Interview with Marta Carrasco: insecurities and decision-making

Psychologist Marta Carrasco talks to us about how lack of self-confidence influences us.

Although we may not be aware of it, in our day-to-day lives we make a large number of decisions whose consequences can affect us significantly. However, we are not always aware of these inertias that in some cases lead us to make the wrong choice. In fact, this tendency to make mistakes can be assumed as "normal", part of our personality.

The way in which our personal insecurities affect our decision making is a case in point.. To better understand how these two psychological phenomena relate to each other, we have interviewed psychologist Marta Carrasco.

Interview with Marta Carrasco: insecurity and its implication in decision making in life

Marta Elena Carrasco Solís is a General Health Psychologist.She treats people of all ages in her office located in Granada. In this interview she talks to us about the way in which personal insecurities are reflected in the decisions we make in our lives.

How are personal insecurities and low self-esteem related?

Generally, we tend to relate low self-esteem to the feeling of being lesser or to the idea of believing we are inferior, either with respect to some expectation that we do not reach, or to someone we take as a reference to compare ourselves with.

Perhaps the expression "not living up to" could be a way of contextualizing this type of feeling within the scope of what we call low self-esteem or low self-esteem. Part of the problem is that this situation taken to the extreme is like a vicious circle that conditions a large part of people's lives and is a source of pathological behaviors and symptoms.

However, there is one aspect of insecurities that would be within normality (the norm, what happens to most mortal beings) and that is related to the way in which our personality has been shaped over time and our unique learning history.

Can everyone develop problems due to excessive insecurity in specific areas of their lives, or is it rather something linked to the personality of some people, a part of the population?

The way I see it, excess almost always brings with it some kind of problem. In line with the above, if insecurity is finally the reflection of something else that has to do with what has been learned, any person can develop important problems related to insecurities in a specific moment or circumstance.

What happens is that usually what is observed is not so much the insecurity but the way of compensating or hiding it, and the person is not always aware of this mechanism. Sometimes you can function very well in life and not even know what you are trying to hide, so it is difficult to put words to it. The problem is when a particular circumstance or event causes this to break down and stop working. Then anguish and anxiety appear as protagonists.

Sometimes, what we call insecurities cover up something that for the person is lived as intolerable (although he/she is not fully aware of it). We can imagine ourselves as a series of voids, vulnerabilities, and weaknesses around which our personality has been developing with its fears and its embarrassments. This disguise or this costume may cease to be useful to us at some point.

Does being an insecure person imply, among other things, obsessing too much about what we do not know before making a decision?

Partly yes, partly not necessarily. Some of the ways in which insecurity manifests itself are directly related to not knowing or believing that we should know more about what we have to make a decision about.

I understand that obsessing about a decision or thinking too much about something without actually acting on it is a way to avoid showing that you don't know or to avoid showing a certain weakness. A difficulty in accepting that we cannot know everything and a somewhat naive fantasy that everything could be under control. Sometimes these obsessions are prolonged over time and we never get to make any decision, which generates a high degree of suffering and blockages in many people.

How can insecurity influence us in the professional and work environment?

If we understand insecurities as traces that are part of a story, it is a little complicated to separate their effects by areas. However, depending on the person, insecurities become more important and manifest themselves more explicitly in some areas of life. Earlier, for example, we mentioned the issue of not knowing and decision making.

In relation to the professional and work environment, I have the feeling that different aspects of both social relations, as well as our own expectations and what we do not know and what we should know are intermingled.

Although it is a very broad topic with multiple edges, an example could be that of a person who works and fulfills what is required in his job and, when faced with the possibility of occupying a position of greater responsibility, begins to show difficulties and weaknesses. Another example is that of a person who does not feel capable of reaching a certain job position and makes excuses that go against what he/she would like.

These are only two examples of the many that can be observed and that could have to do with the idea that something is forbidden, is wrong within a learned scale of values or is outside the assumed personal identity.

And how does it tend to influence our emotional relationships, both with our partners and with friends and family?

It is almost an irrefutable fact that humans are social beings. Therefore, it is not surprising that a large part of these insecurities manifest themselves within the realm of interactions with others and in our social circles. However, sometimes they appear in solitude in the form in which we talk to ourselves.

In the realm of affective relationships, it is different when it is an interaction between two people than when it is a group interaction in which more actors appear on the scene. It depends on the person whether one situation is more difficult than the other.

In groups of friends, family... it is usually more complicated to control what facilitates the awakening of insecurities and mechanisms to hide them. In some cases, when this involves stress that is difficult to manage, symptoms appear such as social anxiety, fear of speaking in public, aggressive behavior, situations of exclusion and other more subtle ones, such as tensions or an apparent disinterest in social ties.

Is it common for poor management of uncertainty to lead people to a situation in which they should seek psychotherapeutic help?

I don't know if there is a good way to manage uncertainty. Accepting that there is very little that is under our control is often complicated.

It is true that there are complex situations where uncertainty can be particularly distressing, which makes some people consider seeking professional help. In any case, it may be interesting to understand why a certain situation generates a certain level of uncertainty and not what happens to us when we do not know or do not control.

As a psychologist, what kind of solutions and psychotherapeutic resources do you think are most useful to intervene in these cases?

As with everything in life, there are different ways to address the issue of insecurities depending on personal singularities and the therapeutic approach from which one works. In my opinion, in therapeutic work it is not so much a matter of covering or covering up these vulnerabilities or compensating for them with strategies.

Sometimes, this can have the opposite effect and it can happen that the problem is displaced to another place or another area of life, or a false sense of control is increased. In this sense, I think it is important to be able to make room for these fears and insecurities, to begin to unpack them and put words to them and to find the "pros" and "cons" of this type of behavior.

Having a more global vision of the way we relate to each other and the consequences that this entails in our day to day lives, allows a distance and the possibility of making the decision either to maintain it or to enter into the adventure that every process of change entails. Perhaps it is not a matter of changing everything and doing something like a "reset", basically because this is an impossible task from the outset, and it is more a matter of being able to do something different from what we have been used to and has been, or continues to be, a source of conflict, suffering and discomfort.