That sounds like a different version of Focusing than the one I've read about-- I thought the procedure was to keep looking for words to describe the feeling until you find words that satisfy you.

I can easily believe that the looking for words approach doesn't work for everyone, and so there are alternatives.

The basic idea of 'focusing' is that if you pay attention to the feeling in your body, and don't distract yourself with too much thinking or paying attention to other things but just 'stay with' the feeling

This 'focusing' reminds me of my understanding of meditation, where the sitter "watches" his thoughts and how they are moving around in the mind and being manifest into emotional states. With practice, this allows a detachment from negative thoughts & emotions as they are recognized to be operating in a system separate from the sitter's source of observation.

In effect, one could stop saying "I am insecure and depressed and anxious!" and say rather "This cognitive-emotional system is insecure and depressed and anxious. I am watching it so I am aware of that now. Hm. Unfortunate & interesting."

The shift in itself can be rather cathartic as it releases you from the sort of "self-blaming" attitude that can accompany low mood states. Further, it can perhaps provide the basis for a more objective, non-shame-filled investigation of how to improve your mood. (Or rather "how to fix that insecure cognitive-emotional system you have succeeded in identifying")

I'd point you to Eckhart Tolle and his book The Power of Now, but I'm not sure that is on the approved reading list here at LW. It is filled with a lot of woo woo, but there is a baby in that bathwater. I think it does a good job of Westernizing some Eastern philosophical concepts that may be valuable in your pursuit. (The first two chapters will give you the gist...)

I don't intend this to be a personally revealing post so I'll just sum it up by saying that being insecure has had a profoundly negative impact on my life. I feel that it is the single biggest reason why I've failed to reach my potential in all ways. That's fine though, I'm not really bitter but I remain very frustrated and I want to solve this problem. I want to 'crack the code', if you will.
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I've developed my own understanding of insecurity, which, admittedly, is a synthesis of other people's ideas, but I haven't found any book or therapy or system that puts it all together in a way that I fully agree with.
[...] Since Jr High at least, I've been frustrated by my insecurity. I don't intend this to be a personally revealing post so I'll just sum it up by saying that being insecure has had a profoundly negative impact on my life. I feel that it is the single biggest reason why I've failed to reach my potential in all ways. That's fine though, I'm not really bitter but I remain very frustrated and I want to solve this problem. I want to 'crack the code', if you will.

If I understand you right you are saying: You are exposed to Arthus Janov ideas for 20 years and they ideas that you developed from that exposure haven't solve your issue. They had some temporal effects but the anxiety always came back.

Then you say that you haven't found any therapy that matches your understanding of the problem. If the therapy works well with the problem I would expect that it doesn't matches with your understanding of the problem.

I also don't believe that you will understand what a form of therapy is about by reading a book about it.

Exactly how they work is not something that is perfectly understood by anyone but I find it frustrating when discussing them with people who don't seem to understand that, whatever the rules are, there are rules.

There are rules but empathy can often be more useful for dealing with someone's emotional issue than trying to use intellectual rigor.

The types of insecurities that don't involve self-deception are probably well-founded.

All the insecurities encourage behavior which is adaptive when the threat is real and maladaptive when it isn't. Universally, they all sap joy from life. Joyful behaviors were probably maladaptive in stress-inducing situations, once upon a time. It's always superior to identify and delete unjustified insecurities, and be consciously aware of and improve real-world causes that justify the justified ones.

You in particular may have once experienced maladaptive self-deceiving insecurity, so you think that one is particularly maladaptive while the others make sense in context. But self-deceiving insecurity makes sense in context as well.

Just imagine that you actually were in a social situation where admitting weakness would have undesirable consequences. Suppose you were in a schoolyard, and larger children decided to bully those who show signs of weakness and get sadistic pleasure out of observing shame and crying. You would do well to suppress negative feelings in this scenario to avoid becoming a target. You would also do well to avoid interacting with unknown people who might hurt you - something that avoidant-type social anxiety neatly accomplishes.

Conversely, the other insecurities can be just as life sapping.

Imagine you've had loved ones cut you off for no apparent reason. You don't want it to happen again, so you cling to people who extend tidbits of affection and get anxious when they aren't by your side. Your needy behavior puts people off, perpetuating the cycle of failed relationships.

Imagine you grew up during a time of economic scarcity, so you save every penny due to ingrained financial insecurity. You skimp on healthcare. You stay in crappy housing. You refuse to trade money for labor, instead spending hours doing dangerous and difficult tasks yourself, often botching them due to lack of skill. You end up losing money in medical and repair bills, and have a lower quality of life,

And so on. Insecurity is a sign that something is wrong - either your mind is mis-calibrated for the situation, or you are in real-world trouble. If you can remove the emotional baggage of insecurity and just calmly carry out the necessary adaptive behaviors, you probably should.

Could you link to a source that describes what primal therapy involves?

