Dealing with shame around an unhealthy coping mechanism
December 11, 2021 11:08 PM Subscribe
In therapy, I recently realized I search for external validation + attention in order to deal with my dirt-poor self-esteem. This is an illuminating realization and is something I'd love to change about myself. Problem is, I'm drowning in shame over this coping mechanism, and it's keeping me frozen. How can Iive with the ways I've survived, especially when they're so off-putting?
CW: descriptions of emotional neglect, drinking and self-loathing.
I'm posting this anonymously because of how much shame I'm carrying around this behavior, but the gist of it is this: my parents were incredibly emotionally neglectful and got divorced when I was around 13. All of this was handled extremely poorly, so I internalized the (clichéd, I know, but still) idea that my family falling apart/not being shown love was all my fault because I was, inherently, a bad kid; a worthless, broken thing that was unlovable. What other reasons could there be for parents to not love their child? That was my logic as a kid, anyway, even if as an adult I rationally understand it a lot better now and know it's a lot more complicated than that.
After their years of neglect and their messy divorce, as a young teen I felt so guilty and worthless that I started partying and drinking just to numb out those feelings. My parents eventually noticed and were all sorts of disappointed, ashamed, etc in me, which just made me feel even worse so I stopped. Stopped, but was still wracked with these big feelings no one ever explained to me, so I needed to cope, but couldn't turn to partying anymore.
I didn't do this consciously at the time, but I realize now that during the last couple years of high school some part of my brain realized that my parents showed me a *lot* more affection and warmth if I was successful: if I got a good grade my mom wouldn't just pretend I didn't exist, she'd actually take me out to get ice cream and hug me, or if I made it to being captain of the track/field team in high school my dad actually showed up and was super proud of me, etc etc. Their sudden affection + external validation when I Achieved Something was almost like a replacement for the alcohol—it numbed the agony, made me feel worthy, and kept me away from the hard feelings.
So I took that and ran with it. Became a total workaholic and overachiever, and focused heavily on being a straight-A student, never ever failing, and always being the never-needy, good friend. I thrived off of everyone's praise and positive attention—it kept me away from the hurt, hurt which felt unsurvivable, and made me feel like I was actually useful and worth something and not just the fuck-up kid that no one liked.
I did have some career aspirations for myself and not just for my parents' sake—I remembered what the pain of my childhood felt like, even if I couldn't put it into words or understand why it was there, and felt absolutely sick at the idea of any other kid or family going through that same excruciating pain. So I set my sights on a career in a helping profession, since I knew it'd make people proud and I could work hard to help other kids to stay out of the pain I'd been in; I could actually try to make a positive difference in someone's life and not just party everything away.
But, after years and years of pushing through, my workaholism and perfectionism stopped functioning. I hit a wall, started missing work, making mistakes, and I went through a few personally traumatic situations on top of it all; so I had to leave my job. This meant that I suddenly lost all that external validation/success that was keeping me afloat. I hit rock bottom, hard, and made the choice to get help because I felt like I was drowning and didn’t understand why leaving my job was wrecking me so badly.
So, I've been in therapy for a while now, and finally had this big realization that a) the emotional neglect was pretty traumatizing, not just something to brush off; my therapist has suggested a diagnosis of complex PTSD, and b) I used achievement, external validation from others and success to ward off my painful emotions and sense of worthlessness.
I feel SO ashamed and grossed out by this external-validation-based coping mechanism. I just thought I was highly sociable, driven in my career and kind of a perfectionist! Not that I was trying to desperately seek approval and attention from everyone in order to feel worthy at all. I keep running into this sense that this particular coping mechanism makes me a Trump-like figure, or a selfish monster who just exploited everyone around her for a little attention. I always tried really hard to be ethical and fair in my job, to be empathic and understanding with my loved ones, and to try to leave this world a little better than I found it, but... How do I know it wasn't all self-serving? If it was, how the hell am I supposed to live with that?
How do I stop hating that attention-seeking part of me? Would it even be morally okay to try to extend that part self-compassion at all? It always feels so needy and desperate, and it makes me feel awful that this was the way I chose to deal with my pain; by becoming so focused on success and on external approval. It's gross. And feels scummy and narcissistic. Opposites of everything I've wanted to be; and I have a bone-deep terror that I've inadvertently hurt someone without realizing because of this, which would break my heart completely.
In short, I'm working on self-acceptance and compassion with my therapist, but I’m also looking for resources and perspectives from others who have maybe been through something similar in terms of relying on external validation to cope, or who have dealt with deep, relentless shame around the maladaptive ways they've handled trauma and pain.
I really want feel better about this since I know that staying stuck in deep self-loathing can turn into a selfish thing to do, and it might harm others, so I want to move past this. I know that the ways I've handled things aren't great or healthy in the slightest, and I fully acknowledge that, but I'd appreciate gentleness if possible. Thank you so much.
CW: descriptions of emotional neglect, drinking and self-loathing.
I'm posting this anonymously because of how much shame I'm carrying around this behavior, but the gist of it is this: my parents were incredibly emotionally neglectful and got divorced when I was around 13. All of this was handled extremely poorly, so I internalized the (clichéd, I know, but still) idea that my family falling apart/not being shown love was all my fault because I was, inherently, a bad kid; a worthless, broken thing that was unlovable. What other reasons could there be for parents to not love their child? That was my logic as a kid, anyway, even if as an adult I rationally understand it a lot better now and know it's a lot more complicated than that.
After their years of neglect and their messy divorce, as a young teen I felt so guilty and worthless that I started partying and drinking just to numb out those feelings. My parents eventually noticed and were all sorts of disappointed, ashamed, etc in me, which just made me feel even worse so I stopped. Stopped, but was still wracked with these big feelings no one ever explained to me, so I needed to cope, but couldn't turn to partying anymore.
I didn't do this consciously at the time, but I realize now that during the last couple years of high school some part of my brain realized that my parents showed me a *lot* more affection and warmth if I was successful: if I got a good grade my mom wouldn't just pretend I didn't exist, she'd actually take me out to get ice cream and hug me, or if I made it to being captain of the track/field team in high school my dad actually showed up and was super proud of me, etc etc. Their sudden affection + external validation when I Achieved Something was almost like a replacement for the alcohol—it numbed the agony, made me feel worthy, and kept me away from the hard feelings.
So I took that and ran with it. Became a total workaholic and overachiever, and focused heavily on being a straight-A student, never ever failing, and always being the never-needy, good friend. I thrived off of everyone's praise and positive attention—it kept me away from the hurt, hurt which felt unsurvivable, and made me feel like I was actually useful and worth something and not just the fuck-up kid that no one liked.
I did have some career aspirations for myself and not just for my parents' sake—I remembered what the pain of my childhood felt like, even if I couldn't put it into words or understand why it was there, and felt absolutely sick at the idea of any other kid or family going through that same excruciating pain. So I set my sights on a career in a helping profession, since I knew it'd make people proud and I could work hard to help other kids to stay out of the pain I'd been in; I could actually try to make a positive difference in someone's life and not just party everything away.
But, after years and years of pushing through, my workaholism and perfectionism stopped functioning. I hit a wall, started missing work, making mistakes, and I went through a few personally traumatic situations on top of it all; so I had to leave my job. This meant that I suddenly lost all that external validation/success that was keeping me afloat. I hit rock bottom, hard, and made the choice to get help because I felt like I was drowning and didn’t understand why leaving my job was wrecking me so badly.
So, I've been in therapy for a while now, and finally had this big realization that a) the emotional neglect was pretty traumatizing, not just something to brush off; my therapist has suggested a diagnosis of complex PTSD, and b) I used achievement, external validation from others and success to ward off my painful emotions and sense of worthlessness.
I feel SO ashamed and grossed out by this external-validation-based coping mechanism. I just thought I was highly sociable, driven in my career and kind of a perfectionist! Not that I was trying to desperately seek approval and attention from everyone in order to feel worthy at all. I keep running into this sense that this particular coping mechanism makes me a Trump-like figure, or a selfish monster who just exploited everyone around her for a little attention. I always tried really hard to be ethical and fair in my job, to be empathic and understanding with my loved ones, and to try to leave this world a little better than I found it, but... How do I know it wasn't all self-serving? If it was, how the hell am I supposed to live with that?
