How neediness and emotional insecurity destroy relationships

“Please, clouds, don’t rain!” Not going to work, is it?

And neither will trying to reassure someone who just can’t be reassured. They will go on fretting, no matter how you plead.

Chronic insecurity in your relationship is a major problem. Why? Because relationships really, deeply matter. Your health, your wellbeing, your happiness are affected by your relationships more than any other factor. And your most intimate relationships have the biggest effect of all.

It’s not just the insecure person who suffers

Feeling insecure in a relationship is horrible for the one who is feeling the insecurity. The burden – of fear and obsessive thoughts, of feeling powerless, of awful awareness that all this insecurity may actually itself be destroying what you treasure most – can feel pretty unbearable.

But it’s also tough for the person on the receiving end of all that insecurity. The truth is that being involved with a really insecure person can be hell.

This article highlighted what a common problem insecurity is

I wrote an article a while back on overcoming insecurity in relationships and was inundated with feedback from all over the world. The scores of comments on the article itself were just the tip of the iceberg. My inbox overflowed with hundreds more private emails from people wracked by feelings of relationship insecurity.

That article, which explores the reasons for insecurity and offers practical tips to help overcome it, eventually became the springboard for the development of the new 10 steps to overcoming insecurity in relationships course. My article was mainly addressed to those who are themselves feeling insecure in a relationship; but I also got – and still get – hundreds of emails from people who have extremely insecure partners. A common recurring theme of these accounts is how isolating it can feel to find yourself in a relationship with someone who is deeply insecure. And this is one major reason why extreme insecurity can be so damaging.

Why reassuring your insecure partner is almost a lie

Because ‘reassurance’ is what insecure people want most, and anyone can say reassuring things, it’s all too easy for partners (and friends) to offer reassurances that everything is “really okay” in the relationship even when it isn’t.This is a kind of denial. And – ironically – the reasons it might not be okay are often the product of the insecurity itself.

Sometimes the only genuine problem in a relationship is the emotional insecurity of one partner and the effect that has on the relationship as a whole. But it’s easy to fall into a pattern of always pretending everything is fine, even when the insecurity becomes really damaging. Such pretense becomes isolating and can drive partners further apart. This is how insecurity can damage or even destroy the relationship.

Relationships thrive on intimacy, and intimacy stems from feeling you can safely be yourself with your partner. So what does it feel like to be in a relationship with a very insecure partner?

Worrying about relationship breakup creates it

Insecurity stemming from a fear of losing intimacy can actually bring on that loss of intimacy. Jake, a former client, described it like this:

“I actually feel totally disconnected from Sara now. She doubts my every word, doesn’t believe me when I say I’ve been working, and constantly misinterprets what I say. It’s driving me nuts! And the angrier I get, the more insecure she gets. I can’t win! I’ve tried being sympathetic, but now everything has to be on her terms, I have to ask myself all the time – is this going to upset her or not?”

Jake told me how he had started to feel very lonely in his relationship, like he had no one to talk to, because “Talking to Sara is like walking on egg shells – will I say the wrong thing? Will she take it the wrong way?”

He, like many who are close to someone so insecure, found himself getting more and more emotionally distant from Sara. He felt less able to speak to her about how he felt, and less able to relax around her. Loneliness isn’t about being alone so much as feeling alone with others – because you feel misunderstood by them – and that’s how Jake now felt with Sara. He’d begun to feel trapped, finding it hard to be around her but also hard not to be around her, because he knew how painful it was for her to be wondering where he was or whom he was with.

The painful truth is that insecurity can lead to the death of intimacy in a relationship – the fear of losing something can actually bring about that loss. Trying to force intimacy or love – demanding to know how someone feels, what they are thinking, who they’ve been talking to, what they are doing – can just drive them further from you.

So what should you do if you are in a relationship with a really insecure person?

How to tell if you have a truly insecure partner

It’s vital to figure out whether the person you are with isgenuinely excessively insecure. Some jealousy and insecurity is actually normal in most relationships from time to time – especially in the early stages. Insecure people are often insecure about their insecurity, because they instinctively know how damaging it can be. But if insecurity is a constant and central feature of the relationship then, yes, it is a problem and a potential cause of breakdown. Of course you can reassure your partner, reason with them, and be gentle and loving toward them, but it’s important not to make too many adaptations for them. This was the mistake Jake made. He had completely stopped spending any time with his friends without Sara. He rang her on the hour, every hour, when he had to work late. He told her he loved her so many times a day that it was more like a chore rather than a genuine expression of how he felt. And after a while the relationship no longer felt real to him.

If the relationship becomes all about reassuring and not upsetting the insecure partner, you and your needs get sidelined to the point that the relationship can start to feel meaningless for you. Jake and Sara’s relationship only improved once Sara herself addressed her insecurity, and learned to trust and relax more with not “having to know” what Jake was thinking or doing all the time. Her self esteem improved and, in turn, he then felt more valued, and no longer trapped or forced to behave in prescribed ways. At last he was being listened to and respected again.

If your insecure partner has enough insight to know they need to change, then you really can encourage them to make those changes that could make such a difference for both of you. Ultimately, no one should have to be constantly “on call” to their partner, or emotionally isolated by them. Good relationships are reciprocal, not one-sided. They flourish when partners trust each other, accept each other, give each other space, forgive each other for failings – and enjoy each other. You and your partner both deserve that. Read more about 10 Steps to Overcome Insecurity in Relationships by Mark Tyrrell

Notes

1. See: Wikipedia entry: Exposure therapy
2. See: Wikipedia entry: Flooding

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How to hypnotize your audience

5 hypnotic techniques to enrapture your listeners

The first thing any good hypnosis trainer will tell you is that to be an effective hypnotist, you need to be confident. That way you inspire confidence in your subject and they are free to relax with you.

