Insecurity

Abandonment destroys a child's sense of safety. That’s why today, it’s so difficult for you to trust yourself, others, and life in general — and why making decisions might feel impossible.

Activity 1 - Reflexion on the concept of safety

Objective : Defining your notion of safety and fears

I invite you to answer the following questions as honestly as possible and take at least 3 minutes to answer each question before moving on to the next.

Journal prompt : 

1. Given your current situation, what makes you feel safe?

2. What would you need to feel fully safe?

3. What are your fears?

4. What do you feel when naming your fears?

I ask you these questions because many of us have a distorted notion of safety, defined by external factors. Additionally, not everyone is used to looking inward and truly asking themselves, "Do I feel safe right now?".

When it comes to fears, it can be easy to identify physical fears such as those of spiders, snakes, darkness, etc. But when we talk about more subtle and emotional fears related to identity and relationships, it’s not always as obvious. Among these fears are the fear of abandonment, rejection, humiliation, loneliness, and attachment.

Many of us define safety in terms of job stability, income, home ownership—essentially, anything related to material possessions. While these aspects provide comfort in life and create an illusion of safety, they cannot represent true safety, as it cannot depend on external factors.

True safety always comes from within.

You could be a wealthy millionaire, with all the comforts you need in life, yet still feel an emptiness inside. There is nothing external that can provide what you truly need.

To restore a sense of safety, our nervous system establishes what are called coping mechanisms. Coping mechanisms refer to what you do when you don't feel well, in response to the symptoms you experience. They are the actions you take to regulate your emotions and your nervous system.

Unfortunately, these mechanisms are often destructive because they emerge from a state of fear. Among them, but not limited to, we find: alcohol or substance abuse; addictions; violence; compensation through food, work, or exercise; dissociation; fictive thoughts; overattachment to the future and outcomes, as well as to those around us.

However, the sense of safety provided by coping mechanisms and thus by external factors is created by the ego and constitutes an illusion that is not stable over time. These mechanisms only provide temporary relief, which is why you may then feel guilty, ashamed and always wanting more.

What creates this lack of safety? 

Activity 2 – Making connections between the insecurity you’re experiencing and your past

Objective : Identify how the lack of safety influences your life and how it has been shaped by your abandonment wound.

Journal prompt :

1.  In what areas of your life are you experiencing a lack of safety?
   a) In your relationships
   b) When being alone
   c) Various fears/phobias such as agoraphobia (name them)
   d) When making decisions or taking action
   e) Stepping out of your comfort zone
   f) Speaking in public
   g) Expressing your feelings and emotions
   h) Other (please specify)

2.  How does it show up for you?
   a) Lack of trust in yourself and others
   b) Inability to build and nurture long-term relationships
   c) Self-isolation
   d) Anxiety
   e) Intense need for control
   f) Constant need for reassurance
   g) Inability to do things on your own

   h) Inability to make choices for yourself
   i) Feeling stuck in your body
   j) Other (please specify)

3. What current life situations trigger these feelings of insecurity ? 

4. Take a moment to reflect on how this might be related to the abandonment you once experienced, and write about it.

Any traumatic experiences provoke a lack of safety, especially during childhood. A lack of love, attention, validation, or any kind of abuse all lead to feelings of insecurity.

Abandonment ultimately leads to a lack of safety.

Abandonment destroys a child's sense of safety. Simply because, as children, our sense of safety primarily relies on our parents and the adults around us whom we trust. They are our anchors until we grow up and become our own anchors. So when one of these images disappears or has never been present, our sense of safety goes with it. We then grow up in fear, without a pillar, and unconsciously develop the coping mechanisms to restore safety within us.

This lack of safety will then be felt in various aspects of their life, including in relationships. A child who didn’t grow up with loving parents and never received the attention they needed won’t be able to feel safe in their future relationships because they never learned how to love and be loved.

Love is unknown to them, and what is unknown feels unsafe.

But how does this show up in someone’s life?

