While I would love to say that I’m a very independent person and that, no matter what, I can always rely on myself, I can’t. You see, there are times in my life where I am always dependent on somebody else.
Reassurance is a statement, comment or action that removes someone’s doubts or fears.
Whenever I convince myself that the future I’ve carved for myself is unachievable, unrealistic, or downright stupid, I lead myself into a never-ending, downhill spiral. I begin to believe that I’m delusional and that everything I’ve imagined my life to be will be just that: an imagination. This is when my self-loathing and self-pity get out of hand.
To get out of this funk, I needed to feel reassured. While it is always healthy to talk to others about how you’re feeling, I developed a habit of not listening to the advice people gave me. Instead, I would wait for the basic “Everything is going to be okay” or the “Don’t worry, you’re just overreacting” pep talk. I needed those simple cliche phrases of reassurance to pull me out of my ongoing periods of self-doubt and self-hatred. I always needed to hear those words come out of someone else’s mouth.
You will form a tolerance to reassurance.
After a while though, it stopped working. The reassurance I practically forced out of people’s mouths didn’t have the same effect on me anymore. Even when I reached out to new people and expected new answers, I still felt the same. What do I do now?
Being so dependent on other people made me the last person I wanted to talk to.
I came to the difficult realization that I never really believed the reassurance people gave me; I simply felt better because they believed it. The advice and motivation I would keep listening to had no real bearing on me. This is exactly why-
No one is going to give you the reassurance you need.
Only we can give ourselves the reassurance we need. Listening to other people will never be sufficient enough to convince ourselves that everything will work out in the end. We all know that we are our harshest critics.
The moment I realized I needed to be the one to reassure myself was one of the most difficult yet rewarding realities I’ve had to face. It doesn’t come easy, and sometimes, it doesn’t even come at all. Learning to become dependent on yourself in moments of distress is not a skill that comes overnight. It is a mindset, that if not practiced, can be lost. It requires consistency and self-discipline.
Being your own pillar of strength will become your strongest weapon against a life full of self-doubt and insecurities.