Emotional Insecurity

Emotional insecurity is the hub that connects all of our instincts. When it goes unchecked, it creates erratic behavior, emotional hangovers, and a life driven by reaction rather than intention. Here’s how to understand it — and what to do about it.

The Four Elements of the Instincts

We’re looking at four elements of the instincts, not just three. There’s sex, security, and society — but within security is both material security and emotional security. We have to consider both of these instincts and how they operate. The feeling of all three together seems to have the mainline of connecting, and the hub represents our emotions.

What I’ve discovered in the spiritual world is this: erratic emotions become authorized — even though we’re not conscious of that authorization — and we find ourselves completely emotionally out of control. The result is an emotional hangover. And in the spiritual world, the source of that is blame. Somewhere in our thought and speech, we justify wrong behaviors or erratic emotions because we blame somebody else for causing them.

Removing Blame from the Emotional Equation

On an emotional level, if we’re removing blame from our speech and our thought, we take responsibility for our own emotions and for staying level with our Creator. At the same time, we must invest an immense amount of energy into emotional security.

Take the word “worry.” Worry is the first premise of emotional insecurity. Look at how much it infects your life. Worry creates stress, anxiety, disorders — and in a prolonged state, it causes self-pity, depression, and immense anger. Worry is a deadly, deadly attribute. The opposite of worry is belief, confidence, reassurance — these are all indicators of trust rather than fear. Similarly, the opposite of anger is peace and calm. These are the reverse sides of emotional insecurity.

The Credit and Debit System for Emotional Security

Here is a practical application: take the principles of emotional insecurity, find their counterparts, and build an absolute application around them. If we could recognize how much we worry — take that measurement — and realize what it would take to counter it with belief and confidence, we start to see a way forward. Think of it as credits and debits. You have a measuring system: when you notice emotional insecurity, feed the mechanisms that build security.

Just as we do a moral inventory on how we’ve hurt people or how situations have altered our lives, we must also take a moral inventory on our good qualities. Expound on the credits that have come from them — the good relationships, the good financial decisions, the ways you showed up. If you’re worried about finances, look at the times you were financially responsible. If you’re worried about relationships, look at the good attributes you bring to connection today.

Building the Track Record of Security

Emotional security doesn’t come from waiting. It comes as you live, as you do a fearless and searching moral inventory of yourself, see where you’ve gone wrong, and try to correct course. With that comes self-confidence, self-esteem, self-responsibility, and the determination to change for the better.

With that comes a track record — something you can count on. In the midst of recovery, you can do another inventory, and instead of looking at what’s wrong, look at what’s gone right. What have you done right? Whatever area of life is affected — sex, security, or society — do an inventory on the opposite realm. If you’re in financial distress, inventory how you’ve been financially manageable. Not how you fear you’ll end up on the street again.

These are the kinds of applications that allow us to start living with emotional security — striving for the supreme goal of walking in this world emotionally secure everywhere we go. I believe all of us can have this, if we start to recognize the importance of doing these assets-and-debits inventories. This is the beginning of finding the resource of emotional security.

Have fun,
Much love,
KC