Insecurities

So I've been thinking about insecurities for the past few weeks. I have yet to find a benefit to having some. It's like they're this mental handicap that we all carry around. They show up at the most critical times and can ruin things that we've put so much work and effort into. I know that most of mine tend to revolve around what other people think of me and how they view in various situations and circumstances. The odd part, is that simply having that insecurity tends to effect me enough to make it all the more probable that what I'm insecure about becomes all the more probable.

I've managed to get myself to a point where I don't worry all that much about other people's views of me and as a result, have been able to avoid a lot of problems. There is a girl that used to be on the dance team with me, who quit because of performance anxiety. She still practices with us, but doesn't do the performances because she would get too worried. We did a performance a few weeks back at the weekly Wed dance, and a lot of the others were really nervous because there were a lot of good dancers there, including several pros. The problem is that the nervouseness and worry about messing up only makes it that much more likely. So my solution is to do it to have fun and just roll with the mistakes. It works for dancing, it works for playing guitar, and other performance type stuff.

It shows up in relationships as well. I've watched people, to some degree myself as well, be perfectly fine with the relationship and the other person until feeling get more involved. Then, all of sudden it's "What if they don't like me as much as I like them?", "Where they checking out that other persons?", "Are they really busy or do tehy just not want to see me?" and various other idiotic things. I've long believed that one can tell when a girl really starts to fall for a guy, because she will all of a sudden become much more jealous, clingy, and just generally insecure. I'm sure guys do it as well, I just pay much less attention to them. But in both cases, those sort of behaviors make it all the more likely that the relationship will be ended by the other person.

I tend to be pretty good about coping with my own, but I'm really bad about dealing with other people's. Because they're typically irrationally based to begin with, I have a tough time helping others cope with them. I tend to take a "It's baseless, so get over it" approach, rather than simply accepting that even though the negative thoughts might not be based in reality, a good way to help is to give someone enough positives that are based in reality. It's a matter of overwhleming with positives rather ignoring the negatives. However, I suck at this, because without my own insecurities, I have trouble recognizing others. It's just one more thing to try and better.