How do I stop hating that attention-seeking part of me? Would it even be morally okay to try to extend that part self-compassion at all? It always feels so needy and desperate, and it makes me feel awful that this was the way I chose to deal with my pain; by becoming so focused on success and on external approval. It's gross. And feels scummy and narcissistic. Opposites of everything I've wanted to be; and I have a bone-deep terror that I've inadvertently hurt someone without realizing because of this, which would break my heart completely.
In short, I'm working on self-acceptance and compassion with my therapist, but I’m also looking for resources and perspectives from others who have maybe been through something similar in terms of relying on external validation to cope, or who have dealt with deep, relentless shame around the maladaptive ways they've handled trauma and pain.
I really want feel better about this since I know that staying stuck in deep self-loathing can turn into a selfish thing to do, and it might harm others, so I want to move past this. I know that the ways I've handled things aren't great or healthy in the slightest, and I fully acknowledge that, but I'd appreciate gentleness if possible. Thank you so much.
Does it help at all to think about the fact that a craving for external validation is pretty much a core need for all humans?
I hope that doesn't come across as minimizing your concern. Just that I think there is an unhealthy idea in modern society that needing external validation is somehow evidence of weakness, that we all should be more independent and self reliant. Which is just not realistic.
Needing external validation is a rational and normal part of being human.
You are right that you have to find a way of managing that need without damaging yourself and others.
But being motivated by external validation itself need not be seen as a sign of something being wrong with you.
And in fact, I am impressed that you have found the strength to look at yourself so honestly and bravely. Reconsidering your core values is not easy!
Please be very gentle, patient, and kind with yourself.
posted by Zumbador at 11:39 PM on December 11, 2021 [24 favorites]
I hope that doesn't come across as minimizing your concern. Just that I think there is an unhealthy idea in modern society that needing external validation is somehow evidence of weakness, that we all should be more independent and self reliant. Which is just not realistic.
Needing external validation is a rational and normal part of being human.
You are right that you have to find a way of managing that need without damaging yourself and others.
But being motivated by external validation itself need not be seen as a sign of something being wrong with you.
And in fact, I am impressed that you have found the strength to look at yourself so honestly and bravely. Reconsidering your core values is not easy!
Please be very gentle, patient, and kind with yourself.
posted by Zumbador at 11:39 PM on December 11, 2021 [24 favorites]
I feel SO ashamed and grossed out by this external-validation-based coping mechanism
I mean, you're in good company. I don't know if half the planet practices this kind of coping mechanism, but I wouldn't be surprised.
I always tried really hard to be ethical and fair in my job, to be empathic and understanding with my loved ones, and to try to leave this world a little better than I found it, but... How do I know it wasn't all self-serving?
Imagine if Donald Trump had made the choice to work out his need for validation by being the most ethical, fair, helpful individual around. Self-serving? If everyone were self-serving that way, the invisible hand would actually work and the world would be an amazing place. If Trump had chosen the path of good, we could have a chance of beating climate change, hundreds of millions more people might be alive, human rights and democracy would be far less under siege. If I found out it was all due to a deep-seated need to look good to others? That would not reduce my gratitude and sense of luck in the slightest. I would be impressed with his take on what looking good means.
Compare what he actually interpreted "looking good" as. That's what a person should be ashamed of, not the ability to recognize right from wrong and actively choose to do right, for whatever reason.
If your approach to dealing with your issues was to act like the best person you could be, then that's a choice you can be proud of. Way too many people choose otherwise. And it is a choice - one you made day after day.
posted by trig at 11:56 PM on December 11, 2021 [17 favorites]
I mean, you're in good company. I don't know if half the planet practices this kind of coping mechanism, but I wouldn't be surprised.
I always tried really hard to be ethical and fair in my job, to be empathic and understanding with my loved ones, and to try to leave this world a little better than I found it, but... How do I know it wasn't all self-serving?
Imagine if Donald Trump had made the choice to work out his need for validation by being the most ethical, fair, helpful individual around. Self-serving? If everyone were self-serving that way, the invisible hand would actually work and the world would be an amazing place. If Trump had chosen the path of good, we could have a chance of beating climate change, hundreds of millions more people might be alive, human rights and democracy would be far less under siege. If I found out it was all due to a deep-seated need to look good to others? That would not reduce my gratitude and sense of luck in the slightest. I would be impressed with his take on what looking good means.
Compare what he actually interpreted "looking good" as. That's what a person should be ashamed of, not the ability to recognize right from wrong and actively choose to do right, for whatever reason.
If your approach to dealing with your issues was to act like the best person you could be, then that's a choice you can be proud of. Way too many people choose otherwise. And it is a choice - one you made day after day.
posted by trig at 11:56 PM on December 11, 2021 [17 favorites]
How do I know it wasn't all self-serving? If it was, how the hell am I supposed to live with that?
Umm, I'm almost afraid that saying this will destabilise your understanding of the planet we live on, but this is all of us, all of the time. Every single thing we do is built on that reality. Self-serving is good, not bad. It is necessary.
posted by DarlingBri at 1:29 AM on December 12, 2021 [13 favorites]
Umm, I'm almost afraid that saying this will destabilise your understanding of the planet we live on, but this is all of us, all of the time. Every single thing we do is built on that reality. Self-serving is good, not bad. It is necessary.
posted by DarlingBri at 1:29 AM on December 12, 2021 [13 favorites]
There is absolutely nothing wrong with being at least somewhat motivated by external validation. Nothing. I suspect the fact that you are ashamed by it has to do with the neglect and abuse you experienced - if validation was conditional as a child, it makes sense that you would see it as risky and possibly shameful to seek it. But I assure you this is an extremely normal human impulse, and I actually think it can be healthy.
(I also think our society holds some contempt for this as well, which I think is just a reflection on how our culture is individualistic to an unhealthy degree. We're a social species, it's normal to want others' approval.)
I think one of the most important things for people who work for the public good is to understand their motivations for doing so. You have done so. And yeah, it can be weird and uncomfortable and even excruciating to do so, but I think it's really important for being able to have the kind of impact you want to have and not burning yourself out again. And you know, it's ok to have some selfish motivations. Actually, I think it's kind of necessary, otherwise you just become a martyr.
And in your personal relationships, well, it's not always the best thing to be a completely non-needy friend. People LIKE to help their friends. I love giving my friends validation! I think again, the key to being a person with needs who is able to have healthy relationships is understanding those needs. I love it when a really strong, independent friend comes to me asks for validation - it makes me feel trusted and valued, and I love making them feel how loved and supported they are!
You are doing really hard, brave, challenging work. I think this work is going to help you need validation less. But you'll never completely get rid of your need for external validation - and if you did, that would probably leave your life poorer.
I would very gently urge you to find a way to share at least a small shred of this with your kindest, most supportive friend. Maybe not right now, and maybe you talk through it with your therapist first. But I bet if you share at least some of this with a friend, you'll see from their reaction that it's really not a terrible thing. They'll probably share their own experiences with needing validation! Good luck, you're making such great strides.
posted by lunasol at 1:36 AM on December 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
(I also think our society holds some contempt for this as well, which I think is just a reflection on how our culture is individualistic to an unhealthy degree. We're a social species, it's normal to want others' approval.)
I think one of the most important things for people who work for the public good is to understand their motivations for doing so. You have done so. And yeah, it can be weird and uncomfortable and even excruciating to do so, but I think it's really important for being able to have the kind of impact you want to have and not burning yourself out again. And you know, it's ok to have some selfish motivations. Actually, I think it's kind of necessary, otherwise you just become a martyr.
And in your personal relationships, well, it's not always the best thing to be a completely non-needy friend. People LIKE to help their friends. I love giving my friends validation! I think again, the key to being a person with needs who is able to have healthy relationships is understanding those needs. I love it when a really strong, independent friend comes to me asks for validation - it makes me feel trusted and valued, and I love making them feel how loved and supported they are!
