Needing External Validation
February 27th, 2008
So I keep thinking that if I could just evolve psychologically and spiritually beyond the need for external validation I could be so much happier. But instead I am having one of those days where things that are normally pleasure-giving sort of hurt, brilliant and clever blogs and the soundtrack to Juno which is my favorite soundtrack ever I think only I keep thinking “I’ll never be so quirky and creative” and, worse, “I don’t even have the compensatory doggedness and focus to make up for it.” How can one be lonely with this many voices in one’s head? Especially when one is so versed in the use of the third person to distance oneself from uncomfortable thoughts, contributing to the sense of there being more people there than there really are. And I sit down to write even in my own journal and am suffering severe can’t-keep-my-butt-in-the-chair-itis.
So I distract myself. Like this cool page of the names of the winds (if I ever had twins they would be Mistral and Sirocco) (maybe it’s good we’re done having kids). I look up the difference between immanent and imminent so that I never misuse them EVER again because that would be so embarrassing. I try and teach the three-year-old to play with a Jacob’s Ladder toy and we butt heads because he wants to do it himself and he wants me to show it to him only, like, without touching it and I realize we need to go outside and take a walk and breathe fresh air and he dances to Barry Louis Pollisar’s “All I Want is You” and it is so adorable that all is instantly forgiven.
And if you read this and think I must be in a terrible place or sad or something, I am not, there’s even a place where I recognize the sort of frustration I am feeling as being one that precedes actually breaking through and doing whatever it is I need to do to be whole and ok.
I have this idea that maybe my to-do list should remember the old-style food pyramid, that I ought to balance, say, making a dentist appointment for the kids against a page of visual journalling, or make sure that for every stupid minute I have to spend on hold with an insurance company I get to spend twenty minutes outside cleaning up the yard (apparently I have been much too tentative in cutting back things that want to be groomed and cut back in the fall, but am fortunate that most of what was planted here before we moved in is forgiving). My current list of things that need doing is all this urgent and obligatory stuff and what happens is I go at it until I break and can only do silly and frivolous things, which is a bit like eating liver and spinach for two weeks and then spending a weekend stuffing my face with chocolate cake.
People in Portland have been calling the last couple weeks of brilliant, mild weather “pseudo-spring.” I think I have pseudo-spring fever. Sunday afternoon the frustrations I had felt in the morning got turned into an urgent desire to cut my hair off and not endure a single afternoon more feeling shaggy, which my sympathetic husband indulged.
So a little lighter and willing to start pruning my hair and the list of things I am feeling guilty for neglecting, I am ready to proceed.
February 27th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
I wonder if the idea that you could “evolve psychologically and spiritually beyond the need for external validation” is an effect of our culture’s rugged individualism myth?
Humans have many needs that are generally met by other humans - like needs for connection, reassurance, love/warmth, intimacy, acceptance, companionship, meaning, inspiration, challenge. If you’re alive, you need other people - that’s just part of being human. The great part is, other people need you too!
February 27th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
One of my friends suggested that trying to overcome a psychological need is as ridiculous as trying to overcome the more strictly physiological needs for food and water, and intellectually, I totally get that and agree. But it still surprises me when I realize I’ve been sweeping some needs under the rug and I am all twitchy and I sit down and have a conversation with myself and try to figure out what it is that’s making me twitchy and there it is, a totally real psychological need. And the thing is, I love being able to provide these things to other people, love being needed, have all sorts of tendencies to take care of people who are not me.
February 27th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Aaaaa I *wanna* speak my mind, I do I do, but I’ve goofed all day and now I have to grade papers! I leave you with two inadequate links, which I’ve meant for some time now to hurl in your etherial direction:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/williamhundley/sets/72157594235409275/
http://pic1.piczo.com/valuca/?g=25544746&cr=1
March 1st, 2008 at 8:32 am
Must hear “All I Want Is You”!
“How can one be lonely with this many voices in one’s head? Especially when one is so versed in the use of the third person to distance oneself from uncomfortable thoughts, contributing to the sense of there being more people there than there really are.”
Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! Ha…ha…koff…ahem…erm….[slips awkwardly offstage]
March 1st, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Just had to pop on to say “with ya, understand, validate, etc.” We are more than the sum of our parts, but that doesn’t mean the parts always add up.
I just went skiing at Timberline yesterday — there’s nothing like a silent view from the top of the mountain to quiet the mind. It’s worth pulling the kids out of school just to get up there on a mild, sunny weekday. Magnificent.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:02 am
I don’t believe that humans need validation like one poster says. I don’t think it’s a basic or important human need. I agree that we’re sociable creatures (to a tiny extent in that we need to be in order to survive) however ‘need’ for another is based on an attachment to the idea that you’re ‘lacking’ somehow. This is a conditioned idea. Children don’t lack as much as adults do because they are yet to buy into certain ideas and so their confidence and self sufficiency (in terms of self-esteem)is intact. If you feel that you do need validation then I think the best bet is to only seek it from those you respect - from those who are worthy of your ‘need’. I’m afraid that I completely agree with your first line. I think it is a beautiful and worthwhile thing to aim for. maybe you have done since this was posted!:)