An Open Letter

I had a realization about insecurity I guess. I think it's pretty well known about exposure therapy to things like rejection or social anxiety. Like for example doing really cringy shit intentionally is always joked about on tiktok as exposure therapy or a lack of fear of social anxiety. And I think it's pretty clear that it works, where exposure therapy will make you get over that fear. But at the same time even if it's such a big problem when someone has an insecurity, for example the fear of rejection, at least for me I don't even consider actually doing exposure therapy for it, and I guess that comes down to not thinking it would work. I was thinking about that a little bit more, and I guess it's because at least for me there's a detachment between my description of the feeling, and the name of it. For example it's pretty easy to say oh yeah rejection is scary, and also this is something that's like I think a universal human fear. And well that's comfortable to say, thinking of what rejection would feel like and what it looks like then evokes like a sense of panic in my head that the word rejection doesn't. Like if I think about not being in a great place and then reaching out to someone and getting disregarded as a human, that horrifies me. Like if I was to actively ask someone “hey is it fine if I join you guys” in a setting where it's acceptable, and I get the response of a definitive no, that would make me feel afraid in a very intimate way that would last with me. Like the feedback that you are not wanted or accepted into some community. Just the hypothetical situation makes me understand what that feeling would actually look like in a way that the word rejection does not. If I convince myself those are the same thing, then I kind of get why that might be something worth actually fixing.

It's almost like my realization with shins splints. I always just accepted that it would be a lifelong problem because I did not know that I would actually be able to fix it. And the ways that I thought I could fix it made it seem absolutely impossible. I did so many calf raises and still struggled so much I just thought I was doomed because that much effort didn't fix it. And then only recently I started spamming tib raises and then I'm now pretty much pain-free. In such a relatively low amount of effort I was able to such a big problem. And I suddenly feel more hopeful. I want to put in effort in new ways for my current insecurities because maybe all of those things are the same. Maybe we aren't doomed to never change.