Insecurity
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6 November 2011 @ 18:32
I've been with my boyfriend for nearly 9 months now. Although I liked him for 2 years before we got together. Anyway we're really well suited but the problem is I seem to just go on at him for no reason. Of course I trust him, but I don't trust other people and he constantly tells me there's nobody else for him and how he wants us to get a place together when we're a bit older, get married etc etc.. I am so in love with him and cannot face losing him because of my insecurity because it's making us have arguments that are so pointless and I just need advice on how to get over this because I 100% want to spend the rest of my life with him.
This was of help to 100% of people
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It can be quite difficult to overcome a deeply ingrained sense of insecurity.
Do you know why you feel this way?
It can go back to difficulties with parental relationships, being let down by a lover, or it can be due to being a rather anxious person who is always looking for the next thing to go wrong in their life.
To be frank, it's often easier to learn to manage such feelings, than to try and get rid of them completely.
One way of learning to manage such feelings is to learn to identify the thoughts that tend to trigger the feelings.
For example, if your boyfriend is late home, do you have thoughts suggesting that he might be chatting with another girl? Does that lead to thinking that he's interested in her for more than just friendship? Does that then make you feel jealous? Do you then start to feel that you may not be as attractive as the (imaginary) other girl? Do you then start to feel angry with him for "making" you feel like this?
So by the time he gets home, possibly having missed the bus, you have psychologically beaten yourself up, and you are ready to have a right go at him?
It can take time and quite a bit of perseverance, but it is possible to change such thoughts.
It’s also necessary to “own” your own thoughts, and not to blame someone else for them, i.e. if the worry is in your head, then it’s not fair to hold someone else responsible for them – this assumes of course that they haven’t given you just cause to doubt them.
It is important to have some idea of why you think this way in the first place. If your b/f has recently been unfaithful, then it wouldn’t be difficult to understand why such thoughts occurred.
However, if your b/f is a solid, reliable and faithful partner, then it might be that you are putting such thoughts and feelings on to him from a previous relationship in which you were let down – could be a previous lover, or a parent, or anyone whom you trusted a lot, and then they let you down in some way, or at least you feel they did.
If this is the case, then one way of managing such thoughts is to remind yourself that your current partner is not this other person, and then to say to yourself STOP, which with practice, can be one way of cutting short the negative thoughts that give rise to the feelings of insecurity and anxiety. Having cut short the usual lead into negative thought patterns, you then train yourself to refocus on something positive, such as some of the nice things that your partner has done; or maybe you recall happy times spent together; etc, etc.
At first you will find there is a strong pull towards falling back into well-established negative thinking patterns, and you will have to work at resisting such tendencies.
Some people feel very uneasy about thinking positively because they feel they will get caught out, i.e. one day they will be happily thinking positively, and something will go terribly wrong. In fact, some people tell themselves that if they expect the worst to happen, then there is less chance of it becoming a reality. Then of course they can also say that if the worst does happen, they are ready for it.
No one of course can guarantee that people who tend to think positively won’t get “caught out” one day. However, one can ask whether a lifetime of self-doubt and torture is a price worth paying to ensure that someone never gets “caught out”?
It’s comparable to driving a car and continually telling yourself that you will have an accident within the next few minutes! The reality is that rather than “being prepared”, you may well turn a worry into a reality through being an anxious driver.
In a similar way, being constantly suspicious of a faithful partner can wreck a relationship. Which even when people realise what is happening, can reinforce, in an irrational way, the feeling that they were right all along. The reality being that the suspicion and mistrust has been turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If you think that you might like to try the above approach, then googling with :“Cognitive therapy”; “Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), or Rational Emotive Therapy, will find various websites and books on the subject.
Finally, I should mention that sometimes such negative thought patterns can be a symptom of depression, and it’s worth checking this out before trying to sort out matters on your own. The above approaches are effective in the treatment of depression, but if attempted on a DIY basis, it is possible to make things worse when the problem is clinical depression.
Hope this is useful to you, take care - Skywalker
I found the article below helpful when I had feelings of insecurity. What do you think?
Just click on the address below
http://thecoupleconnection.net/articles/affairs-and-jealousy-the-green-eyed-monster