You are doing really hard, brave, challenging work. I think this work is going to help you need validation less. But you'll never completely get rid of your need for external validation - and if you did, that would probably leave your life poorer.
I would very gently urge you to find a way to share at least a small shred of this with your kindest, most supportive friend. Maybe not right now, and maybe you talk through it with your therapist first. But I bet if you share at least some of this with a friend, you'll see from their reaction that it's really not a terrible thing. They'll probably share their own experiences with needing validation! Good luck, you're making such great strides.
posted by lunasol at 1:36 AM on December 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
Somewhere in you is a little kid voice saying, "look at me! Tell me I'm amazing! Tell me I'm worth your love".
And there's a big, mean old voice saying "how dare you, you're disgusting for even wanting that." (Would you ever say that to a kid? No, right?)
But that voice is there to protect you - like, it's trying to stop you from actually asking for love and then getting rejected in a harsh way. It preempts it.
Long ago, you got taught to expect to get shamed. You internalised that voice to protect yorself from outside shaming. Now you know that what you got taught was wrong, but you can't believe it yet. That's okay. It takes a while to unlearn.
Big Voice is still trying to protect you. It's afraid for you. It doesn't have to be afraid, though. You're on your own side. Eventually, you'll find a new map for how the world works. One that has room for you and yur needs and the fact that you are worthy of all kinds of love and admiration, and that needing it is human and good.
posted by Omnomnom at 4:09 AM on December 12, 2021 [12 favorites]
And there's a big, mean old voice saying "how dare you, you're disgusting for even wanting that." (Would you ever say that to a kid? No, right?)
But that voice is there to protect you - like, it's trying to stop you from actually asking for love and then getting rejected in a harsh way. It preempts it.
Long ago, you got taught to expect to get shamed. You internalised that voice to protect yorself from outside shaming. Now you know that what you got taught was wrong, but you can't believe it yet. That's okay. It takes a while to unlearn.
Big Voice is still trying to protect you. It's afraid for you. It doesn't have to be afraid, though. You're on your own side. Eventually, you'll find a new map for how the world works. One that has room for you and yur needs and the fact that you are worthy of all kinds of love and admiration, and that needing it is human and good.
posted by Omnomnom at 4:09 AM on December 12, 2021 [12 favorites]
Wanting external approval is so, so normal and nothing to be ashamed of at all! There's no particular *virtue* in being/becoming more internally motivated and finding internal sources of love and validation, it just makes your emotional life easier in a lot of ways.
You won't be a better person if you find a way to give up your perfectionism, etc., but your life could get a lot easier. That maybe sounds a little negative - another way to look at it would be that by reducing your dependence on external validation you're not exorcising some shameful part of your personality: you're simply giving up on strategies that aren't working for you anymore.
posted by mskyle at 6:05 AM on December 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
You won't be a better person if you find a way to give up your perfectionism, etc., but your life could get a lot easier. That maybe sounds a little negative - another way to look at it would be that by reducing your dependence on external validation you're not exorcising some shameful part of your personality: you're simply giving up on strategies that aren't working for you anymore.
posted by mskyle at 6:05 AM on December 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
I just thought I was highly sociable, driven in my career and kind of a perfectionist! Not that I was trying to desperately seek approval and attention from everyone in order to feel worthy at all.
These things are not mutually exclusive. People have a variety of motivations for the things they do, and sometimes they internally conflict. People become doctors because they genuinely want to help people, but also because it is a high-status role. Anyone who is a high achiever is partially motivated by seeking approval and attention from others, even if they would never describe it that way (socially acceptable ways to say this are “having an impact” or “making a greater contribution”). It is important to balance this with a sense of self and worth that isn’t dependent on achievement, but this is really a BALANCE. Not caring about the approval of others at all isn’t great either.
It also sounds like you had the experience of burning out due to professional and personal factors, and experiencing a loss of identity because your identity was so tied to your job. Again, this is a common experience. Developing an identity separate from work is important, but it is also ok to have some facets of your identity and worth related to your work.
Tl;dr - so much of this sounds so normal, and the work is more finding a balance and less getting rid of this altogether.
posted by jeoc at 6:18 AM on December 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
These things are not mutually exclusive. People have a variety of motivations for the things they do, and sometimes they internally conflict. People become doctors because they genuinely want to help people, but also because it is a high-status role. Anyone who is a high achiever is partially motivated by seeking approval and attention from others, even if they would never describe it that way (socially acceptable ways to say this are “having an impact” or “making a greater contribution”). It is important to balance this with a sense of self and worth that isn’t dependent on achievement, but this is really a BALANCE. Not caring about the approval of others at all isn’t great either.
It also sounds like you had the experience of burning out due to professional and personal factors, and experiencing a loss of identity because your identity was so tied to your job. Again, this is a common experience. Developing an identity separate from work is important, but it is also ok to have some facets of your identity and worth related to your work.
Tl;dr - so much of this sounds so normal, and the work is more finding a balance and less getting rid of this altogether.
posted by jeoc at 6:18 AM on December 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
awww man i feel this so deeply. a couple of books that might be worth reading:
complex ptsd: from surviving to thriving has a TON of helpful information and a lot of actionable strategies to deal with the voice in your head that shames your for wanting and needing love and approval. as many people have said, that drive is totally normal. it’s the fact that you feel shame for having human needs that is hurting you.
self compassion. basically exactly what it says.
posted by missjenny at 6:54 AM on December 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
complex ptsd: from surviving to thriving has a TON of helpful information and a lot of actionable strategies to deal with the voice in your head that shames your for wanting and needing love and approval. as many people have said, that drive is totally normal. it’s the fact that you feel shame for having human needs that is hurting you.
self compassion. basically exactly what it says.
posted by missjenny at 6:54 AM on December 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
No one is an island. If you look at people who are able to stand up against unjust but socially acceptable situations, where they will face significant negative social consequences for doing so, those folks tend to have a family of origin or someone important to their childhood development who provided them with the emotional security of unconditional love that your parents did not provide you. Most people don’t or can’t do that because most people don’t have a sufficiently secure background, and so need to be able to get that external validation in an ongoing way. (This lies on a spectrum, where your parents were particularly neglectful, from what you describe and the fact that your therapist has diagnosed you with C-PTSD.) In all cases, however, people still need a base amount of social connection. As trig notes, Trump is a shitty human being because he chooses to act in ways that are incredibly harmful to those around him, not because he had an equally shitty father and was also emotionally neglected as a child.
Discuss this with your therapist, but one potentially useful approach might be to reframe your entirely normal human need from “needing external validation” to “needing positive social connection”? To help with that reframing, it might potentially be useful to read a bit on relational autonomy (in the feminist philosophy sense; there’s also an idea called relational autonomy in medical ethics, which appears to be a different thing).
posted by eviemath at 6:59 AM on December 12, 2021 [7 favorites]
Discuss this with your therapist, but one potentially useful approach might be to reframe your entirely normal human need from “needing external validation” to “needing positive social connection”? To help with that reframing, it might potentially be useful to read a bit on relational autonomy (in the feminist philosophy sense; there’s also an idea called relational autonomy in medical ethics, which appears to be a different thing).
posted by eviemath at 6:59 AM on December 12, 2021 [7 favorites]
When my kids asked/ask for attention, I gave/give it to them. It’s a human need. There’s nothing wrong with it; society is all kinds of messed up about it. It’s fine to need and want to be recognized and cared for. If you think about how you treat others I think you’ll see that. Treat yourself the way you’d treat them. I know that’s hard in a lot of ways but you can do it..
posted by warriorqueen at 7:02 AM on December 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by warriorqueen at 7:02 AM on December 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
I internalized the (clichéd, I know, but still) idea that my family falling apart/not being shown love was all my fault because I was, inherently, a bad kid; a worthless, broken thing that was unlovable.
For a long time it has helped me to understand this as a necessary lie that I told myself as a child. A child is powerless over their parents and relies completely on them for survival. The younger you are, the more your life literally depends on your adult caretakers! If the caretakers are abusive or neglectful, the child has two ways to understand what is happening: either I am a fundamentally decent and lovable human being who is completely at the mercy of unreliable, abusive caretakers, OR I am fundamentally awful and the chaos and abuse are actually fair treatment. Either I am good and lovable and the world is trying to destroy me for no reason at all, OR I am bad and wrong and the world is fair and not fundamentally insane.
