Insecurities - What Are They, How Are They Formed & What To Do

All right, team, welcome back to the Mantalk Show. Connor Beaton here. Today, we're going to be talking about insecurities. We're going to be talking about what an insecurity is, why it exists, and how you can begin to overcome and deal with those insecurities out of the gates. I just want to say, as I prepped for this mini episode, I watched a whole bunch of videos and read a bunch of. Read a bunch of commentary about insecurities and how to deal with them. And I gotta say, there's just a tremendous amount of garbage.

There's just. It's like a hot steaming mess of bullshit when it comes to how to deal with insecurities. You know, I mean, it's. I won't get into it, and I won't necessarily get into some of the people that I read, you know, read and was trying to, like, look, look up at, like, what are the other people saying? Because that always interests me. And this was one of those topics where it was so.

Basic and so sort of dumb and so missing the mark. And so I'm going to take a bit of a different approach on this. So let's just start by defining what an insecurity is. Now, if you go and look up in the dictionary what it. What an insecurity is, it'll say something along the lines of an uncertainty or an anxiety about oneself, specifically a lack of confidence. Now, this is what most people would say, right? Most people would say an insecurity when you're insecure about your body or, you know, how well you perform in the bedroom sexually, or you're insecure, you know, about your capacities at work or with friends or whatever it is, right? Whatever you're insecure about. I don't know. I don't know what your insecurities are. It's all good. But that's what most people would say an insecurity is. I'm going to broaden the lens. Okay? Here's how I define an insecurity. An insecurity is anything that threatens your sense of belonging, and insecurity is anything that threatens your sense of belonging. Now, why is this important? It's important because from an evolutionary standpoint, we have evolved as human beings not to be solitary creatures that just live in a vacuum. We have actually evolved to be in a tribe, in a community, in a group of people. We've. We have specifically evolved to be relational creatures. And so our mind, our cognition, our bodies, our emotions, our psychology has all evolved, mirroring this, other people and being in relationship with other people. And so an insecurity is anything that threatens your capacity and your ability to belong in a group, in a culture, in a community, with women, with friends, with family, etc. And I think what's fascinating is that for a lot of us, when we start to look at our insecurities, we start to see a few things. So I'm going to talk about how insecurities are formed because I don't think a lot of people talk about this part. Insecurities are generally formed through a few ways. Number one, insecurities are formed when our sense of belonging growing up is threatened by people that we care about or want acceptance from. So if you had parents who were verbally abusive, who called you stupid, who, you know, said things like, what the hell is wrong with you? Or if you had parents who were very neglectful, right? Maybe they were workaholics or alcoholics or whatever it is, and they just neglected your needs and your wants and your desires or the social circle that you tried to fit into. At school, you were picked on and you were bullied for the way you looked or the way you talked or, you know, I remember when I was growing up, I had adhd. I could not focus. I was a fricking clown. And I really had trouble reading in front of the class because my ability to focus and how I would feel in those moments was very anxious. I would get super rattled up. My mind would go a million miles a minute, what are people thinking of me? And I would stutter and I couldn't read. And it was just. It was brutal. It was a brutal experience. And I got teased for a little bit when I was growing up. And so those types of things. And by the way, I do public speaking now all the time. I do this type of stuff. You can overcome your insecurities, right? This is the point of what I'm saying. Those types of things threaten our sense of belonging. And when our sense of belonging is threatened, it not only provokes an insecurity or creates an insecurity, because that's what we're talking about. It creates an insecurity. Because if our sense of belonging is threatened, that's life endangering, right? Because when you look at an evolutionary perspective, anytime that you were not going to belong in a tribe or with family, that was life endangering. Like the notion that if you were going to have to go out on your own, that all of a sudden you had no friends or no family to support you or protect you, you probably weren't going to last very long, right? You weren't going to do very well. And in our culture today, we all know the importance of relationship. And there's a lot of different caveats that we could put into that, but I think that's probably sufficient. So number one, insecurities are created when our sense of belonging is threatened, in our upbringing, in our family system or in our friend groups, when people are neglectful, when they abandon us, when they are verbally or emotionally or physically abusive. And number two, these insecurities can start to develop when our internal stories don't match external realities. So we can have a story that we're not good enough or not smart enough or not fast enough or strong enough or whatever it is that just starts to manifest based on our comparative analysis of the people that we are surrounded by within our culture. And so, you know, you could be that kid that's in school that does pretty well that that works his ass off and is looking at little Johnny sitting next to you who doesn't study, who dicks around and gets a all the time. And you're like, how come I'm not like that guy, right? Like, why am I not like that guy? Or you see the guy at work that is just like so charismatic and crushing it and getting the promotions and here you are busting your ass and you're like, why can I not get ahead? Those types of things, we start to self reference and we make it mean that there is something wrong with us internally. So we start to compare ourselves to other people around us and that starts to diminish our capacities. And then lastly, insecurities are formed when we lack competence, right? When we just lack skill, when we have lacked practice, when we lack any type of training in a certain area. And that creates an insecurity, right? Because things that you are not good at, things that you have not actually put effort and time into, are going to create an insecurity, plain and simple. So what do we do? How do we begin to overcome our insecurities? Well, number one, I would say that one of the most important things and one of the things that I do not hear enough people talking about out there is that you need to kill the idea that there is a quick fix to your insecurities internally and that your insecurities are a bad thing. Your insecurities are often a pathway towards a deeper sense of purpose, towards a deeper sense of meaning, towards a deeper sense of belonging either with, you know, a woman in a partnership or with friends or with family members or Whatever it is, it is a pathway towards something that will develop you and expand you as a human being. But we live in this pill happy hack culture that has brainwashed the majority of people into thinking that everything should be solvable in a very short and very brief amount of time. And so I see a lot of men who watch my videos who maybe, you know, I don't know if you're one of them or not. I'm not going to say anything, but I see a lot of guys that are out on the Internet looking for the, you know, kill off my insecurities, quick solution. And the reality is that that's the generally not the case. What I have seen with my own insecurities and the hundreds and the thousands of men that I've worked with is that moving through and overcoming your insecurities takes time. And it takes time because you need to get to the roots of it. You might find some quick fixes that'll prune the branches for you and make it look a little bit better. Right. Like, I think that that's what the pickup culture used to do. It would teach men these sort of hacks and these tricks that they could do and in order to get women, but they would still feel internally insecure. And then when they would get into a relationship with the woman that they had used all these hacks and tricks to get, all of a sudden the insecurities that they had been living with would start to come out and they couldn't maintain the relationship because it really wasn't true to who they were. Right. So anyway, we need to kill the idea that there's some quick fix and enjoy the process of facing and overcoming your insecurities. Next is we need to know that we cannot possibly affirm our way out of insecurities. You cannot possibly positively affirm your way out of an insecurity. I think that there's a lot of spiritual bypassing nonsense out on the Internet that is telling men and women that if they just, you know, alter their thinking and they cognitive behavioral therapy their way through it, you just cbt your way through it that suddenly you will be without any insecur. And I think that CBT and DBT and these types of things can be supportive. But if we don't get to the roots of what caused the insecurity and we don't get to the roots of starting to develop the skills that are causing us to feel insecure, I'll give you an example. I worked with a client who was almost 40 years old, and this man had only been in one relationship and with one woman, and he felt very, very insecure. He would go out on dates with women, they would get to like two or three dates or five or six dates, and he would start to feel very insecure and it would just all fall apart. Like the whole thing would just fall apart. And he said, why do I feel so insecure? Like, you know, how can I just get over this? And I said, well, of course you feel insecure. You just are lacking experience and skill and practice in, in spending time talking to women, being sexual with women, being in relationship with women. You just don't have the experience that is going to develop a deeper sense of confidence within your ability to talk, interact, love, be sexual with a partner. And so sometimes what we actually need is the practice we need to put in the labs. We need to do the work in order to develop the competency that just thinking about it, right, just changing your thoughts is not ultimately going to cut to the core of the insecurity. Lastly, I cannot stress this one enough. Start to pursue your fears. Start to pursue your fears. I think there's a lot of people that are trying to move people towards, you know, pursue success, pursue money, pursue these types of things. There's a lot of narrative that's out there that's saying that. But in reality, if you just start to pursue your fears, it will start to develop this confidence within you because you will have to confront your insecurities. You'll have to confront your insecurities of whatever it is, public speaking, heights, approaching, women, going on dates, et cetera. Like whatever your fears are, whatever your insecurities are, you will have to confront those things. And nothing is simultaneously more attractive to women and more feared by the masses than a man who is capable of facing what he is afraid of. And we live in this very interesting time where people are. And without getting sort of political about it, but we're living in this very interesting time where people are being very immersed in fear. And it's almost like we need to tiptoe around other people's insecurities and around other people's fears. And so if you can be someone who starts to pursue their fears actively and start to. Starts to pursue your insecurities actively and saying, okay.

