7 Ways to Feel More Secure

First off what does it mean to feel insecure? Sure we've all heard that word before, but often I think words get misused and that people have different ways of explaining feeling words, so here is how I define insecure: Feeling fear or anxiety about not being good enough, or that you’re not going to get what you want, or that you will be abandoned, this may cause a racing mind and heart, sweating, feelings of uncertainty or dread. 

Now with that understanding here are 7 ways to feel more secure:

1. Feel your feelings. People try to push insecurities down or to forget them or ignore them. However, there is tremendous opportunity to grow from them, by feeling the uncomfortable feelings and processing them you can deal with them head on, and grow from them. Test out just how real the fears are or if you are simply holding yourself back.

2. Keep a gratitude journal. Insecurities have less power when people understand both their strengths and weaknesses work together to make them unique. Keep a long of what your strengths are, what you feel adds to your life, and what you are grateful for. 

3. Stop comparing yourself to others. From a distance, other people might seem happier, more successful, thinner or wealthier. But often, that is just how it looks. You never truly know what someone else is going through unless they open their whole life to you, its like the old saying "don't judge a book by its cover", what people put out their is typically just a representative of what their real life is.

4. Live in the now. Insecurities often arise when people live in the future or the past. They worry that new things won't turn out positive or that the past will repeat itself. What if you just simply focused on right now, in this moment and lived life as though all you had was this moment?

5. Share your feelings. Often times when we feel insecure we keep it to ourselves, this can very easily keep us stuck. By sharing our emotions with a trusted person we can get the release of letting some of the emotion go, support from someone else, and possibly and objective look on the situation. 

6. Practice doing what you know. If we build on our strengths they can often translate to helping us fight our insecurities. For example if you are really fantastic at fixing things around the house, then practice that, feeling the strength and accomplishment from performing that task, all of those feelings can thing get stored in your mental strength tool box. Then when it comes to the time to give a public speech, all the strength you built up in your mental tool box can get used in to fuel you through what scares you.

7.  Avoid people that make you feel small. You have to protect yourself. That should be your first priority, you are the first priority to you. If you surround yourself with people that empower, encourage and inspire you, then your life will feel more full, safe, and secure. 

What parents should be doing to teach their kids/teens to feel good about their bodies?!?

Limit what you can from your daughter’s/son's exposure to the media and popular culture when they are young. This is valuable because it will allow them to develop their creativity, imagination and their own ideas from experiencing relationships and first hand experiences. Of course as they grow, media messages will start to get in, so having rules and routines from the start can help them control their own experiences as they grow and mature. As we all know there is helpful and healthy messages to take in, but there is also so many unhelpful and unhealthy messages out their, and having them be early and skeptical about some message will help them be informed consumers. 

Help them process the messages in the media. Often times there is such a limited focus in the media, try to help them avoid the narrow focus on appearance and consumerism that often dominates the media. By helping your daughter/son process the messages they see on the screen and develop their own ideas about them, you can prepare them to better resist the media’s pervasive stereotypes, and privileges that are displayed all throughout the media. Sit and have a conversation that is open and honest about your experiencing consuming media, and ask them to do the same. 

Avoid making negative comments about your own body. When adults make comments about their own body, children often feel like they most join in, even if it doesn't make much sense to them. When the conversation about dinner starts off with "I ate too much at lunch, I'm only going to have a salad for dinner, so I can fit into that dress I bought for the cruise", your kid begins to want to imitate that, just as they have learned just about everything else for you. As a teen it does take on a life of its own, and they will either reject that message completely (which can also be unhealthy) or follow that message exactly (which again can also be unhealthy). Its best to take a neutral stance about food, not labeling them as "good" or "bad", as well as teach your children to eat when they are hungry and stop eating when full. 

Avoid commenting on other peoples weight loss or weight gain. A lot of parents congratulate kids on losing weight or even find themselves saying things like “That outfit looks great on you – so slimming!” But all this does is remind kids/teens that they are more loveable and valued when skinny. If a child really does have a weight related health issue, addressing that with a trained health professional will be a lot more effective that reinforcing the inaccurate message that losing weight is a cure-all for everything from illness to social problems that kids/teens already get every day in the rest of their lives.

Teach children to take a holistic approach to their health and happiness. Often times parents can be overly focused on one aspect of their kids/teens life, for example the parents who get really jazzed about their kids sports, or their kids grades or their kids friendships, or their kids body shape. Just like you as a parent that wears the variety of hats of mom, career women, stay at home mom, coach, wife, teacher, nurse, etc. your kid/teen offers all types of those things too. For example, lets say you really want your teen to get into the best college, so you focus in on their grades to the point that you talk about them at least 3-5 times a week, or you ask to talk to their teachers, or you simply primary reward them with praise when they do well in school. This can lead a child to become so focused on pleasing you and the expectations that have been set, and ignore other strengths they have, like being a good friend, or acting in a school play or just being a teen. I say this all, to promote their be balance in a kids life, focus on mental health, academic success, their happiness, their relationships, their physical health and all things in between. If you do this as they grow they will be more resilient as adults and things will take care of themselves, so stop putting so much pressure on yourself and on them. 