The first option was much closer to the truth of my situation, but it is far too frightening even for many adults to handle! If I had chosen option number 1, I think I might literally have died of despair. Like, seriously, I think I would have given up on eating, talking, bathing, protecting myself in even the most basic ways. Choosing the lie that I was wrong and the world (and my parents) were right probably saved my life. It gave me something to hold on to, a fictive kernel of control over my circumstances, a little bit of perverse hope that if I could just pretend to be very VERY good, my parents would deign to look past my awfulness and love me and the world would be fair and orderly.
How do I stop hating that attention-seeking part of me? Would it even be morally okay to try to extend that part self-compassion at all? It always feels so needy and desperate, and it makes me feel awful that this was the way I chose to deal with my pain; by becoming so focused on success and on external approval. It's gross. And feels scummy and narcissistic.
I think it is necessary to extend compassion to that part of yourself. If you are like me, self-hatred was the only tool you had to survive your childhood. To stop hating my own emotional needs, including my needs from childhood that were never met -- that is frightening, because then I might start to really FEEL the abandonment that my parents subjected me to. That abandonment is too much for a person to endure without help from another person, and so I had to bury that pain deep down and never look at it, or else it would have destroyed me because I had no one to help me through it. But now I do have help from a therapist.
There's a quote from Timmen Cernak that is rather daunting to me, but I think it's important: "It does not work to have your feelings in order to heal. You must be willing to have your feelings simply because they are real." Your feelings of desperate need are not scummy or narcissistic; they are simply real.
posted by cubeb at 7:57 AM on December 12, 2021 [24 favorites]
For a long time it has helped me to understand this as a necessary lie that I told myself as a child. A child is powerless over their parents and relies completely on them for survival. The younger you are, the more your life literally depends on your adult caretakers! If the caretakers are abusive or neglectful, the child has two ways to understand what is happening: either I am a fundamentally decent and lovable human being who is completely at the mercy of unreliable, abusive caretakers, OR I am fundamentally awful and the chaos and abuse are actually fair treatment. Either I am good and lovable and the world is trying to destroy me for no reason at all, OR I am bad and wrong and the world is fair and not fundamentally insane.
The first option was much closer to the truth of my situation, but it is far too frightening even for many adults to handle! If I had chosen option number 1, I think I might literally have died of despair. Like, seriously, I think I would have given up on eating, talking, bathing, protecting myself in even the most basic ways. Choosing the lie that I was wrong and the world (and my parents) were right probably saved my life. It gave me something to hold on to, a fictive kernel of control over my circumstances, a little bit of perverse hope that if I could just pretend to be very VERY good, my parents would deign to look past my awfulness and love me and the world would be fair and orderly.
How do I stop hating that attention-seeking part of me? Would it even be morally okay to try to extend that part self-compassion at all? It always feels so needy and desperate, and it makes me feel awful that this was the way I chose to deal with my pain; by becoming so focused on success and on external approval. It's gross. And feels scummy and narcissistic.
I think it is necessary to extend compassion to that part of yourself. If you are like me, self-hatred was the only tool you had to survive your childhood. To stop hating my own emotional needs, including my needs from childhood that were never met -- that is frightening, because then I might start to really FEEL the abandonment that my parents subjected me to. That abandonment is too much for a person to endure without help from another person, and so I had to bury that pain deep down and never look at it, or else it would have destroyed me because I had no one to help me through it. But now I do have help from a therapist.
There's a quote from Timmen Cernak that is rather daunting to me, but I think it's important: "It does not work to have your feelings in order to heal. You must be willing to have your feelings simply because they are real." Your feelings of desperate need are not scummy or narcissistic; they are simply real.
posted by cubeb at 7:57 AM on December 12, 2021 [24 favorites]
Who taught you that it was morally wrong to seek attention and validation?
Perhaps what's going on is that as you're learning to practice self-compassion, and as you're detangling your true needs and true values from those of others, you're coming up against big, painful, confusing knots that need to be worked out. In this case, your 100% normal, human need for unconditional love, validation, and attention vs. your parents and other authority figures wanting you to be small, servile and perfect - and what they taught you about the world in order to make you behave that way.
You are allowed to have needs. You do deserve unconditional love. You do deserve to be seen and appreciated.
posted by Stoof at 10:25 AM on December 12, 2021 [7 favorites]
Perhaps what's going on is that as you're learning to practice self-compassion, and as you're detangling your true needs and true values from those of others, you're coming up against big, painful, confusing knots that need to be worked out. In this case, your 100% normal, human need for unconditional love, validation, and attention vs. your parents and other authority figures wanting you to be small, servile and perfect - and what they taught you about the world in order to make you behave that way.
You are allowed to have needs. You do deserve unconditional love. You do deserve to be seen and appreciated.
posted by Stoof at 10:25 AM on December 12, 2021 [7 favorites]
I have complex PTSD and my experience is very similar to yours. This is a very hard thing to live with and I'm really proud of you for all of the immense work that you've done so far to get you to this pivotal point.
Has your therapist spoken with you about how intense shame is a very common feeling for those of us with cPTSD? I believe some therapists even use it as a diagnostic marker. Self-loathing and extreme shame over having basic needs and wanting them met is the trauma. More importantly -- have you spoken with your therapist about this shame? And moreover, have you tried feeling this shame during a therapy session over this with your therapist there with you? Really feeling it, not intellectualizing the fact that you feel it? Your inner child (and you) need to feel these feelings in a safe environment with another human in order to help you heal. People like you and me were taught that any needs or desires that we had for acceptance, validation, and love (basic human needs) were wrong and bad, and we need to relearn our relationship with those basic needs. Personally, I think it is easiest to rebuild that relationship through interaction with others -- like a trusted therapist -- because it is an attachment-based trauma. The fact that you've gotten to this point in your work with your therapist suggests that you will be able to continue doing this work with them. I'd encourage you to talk with them about your shame and to try to see if you can work through it together.
Oh, and you asked: "Would it even be morally okay to try to extend that part self-compassion at all?" Yes. It is absolutely okay and it is probably necessary for you to be able to extend compassion towards the part of yourself that worked out a strategy for having their needs met. One thing I do in therapy is that I imagine extending compassion towards other people who have similar experiences to me. Sometimes we talk about what it was like to be a child in the environment that I was raised in, and I can have compassion for that kid. Through doing this work with my therapist, it has become easy for me to extend compassion towards the child version of myself, a small kid, trying to get by in a very abusive and dysfunctional home. We've been working on me extending that compassion to myself in the present, too. I have a lot of compassion towards you reading your story here. I imagine if I told you my similar story in more detail that you would feel compassion for me, too. Learning to how to extend that compassion towards the self is hard, but it is definitely doable for people who were raised the way that we were. You're doing awesome work so far. Best of luck to you and solidarity.
posted by twelve cent archie at 10:34 AM on December 12, 2021 [9 favorites]
Has your therapist spoken with you about how intense shame is a very common feeling for those of us with cPTSD? I believe some therapists even use it as a diagnostic marker. Self-loathing and extreme shame over having basic needs and wanting them met is the trauma. More importantly -- have you spoken with your therapist about this shame? And moreover, have you tried feeling this shame during a therapy session over this with your therapist there with you? Really feeling it, not intellectualizing the fact that you feel it? Your inner child (and you) need to feel these feelings in a safe environment with another human in order to help you heal. People like you and me were taught that any needs or desires that we had for acceptance, validation, and love (basic human needs) were wrong and bad, and we need to relearn our relationship with those basic needs. Personally, I think it is easiest to rebuild that relationship through interaction with others -- like a trusted therapist -- because it is an attachment-based trauma. The fact that you've gotten to this point in your work with your therapist suggests that you will be able to continue doing this work with them. I'd encourage you to talk with them about your shame and to try to see if you can work through it together.
