Insecurity: An emotionalized belief or assumption

    The Case of Harold Menu

    • Harold's History by FACULTY Don Nathanson, 9/9/96
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        • Insecurity an Emotion? by FACULTY: Vick Kelly, 10/30/96

    Insecurity: An emotionalized belief or assumption
    by John W. Bush, Ph.D., 4/2/97

    I don't think of insecurity as an emotion per se, but rather as a cognitive schema that typically mobilizes an actual emotion such as fear. If someone, either consciously or tacitly, believes or assumes that he is helpless in the face of a wide variety of risks and dangers, he is likely to "feel" insecure.

    However, in my personal dictionary that doesn't mean that insecurity is an emotion -- which I define as a process or behavior that produces bodily sensations and results from events, cognition and physiology working in concert.

    Most of the time, when I hear someone say "I feel insecure," it's easy enough to recognize the phrase as a harmless bit of shorthand. In working with patients, however, I sometimes need to explicitly clarify the issue. This is the case when the person wants to feel more secure, but needs to modify some of his cognitive appraisals and coping behaviors in order to do so.

    Theory mavens will doubtless recognize the foregoing as the typical verbal output of a cognitive-behavioral practitioner.
            • emotion definition? by Don Nathanson, Faculty, 4/2/97
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