How to Counter Your False Sense of Security

“They don’t seem to like you given the last statement they did”, says your mind to you.

“Are you sure? They might have misunderstood me or misinterpreted what I said”, you answer back.

“Didn’t seem that way”, says your mind in return.

We all have our own little bubble that we wouldn't like to be burst. And for that reason, we protect it by building strong emotional walls around it that withstand anything that might pressure it.

That little bubble is our ego and the walls are the sense of security we instill in our mind so that it won’t get attacked with any negative thoughts.

While nothing is wrong with feeling safe regarding our personality, there are many instances in our lives when we use petty or insufficient excuses to justify our wrongdoings, so our fragile egos do not break down. That’s how a false sense of security can be cultivated and it can impair our self-growth.

How Can a Need for Security Arise?

Now you might ask how and when exactly can this occur?

A need to feel safe usually appears when you require reassurance for something vital to you. Moreover, depending on the terms you are with yourself, you might look out for that reassurance on internal or external factors.

By having an inflated ego or a generally good idea about yourself, you will most likely try and search for it internally, while having a frail ego will urge you to find comfort from others.

Now, as I have said in the prologue, sometimes you will find yourself in situations that will give you a sense of wanting to feel safe through various excuses so that your ego doesn’t get damaged.

These situations are split into two categories again depending on the terms you are with yourself.

If you have a high ego, you might find yourself on occasions where you will need to take responsibility because of a misstep you have made. At that time, it will seem easier to retreat to your shell so that you don’t admit your wrongdoings and see your ego plummet.

If you have low self-esteem, it’s more likely that you’ll encounter situations where you will feel the need to reassure your way of thinking by asking for other people’s opinions due to your low self-confidence. This way you’ll keep your ego in check since you’ll believe that they won’t be “disappointed”.

Let’s boil down all the above information with two separate examples to make this more comprehensive.

In case you have a high ego, imagine that you leave work a little bit earlier to find less traffic on your way back. After some time passes, you remember that you forgot to send an important report to your supervisor.

To feel good about yourself, you might think something like the following:

“It’s not entirely my fault since I am kept most of the time some extra minutes for that and I return home later due to the traffic I run into.”

“It’s important to return home early today since I deserve some off-time from all the work anyway.”

Message received, walls rise, and ego stays intact.

On the other hand, if you’ve got low self-esteem, imagine that you give a presentation in front of the class and stumble on one sentence at some point. You wrap it up, everyone claps, you hear some good assessments, but you still remember that tiny slip of the tongue and feel embarrassed.

To elevate or keep your ego in balance, you might think as follows:

“Did they all hear that? Won’t everyone think about it and laugh with others?”

“I should ask for my classmate's opinions, especially that of my friends, they might not have noticed it or didn’t mind it.”

And thus, you proceed to ask how the presentation was. In case you hear many pleasant remarks, you are in the safe zone again. If you are not, you will feel bad about your mistake and possibly criticize yourself harshly.

The examples might seem a little stretched at first sight; nonetheless, the point is that there are a million ways most of us try to keep our egos in check in unproductive and inefficient ways that don’t help our self-development.

Distinguish the Real You From the Need to Feel Safe

The best way I believe that counters such an issue is to consciously separate our need to feel safe with disingenuous means from the real us; the actions and thoughts that are in complete harmony with themselves.

1. Understand yourself

First things first, to understand whether you are trying to achieve a false sense of security, it’s imperative to comprehend how your mind works, what your values and beliefs are, what’s important to your well-being, and so on.

Get a piece of paper and write down the characteristics that you believe you truly possess. You can also get a close friend’s or family member’s help for that since they should know you pretty well.

Since you’ve got your vital characteristics as a person down, it’s time to get a better sense of what your beliefs, values, and general way of acting are. Here, try to imagine several situations in which you got involved that forced you to take a side or make a decision.

As an example, try to think what would you do if you found out that your important other lied about a meeting she or he was going to attend tomorrow night. How would you act? How would you feel? Write them all down.

Once you do that as well, you should have a better idea as to what you value as a person and what your strengths and weaknesses are.

2. Watch out for when your need for security emerges

You might wonder now, how are these helping about the case in point, false sense of security? The answers above will be tied with the next practice; finding and erasing the inherent need.

My advice for distinguishing the real need from the fake one is by adhering to your values and beliefs. That piece of paper you have just contemplated about and wrote down should act as your guardian angel through various occasions in life.

When you find yourself in a scenario in which something is threatening your values, beliefs, or general way of life act in a way that can solve the problem at hand.

However, if you come across a situation that isn't necessarily posing any danger to something of value to you but rather only has repercussions seemingly in your ego, then stop and don’t act upon the urge to feel safe.

Suppose you were writing an exam and answered in time all the questions to the best of your ability. Now, you come outside the class, and some of your classmates are talking about the answers.

You notice that most of their answers are different from yours. Your mind would now tell you to try and prove their answers wrong and yours right. Before actually implementing this though, ask yourself:

“Is it truly necessary to prove the others wrong? Maybe I am the one with the incorrect answer.”

If you have doubts about your answer, don’t act. If you believe 100% that you are correct, you can use that information to guide people to the correct answer rather than just reassure yourself or inflate your ego.

Once you do the aforementioned a certain amount of times you will inform your mind that it doesn't need insincere means to keep its ego in check.

Final Thoughts

A false sense of security isn’t a topic that comes up many times in our lives. Despite that, it’s a recurring theme for balancing our egos in our minds.

Understand what kind of person you are and what is it that you value most, and you will find yourself in harmony with your every thought, action, and speech. And that’s the best way to be alright with yourself and with all the people that are in your life now or in the future.

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

- Mahatma Gandhi

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This article was originally published on Medium