Emotional security is the most sacred and important aptitude that any human being can have, and it must be protected and guarded at all times. But there is an acknowledgment that maintaining emotional security can be tricky at times. There are seasons in everyone’s life when maintaining this status can be challenging.
Noticing these signs is essential to our well-being, as loving ourselves is vital to achieving happiness. Without healthy emotional security, it makes loving ourselves evermore challenging. We become a shell of who we could have been.
We become at risk of losing our social skills, thus unable to communicate. Without social skills, we also lose social intelligence. Lacking emotional security can lead to a cascade of issues that most aren’t aware of.
Ten signs of someone lacking emotional security
Being aware of our emotional security along with those around us is critical. You must recognize and have the social intelligence to witness these changes. Below are ten telltale signs of someone lacking emotional security and the potential causes.
1 – Someone who lacks emotional security is quick to highly-charged rants.
To be sure of yourself and what you can provide to the world means being in reasonable control of your emotions. If you lack that security and reassurance, it can make you prone to outburst. You are quick to use anger and loud outburst to shield your fears, and it can be a coping mechanism.
Having strong emotional security would mean not allowing relatively minor things to cut under the skin. Facing rejection from a partner or co-worker shouldn’t provoke a rant. Instead, it should be an opportunity to look toward the future into how you can improve the next time.
Emotions are important and should be expressed, but emotional security means understanding when it’s appropriate. But if you are prone to emotionally filled rants, that shows a lack of emotional security. Not only that, but it also reveals a lack of social skills.
2 – Feeling helpless and hopeless
Life is meant to be filled with joy and fun. To feel broken and distraught over a long period is a warning sign. You cannot bring yourself out of this dark place.
Without strong emotional backing, it is easy to allow the world’s ills to take hold. You must learn tho to offset negativity by understanding that life gets better. But without emotional security, it’s impossible.
3 – A person low in emotional security freezes up when it’s time to show empathy for others
To be unable to comfort or recognize someone in pain shows a lack of social intelligence. Some people cry with others or hate others, but to be a blank slate is not a good sign. People need emotional connections to feel alive, and to have that lack of awareness can be devastating for the person suffering.
A friend losing a parent would be a moment to comfort them. This behavior is a crucial element in social intelligence. But to do nothing or feel nothing shows a lack of empathy.
4 – Difficulty with relationships
Whether friendly or romantically, there is an emotional element to relationships. Emotions must be shared in a thriving relationship. A partner needs to know they can talk to their significant other about anything.
Lacking emotional security means you cannot share those moments. Or you have a fear of being vulnerable to anyone because you don’t want to be hurt. It makes you feel uncomfortable and tense because you are used to holding everything in.
With your lack of empathy, you lack the ability to provide emotional support, which is crucial in a relationship. So it makes it extremely difficult to maintain any relationship. Relationships are about vulnerability. Without them, it’s as if you are pushing them away.
5 – Excessive consumption of drugs or alcohol
Drinking or using drugs above normal consumption levels could reveal a secret. Without explaining it, the consumption can show an attempt to hide from peers or rejections. Or to escape from reality.
When there is a lack of social skills, that’s when drugs or alcohol come in. It helps people express themselves in a way they were unable to before. It shows they are not in line with their true self, that you are trying to hide behind this mask.
6 – Seeking to please others above yourself
Helping others is always welcome, but there comes a time when it becomes damaging. When you lack emotional security, helping others is a way of hiding from yourself. You don’t want to help yourself or deal with your problems, so you help others.
It comes from the fear of looking deep inside to what may be hurting you. But in the end, it doesn’t stop the pain inside. It simply sits and decays over time.
7 – A person with low emotional security takes constructive criticism personally
Rejection is something most people are afraid of. Even so, most of us can take constructive criticism. When your emotions are not in check, you cannot see and accept the feedback constructively.
It can also lead to confrontation. You get protective and defensive, taking the feedback as an insult. Having your emotions under control can show that this is just one step and that things will be better next time.
