So Insecure

Lack of secure attachment in the formative years of a person's life can significantly impact their ability to relate effectively to another. In this episode, Sam Bailey discusses the importance of recognizing insecurities in ourselves and others. Once we understand how the environment shapes us, we will be better equipped to navigate conversations and situations with a better understanding. 

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Hello, welcome back to Once I Knew a Girl. I am your host, Sam Bailey, and I appreciate you for joining today. And I know it's been a while, but I'm excited to be back doing this podcast, finishing up these episodes, and hopefully following that, putting out a book. So first of all, I just want to say to all those who were following me consistently and regularly that I'm sorry you had to wait so long, but sometimes you got to re-up, regroup, Get back on it and finish this out. I think these conversations are so very important to have. So if you have not done so, I want to let you know you can go back and check out all of the prior episodes. There are about nine episodes. And once I knew a girl. to catch you up if this is your first episode, was originally going to be aimed at men or young men talking about navigating the complexities of relationships. But as it's evolving, it's going to be a conversation that all of us know someone. And for ladies as well, I think our aim is to bring insight into how we think as men. And I know in A world or society today where there are lines that are blurred, I still believe, call me old-fashioned, traditionalist or whatever, I still believe that there are some things that are innate to men and innate to women. And there are some things probably culturally that norms, expectations that society places on us. Some of the things I think are true are undervalued and some are overemphasized. But the conversations need to keep going. Again, to remind you, this podcast is... is subjective in nature, which means that I'm coming from a male's point of view, but open to the female persuasion as well. So today I want to talk about a girl. Once I knew a girl who seemed too much too soon. And there's a word that I'm thinking about, exposure. We don't often realize how crucial the developmental years are to a person's mental wellbeing in life overall. I'm an environmentalist. In other words, I believe that a person's environment goes a long way in the shaping who they are. We are the product of our environment, whether it be good or bad. We often have the option to choose whether or not we come from a good family, and want to continue to carry on what we know and what we've learned, or we can rebel against that and do our own thing and discover some things for ourselves. That option is always there. Or I've seen people who come from troubled families and they have made a conscious choice in their life to break some of the generational curses or generational cycles in their families' lives and choose a different path for their family. So it can go either way. There are some people come from bad family structures and never break from that. So there's a lot of options when you talk about developing who you are. And if you ever met a girl or a person who's seen too much too soon, you'll find yourself constantly trying to figure out what's wrong. I know that seems like that's on every episode, right? What's wrong with this person? But I mean, it's odd things like trust, right? So we're talking about secure attachment and secure attachment usually is formed in those formative years. So trust, right? We learn trust early. A child learns to trust their mother, to feed them, to nurture them, to put them to sleep. how to get their attention. Trust is feeling confident that your loved ones will be there when you need them. If you started off at an early age, as far as you can remember, going through periods of feeling or actually being abandoned, you're gonna have a difficult time trusting people. And people who have trust issues, they usually project those issues out on you, saying things, trying to make you feel guilty preemptively. I know you're going to leave me. It's just a matter of time. I don't trust people as might be a legitimate reason or an excuse not to open up to you. So they don't have confidence. And that confidence should have been developed at an early age, primarily because of the relationships that should have been formed as a child. So sometimes you can see too much too soon. Some people came out of abusive situations. Some people came from divorced relationships and they have a jaded view of what marriage is or should or should not be. Some people lost a parent at an early age and that has defined their life. And so oftentimes people seem too much too soon have difficult times communicating because when you can't trust and you've never been able to feel confident in sharing your thoughts, sharing your feelings, your emotions, then now you have a glitch in your communication. And I like to use that word glitch because there's some people who are glitchy in their communication. They can't express their needs or their feelings. And if they do, they do it reactively. They do it passively or they do it with a great extent of sarcasm, negativity. And they only tell you when you mess up. You don't know what to do. You're walking on eggshells. You're walking on pins and needles. They say things as kind of snide comments off to the side in passing, and they can't be direct because they don't know. When they attempted to communicate in the past, either someone shot them down, didn't listen to them, or took advantage of them in some shape, form, or fashion. You can tell when someone grew up in an environment where communication was not emphasized. People talked over one another. No one listened to one another. No one validated. No one sought to be understood. And so now it creates a lack of empathy. I may have talked about this before, but there's a difference between sympathy and empathy. Sympathy is when you feel for someone. Empathy is when you feel with them. And so sometimes it's tough to feel with the person who's coming at you or with the person who is not seeking to get a better understanding of the dynamics within the relationship. That's crucial and that's important. So being empathetic, these people who've seen too much too soon, they've been hurt so much, misused so much, disappointed so much. It's easier to detach, be disconnected, to disassociate than to feel empathy, right? To be empathetic means I have to feel. I have to care. And oftentimes we say, listen, nobody cared for me when I was going through it. Nobody cared for me when I was being verbally abused. Nobody cared for me when my mom left me to be a latchkey kid. So why should I care about anybody else? And so you might see in that relationship, why is this person doesn't care that I lost something? It doesn't care that I got fired. It doesn't care because they are correlating your situation to theirs, which they really have nothing to do with the other, but they have a difficulty engaging in concepts of what it means to be empathetic or to be a person of empathy. So then you talk about intimacy. There's a difference between sex and intimacy. Some of y'all don't know that yet, right? as I've always said, intimacy is into me, you see, and intimacy takes vulnerability. I have to allow you to appear into or to see into my heart. This is careful because with intimacy and vulnerability, you have to bring them with boundaries because you can't just have a free for all of your heart. Let anybody in, say anything, damaged goods inside of your inner sanctum. And that's so important to know that. And you can't get close with a person who's never had a secure attachment from an early age with the most prominent relationships