RE: Insecurities & Selfishness

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RE: Insecurities & Selfishness - 7/15/2007 5:29:34 AM

eyesopened

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Insecurity IS "selfish" in that it means one's focus is on themselves, directed inward, instead of focus and direction being outward.

The best way i know to handle my insecurities it to remind myself that it's not up to me to decide if i am "good enough". Sometimes that's a mantra i need to chant over and over again.

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RE: Insecurities & Selfishness - 7/15/2007 7:57:11 AM

velvetears

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No human being escapes life insecurity free. The media targets our insecurities every day and does quite well with this marketing technique making millions of dollars.

i think part of the bonding process in developing a relationship with someone is opening up and discovering each others insecurities, becoming vulnerable to that person. If someone has an insecurity and i can help them feel better, why not do that and vice versa? Doing this can only create more trust and security in each other. i think an insecurity beomes selfish when a person uses it as a means to control the other person or manipulate them in some way. When that person uses their insecurity to try to get constant reaffirmation instead of focusing on "doing" what needs to be done to feel good about themselves. It's very selfish to put a person in this position. On the one hand if they love you they will probably try, and when they finally realize what's happening they will begin to resent you for the selfishness they finally see. Then when they refuse and stop, maybe even going so far as backing away from the relationship the insecure person can sit back and cry - See i knew it, you never really blah blah blah.

On the flip side of the coin i think people use other's insecurities to their advantage by taking advantage of them. It's easy to be called on exploiting an obvious insecurity, but if someone really gets into your head and finds your other well hidden insecurities and uses them to their advantage, that can be crushing. It's like being run over, never seeing the car coming. The worste form of manipulation in my opinion.

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RE: Insecurities & Selfishness - 7/15/2007 11:45:33 AM

Faramir

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quote:

ORIGINAL: LuckyAlbatross
I don't think insecurity = selfish, or that selfish = insecurity OR that selfish necessarily = bad/wrong

It's more when it keeps you from being yourself, where you get too wrapped up in the fear to be who you are.

The distinction I would make is between feelings, which are not chosen, and a practice of character which inculcates certain feelings, which is a choice. I'm coming from the Aristotelian understanding in this: we have no direct control over our feelings. One cannot choose to feel angry, scared, insecure, etc. However, we can choose a practice--a habit--of vice or virtue that inculcates a certain character that will lead to more or less of a given feeling.

Let's say I was so abused as a child I left home at age 16, and in response to my trauma I had strong propensity towards anger and outburts of temper and violence. That would not have been my choice, and I could no more "chose" not to feel angry in a given situation that corresponded to my psychology than I could sprout wings and fly to the moon.

What I could choose is over my life a course that led to a character less prone to those feelings, choices that led to health and continence in anger, or a habit of vice that made me the kind of man more and more prone to rage and incontinence in anger.

The insecure person, maybe someone shit on and undermined from an early age by one or both parents, who has been in a sense crippled in their psychological construct, can't help that insecurity. There is no vice in that person's condition. Where we might find selfishness (I would use the word "self-indulgence") is in a choice to encourage and develop that insecurity, to wallow in it.

We don't choose the hand we are dealt with--we do choose how to play the game.

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Post #: 43