Whose life are you living? Have you put someone in charge of your life by trying to live your life to please them?
You don’t need someone’s permission to live your own life; you must seize it.
Throughout my long career in psychiatry, I have had many patients say to me, “I just want to be happy.” It’s as if I were going to dispense some magic potion that suddenly would make them feel good about themselves.
They look a bit shocked when I respond, “How much work are you willing to put into it?” Then I add, “I’ll work hard to help you feel better. But I’m not going to work harder than you do.”
. . .
Addicted to Approval?
Many have tried their own elixirs to fix a damaged self-esteem: sex, drugs, alcohol, gambling, food, and porn.
A life filled with pursuing the rush of the next dopamine high relieves the pain but only in transient and superficial ways. And to reach that next high, a person must seek more and more stimulation. But they never reach that pinnacle of pleasure again.
I have come to believe that seeking approval operates in the brain in much the same way as addictions.
. . .
I Felt Estranged from my Soul
When I was a boy, I struggled with the question, “How will I ever learn to be a man?”
I heard, “Boys don’t cry,” but I cried. Boys are supposed to want to win, but I didn’t care. Boys are supposed to like to fight, but I avoided conflict.
Boys get mixed messages: make yourself vulnerable, show your feelings. But if you do, the world will beat the emotional crap out of you. Telling me to put on my big boy pants never really worked.
I grew up in a small town in Nebraska where everyone looked alike, thought alike, and believed alike. I tried to look, think, and believe as they did. But during those painful years, I felt estranged from my soul.
I felt alone and powerless while those around me seemed to have all the power they needed.
I tried dealing with it by being the best little boy I could be. I followed all the rules. I went through life as if I were everyone’s designated driver.
When people told my mother, as they often did, “What a fine young man Loren is,” I felt good for a moment. But I always felt a bit disgusted as well.
Why couldn’t I be the bad boy, the one whose flaunting of the rules was dismissed with “Boys will be boys”? But I couldn’t risk disapproval.
When I came out, I wasn’t just saying, “Hey, I’m gay.” I wanted to scream, “I am what I am! This is me being me! It’s my world too!”
Ironically, when I stopped faking the social definition of a man, I finally began to feel like a real man.
Gandhi was right; they couldn’t hurt me unless I allowed them to.
. . .
A Model for Understanding Self-Esteem
Self-esteem exists where the ideal-self and the actual-self overlap.
Step #1
The organizing principle of self-esteem is our ideal-self, in other words, the idea of the perfect me. The ideal self is the person I want to be. It is a person who is competent, attractive, well-liked, and morally good.
It is the sum of all the traits, values, and issues I’ve inherited. I inherited them first from my family, and then from my religion, society, and culture. It is the look-alike, think-alike, and believe-alike that I assumed was the norm when I was young.
The ideal-self was easy to figure out because it was handed to me. It became more complex as my world enlarged. Sometimes what some people wanted me to be conflicted with others’ expectations. It was all very confusing, and it made me anxious.
I realized that I needed to deconstruct that old idea of the perfect me and reconstruct a new ideal of my own.
But I knew that I was risking disapproval from people I loved and respected.
The perfect me had to be a bit of a stretch but still attainable. If reaching a goal is too easy, it is meaningless as a goal. To be meaningful, I had to be the one to choose that ideal.
What I discovered was that when I chose this new ideal for myself, people really didn’t care as much as I had thought they would.
I sought to fit into a group in which I didn’t really belong. And frankly, it was a group I didn’t even like very much.
Fitting in and belonging to a group are not equivalent.
Step #2
The other task was to begin to assess me more realistically. Often when we assess ourselves, we criticize ourselves excessively. We have a negative bias about ourselves.
We must eliminate those distortions in our thinking.
I needed to stop beating myself for not being the man I was expected to be and thought I must be.
I wasn’t perfect, but was I good enough?
Earlier in my life, when I couldn’t be the person I thought I should be, I criticized myself for not being able to do it. The circles in the diagram were swirling around in a pool of shame and guilt.
Once I began to have a good sense of my own ideal and an accurate assessment of myself, the circles in the diagram above began to align. The area defined as self-esteem grew.
Step #3
The model for self-esteem pictured above has nothing in it about approval from others. Self-esteem is nothing more than how closely the person we are corresponds to the person we want to be.
Brené Brown writes that when your path is clearly laid out before you, it really isn’t your path.
By always seeking approval, I followed someone else’s plan. I had relinquished my power to others.
I knew who I should be because they had told me, and being a “fine young man” meant I was meeting their standard.
Approval from others is like an addiction. You get a hit and it feels good, but it doesn’t last, so you have to keep returning for another. And another. And another. And each approving comment must be higher praise than the previous one.
As I began to allow myself to be seen deeply by others, I found more acceptance from others than I had when I was trying to be someone I really wasn’t.
. . .
Summarizing the steps
1. Take charge of the ideal self, the person you want to be. Listen to your soul and show up as yourself.
2. Learn to see yourself as you are. Avoid exaggerated self-criticism. Ask yourself, “What are the facts?” Are you good enough?
3. Stop looking for approval from others. Look inside yourself for approval. Set well-chosen goals and be accurate in your progress.
. . .
We can choose to be a person that is different from what is expected. We usually find that others approve of us just as much.
It feels very good to take back ownership of our lives.
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This post was previously published on Change Becomes You.
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