Oh, and you asked: "Would it even be morally okay to try to extend that part self-compassion at all?" Yes. It is absolutely okay and it is probably necessary for you to be able to extend compassion towards the part of yourself that worked out a strategy for having their needs met. One thing I do in therapy is that I imagine extending compassion towards other people who have similar experiences to me. Sometimes we talk about what it was like to be a child in the environment that I was raised in, and I can have compassion for that kid. Through doing this work with my therapist, it has become easy for me to extend compassion towards the child version of myself, a small kid, trying to get by in a very abusive and dysfunctional home. We've been working on me extending that compassion to myself in the present, too. I have a lot of compassion towards you reading your story here. I imagine if I told you my similar story in more detail that you would feel compassion for me, too. Learning to how to extend that compassion towards the self is hard, but it is definitely doable for people who were raised the way that we were. You're doing awesome work so far. Best of luck to you and solidarity.
posted by twelve cent archie at 10:34 AM on December 12, 2021 [9 favorites]
Someone already recommended the Pete Walker Complex PTSD book, which I often recommend partnered with Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents.
You might discuss the treatment methodology of "reparenting" with your therapist (I think there are hyper-intense versions of this out there, but most of the people I know who have done it are using it as an ongoing narrative framing/philosophical device and not some kind of weird boot camp), but I think the free and lightweight version of this - and you see it expressed in all kinds of questions on Ask - is simply the concept of being a friend to yourself.
If a friend or someone you manage or someone you admire or even just the person next to you on a plane said to you, "I feel so unseen, nobody ever acknowledges my success or progress, nobody around me will talk to me, this is really hard and distressing," would you respond yes, this is correct, you are being an accurate monolith or would you say oh god, that sucks, that's not okay, you're doing a good job, how can I help make this better? Would you look down on someone else for having the human need - the human right - to be externally validated and interacted with and treated with respect and kindness?
You should at the very least extend yourself the generosity you would give to someone you maybe don't even know.
This may be a really scary thing to confront, but you're coming here asking how to deal with the shame as if the shame is rational and your human needs are irrational, but you have that completely backwards: your human needs are fine and normal and you should have had them nurtured as a child and you should be nurturing them yourself now. The shame is a symptom of the abuse (or, if you're not ready for that word, it's a symptom of the parenting failure), not some natural consequence of having the needs.
Something that can also be a big bite to chew for people with these kind of childhoods is accepting that your parents Did It Wrong. You are only just cracking the illusion that parents are infallible, and you'll have a bunch of defense mechanisms that say they didn't hit you unnecessarily and you had food, and you might even rush to point out all the ways in which you are quite privileged. It doesn't matter. Your parents were still not very good at parenting on this front. All parents fuck up sometimes and all kids hit adulthood with at least a few door dings, but yours were ongoing failures at a critical component of installing a healthy internal ecosystem in their child. It may actually be critical to your path forward toward a healthier ecosystem to acknowledge that, really dig in and empathize with them as flawed humans who probably weren't doing this as some sort of horrible science experiment and were just emotionally-stunted people (probably as a result of other people), and at least forgive so far as recognizing you can't go back and change it so you will just have to find new ways to go forward.
And to be fair, you also grew up in a world that chronically induces anxiety to make us good consumers and un-empowered, easily-manipulable employees. Just like a lot of us, you recognized that the people who are most likely to take brazen advantage of that are shitheads and you created the false equivalency that having healthy self-esteem is sociopathic. That's fine with them, it keeps us in our place. But you find yourself using work to fill the lack in yourself, and success at that work takes you ever closer to becoming one of Them, even if you can recognize from up close that it's not quite that black and white and you can be successful and also not terrible.
So I highly suggest that part of a multi-prong plan going forward - becoming a friend to yourself, recognizing the ways you were let down as a child, practicing the compassion you should be extending yourself - also embracing some socialism at the very least as a way of understanding the calculated structural oppression we operate under and why school and work so conveniently soothed the injuries inflicted by your family, right up until they didn't anymore. That's on purpose.
But shame can be a really difficult barrier to therapy, and you might look at the other recent threads here on EMDR and discuss that with your therapist (you may need to go work with a trained/certified EMDR therapist to actually do that treatment, but you can certainly consider it with your current therapist and prepare for it with them and continue seeing them for talk therapy). It can help neutralize the burn of the shame so you can step around it to what's behind it.
Being internally horrible to yourself is not a virtue. We get taught in various ways that it is, that it's "unfair" to others to really like yourself. That's a scam. It is okay to like yourself and get along with yourself and nurture yourself - beyond okay, there are advanced levels of compassion and love and connection that are not reachable without a foundation of self-acceptance and good regard and trust in yourself. If you want to see it as a critical component to bucking The Man/The System, it is actually a moral obligation to like and love and care for yourself as much as you can or would any other human. Because we're all part of it, my friend. It is and must be self-serving to make the world better, because we live here too.
This sounds silly, but as part of this work I recommend dating yourself. You and You should go for some nice walks together and talk about the stuff that matters to you. Go to museums and talk about your perceptions and how you wish you understood art better. Go for a hike or a wander and pick up any trash you see, because it's exercise and virtuous and you can practice guilt-free patting yourself on the back for it. Have some nice meals just in your own company - and maybe some days that's just a Subway sitting in your car at a nice park, or takeout at your own table - but sometimes just sit and be with yourself, and sometimes make yourself a playlist or listen to a comedy podcast and laugh. This process of re-negotiating your relationship with yourself isn't going to be fun every moment, but it is also important to manufacture opportunities where you can feel joy and excitement and silly-happy and relieved and relaxed.
posted by Lyn Never at 11:25 AM on December 12, 2021 [14 favorites]
You might discuss the treatment methodology of "reparenting" with your therapist (I think there are hyper-intense versions of this out there, but most of the people I know who have done it are using it as an ongoing narrative framing/philosophical device and not some kind of weird boot camp), but I think the free and lightweight version of this - and you see it expressed in all kinds of questions on Ask - is simply the concept of being a friend to yourself.
If a friend or someone you manage or someone you admire or even just the person next to you on a plane said to you, "I feel so unseen, nobody ever acknowledges my success or progress, nobody around me will talk to me, this is really hard and distressing," would you respond yes, this is correct, you are being an accurate monolith or would you say oh god, that sucks, that's not okay, you're doing a good job, how can I help make this better? Would you look down on someone else for having the human need - the human right - to be externally validated and interacted with and treated with respect and kindness?
You should at the very least extend yourself the generosity you would give to someone you maybe don't even know.
This may be a really scary thing to confront, but you're coming here asking how to deal with the shame as if the shame is rational and your human needs are irrational, but you have that completely backwards: your human needs are fine and normal and you should have had them nurtured as a child and you should be nurturing them yourself now. The shame is a symptom of the abuse (or, if you're not ready for that word, it's a symptom of the parenting failure), not some natural consequence of having the needs.
Something that can also be a big bite to chew for people with these kind of childhoods is accepting that your parents Did It Wrong. You are only just cracking the illusion that parents are infallible, and you'll have a bunch of defense mechanisms that say they didn't hit you unnecessarily and you had food, and you might even rush to point out all the ways in which you are quite privileged. It doesn't matter. Your parents were still not very good at parenting on this front. All parents fuck up sometimes and all kids hit adulthood with at least a few door dings, but yours were ongoing failures at a critical component of installing a healthy internal ecosystem in their child. It may actually be critical to your path forward toward a healthier ecosystem to acknowledge that, really dig in and empathize with them as flawed humans who probably weren't doing this as some sort of horrible science experiment and were just emotionally-stunted people (probably as a result of other people), and at least forgive so far as recognizing you can't go back and change it so you will just have to find new ways to go forward.
And to be fair, you also grew up in a world that chronically induces anxiety to make us good consumers and un-empowered, easily-manipulable employees. Just like a lot of us, you recognized that the people who are most likely to take brazen advantage of that are shitheads and you created the false equivalency that having healthy self-esteem is sociopathic. That's fine with them, it keeps us in our place. But you find yourself using work to fill the lack in yourself, and success at that work takes you ever closer to becoming one of Them, even if you can recognize from up close that it's not quite that black and white and you can be successful and also not terrible.