A person who was abandoned will lack trust in themselves, others, and life in general. They feel insecure in their relationships and constantly seek reassurance to feel safe. This insecurity can make it difficult to build and nurture long-term connections and, unfortunately, often pushes them to sabotage those relationships.

Since they don’t trust themselves, making decisions may feel impossible. Rather than being the actor of their own life and taking aligned actions for themselves, they end up enduring and seeking comfort in others’ choices and opinions, which prevents them from speaking their truth.

At the end of the day, this will provoke intense frustration, resentment, and a loss of joy in life.

Someone who feels insecure will always seek comfort and familiarity. Anything that pushes them out of their comfort zone will seem like the worst thing. In this sense, it’s very common for someone suffering from the abandonment wound to keep attracting experiences and people that reflect what they’ve always known and grown up with: anxiety, fear, sadness, and sometimes more abandonment. That’s why many of them end up stuck in unhealthy situations.

Know one thing: your nervous system will always crave what is familiar, not what is healthy.

Thus, joy, love, and peace will never feel safe to someone who was abandoned because they are not familiar. Healing is not just about letting go of old emotions or working on the “bad” ones. Healing also means learning to open ourselves to joy, love, and all those beautiful feelings—while feeling safe enough to welcome them.

Speaking of emotions… when someone doesn’t feel safe within themselves or in their environment, they ultimately don’t feel safe sharing or expressing their emotions. So, they repress everything inside, eventually creating blockages that make them feel stuck in their body.

Activity 3 - Identification of your coping mechanisms 

Objective - Defining what you do to recall a sense of safety.

Journal prompt : Think about a moment when you didn’t feel your best. Maybe you were overwhelmed with anxiety, you felt scared or frustrated. Write about it. How did you feel? What made you feel that way? What did you do to cope with these feelings? 

What you do to cope with your emotions constitutes your coping mechanisms, which are used to recall a sense of safety within you. Notice whether you compensate with external factors or if you return to yourself.

As I explained earlier, the automatic and unconscious response to feeling insecure is to seek comfort in external factors to regain a sense of safety.

In abandonment scenarios, it’s very common to become overly attached to material possessions, but also to people. We actually wait for something—or someone—to fill the void within us.

That’s how many of us develop emotional dependency, which means relying on someone else to feel good, safe, and loved. We wait for a person to give us what we lacked as a child and restore that sense of safety within. At the end of the day, we expect someone to save us—but the truth is:

Nothing and no one can save us but ourselves.

I’ve been there too. Emotional dependency is a huge part of my own journey.

Unfortunately, depending on external factors will always end up being ineffective and eventually intensify feelings of insecurity.

Self-isolation is also a mechanism commonly used in abandonment scenarios because it helps avoid experiencing another abandonment. It’s about avoiding connection to stay safe. However, even if it might seem like the right decision at first, we are human beings—we need connection to grow and feel fulfilled. So, in the end, preventing ourselves from nurturing relationships only deepens feelings of loneliness and abandonment, which ultimately increases our sense of insecurity.

What emotions did this identification bring out in you?

Breathe, ground yourself, fully feel these emotions, and let your body express them intuitively.

All our patterns arise from a space of insecurity. Reconnecting to our true inner safety is therefore a crucial step in healing, and I would even say it is the foundation.

I’ve been there myself and experienced many coping mechanisms, including substance abuse, self-inflicted violence, fictive thoughts, sickly attachment, emotional dependency, the constant quest of perfection, and more.

I mention this so that you know you are not alone and that there is nothing wrong with you. Your mechanisms are simply, at this moment, the best options you know to feel better. But I can also assure you, with certainty, that they do not define you and are not set-in stone. I can promise you this with my eyes closed because I have experienced it; it is possible to regain your true inner safety.

It is a learning process, a return to yourself.

I am still learning today, and I won’t say that everything is perfect. However, I do my best and have replaced my unhealthy coping mechanisms with gentler, healthier methods. You can do this too, and if you’ve read this far, it’s because you are ready. I believe in you.