The Healing Otherness Handbook by Reicherzer Stacee L.;

Author:Reicherzer, Stacee L.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
Published: 2021-02-19T22:59:55+00:00

External Validation Is a False Promise

If you seek external validation for your worth, you’ve been making the uphill climb for approval for what seems like forever. No matter how far we climb, how hard we persist even as our bodies age and begin to fail us, we continue. But the top of the mountain remains just out of reach, past the clouds that shroud the goal.

Our peace will only come when we recognize that this summit can never be reached. The secure place we long for, where someone else’s approval, love, or validation makes us feel whole, is fictional. Test this for yourselves. Search your memory for a relationship or situation in which you finally won approval from a person or group. Did it remain satisfying for more than a short period? External validation is one of the most tenuous things in the universe. We might climb high in pursuit of it, but it’s as solid as the clouds we pass through—ephemeral and fleeting. We can’t reach it because the moment we give someone else power over our self-worth by asking them to tell us we matter and are beautiful, lovable, worthy, or whatever else we need to feel convinced, we establish a power imbalance. We surrender a power that ultimately belongs to us. So long as that power is ceded, the power imbalance remains.

Anyone who has fought for love knows what this means. Maybe you fought and you got it. Then the minute you did something human—you needed time to yourself, got angry about dishes in the sink, didn’t want sex when the other person did—your mate put you in check. They reminded you who had power in the relationship. In a sense, you thought you got somewhere, but were then kicked off the mountainside to start proving your worth again. Up the mountain you went, trying to regain their approval. Or maybe you found another mountain to climb, as we’re big on recreating the same story again and again with different people and situations.

This is also true in family dynamics, work environments, social groups, and other ways we engage people. Another person will love, admire, or support us as long as we’re doing something for them. A dominant culture does it by keeping us cast as “the Other who exists in service” to them. The minute we have a need of our own, or the minute we say “No,” the love, admiration, and support dry up quickly. In some instances, the validation we seek remains hidden because it’s dependent on an expectation someone else placed forever out of reach, which we’re trying to live up to. Nina’s story illustrates how this works.

After her college graduation, Nina found meaningful work at a planetarium. She also met the man who became her husband and the couple adopted two foster children. When Nina and her husband divorced eight years later, her mother insisted that Nina’s career had interfered with her marriage (when, in fact, she and her husband had worked an equal number of hours).

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