[quote=Miguel'smom;2352204 You can say 1000 nice things about me but the 1 negative thing sticks.[/quote]

Yes. THIS. ^^

I should be one of the most confident people on earth. I have a solid marriage and beautiful family, a nice home, enough material goods and then some. I'm successful in my career (and recently turned down a huge promotion at work because I knew I'd never be able to do it in the frame of mind I was in at that time). I have a large circle of friends and the respect of literally hundreds of people, both IRL and online. Truly, I've been blessed with much more than I deserve.

So why do I continue to struggle with insecurity? It started with a hypercritical mother and an oppressive upbringing, but even with therapy I've never been able to overcome it completely. Now I know that the issue underlying all of that is the bipolar, which may have only been recently diagnosed but has been there all along......probably since I was a child, certainly since I was a teenager.

My pdoc thinks I underestimate the damage my childhood experience inflicted on me; in fact, he calls it "traumatic". I don't know about that. But I never experienced unconditional love until I met my husband 32 years ago, and it took him 20 of those years to convince me that he loved me no matter what I said or what I did.

Even now, even with him knowing the worst about me and having put up with my moods, my rages, my erratic behaviors all these years, I still can't really wrap my mind around the concept of unconditional love. Sometimes I wonder what God is going to say when we finally meet, because He's all about unconditional love, and I can't see it even when it bites me right on the nose.

So to answer the question "Are you insecure?", I'd have to give that one a "HELL YES!!!" even though I don't have the slightest reason to feel that way. It's one of the sadnesses of my life, and at this point I seriously doubt there's a fix for it. But, it is what it is.