The same is true if you want to hypnotize your audience when presenting. First, you need to inspire confidence in them, and to do that you need to be free of anxiety.

And when I talk about hypnotizing your audience, please forget the clichés of watch swinging, cluck-like-a-chicken merchants. I’m talking about the hypnosis of life.

Help your audience leave the room

When you hypnotize someone you get them to “leave the room” as they “travel” along your narrative within their mind.

You achieve this by focusing their attention so intently that your words start to have a real effect on their experience – both conscious and unconscious. A skilled hypnotist can help you change the workings of your immune system or blood flow with their words. Think what effect you could have on an audience you are looking to influence.

So why do I talk about “hypnosis” when describing the effect a great presenter has?

Hypnosis and the art of presenting

Hypnosis involves:

• Narrowed Focus
• Disassociation
• Learning

Any presenter will agree that you want to be compelling enough to focus your audience on what you are saying. You want them disassociated from their environment and concerns so that they travel with you to other times, places and possibilities. And you want them to adopt, at least for a while, new ways of seeing reality.

Hypnosis in therapy is so powerful because it helps people learn new ways of responding to life so that low confidence, phobias or addictions no longer trip them up. When you present powerfully you focus your audience’s attention so narrowly that the nature of their learning becomes hypnotic rather than merely conscious. This kind of learning feels a lot more profound for people. But there are different kinds of audience trances..

Avoiding the boredom trance

If you are uninspiring then your audience may certainly psychologically “leave the room” not by following your ideas but as an attempt to escape your talk. They might start to imagine what they’ll do later, what they’ll cook for dinner, or their upcoming social arrangements. They are disassociated but not in the way we want them to be. There are specific techniques to compel your audiences in just the right way.

Crowd hypnosis

The greatest public presenters will captivate audiences with their words and gestures. They’ll use expectation, language, story-telling and “future pacing” which means they’ll implant ideas for their listeners to act upon in future. This is all hypnotic. Hypnotic speakers don’t just give the facts they will give their listeners an experience that will change the way they feel, think or behave. Hypnotic presenting appeals to the part of the mind that the greatest pieces of poetry or music do. In fact truly world beating public talks have a real rhythm.

The poetry of presenting

The best speeches like the best hypnotic inductions have a kind of trance rhyme to them which draws you in and makes you forget anything other than the speech. Listen to Sir Winston Churchill on YouTube

He uses repetition, emotive words, he paints a picture of a positive future beyond current hard times but he doesn’t lie to his listeners by pretending things are going to be easy. He connects what is important to his listeners, he evokes strong images. And like the language of storytelling or even epic myth he talks about avoiding an oncoming “Dark age” by fierce, proud, brave and collective struggle.

In some of Churchill’s speeches his language is almost confusing which is a favourite hypnotic technique too as it”ties up the conscious mind” and appeals more directly to the unconscious which absorbs it often before the conscious mind has untangled it : “Never was so much owed by so many to so few.” He says when talking about the heavily outnumbered RAF men who fought the famous Battle of Britain. We know what he means without following the logical thread of the statement.

If you want to be more hypnotic to captivate the attention of your audience then you might like to put these following tips into action (which are expanded in the new 10 steps to powerful public speaking course)

1. Pepper your speech with words that appeal to feelings.
   Words that people have to “go inwards” to connect their personal meaning with are called nominalisations and they are hypnotic. These are words like: “Powerful, beautiful, love, wisdom, strength”…and so on. Make sure these kinds of words fit with what you are saying but they will produce more of a response than more “concrete” type words.
2. Paint pictures in your listeners’ minds by overlapping their senses.
   When we hypnotize someone we are seeking to give them a dream-like experience. And of course we dream in pictures, but also sounds, sensations, tastes, and emotions. If you are telling a story in your speech about something that happened to you tell them what you saw, felt, heard, tasted and so forth. This makes it so much more evocative. “I went to the mall and saw a fight” doesn’t draw you as much as: “I was heaving a heavy shopping bag through the mall when I heard a sickening scream, I turned and saw two huge guys trying to mug an old lady who karate kicked them to kingdom come – you could almost smell their fear…!” Be descriptive. Which reminds me…
3. Tell stories. Even if you are delivering a speech about molecular biology there are stories to be told – tell them engrossingly.
4. Use your voice to fascinate. Sometimes speed up and sometimes slow…down… a bit. Not all the time or else you will annoy but think about the importance and relevance of your words. When it’s a point you feel is important, slow down a bit and occasionally you can even talk the calm, slow delivery of a real hypnotist.
5. Use unexpectedness. We go into hypnotic trance when we relax but also when we are startled, surprised or even shocked. Great speakers use humor because it can be hypnotic. Humor surprises you – a punch line has a “punch” because it causes surprise. Hypnotists (especially of the stage show variety) will often use “shock “to fast track subjects into hypnotic trance, so be a little surprising here and there to keep your audience focused, then refocused. This technique when presenting is startlingly powerful.

In the end, it’s all about the emotion

Study the effect communication has on people. Just the bits of sound we call “words.” It can make them angry, weep, be prepared to go into battle and change their life infinitely for the better. Words don’t have to be “just words.” Hypnotise your audience to help them feel something real when you speak.