Lesson 7: Will I ever outgrow the need for approval?

Submodule 7

Will I ever outgrow the need for approval?
Unless you were encouraged and given opportunities from a very young age to become your own person, it’s possible that you didn’t develop a Natural Sense of Self. Without one, it’s likely that by the time you are an adult, you find yourself constantly attempting to please others in both your personal and professional interactions—often without even being aware of it.

In an ideal situation, a Sense of Self is developed in early childhood, but there is another way for those who did not grow up with this ideal to recover their SoS later in life. Following the SoS Method can effectively free you from the internalized voice of your caregiver, a voice you have probably been mistaking for your own.

If you have a strong desire to retrain yourself, you can successfully live without the constant echo of the parental voice clouding your decision-making process. Once you silence that inner voice, you can unchain yourself from the past, stop relying on approval, and begin making your own life choices.

You can develop a strong Sense of your Self at any age—and there’s no better time to start than right now.

The opinions of your childhood influencers (predominantly your caregivers/parents) still color your life in adulthood. Such coloring is normal, expected, and healthy to the extent that those opinions provide you with necessary life skills. What does NOT need to stay with you are the lingering residues of your parents’ difficulties with their own parents and with their own Sense of Self.

What characterized your most basic childhood experience within your family?

• If you think back to when you were growing up, is it possible your caregiver’s purpose was more self-serving than was apparent to you at the time?
• On a scale of 1 – 10, 1 being ignored and 10 being adored, how would you rate your status in your family when you were growing up?
• Did your parents just quietly let you do your own thing, or were they breathing down your neck and criticizing every move you made?
• Did you feel generally respected as a person or did you feel invisible, as if you didn’t exist? Did you feel you had the right to be you?

The voices you heard growing up and the vibes you received from your caregivers travel with you throughout your whole life, sometimes quietly in the background and other times like a loud, repetitive parrot. Your parents may have been loving and supportive but it is also possible that they conditioned you to be on constant alert, so you could avoid creating trouble and focus on seeking approval above all else.

This unit explores the relationship between two SoS Method concepts: Enmeshment and the Internalized Parental Voice (IPV).

When your own strong Sense of Self is absent, these two concepts can become major forces that impact and shape your adult life. They are the leading causes of excessive suffering and inner turmoil.

The BENEFITS of gaining a healthy Sense of Self are:

• Better social skills
• More self-confidence
• More success in business and other creative endeavors (Direct Motivation)

WATCH THE VIDEO FIRST!

Video transcript available here.

GLOSSARY

For your convenience, here is a downloadable/printable PDF Glossary, or you may visit the Glossary on our website. (Note that the glossary on the website includes some additional terms not addressed in this course, and contains links to extended and more detailed information on each term.)

NEW SoS TERMS

• Enmeshment
• Virtual, Internalized Parental Voice (VIPV)

Definition: Enmeshment

An unhealthy relationship between child and primary caretaker. The child’s identity and motives are merged with the adult’s, which leads to extreme dependence on approval.

Children generally aim to please, but at some point, most children will exert themselves when they want space to explore their individuality. In the natural course of development, children pull away from their parents so they can become their own person.

When a child is not truly seen as an individual but is either related to as a means to an end or as a burden to the caregiver, the child is unable to develop a psychological spine of their own. What happens if unconditional love and acceptance of the child, as a unique person, isn’t reflected in the virtual mirror held up by the child’s caregivers? The child starts to believe that there is a reason for that and self-doubt sets in.

If the child never sees their Self as being loved and accepted for the way they are—if the child always gets a feeling of needing to be different/better, based on their caregivers’ (subliminally perceived) criteria—then chances are the child takes on these non-verbal (or verbally expressed) judgments and accepts them as the truth about who they are and who they ought to be.

The child also develops ways of deflecting/preventing this judgment by making sure they live up to perceived parental expectations in an attempt to make the parent change their judgment about him or her. As the child grows up they perceive these expectations as being their own, even as a part of who they are. This is the Enmeshment situation. The child hopes that if they can meet these conditions, they might get (virtual) approval, which is their version of being seen as a person. This hope continues into adulthood, and can last a lifetime.

Maybe they would be taken into account if only they did XYZ or lived up to being XYZ. These conditions now have become what leads to some experience of a virtual, psychological spine—XYZ is now needed to fill in the black hole where an SoS should be. Living up to or doing XYZ is now an Ego-Reference (see Unit 5 for review as needed).