8 – A lack of confidence
We are enough as is, but that only reins true if you believe it. You can always feel like something to fix because it’s all being made up in the mind. When there is a lack of confidence, it becomes difficult to express emotions.
You begin to question everything you do. You become afraid of taking chances, like speaking in a group. So instead, you fall back into the crowd at a party, looking to avoid attention.
Being sure of yourself and what you bring to the table not only shows emotional maturity. It’s a critical element of social intelligence. It will allow you to pursue your dreams and not doubt yourself.
9 – Anger stays in the heart of someone with low emotional security
Anger is another emotion that we all express. But just like any emotion, it is not meant to stay. Having only anger in your heart shows the instability of being a rational thinker.
Anger becomes the easiest to express if you can’t control your emotions. It becomes difficult to move on and easy to hold grudges. You feel as though everyone is against you and judging you when that is not the case.
It becomes like a poison in the heart that can’t be contained—breaking friendship and bonds that mean so much to you.
10 – Making unfair self-comparisons
Comparing ourselves to others shows a lack of confidence in ourselves. It shows a lack of acceptance for who you are and a call to be something else. It makes you prone to depression as you can not look in the mirror and love what you see.
Instead of embracing yourselves, you look to join the rat race of society. You might use social media to point out flaws and dig yourself further into a hole. You never allow yourself to accept who you are and what you bring to the table.
5 Causes of diminished emotional security
Now that you know the signs of this condition, you might wonder. What causes low emotional security?
1 – Unhealthy (or lacking) childhood attachment
A child needs attachment to develop social skills, social intelligence, and emotional tolerance. Having no childhood attachments can instill fear into the child that spreads to adulthood. A child must have a parent who shows them affectionate emotions to see and replicate those emotions.
Without these attachments, the child becomes susceptible to outside influences. It heightens the chances of suffering from substance abuse as they get older. It forbids them the opportunity to understand how to develop meaningful relationships.
2 – Internal Stress
Fear, anxiety, and rejection all lead to the deterioration of emotional security. Whether real or made up by our minds, these are caveats to stress. It creates this heightened sense of emotions that makes it difficult to differentiate fact from fiction.
It can cause issues within a romantic relationship. You begin to view your partners as the root cause of your problems. It is a way of passing the bucket or trying to make sense of your feelings.
3 – Failed romantic relationship
Connection is the most important thing to people. Without ever experiencing that connection, we never gain the ability to care for others. In return, we never develop empathy or understand how to put others before ourselves in a healthy way.
We then begin to doubt our worth as a person. A pain that sticks with us for the long haul. If that romantic relationship never develops, we continue to lose emotional standing.
4 – Traumatic events
With the addition of trauma, whether from a job or accident. The trauma will heighten your emotions, but that isn’t always good. It causes you to question things, look over your shoulders and cause a lack of social intelligence.
With your emotions heightened, it will lead to misunderstanding and outbursts. There is a lack of trust in yourself and the people around you. Trauma can cause a person who was once open and welcoming to shun the people around them.
5 – Rejection
Be it a job or a potential spouse, past rejections can cause one to be on guard at all times. We all seek to protect our hearts, but inevitably rejection will come. This wound can lead the body to go into overload to help it avoid future rejection.
Thus, your social skills are compromised, so you can no longer speak to people freely. There is this nagging inclination to remain closed off, to avoid future rejection and pain. But with emotional security on the decline, you don’t see it that way.
Final thoughts on the causes of reduced feelings of emotional security
We all want our emotional security to be the best it can be. We also like to think that the emotional security of the people around us is good. But the truth is not always the case. We all have our fear of the future or fear of rejection, which leaves our emotional security in constant flux.
Without emotional security, we can not expect to have the necessary social skills. We can not expect to have the social intelligence needed to navigate life. A lack of emotional security will impede us from doing fundamental things and being social creatures.
To an extent, our friends and loved ones must always be aware of emotional security. The signs signaling a lack of emotional security can be minor but there. If we wish to live a thriving life of sociality, we need our emotional security.
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