I think that what insecurity is, is inhibition of feelings of disappointment/loss because of an implicitly learned belief that to express these feelings will have negative consequences (ie – it will only make things worse).

That's almost the opposite of what I would consider feeling "insecure". In the predictive sense, it's being pessimistic. In the emotional sense, It's not inhibition of feelings, but having them. Expecting something bad to happen to you and feeling afraid and anxious is to feel insecure. Generally usage of "insecurity" usually applies this to your own competence or other's perceptions of you.

Reading through your post, I kept waiting for a some kind of delineation of what you were referring to with "insecurity" along those lines. What you've given above seems very idiosyncratic to me.

I've struggled with insecurity for a while. Here are my most effective two techniques.

First, whenever I become self conscious I remind myself that I think mostly about myself. Other people are probably like me, so they are probably uncaring about whatever I'm concerned with.

• Oh my gosh, I didn't wash my face this morning, everyone will think I"m a slob.

When I see someone with a dirty face it doesn't change my opinion of them. Other people will also not care how dirty my face is.

• Hmm, this guy isn't responding to my text. Maybe he could have come to the conclusion that I'm a vicious racist!

I don't think about whether acquaintances are racists all the time. Other people are also not thinking about me when I'm not talking to them.

• I'm not going to be on time. Everyone will think I'm being deliberately late in order to emphasize my own importance by making them late.

I may not be the latest one, and most people will be concerned with their own reasons for attending. My tardiness will be overlooked, or I will be asked for an explanation.

My other trick is that if I'm in a private place (and most often when I'm insecure I'm at least mostly in private. I have little time for such ruminations when I"m distracted by socializing.) I'll verbalize my insecurities. Then I'll respond out loud to the insecure statements.

Doing so seems to activate the parts of my personality that decide who I back in an argument, and the response is invariably more confident/assured than the insecurity (almost by definition). I find my thoughts falling into agreement with my responses rather than my insecurities.

To put it more simply, many insecure worries sound really odd when spoken aloud. This springs from the same root as the first tip. My insecure thoughts are not the sort of thing I imagine that other people have, so hearing them out loud makes explicit the contrast.

Insecure Walter: I spent too much on that online game which I didn't play very much. That'll become a trend and then I'll go broke and lose my house and die in a gutter. Response: I've spent too much before and never spent everything, and even if I went broke I could take out a loan. Principle of Mediocrity says this won't be too different. I'll just spend less in the future. Thoughts: Yeah, I shouldn't spend so much.

Hope this helps.

the difference between security and insecurity is basically expected value of acting.

This sounds right.

I feel insecure very seldom.I feel safe and confident in my actions. Whatever I do I'm sure it's the right thing. Sometimes it is the right thing to try things out and consciously risk something. Most negative feedback I got from acting under stress. I know this and thus tend to not attribute such negative feedback to my action itself but to the stress that caused it. I try (and mostly succeed) in limiting stress in the long run (note: this has the disadvantage of possibly lesser productivity if overdone).

I know people who feel permanently insecure even though I'd say that they don't get significant negative feedback about their actions. I think the key is the expected value of the action. If you have high expectations (perfectionist) than it is easy to interpret the outcome as (partly) negative.

Focusing is one of the books that I think should be a much larger part of LW's emotional life than it is, as I discussed a while ago, and so I'm happy to see someone mention it.

I think that, for most things in psychology, studying the healthy is better than studying the unhealthy- rather than asking what causes insecurity, I would ask what causes security.

I suspect the difference between security and insecurity is basically expected value of acting- I seem to be insecure in areas where I think on net my actions are likely to have negative consequences or in areas where I can't tell between helpful and harmful actions, and secure in areas where I'm confident in my ability to accomplish goals and distinguish options.

Semantic quibbles:

Insecurity is when someone perceives that they are not secure - i.e. they are in danger of being harmed by others or deprived of an essential resource be it money, social standing, a relationship, or self-esteem. It more refers to abstract and long term things that cause anxiety rather than fear - so any problem significantly more abstract and long-term than say, a bear, can cause insecurity.

I think that what insecurity is, is inhibition of feelings of disappointment/loss because of an implicitly learned belief that to express these feelings will have negative consequences (ie – it will only make things worse).

I think that what you have described are the compensation mechanisms that some people use in response to a specific type of insecurity.

When one's insecurity centers around self-esteem / self-image, the defense mechanism is to try to avoid admitting certain things about yourself to yourself which might contradict a proud self-image. It's a form of self-deception, similar to belief in belief.

One might also have similar behavior because they are afraid of people hurting them, and so avoid relationships with people and avoid exposing vulnerability to others. Since its hard for many people to fake social cues one might to some extent hide one's vulnerability from oneself as well.

There's plenty of other insecurities, with different ways of dealing. People feeling insecure about money will have stronger emotional reactions to losing it. People with insecurity about losing a relationship might get clingy, while people who are afraid that they will be harmed by others will avoid forming attachments. Not all of these insecurities involve deception to self/others about negative emotions.