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I.M. Insecure 5 Apr 2021

Fortunately I am not locked up in a safe. Inside is little air to breathe and just a limited space to move. I do not live in a secured place. The disadvantage is that big wide world is full of risks.

Risk

Some days ago I wrote about cognitive disorders (see March, 31st). When I feel insecure, I tend to distort the reality. The risk that my fears will actually happen is usually small. I know it. And still the fears remain. What can I do?

Act

The first option is choosing the path of courage. I am going to face and test my unrealistic fear.
It is like jumping in deep water and then finding out that I can swim. I can decide to take by times a small risk and see what happens. It is learning to trust the world around and to enlarge my space of operation.

Write and Evaluate

When I struggle with events challenging my emotional feeling, I write down the event on a paper. I am as specific as possible. It is however not about details. As a second step I name the emotion I experience. Examples are angry, guilty, lonely, etc. Next for each emotion I write a specific statement what I am angry about, what I feel guilty about, what my lonely feeling is. And I evaluate the chance that my expression is accurate and correct. Then for each emotion I consider what cognitive distortion might apply. If I am afraid, perhaps I may realize that I am just predicting an unknown future. Then I write a more realistic estimation of what could happen. Then I make a new estimation about the accuracy or original first analysis (in %) and about the second analysis (again in %). Almost always the more realistic estimation of my fear will take away most of my insecurity.
It is excellent to perform such reflections on a regular basis.

Prayer

Holy Spirit, teach me about healthy thinking. Jesus, please redeem me from unrealistic insecurities.