Insecurity in Love?

How to move beyond insecurity towards love

Love is our greatest teacher on our life’s journey.  If we’ve been really hurt in the past, it’s easy for us to fall under the negative spell of the shadow side of our ego that tries to protect us from being hurt again by taking control and ruling our future relationships through fear and insecurity.

How does our insecurity show up in our relationships?

1/It insists that we have to be in control at every step along the way.  It wants to know everything that’s happening without any room for doubt and uncertainty.  Unfortunately, this can mean squeezing out the space in which magic or alchemy can take place or even on a far more mundane level it crushes the potential for spontaneity or surprise.

2/When in doubt, it insists we take the most negative interpretation of anything that happens.  If they are late, it’s because they don’t care.  If they don’t call us when they said they would, it’s because they are out with someone else.  If they seem distant or preoccupied, it’s because they are planning when to dump us (in which case, our insecurity might urge us to get in first and finish with them before they can end it with us!).

3/It encourages us to interpret anything nice that they say or do through the lens of an ulterior motive.  If they buy us flowers, they’re feeling guilty or trying to buy us off.  If they pay us a compliment, they don’t mean it; they’re just trying to get round us for their own ends.  In the end, it means they can’t put a foot right when they do something right and when they get it wrong it’s confirmation of every suspicious thought we ever had.

4/It doesn’t allow us to let the past die.  It constantly scans the present for anything that remotely resembles anything that echoes what has gone before and uses it to sound the alarm bells.  It can get to the point where we see signs and signals everywhere that we are about to get dropped in it again from a great height.  No one can live in a constant state of emergency.

Our insecurity means well, but it can actually act like the worst kind of saboteur, sinking our new relationships before they’ve had a chance to set sail.  That’s when our insecurity can crow and say that it was absolutely right, when in actual fact it just didn’t give anything new a chance.

So what’s the remedy?

Firstly, whoever you are and however you’ve been hurt, you have to accept that we’ve all gone through it.  I don’t know anyone who has never had their heart broken and I’ve certainly had my fair share of mammoth betrayals and losses that seemed devastating at the time.  That matters because it means that life hasn’t singled you out for harsh treatment; it’s all part and parcel of growing into our soul.

Secondly, remember that no matter what your situation, you are always connected to the whole.  The shadow side of the ego will insist that you’re alone but you’re not.  You’re part of everything and everyone and even if it’s all gone horribly wrong with one person there will be loads more who think you’re fabulous and amazing and you can still get to give and receive love with all sorts of people in your life.

Thirdly, you have to sift out what your intuition might be telling you and the messages that are coming from the shadow side of your ego or your insecurity.  The difference is that your intuition comes from a very deep place when you are still and quiet and you just feel or sense that someone isn’t being honest, or something more is going on that meets the eye, or that you need to take a bit more care, but it’s all based very much in the now.  In contrast, your insecurity weaves complex stories from elements of the past that play out on a mental level until you can become quite confused about what’s actually going on if your shadow ego really goes to war with your intuition.

Ultimately you have to rebuild your relationship to yourself.  When someone else hurts us, it can shatter our relationship to who we are.  Someone is unfaithful and we tell ourselves it’s because we’re too thin/too fat/too old/too young/not tall enough.  Someone walks out and we tell ourselves it’s because we’re boring/too clingy.   Actually, what anyone else does is rarely anything to do with us at all, but we use it to make a huge stick and beat ourselves with it until we can’t stand up any more.

The universe mirrors our internal world, so when we become our own lover, when we are appreciative of all of the wonderful and unique qualities that we have and treat ourselves like royalty, we often find that others will respond in the same way.  The paradox is that the more we love ourselves, and I mean true love rather than the narcissistic sort, the less we actually need from others and the more they are likely to give us as a result.

There is no such thing as love without risk, but as we become wise, the risks become fewer because we are more conscious.  Along with that, as we build healthier relationships to ourselves, we become less vulnerable to what anyone else may do and step more into our own power.

Love Michele