The Confidence Coat: do your insecurities define you?

When you are born, you are faced with a choice. A wardrobe, of sorts, and in it – all the coats that you could wear in your life. Coats like love, grief, happiness, confidence, fear and so on. But, like with any clothes, you can't wear them all at once. So, you must choose which you wear.

We all know that the clothes you choose to wear define your fashion style. Same with feelings. The choices you make early on define what clothes you will wear in later life.
If you keep wearing a coat of fear, it becomes old and cozy – soon, your favorite item of clothing. Also, if you wear fear, your other coats get eaten by moths in the closet. And when you finally decide to wear your confidence coat, you find it's all ruined.

A friend of mine keeps complaining that she is fat, that she does not feel good in her body. She hates the idea of boys looking at her, for fear that they will see her cellulite, that they are laughing at her or are disgusted by her.
My friend is not fat. She's beautiful. Lovely features, pretty eyes, hair...And while she is neither a walking skeleton or a booty-popping Kardashian (the two images of perfection, apparently), she is by no means what you define as fat. In fact, I very much doubt that any of these boys laugh at her or ridicule her. From what she tells me, many seem to like her, so quite the opposite. See, it's all in her head.
All our insecurities are in our heads.

Personally, I think that it's her fear of rejection that makes her set up these invisible barriers. Of course he won't want to go out with me, because I'm fat.

False in reality, but true in her head. When we fear something – in this case, rejection – we cling on to any detail (imagined or otherwise) that might justify our fear. And adolescence and young adulthood is peak season for all these fears and insecurities.
There's always something wrong with young people: I'm too fat, I'm too skinny, my breasts are too small, my eyes are too close-together, I'm not interesting, I'm hard to love, I'm too hairy, my voice is funny, My acne makes me ugly, I'm not smart enough, my butt isn't big enough.

And this is normal. To a point. It's natural to have self-doubt and such fears. At any age, although it's more pronounced in young people, because we're just starting out in this world, we don't know if it will accept us or not.

Technically, it will, we know that. But we don't have the proof, we haven't tested that and it remains just a theory.

I think the issue is we haven't lived enough and experience enough to learn that rejection is just a part of life. It's normal, just as normal as fear is. I think that if we knew that, we wouldn't be so afraid. For example, I have this insecurity, this impression that I am hard to love. And I know it's not the case, in theory, that I have plenty of attributes and am, in general, a very nice person. But I still doubt the people who do love me, I have this feeling that I will disappoint them somehow, that they will see me for who I really am, and stop loving me. Absurd,I know, but nonetheless real. So, I question their love, probably trying to convince myself they don't really love me, so that I don't fall too hard if it does indeed turn out they don't. See, I fear this rejection, this failure, so I try to convince myself that this hard to love thing is justified, so I won't be as hurt or as taken by surprise when I am rejected or when I fail at something.

Insecurities: from normal to crippling

But you have to learn to go over those insecurities. You can't let your life be ruled by them. If I reject any relationship on the basis that I am unlovable, I'm only feeding the demon. Same with my friend, if she builds in her head the idea that she is fat and therefore not pretty, she will become (at least, to herself) that person.
She knows it's absurd. Still, she feeds the belief that she is fat and unlikable.

Change your mindset, change your life.

You can't allow these fears to run wild and become the leading figure in your life, because that allows them to take a whole lot of space in your existence, making the idea of getting friends, partners or jobs you desire seem remote.
Or rather, we can't, because I believe these fears and the fight with them start in childhood and a lot of them take place in youth. We must stomp these insecurities now, while they're still manageable. Otherwise, they just become larger and harder to kill.

You can't live without insecurities, because, as I said, they're natural. Everyone has them, at any stage in their life. The difference is in how we choose to handle them.
You must find that strength to recognize when your insecurities are taking over and pull yourself together, see that it's all a pile of bull, and that you are not the person you think you are.

You are you. There is no one that has the power to be you. And if you don't fight for yourself and love yourself, no one will.

Even when you feel at your worst, at your ugliest, fattest, dumbest self (then more than ever), you must find the ability to go up to the nice boy and make small talk or ask for that promotion or go out with your mates.

Fear (and insecurity) is a mean little coat that puts you on, not the other way around. But if it stays on...well, that's up to you. You have the choice to take it off and put on your confidence coat.
You can choose to be confident and live your life with and despite your insecurities.

So, to answer my own question, yes, your insecurities define you. But only if you let them.

Choose your coat wisely.

Thank you for reading,

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