in their life. They don't feel comfortable being intimate. They don't feel comfortable exploring what it means to talk. Every time things get uncomfortable, they run, they retreat. So you see, you think about secure attachment, it can be seen in children who feel protected by their caregivers, right? When they feel protective, they can actually branch away. They can go to another person who wants to hold them, but they're still leery of strangers. And you gotta be careful also, a child that just goes to everybody, I would be leery of that as well. And that means they're used to being passed around. And there are people like that. They seek attention in everybody. They confine in everybody. And they just saw too much too soon. Be careful, y'all, who you attach yourself to. Be careful when you start diving deeper into emotional connections and to air quote soul ties with a person. I think it's important to check their background to know where they came from. That doesn't mean that they're going to be forever alone. unlovable or that you can't start a relationship with them. But that just means foundation is important. I believe genetics is important. Environment is important. So we got to consider these things and secure attachment is something that that we all must try to. evaluate. And so when you talk about secure attachment, it helps you be able to regulate your emotions and your feelings, because when you don't have those attachments, you can't regulate your emotions and your feelings. You can't cope and learn how to deal with your problems, because whatever way you cope, you did it by yourself. And there's a level, yes, to which we have to cope by ourselves. But remember, we're social beings. We have to learn how to cope within the framework of our social Right. in your relationships. If you are insecure, then you're going to have a difficult time being in a solid relationship, right? Because you are going to act out. Let me check your phone. Let me see you. Where are you going? Who are you talking to? And you're always going to think that somebody is going to leave you. You're always going to think he's going to do just like your dad did. You're always going to think that All men are dogs. I always say that all men are dogs. Maybe you just need to get out of the pound. Maybe just all the men you deal with are dogs. Maybe all the women that you're around don't put a blanket statement on all men or all women. And that's unfair. And not all black people are on a certain way. All white people are on a certain way. All old people are young people. And we do this. And so that whatever attachment style we develop at an early age, it will have lifelong influence on our ability to communicate, how we respond to conflict, how we And even expectations that we form in these relationships. And now I want to say everything, attachment style, it doesn't explain everything about your relationships. You know, who you become as an adult, because some of us are using things 15, 20, 30 years ago, which even though it explains, it doesn't justify. I'm a believer that a lot of things can be explained, but that doesn't mean it's justified. So in relationships, right? most time you can, when affairs happen or different things like that, you can find an explanation. I heard a quote that said, sometimes the victim of the affair was not the victim of the marriage, but whether they cheated or whether they didn't, You can find an explanation somewhere if you do the relational forensics of it, if you explore it. But once you find the answer, that doesn't mean it's justified. Right. So sometimes we get caught up in the explanation and we don't like, especially if you've been the victim of something, you don't want to hear the explanation. But the explanation can help you get to the cause. And when you get to the cause, then you could do some research. some understanding retroactively, but also you can do some preparation for the future and know what work you got to do currently in your relationship to be able to strengthen it. And it's healthy when you're in a secure type of relationship, right? There's a balance. You're not constantly depending on the other person to meet all of your needs. No one person can meet all of your needs. And I think that's so important. I need you to complete me. Now I'm already complete. And so So there's a balance. And when there's a balance in the relationship, then you can have deeper intimacy because, as I stated in prior podcasts, it's when expectation doesn't match up with reality, then disappointment is manifested in the relationship. So deeper intimacy, deeper vulnerability. And here's the key. have deeper intimacy, have deeper vulnerability, all the while maintaining your individuality. If you are a guy, if you're a girl, whatever relationship that you're in, if it is stripping you of your identity and your essence, I'm one that believes being a relationship should just enhance who you are. It shouldn't make you lose your identity. I've seen people get relationships and they no longer can talk to their family and the person wants to totally isolate them from their life. That's an insecure person Totally isolate you from your life, from the people who have been there for you, supported them. Whether you like them or not, you can form your individual relationship. I've seen it happen in husband and wife situation where the mother-in-law or the daughter-in-law pulling against the other and the man just caught between the middle. He's like, I don't love my wife like I love my mother. And I don't love my mother like I love my wife and my mother-in-law, my girls. There's enough capacity, enough room to love everybody in the way that they need to love. But an insecure person can't do that. And that usually starts from seeing too much too soon. All right. So I really probably should have called this podcast and I probably will. Now, once I knew a girl who was insecure, because that's really what it is. The insecurity comes from the lack of security at those formative years. And so I hope today that someone who's listening in dropped in a day can can consider or reconsider some of the thoughts shared in here. Look at your own life. If there's something within your own life that you need to work on, don't be practicing on other people, experiencing on other people, dumping on other people. Work on yourself. Find someone who loves you for you. There's someone out there who will love the person that you're Give it to us upfront. Tell us who you are. Tell us what you experienced. Don't hide it. Don't hold it back. You know, and because if, if you, if you don't have a secure attachment style, then you're going to fall into several insecure categories. You're going to be anxious in your relationships. Every time somebody leaves avoidant, or you're going to be just disorganized altogether. And you're not going to help yourself altogether. or the person that you're attempting to love and to build something long. and stable with. So these things are so important. And in these podcasts, I'm going to try to create a way and I'll let you guys know, build a fan base and a way for you guys to communicate back and to be able to ask and receive questions as well as we can go deeper into these conversations. Again, I want to thank you for joining today. I want to reconnect with all of you. I want you to share these podcast. I want you to go back and listen to some of them and we're just going to keep the conversation going and stay on this journey together because really life is about relationships and we got to learn how to relate first of all with ourselves, I believe with God and with others as well. And then we can truly be secure in our relationships. So thank you for joining. I'm grateful for you. And I'll see you next time right here on Once I Knew a Girl.