts of us fear that our insecurity will be noticeable to others and they cover up our feeling of being flawed, insecure, and not good enough. What this often looks like is that we act overly self-assured, we criticize others, maybe we’re arrogant, or we become defensive or combative when someone disagrees with us. If that’s you and you find yourself wanting to hide and compensate for your insecurities in this way, know that that is a totally normal response that your brain is having in trying to protect you from the feeling of not being seen as worthy, lovable, or good enough.

It’s a bold choice to acknowledge the ways you compensate for your insecurities and to consider removing the veil that’s been protecting you all this time. And doing so is exactly what will set you free.

Healing the Roots of Insecurity

Part of healing insecurity often involves learning how to relate to ourselves in some of the ways we may not have consistently been related to earlier in life — with more validation, compassion, encouragement, care, emotional safety, and support. Here are some specific ways as to how.

1. Value yourself.

Acknowledge your value as a human being and intentionally begin noticing the good, meaningful, caring, capable, lovable, or beautiful qualities that already exist within you. The voice of insecurity inside you has been calling out the not-so-good for a long time. Now, it’s time to intentionally evoke evidence of the good. Focus on who you are, rather than on who you are not.

2. Respond to your own needs.

When you value yourself, you don’t put others’ needs ahead of your own. You recognize and value that you too, as a human being, have valid needs, wants, and concerns and that these need to be attended to regularly. When we continually ignore our own needs, emotions, limits, or well-being, it can unintentionally reinforce old beliefs that our needs don’t matter or that we aren’t deserving of care and attention too.

3. Meet and embrace your voice of insecurity.

Your voice of insecurity, believe it or not, is actually trying to help you. This part of you that has this voice assumes that if it criticizes you and reminds you of your flaws, it will prevent you from all of the consequences that come with not being good enough. It doesn’t realize that its voice itself is doing a lot of the hurting. The key, then, becomes to work with, rather than run or hide from, your voice of insecurity. When we begin turning toward our insecurity with more honesty and compassion rather than shame or avoidance, we often begin understanding what it’s trying to protect and what it may need from us underneath. I share more how to understand and work with our voice of insecurity in this article about our inner critic.

4. Learn to truly accept yourself.

Easier said than done, right? Learning to accept ourselves more fully is rarely a quick or linear process. But over time, as we repeatedly meet ourselves with more understanding, compassion, validation, honesty, and care (Steps 1-3), something inside often begins softening naturally.

And often, genuine security grows less from constantly trying to force ourselves to think, act, or be different, and more from gradually building a safer, kinder, more trusting relationship with ourselves from the inside out.

Along with that, finding and welcoming more secure relationships into your life… where you consistently have experiences with others who treat and see you in these loving ways too… will help your brain naturally shift toward more secure ways of seeing and relating to yourself. If insecurity can happen through experience, so can security.

If insecurity can happen through experience, so can security.

I often say to start where you are.

So if insecurity is present for you right now, begin there — not with shaming yourself for it, but with honest acknowledgment, curiosity, compassion, and a willingness to understand where it came from and what it’s been trying to protect.

Much of what I guide people through inside Happy from the Inside Out® and in my one-on-one work, by the way, revolves around this process of healing insecurity, understanding protective patterns, and building a more compassionate and secure relationship with ourselves from the inside out.

And if this reflection resonates with something tender or familiar in your own life, I hope it reminds you that insecurity is not proof that something is wrong with you. Often, it’s a reflection of what you’ve lived through — and something that can slowly heal through awareness, compassion, support, and a different relationship with yourself over time.

Note: This article was originally written several years ago and has been lightly updated to reflect my current work and offerings.