So I highly suggest that part of a multi-prong plan going forward - becoming a friend to yourself, recognizing the ways you were let down as a child, practicing the compassion you should be extending yourself - also embracing some socialism at the very least as a way of understanding the calculated structural oppression we operate under and why school and work so conveniently soothed the injuries inflicted by your family, right up until they didn't anymore. That's on purpose.
But shame can be a really difficult barrier to therapy, and you might look at the other recent threads here on EMDR and discuss that with your therapist (you may need to go work with a trained/certified EMDR therapist to actually do that treatment, but you can certainly consider it with your current therapist and prepare for it with them and continue seeing them for talk therapy). It can help neutralize the burn of the shame so you can step around it to what's behind it.
Being internally horrible to yourself is not a virtue. We get taught in various ways that it is, that it's "unfair" to others to really like yourself. That's a scam. It is okay to like yourself and get along with yourself and nurture yourself - beyond okay, there are advanced levels of compassion and love and connection that are not reachable without a foundation of self-acceptance and good regard and trust in yourself. If you want to see it as a critical component to bucking The Man/The System, it is actually a moral obligation to like and love and care for yourself as much as you can or would any other human. Because we're all part of it, my friend. It is and must be self-serving to make the world better, because we live here too.
This sounds silly, but as part of this work I recommend dating yourself. You and You should go for some nice walks together and talk about the stuff that matters to you. Go to museums and talk about your perceptions and how you wish you understood art better. Go for a hike or a wander and pick up any trash you see, because it's exercise and virtuous and you can practice guilt-free patting yourself on the back for it. Have some nice meals just in your own company - and maybe some days that's just a Subway sitting in your car at a nice park, or takeout at your own table - but sometimes just sit and be with yourself, and sometimes make yourself a playlist or listen to a comedy podcast and laugh. This process of re-negotiating your relationship with yourself isn't going to be fun every moment, but it is also important to manufacture opportunities where you can feel joy and excitement and silly-happy and relieved and relaxed.
posted by Lyn Never at 11:25 AM on December 12, 2021 [14 favorites]
staying stuck in deep self-loathing can turn into a selfish thing to do, and it might harm others
I want to gently push back on this in particular, people have said a lot of good things here - feeling the symptoms of a very real mental illness/trauma that is mostly directed at yourself is not a selfish thing to do. It's a popular but bullshit concept to pathologize self-loathing into evil or selfishness or whatever, and I can almost guarantee you're not actually at any risk of having harmed people other than yourself. You seem ethical, kind, and contentious and very cruel to yourself, the worries about causing harm or shameful bad morality are simply not real. As much as I can say this not knowing you: you didn't do anything wrong! You won't! You honestly sound like a totally normal nice person!
posted by colorblock sock at 2:48 PM on December 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
I want to gently push back on this in particular, people have said a lot of good things here - feeling the symptoms of a very real mental illness/trauma that is mostly directed at yourself is not a selfish thing to do. It's a popular but bullshit concept to pathologize self-loathing into evil or selfishness or whatever, and I can almost guarantee you're not actually at any risk of having harmed people other than yourself. You seem ethical, kind, and contentious and very cruel to yourself, the worries about causing harm or shameful bad morality are simply not real. As much as I can say this not knowing you: you didn't do anything wrong! You won't! You honestly sound like a totally normal nice person!
posted by colorblock sock at 2:48 PM on December 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
i don’t think there’s anything off-putting or shameful about the behavior you’re describing. Like a lot of other posters are telling you, attention, validation, and being a valued member of your community are normal, positive human needs. Being loved, having the people you care about pay attention to you— there is nothing wrong with wanting these things, even when you’re doing community service work.
These vital, normal, healthy human needs are also all things that, by definition, the children of emotionally negligent parents don’t get from their families. Instead, they’re taught that they’re wrong to want them, and that deliberately behaving in ways that will make people respond with love and attention— or, worse, asking for them— is inappropriate, gross, embarrassing, something to be ashamed of. I think a lot of the shame and self-loathing you’re feeling about these recent revelations are part of the original traumas of your childhood, the feelings of worthlessness and fault, and being undeserving of love, and like wanting or asking for love is unacceptable— the ways you’ve internalized the taboos around wanting normal emotional connection in an emotionally unhealthy and neglectful family of origin. You deserve to be loved and seen. Please be gentle with yourself as you’re working through this.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 3:31 PM on December 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
These vital, normal, healthy human needs are also all things that, by definition, the children of emotionally negligent parents don’t get from their families. Instead, they’re taught that they’re wrong to want them, and that deliberately behaving in ways that will make people respond with love and attention— or, worse, asking for them— is inappropriate, gross, embarrassing, something to be ashamed of. I think a lot of the shame and self-loathing you’re feeling about these recent revelations are part of the original traumas of your childhood, the feelings of worthlessness and fault, and being undeserving of love, and like wanting or asking for love is unacceptable— the ways you’ve internalized the taboos around wanting normal emotional connection in an emotionally unhealthy and neglectful family of origin. You deserve to be loved and seen. Please be gentle with yourself as you’re working through this.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 3:31 PM on December 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
The way out of this for me is anger. At your parents. The self loathing you feel comes from their narratives about you. If you come to understand that you have been severely fucked with you'll realize you have nothing to be ashamed of... But your parents sure as hell do.
Also, i would listen to that bone deep terror. I think it is telling you something important. The best way to ensure you don't hurt anyone is to face the fact that you could, and maybe have done.
Seriously though. You don't have to take on the burden of your parents decisons. You can put this on them where it belongs.
posted by PercussivePaul at 7:06 PM on December 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
Also, i would listen to that bone deep terror. I think it is telling you something important. The best way to ensure you don't hurt anyone is to face the fact that you could, and maybe have done.
Seriously though. You don't have to take on the burden of your parents decisons. You can put this on them where it belongs.
posted by PercussivePaul at 7:06 PM on December 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
becoming so focused on success and on external approval. It's gross. And feels scummy and narcissistic.
doesn't this strike you as pretty backwards on just a base logical level? people who are so pleased to be satisfied with internal validation alone, people who don't need any external approval, are that way because their own opinion is their own ultimate authority. if that seems healthy and ideal to you--I know it does to some--it doesn't to me. if you want to use "narcissistic" as an insult, which is an idea I wish you would question, apply it to that mindset, not your own.
You care what other people think of you, which is good insofar as irredeemably antisocial people very much do not care. and you care about not just doing good but being seen to do good; you want other people to know it was you who did a good thing for them. and fulfilling that desire benefits them as well as you. how? because when they validate you for your efforts, your pleasure in their approval shows, and that makes them feel good and important. this is really true: lots of people feel like nobody cares what they think. when they give someone like you an earned compliment and see how much it matters to you, your response tells them that they and their judgments matter. which feels great.
(sometimes you maybe do not want them to feel too good. sometimes you want to be very careful about who you give this power to, because some people cannot be trusted with too much of it and you do not want to be too much in thrall to them. but sometimes it is just nice to let other people know they have this power to make you feel better by approving of you, and let them use it.)
tl;dr: caring what other people think is an amoral instinctual drive; you have some amount of that drive that you did not choose to have. more than the average person, maybe. think of it as like the engine in a car. or maybe like the gasoline in a car. I don't know, I don't drive. point is it powers your movements, and you decide the direction of those movements. you have chosen to steer in the direction of doing good things so that people think well of you, instead of doing horrible things so that people are afraid of you. that choice is where morality enters into it and that's where you have made good moral choices. could you be even better, by your own personal value system? probably sure. but you have not, up to now, been bad.
posted by queenofbithynia at 8:28 PM on December 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
doesn't this strike you as pretty backwards on just a base logical level? people who are so pleased to be satisfied with internal validation alone, people who don't need any external approval, are that way because their own opinion is their own ultimate authority. if that seems healthy and ideal to you--I know it does to some--it doesn't to me. if you want to use "narcissistic" as an insult, which is an idea I wish you would question, apply it to that mindset, not your own.
