How To Help An Insecure Person? 6 Keys To Give You Support
As a state, insecurity is something we all feel from time to time and it is totally normal. Life is not a bed of roses and on many occasions obstacles appear on that path that make us not feel safe. The problem comes when this is a trait, a defined character of the person.
We all know someone who deep down is tremendously insecure. She may hide it by being very critical of others, or she may be so afraid of what they will say that she is constantly avoiding other human beings for fear of what they think of her.
Whether we are friends, family or even a partner, it hurts us to see how the insecure person suffers and, in many cases, makes others suffer. For this reason we are going to find out how to help an insecure person from the context of a friendship or a family or couple relationship understanding their suffering and also putting ourselves in their same shoes.
Tips to know how to help and support an insecure person
Everyone, at some point in their lives, has felt insecure. This is something totally normal since on more than one occasion it can happen that we live an experience that makes us question our abilities.
Whether it is a disappointment, a failure or a mistake, whatever has happened, it is normal for us to question our worth. However, It is also normal that we overcome it, learn from it and understand that in this life we cannot be perfect and sometimes things don’t go the way we wanted. No problem.
The problem is that there are people who constantly live thinking like this. They have a very negative perception of themselves and the world. They do not see themselves as capable people and fear that others will judge them or discover all the weaknesses they believe they have. Your insecurity is not something temporary, but a trait of your personality or a state that has settled for too long in your way of being, completely destroying your self-esteem.
Whether it is our partner, our friend or a family member, it hurts us to see how their insecurity prevents them from enjoying life, calling into question everything that they undoubtedly possess but do not know how to see. However, It often happens that we do not know how to help these types of people since their own insecurity acts as a barrier or even as a repellent, since some insecure people choose to avoid social contact, fearing that they will be harmed.
Other insecure people are not docile, quite the opposite. They are super critical of what we do and don’t do, making jokes, joking comments… It seems that they are trying to destroy our self-esteem, turning us into insecure people. Since they do not know how to manage their insecurity, they choose to look for the complexes of others, those small defects that everyone has to try to raise their own self-esteem a little. The problem is that this doesn’t work and actually becomes just another dysfunctional way of managing her self-doubt.
Whether they engage in withdrawal from people or toxic behavior, it is possible to help overcome a loved one’s insecurities. In the following lines we will see how to help an insecure person, especially by putting into practice our empathy, patience and ability to identify and manage the strengths and weaknesses of the person we are trying to help
1. Practice empathy
Each person has their good things and their bad things and their behavior can be largely explained by their experiences. Not all of us have grown up in the same environment nor have our parents exercised the same type of parenting. The type of environment in which we are raised during the first years of life greatly shapes our personality and it is during this period that the trait of insecurity can emerge.
If we want to help an insecure person to have greater self-confidence The first thing we must do is understand where that personality comes from We should not constantly remind her of the problems she may have because of her insecurity, since she already knows them firsthand, but rather understand what has caused it.
We must keep in mind that insecure people are very aware of what others tell them. Depending on how we say it, he or she may get the wrong idea about what we think of him or her. For this reason we must be careful with how we tell them things. We must be empathetic, trying to understand what it must be like to be in their shoes.
Insecure people are very critical of themselves and, blinded by a brutal negativity bias, they are unable to see all the strengths they possess on their own. For this reason our task will be to highlight its qualities. By making him aware of all the good things he has we can help build a little security and self-confidence
This task is really easy if the person we are helping is our friend or partner, since it would not make much sense to continue by their side if we were unable to find anything good for them.
In fact, it is even possible that we know talents and abilities of that person that we have never told him or her because they are so apparently obvious that we trusted that he or she already knew them, something that if we tell him or her it may even be a pleasant surprise for him or her.
3. Make him see that nobody is perfect
Perfectionism is a common trait in these people, that is, being obsessed with doing everything as well as possible thinking that if they don’t get it, they aren’t worth it. The problem is that they never achieve it and they become frustrated, in addition to the fact that their self-esteem sinks even more than it already was. It is normal that they do not achieve it, not because they are not worth it, but because perfection does not exist.
We must make them understand that neither we nor they nor anyone else is perfect, and that’s okay. The ideal is to get him to see the balance between his strengths which, without a doubt, has, and its weaknesses, weak points that are not unchangeable.
By seeing the good things you have, you will be able to build self-esteem based on real things, strengths that you have. On the other hand, knowing what weaknesses you have and what things you can improve and what you cannot will give you a lot of mental health, since you will not waste energy unnecessarily on changing what cannot be changed.
4. Motivate her
Motivating insecure people is one of the best ways to increase their self-esteem and give them confidence and security. Words of encouragement are good medicine for those who have had very unpleasant experiences which have made them seriously question their worth. In addition to telling them their strengths, we can motivate them to accomplish what they set out to do, making them see that we trust them to achieve their goals.
By knowing your insecurities we do not mean having to put up with complaints about your complexes and problems, but asking you to honestly express to us what worries you, what your feelings are and which people you think are criticizing you or not. They look at him with good eyes.
The idea is to find out what exactly worries them and make them understand, by analyzing what they tell us, what is real in their concerns. Many times they will tell us that they think that others are talking about them, but what really happens is that in their minds they have created that idea, which they believe without evidence. It is, in effect, a paranoid idea which you will only be able to understand is not true if another person makes it clear to you
6. Be patient
Patience is the mother of science, and also of a good friend. Sometimes the insecure person we are trying to help will begin to complain about what they think is happening, releasing a whole list of conspiracy thoughts about what is happening around them or what others think. It may happen that that person defends himself by criticizing us, since that is his defense mechanism.
Whatever the way the person we are trying to help acts, we must be patient She may make harmful comments to us, or she may even begin to say that she’s really not worth it, that she’s useless, and that there’s no point in trying to make her see the good things because she doesn’t believe she has them. It is true that all this is very tiring, but sooner or later we will be able to enter their mind and stop this entire cycle of mistrust, fears and insecurities.