Teach Kids That Weight Gain and Changes to Body Shape Are a Needed and Expected Part of Getting Older. For a lot of kids, the changes of puberty are rough. Bodies can morph from something familiar to something foreign seemingly overnight. Often, that means that adolescents develop more visible body fat, and girls, in particular, may develop breasts and see their hips, butts, thighs, and bellies grow. But this is not a problem. It is a just sign that someone is growing up. Kids should be reminded that we need fat on our bodies. It’s crucial for brain development, for menstruation, and to keep us warm – just to name a few basics. 

If you want to learn more on this connect with Stephanie Konter-O'Hara, LPC at the Contact page

Yoga can Heal

Yoga helped me learn to love my body for the first time. After years of struggling with loving my body I finally tried yoga, and did it even when it was uncomfortable. I had always hated on yoga, for reason such as "its not a real workout", "its too slow pace", "only yuppies or hippies practice yoga", and finally "I don't burn enough calories during yoga, its a waste of time". 

For many years I was an avid runner, or perhaps an addicted runner that wouldn't let up. I started running in high school as a means to fit in and loose weight. Running in fact help me accomplish both goals, so my logic was that if I run more, run before practice, stay late at practice, run everyday, and so on that my goals would be exponentially achieved. And that worked, for awhile, and even when it didn't I kept trying to make it work, because after all it worked before. In this way, I was just like an addict, chasing that first "high" that I had gained from running.

There is a lot of "story" in between this point in time and to where I began to love yoga, so for time sake I'll fast forward the time line to then. 

So I start practicing yoga because my therapist at the time stated that it would be a great practice in mindfulness. With time, yoga taught me to create space for me to feel my feelings, to treat my body as a vessel of love rather than an enemy to despise. I went to classes that focused on the breath work and had no mention of "six-pack abs". I felt the connection and safety I needed to in that time—I was vulnerable, but supported and I loved it. I learned about the Sutras and Tapas and felt a spiritual connection that I have cut myself away from during the obsession with food and my body shape. 

Healthy mind and exercise collided for me when I began yoga and I am so grateful for my practice. So much in fact that I became a yoga teacher myself to help give back the connect and safety I felt to others. 

Intentionally Seeking Balance

Recently I had an accident that resulted in a surgery, and weeks of pain. In the beginning of this journey I had thoughts of "why me", and "Oh my, my body is not functioning the way it always has". These among other thoughts inline with these influenced me to feel a higher level of anxiety than I typically face on a daily basis. I was scared of the pain, the surgery, of my body never being the same, I was frustrated that I had to ask for help to do simple things like getting dressed and doing my hair. 

Suddenly there was a shift in perception, and no I didn't just become grateful or happy overnight, nor did humility really find me in a way that changed my gut reaction to asking for help. What did shift was, that I started to see this incident as a message to slow down. As an over-achiever and a "worrier" I go 80 mph almost all the time, but this pain has slowed me to about 45 mph, its helped my realize that I have people that will bend over backwards to help, and slowing down is okay. In fact its more than okay its what needed in order to have a balanced life.

What is most upsetting is that, I've done this before, gone 80 mph and wiped out from it. Hopefully this time I will hopefully learn and make an intentional choice to continue to seek balance and slow down in all areas of my life  

Atychiphobia

The fear of failure.

Or as I have deemed it, persistent fear of messing it all up. 

Fear, is as much, if not precisely the same as anxiety. The fear of failure however is quiet specific in its hold on a person. It will strike only when success is the primary goal. However success can mean just about anything; successful relationship, successful career, success in raising children, success in finances, success at being popular. So this fear leads you to have no choice, except to be PERFECT.
Perfectionism, the constant sneaking feeling that what you’ve done is just never quiet enough. Spinning your wheels to run faster, work longer, climb higher, be something more than what you are, “I mean come on, clearly what and who you are clearly isn’t anything decent” said the voice of shame.
We say things to ourselves that we’d never say out loud to another person because, well we’d just be a bully. We bully ourselves into many things, we shame, and guilt ourselves into doing things that are for…. Who? Ourselves, our partners, our parents, our peers… 

For example right now, I am attempting to write a personal statement. I’ve probably have edited it about 20 times, have had my brother edit it 5, and well I still think its not ready to be submitted. The pressure and stakes are too high to not be diligent, I tell myself. Because this statement will be read over in 5 minutes by the admissions board, and thats all the time I have to impress them initially. Then again, its only worth 5 minutes of their time.
What is a girl to do?

The only solace I can conjure at this moment is, I can just keep trying and to shut down my inner bully with statements like “I’m doing the best I can” (even if I have to mumble it to myself thousands of times).