There is no way to measure the damages of insecurity. It is much easier for psychiatrists to describe the causes, if not the root cause, of this afflction, which probably affects everyone. Some mask this by acts of bravado or machoism others by retreating into various phobias to avoid any comment or challenge.
In my youth, I waited for any comment from my father, good or bad, it was the attention I craved. The bad ones were far more frequent, painful, and long-lasting:
"You couldn't be father to a cat",
As a boy of 11 and up to age 15 I raged against him and the world through vandalism, theft, breaking and entering homes and businesses and finally to grand theft auto which led to my final arrest. My unknown goal was to make him show up at any event in which I was a participant. He had missed every football game, baseball game, swimming event, school event and social occasions like birthdays. However, I knew he would have to come to the police station or courth to bail me ut and take me home. He even missed these in the early years and left me there as punishment.
On my 16th birthday, when he visited me on a youth detention work farm, "You are the reason your mother and I are getting divorced". It was not, apparently, his 16 years of alcoholism and abuse.
At the beginning of the Vietnam war, in 1967, when I asked him for $130 for one semester of college; "Join the army, see the world, you are not college material"
I survived these and succeeded in life, college, and business, surpassing his expectations and easily exceeding his own accomplishments. However, I was always and am now at 72 years ols, scarred and damaged by feelings of insecurity.
When I married into a wonderful, loving, caring family by marrying their daughter, an amazing, beautiful blonde beauty of my dreams, I felt that every day was a gift and that my time with them would be short. I was waiting for them to "find me out" and ask me to leave. In marriage to Nelle I felt the same way and protected myself by never fully opening up to her, traveling to avoid conflct or discovery, and always keeping one foot out the door.
That was almost 50 years ago. Her parents, who I loved more than my own, are dead. Nelle is still with me and apparently loves me enough to endure this and even more, to have helped me succeed beyond my own beliefs and insecurities.
Without Nelle I may have fallen into the pit of insecurity, misery, and self-loathing that comes with letting insecurity win as you come to believe all the bad things that people said or thought about you.