I'm insecure about my body, it kind of feels fragile. I'm not really, I don't feel strong, those types of things. I don't feel super attractive. And you go, and you start at beginner level, you start to do Brazilian jiu jitsu. You start to work out, you start to do some type of martial arts, you start to use your body going hiking or rock climbing, whatever it is, and you start to practice facing that insecurity on a weekly or daily basis. Over time you're going to develop the competency and the confidence in yourself. And that insecurity will dramatically lessen because it cannot coexist in the face of competency and in the face of you practicing the thing that has been causing you to feel insecure. So move towards your fears, move towards your insecurities and start to see what happens. And lastly lastly, don't worry about self love. Focus in on self acceptance, self compassion and self mastery. The intersection between pursuing self mastery and allowing for self compassion to be present right when you screw up, when you get things wrong, there is some type of magic at that intersection. Because if you're just pursuing self mastery but you're expecting perfection, you're going to just beat the shit out of yourself and you'll continue to stay stuck, you'll continue to stay in this place of insecurity because nothing will ever be good enough. But on the other side, if you're just overly compassionate towards yourself and you're like it's okay, and you're constantly letting yourself off the hook, driving towards any type of competence and mastery and excellence is nearly impossible. And so we have to try and find this balance between being compassionate towards ourself for getting things wrong, for putting the effort and maybe not getting to where we want to be, but actually continuing to create progress, continuing to chase after the goal and the aim, and to work and to confront our fears. So wherever you're tuning into this, please let me know how this landed for you. Make sure to man it forward. Subscribe on whatever channel you are tuning into. And until next week, this is Connor Ben signing off.