How to let go of your high school insecurities

One woman reflects on how she shed her insecurities from the past to become a more confident woman.

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“Sometimes I feel like there is a group who maybe doesn’t really want me there. Sometimes I wonder why I wasn’t invited. Sometimes I wonder why I wasn’t included. Sometimes I walk up to a circle of people and I get that awful, sinking feeling like they were just talking about me,” Amy Weatherly began in a Facebook post.

She continues, “Sometimes I feel like the same 16-year-old girl who didn’t know where to sit in the cafeteria.” Because high school is such a formative phase in our lives, the scars and insecurities we’re left with don’t quickly fade. Many are left with a nagging sense of unworthiness or a “loser complex,” relentless perfectionism, or a need for approval. That feeling of never-good-enough becomes so familiar that we forget that we have the option of living without it. But how can we let go when our younger selves seem to haunt us at every turn?

In a beautiful reflection posted on Facebook, Amy Weatherly shares her secret to overcoming these haunting insecurities: “I’m not her anymore. I may feel like her from time-to-time, but I’m not her. I’m wiser. I’m stronger. I’m better in most ways. I know how to be proud of exactly who God created me to be.”

She ends with an encouragement for other women: “I hope you know that too. That you aren’t the same girl you used to be. That you don’t have to worry about fitting in anymore. That you are free to be exactly who God created you to be. That you don’t have to be everyone’s cup of tea. You do it, friend. You do it with a smile. You do it with love. You do it with all the confidence in the world.”