You care what other people think of you, which is good insofar as irredeemably antisocial people very much do not care. and you care about not just doing good but being seen to do good; you want other people to know it was you who did a good thing for them. and fulfilling that desire benefits them as well as you. how? because when they validate you for your efforts, your pleasure in their approval shows, and that makes them feel good and important. this is really true: lots of people feel like nobody cares what they think. when they give someone like you an earned compliment and see how much it matters to you, your response tells them that they and their judgments matter. which feels great.
(sometimes you maybe do not want them to feel too good. sometimes you want to be very careful about who you give this power to, because some people cannot be trusted with too much of it and you do not want to be too much in thrall to them. but sometimes it is just nice to let other people know they have this power to make you feel better by approving of you, and let them use it.)
tl;dr: caring what other people think is an amoral instinctual drive; you have some amount of that drive that you did not choose to have. more than the average person, maybe. think of it as like the engine in a car. or maybe like the gasoline in a car. I don't know, I don't drive. point is it powers your movements, and you decide the direction of those movements. you have chosen to steer in the direction of doing good things so that people think well of you, instead of doing horrible things so that people are afraid of you. that choice is where morality enters into it and that's where you have made good moral choices. could you be even better, by your own personal value system? probably sure. but you have not, up to now, been bad.
posted by queenofbithynia at 8:28 PM on December 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
Based on what you wrote, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess you’re dealing with some weapons-grade depression, and the particulars you describe here are actually irrelevant; your depressed brain will find ANYTHING it can to twist your view of yourself and be ashamed.
A term I heard to describe this phenomenon somewhat recently is “negative self-confabulation.” Having gone through some depression this past winter, oh.my.god it hit that one right on the nose. I made up all sorts of reasons I was an awful garbage-person. I bet you are too.
Psychotic depression can result in something similar, where you can have delusions about how terrible and unworthy a person you are. My understanding is that it’s not usually the psychosis we think of when using that term. Yes, it is a delusion, but it is harder to identify because it’s not an obvious break from reality as you would see in other delusions like schizophrenia. No belief the government is listening to your thoughts. Instead a negative self image that is not at all consistent with reality, but almost could be. If your therapist sucks, they might even believe what you are telling them (the scale of negative concerns).
If any of this rings true, and maybe if it doesn’t, talk to your therapist about how to manage this as a symptom of depression as opposed to trying to address the specific concerns regarding validation.
I’m not saying what you wrote isn’t an important issue to work on, but rather the level of disgust in yourself suggests to me that there is a much bigger issue at play.
In the meantime, remind yourself of this. And if you are ruminating on this, develop an “if-then” strategy around what you will do if you recognize you are doing this.
Also helpful, a gratitude journal and daily affirmation journal. I know, I know, it doesn’t sound specific to your issue. Because your issue isn’t your issue.
Just remember, you are a good person and and deserve love; you deserve the praise you’ve gotten. And you deserve to not feel bad about it, and get help for yourself. You’re doing the right thing. I think you got this.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 2:31 AM on December 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
A term I heard to describe this phenomenon somewhat recently is “negative self-confabulation.” Having gone through some depression this past winter, oh.my.god it hit that one right on the nose. I made up all sorts of reasons I was an awful garbage-person. I bet you are too.
Psychotic depression can result in something similar, where you can have delusions about how terrible and unworthy a person you are. My understanding is that it’s not usually the psychosis we think of when using that term. Yes, it is a delusion, but it is harder to identify because it’s not an obvious break from reality as you would see in other delusions like schizophrenia. No belief the government is listening to your thoughts. Instead a negative self image that is not at all consistent with reality, but almost could be. If your therapist sucks, they might even believe what you are telling them (the scale of negative concerns).
If any of this rings true, and maybe if it doesn’t, talk to your therapist about how to manage this as a symptom of depression as opposed to trying to address the specific concerns regarding validation.
I’m not saying what you wrote isn’t an important issue to work on, but rather the level of disgust in yourself suggests to me that there is a much bigger issue at play.
In the meantime, remind yourself of this. And if you are ruminating on this, develop an “if-then” strategy around what you will do if you recognize you are doing this.
Also helpful, a gratitude journal and daily affirmation journal. I know, I know, it doesn’t sound specific to your issue. Because your issue isn’t your issue.
Just remember, you are a good person and and deserve love; you deserve the praise you’ve gotten. And you deserve to not feel bad about it, and get help for yourself. You’re doing the right thing. I think you got this.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 2:31 AM on December 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
You remind me somewhat of myself and of friends I've had, and the advice you've already received is very good. I can't say I've dealt with these problems all too effectively, but there are a couple things that jump out at me from your post. (Other people have said most of these things, I'm just repeating them.)
- How do I know it wasn't all self-serving?
Everyone is self-serving! Everyone takes actions in their own interest, or as you put it, "exploiting everyone around them for attention." I understand where you're coming from - when you hadn't examined your motivations, you thought you were "social" and "driven" just kind of naturally, instead of out of a strong desire for attention and validation stemming from childhood neglect, right? But everyone requires attention. It's a human need. Your probable assumption that other people are "actually" social and driven, unlike your fraudulent self, isn't true. People are social and/or driven for all sorts of non-disentangleable reasons -- nature, nurture, who they want to be, some combination thereof.
Maybe a consequential lens will help? Your friends almost certainly don't care why you approached them. If it was partly because you liked them and partly because you wanted them to like you, who cares? That's common. What matters to them is that you're a good friend. "But isn't it impure that I approached them to fill the bottomless attention-craving hole in my heart?" It's literally not.
(Having constant, pervasive negative self-talk means said self-talk should be heavily discounted. Ask me how I know!!)
- If it was, how the hell am I supposed to live with that? [...] Would it even be morally okay to try to extend that part self-compassion at all?
You seem extremely quick to condemn yourself morally for things that most people would not bat an eye at. Why are you so keen to hate yourself? This is a serious question -- why have you so deeply internalized that you're Bad? Because it isn't true. Also, try to black-and-white-think less.
- I have a bone-deep terror that I've inadvertently hurt someone without realizing because of this, which would break my heart completely.
Try to come to terms with the idea that you've almost certainly hurt people in your life without realizing, which is FINE. If you actually never did that, you'd always bottle up your own wants and needs to please others... which might be what you're used to, but also, it is bad.
- I really want to feel better about this since I know that staying stuck in deep self-loathing can turn into a selfish thing to do, and it might harm others, so I want to move past this.
This part of your post jumped out at me the most. The reason to feel better is NOT that it would be selfish and bad of you, or that it would harm others. What? It's because you deserve to not feel miserable! From this post alone you're clearly a thoughtful, kind, and empathetic person, but even if you weren't, no one deserves to feel miserable all the time! Except e.g. serial killers, but that isn't you.
Please actually prioritize yourself. Believe that you deserve to feel good, you really do, I promise. I know this was too long to read, but if you only read part of it, you need to stop hating yourself. Good luck.
posted by involute at 4:42 AM on December 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
- How do I know it wasn't all self-serving?
Everyone is self-serving! Everyone takes actions in their own interest, or as you put it, "exploiting everyone around them for attention." I understand where you're coming from - when you hadn't examined your motivations, you thought you were "social" and "driven" just kind of naturally, instead of out of a strong desire for attention and validation stemming from childhood neglect, right? But everyone requires attention. It's a human need. Your probable assumption that other people are "actually" social and driven, unlike your fraudulent self, isn't true. People are social and/or driven for all sorts of non-disentangleable reasons -- nature, nurture, who they want to be, some combination thereof.
Maybe a consequential lens will help? Your friends almost certainly don't care why you approached them. If it was partly because you liked them and partly because you wanted them to like you, who cares? That's common. What matters to them is that you're a good friend. "But isn't it impure that I approached them to fill the bottomless attention-craving hole in my heart?" It's literally not.
(Having constant, pervasive negative self-talk means said self-talk should be heavily discounted. Ask me how I know!!)
- If it was, how the hell am I supposed to live with that? [...] Would it even be morally okay to try to extend that part self-compassion at all?
You seem extremely quick to condemn yourself morally for things that most people would not bat an eye at. Why are you so keen to hate yourself? This is a serious question -- why have you so deeply internalized that you're Bad? Because it isn't true. Also, try to black-and-white-think less.
- I have a bone-deep terror that I've inadvertently hurt someone without realizing because of this, which would break my heart completely.
Try to come to terms with the idea that you've almost certainly hurt people in your life without realizing, which is FINE. If you actually never did that, you'd always bottle up your own wants and needs to please others... which might be what you're used to, but also, it is bad.
- I really want to feel better about this since I know that staying stuck in deep self-loathing can turn into a selfish thing to do, and it might harm others, so I want to move past this.
This part of your post jumped out at me the most. The reason to feel better is NOT that it would be selfish and bad of you, or that it would harm others. What? It's because you deserve to not feel miserable! From this post alone you're clearly a thoughtful, kind, and empathetic person, but even if you weren't, no one deserves to feel miserable all the time! Except e.g. serial killers, but that isn't you.
Please actually prioritize yourself. Believe that you deserve to feel good, you really do, I promise. I know this was too long to read, but if you only read part of it, you need to stop hating yourself. Good luck.
posted by involute at 4:42 AM on December 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
Just remember, you are a good person and and deserve love
And also, the two parts of this statement are independent of each other. You are a good person because of your actions in the world and how they impact others. You deserve love because you are a person, and that is a basic human need.
posted by eviemath at 4:54 AM on December 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
And also, the two parts of this statement are independent of each other. You are a good person because of your actions in the world and how they impact others. You deserve love because you are a person, and that is a basic human need.
posted by eviemath at 4:54 AM on December 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
Lots of good advice in this thread.
I will only add, This is a big part of the personal growth of adulthood: recognizing the coping mechanisms you developed while growing up; how they serve you and are the foundation of your strengths; learning that they inevitably have costs and drawbacks, that are often so painful to contemplate that we work very, very hard not to look at them.
It usually takes getting painfully stuck, in a way that your coping mechanisms—your strengths, your best self—only make worse, before someone has to confront all of this.
It’s hard.
You’re human.
posted by Sublimity at 1:00 PM on December 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
I will only add, This is a big part of the personal growth of adulthood: recognizing the coping mechanisms you developed while growing up; how they serve you and are the foundation of your strengths; learning that they inevitably have costs and drawbacks, that are often so painful to contemplate that we work very, very hard not to look at them.
It usually takes getting painfully stuck, in a way that your coping mechanisms—your strengths, your best self—only make worse, before someone has to confront all of this.
It’s hard.
You’re human.
posted by Sublimity at 1:00 PM on December 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
I feel this so much. As everyone else here has said: it is a very normal part of being human (being desperate for approval, affection, validation, belonging and attention). Cliches are cliches because... they are so common. You are tracing it back to the source and that's good, powerful work! But it may always be with you.
The most helpful thing for me is remembering... I have to give it to myself. At the end of the day, no one else can give me exactly what I need to feel good and safe. And whenever I feel frustrated or angry it's because I've been expecting that... for others to validate and approve of me, to my satisfaction.
For me "giving it to myself" looks like a reminder in the moment - I'm looking for attention or external validation and it won't satisfy me, I know this from experience. What can I do instead? It looks like visualizing my six-year-old self, who was longing for her father to see her, who felt responsible for the well-being of my entire family and like I failed whenever anyone was upset, and it looks like loving her. Sometimes it's drying her tears, picking her up, hugging her, telling her she's safe and it's not her job to perform. She gets to just exist and be needy as she wants to be. But the only one who can satisfy that need is myself.
And lastly - because I'm not sure anyone has said it above and you used she/her pronouns - in most modern cultures it's still drilled into us that women don't get to take up as much space as men, don't deserve as much attention, aren't likeable when they seek others' approval, need to live up to higher and stricter social standards, and should support others without asking for anything in return.
Your shame came from this, and from your childhood, and from all the things you ever heard and saw that said it's not okay to need love. See if you can imagine a future where that past conditioning doesn't dominate your experience. Sometimes even that vision can provide momentary relief.
My heart is with you!
PS: Brene Brown is really good on this stuff. Try Braving the Wilderness!
posted by Isingthebodyelectric at 3:43 PM on December 14, 2021 [2 favorites]
The most helpful thing for me is remembering... I have to give it to myself. At the end of the day, no one else can give me exactly what I need to feel good and safe. And whenever I feel frustrated or angry it's because I've been expecting that... for others to validate and approve of me, to my satisfaction.
For me "giving it to myself" looks like a reminder in the moment - I'm looking for attention or external validation and it won't satisfy me, I know this from experience. What can I do instead? It looks like visualizing my six-year-old self, who was longing for her father to see her, who felt responsible for the well-being of my entire family and like I failed whenever anyone was upset, and it looks like loving her. Sometimes it's drying her tears, picking her up, hugging her, telling her she's safe and it's not her job to perform. She gets to just exist and be needy as she wants to be. But the only one who can satisfy that need is myself.
And lastly - because I'm not sure anyone has said it above and you used she/her pronouns - in most modern cultures it's still drilled into us that women don't get to take up as much space as men, don't deserve as much attention, aren't likeable when they seek others' approval, need to live up to higher and stricter social standards, and should support others without asking for anything in return.
Your shame came from this, and from your childhood, and from all the things you ever heard and saw that said it's not okay to need love. See if you can imagine a future where that past conditioning doesn't dominate your experience. Sometimes even that vision can provide momentary relief.
My heart is with you!
PS: Brene Brown is really good on this stuff. Try Braving the Wilderness!
posted by Isingthebodyelectric at 3:43 PM on December 14, 2021 [2 favorites]
This thread is closed to new comments.
By recognizing them as the survival mechanism that has now got you to a place where you might now have better options. You're still here. That's a huge win.
I always tried really hard to be ethical and fair in my job, to be empathic and understanding with my loved ones, and to try to leave this world a little better than I found it, but... How do I know it wasn't all self-serving? If it was, how the hell am I supposed to live with that?
By understanding that as long as you are being ethical and fair, and leaving the spaces you occupy in even slightly better condition when you're done with them than they were in when you arrived, then there is absolutely nothing wrong with being self-serving. All healthy people are self-serving. It's what keeps us alive.
The name of the game is working out how to keep your own ego signed up to the project of keeping you alive that the rest of you has already been signed up to for years.
Once we recognize that there is more to us than our thoughts, our thoughts just do have a bit of a pout and a flounce and turn on us for a while, just like any privileged entity whose privilege is under threat. It's OK and expected for that to happen. Bloody uncomfortable while it is, but they'll come around eventually.
Realizing that doing the right thing because it works better is more sustainable than doing it to gain praise or avoid blame is a sign of maturation into genuine, autonomous adulthood. It's by no means an obvious move and almost nobody does that from childhood. Almost everybody needs that scaffolding of praise for sound choices in order to get those short-term dopamine hits that guide us toward being mature enough to balance delayed and immediate gratifications in a healthy and sustainable fashion.
some part of my brain realized that my parents showed me a *lot* more affection and warmth if I was successful: if I got a good grade my mom wouldn't just pretend I didn't exist, she'd actually take me out to get ice cream and hug me, or if I made it to being captain of the track/field team in high school my dad actually showed up and was super proud of me, etc etc. Their sudden affection + external validation when I Achieved Something was almost like a replacement for the alcohol—it numbed the agony, made me feel worthy, and kept me away from the hard feelings.
So I took that and ran with it. Became a total workaholic and overachiever, and focused heavily on being a straight-A student, never ever failing, and always being the never-needy, good friend. I thrived off of everyone's praise and positive attention—it kept me away from the hurt, hurt which felt unsurvivable, and made me feel like I was actually useful and worth something and not just the fuck-up kid that no one liked.
So the parental scaffolding has now done its job. You are the useful, successful adult, you do now have a set of skills that will keep you alive and allow you to function as a valuable contributor to your community, and you are therefore way better off than all those people who had no better option when faced with the looming existential questions brought on by ongoing parental indifference than trying to bury them with recreational drugs.
All you need to do now is attend gently to all the places where your parents' lack of skill at scaffolding construction has left the inevitable bone-bruises on your soul and you're good to go. Welcome!
posted by flabdablet at 11:36 PM on December 11, 2021 [20 favorites]