In an Enmeshment situation, the child’s activities or behavior serve to get approval or just to be looked at in a kindly way. Trying to live up to the parent’s expectations, to the point of identifying themselves with the parent becomes part of the child’s “self” in the Enmeshment with their caregiver. They might eat what the parent likes or might wear what the parent likes. They tend to go places that the parent likes and never develop their own specific tastes or opinions. They make life decisions based on what the parent likes because they have never learned what it is to like something themselves. BUT THEY ARE NOT AWARE OF IT AND THINK IT IS WHO THEY ARE.*

Imagine how this pattern of behavior plays out in adult life; with partners, friends, the people they work with and for, and even their own children!

In conversations with others, later in life, this person is uncomfortable because they do not experience feeling backed up by the standards of their own opinions, tastes, and/or preferences. Perhaps they shy away from speaking up or they might instead desperately try to manifest themselves louder but end up going home with even more nagging insecurities about how they were perceived by others. They might know they have potential, but they also sense that there is an invisible cocoon around them that feels impenetrable as if they will forever be unable to tear it open and step out as a fully developed person.

I know that feeling because I was like that. My whole life was about my parent’s virtual approval and appreciation of me as-the-person-I-felt-I-was, and it created the need to “Feel-good-about-myself” on a daily basis.

*Note: Sometimes the prison created through Enmeshment and the associated lack of freedom is so stifling that a strong reaction-formation develops in which the child does exactly the opposite of whatever the parent likes, or does things to shock the parent. We call these “Reactionary Ego-References” because the child’s identity is still tied up in the parent’s judgment of them. The ghost voices of parental expectations are still serving as an Ego-Reference, whether the behavior represents attempted compliance or rebellion.

A child can be so deeply Enmeshed that their entire life becomes tied to their caregiver’s judgments and preferences—even long after the caregiver has passed away.

The following two videos show a graphic representation and analysis of how the SoS Theory views the Self (the six layers of Self), and how the process of Enmeshment between a primary caregiver and a child can develop. We encourage you to watch these two videos before moving on to Unit 8:

• Video #1 – Building Blocks Of The Self
• Video #2 – Clay Demo

Definition: Internalized Parental Voice (IPV)

The often-repeated verbal and non-verbal messages through which parents talk to their children becomes (almost) hardwired in the child’s mind so that it is perceived as an unquestionable truth (about and) by the child.*

*Note that this is not the actual voice of your parent, this is the voice of your Belief System adopted through your caregivers’ early influence.

Have you ever heard the voice of your mother or father in your head when you were about to choose an activity or behavior you knew they would not approve of? How invested in adopting (or not adopting) their values did you become by the time you were a teenager? Did you avoid certain people, careers, activities, hobbies, or lifestyles to please (or irritate) a parent? Did you pursue certain partners, friends, careers, sports, or goals for the sake of making a parent proud (or ashamed) of you?

As a child, it is not only natural to want your caregivers to express love for you and convey encouragement and acknowledgment of your existence, it is fundamentally important. What your parents think and feel about you becomes hardwired in your brain because it is repeated over and over while your brain is still forming. Eventually, it becomes part of who you are and shows up as an inner voice that is either heard or felt. That voice is assumed to come from your inner self: who you believe you are.

What the young child sees reflected in the mirror held up by the caregiver is “self,” there is no doubt about it in the child’s mind. But is that reflection accurate? The mirror here can either be accurate or—if the caregiver sees the child only in the light of his or her own agenda—it can be screamingly distorted. In that case, it can project a warped image in the child’s mind of who they are, which they will try to correct for the rest of their adult lives unless they question this belief.

This distorted reflection of “self” is carried out in your life through your Ego-References. That reflection is what has made you focus and work hard to get your parent to change their mind about you and give you their unconditional approval.

The IPV can be considered the voice of your beliefs about yourself. It is the activator of your Ego-References.

The IPV resides in your subconscious, and most of the time you cannot hear it as a physical voice in your head, but you can start to recognize it because of the symptoms it generates: fear, insomnia, heart palpitations, sweating, anxiety, anger, or rage. (And this rage is not to be underestimated. It can be a furiousness with the potential strength to kill yourself or others.) All of that is generated based on the internalized parental judgments that live within yourself. It can almost feel as if you have become your own worst enemy.

Your IPV, even though invisible (or maybe because it’s invisible), is the toughest opponent and the hardest to eliminate.

Note: I speak about an Internalized Parental Voice but the word voice can be misleading. This refers to your Belief System about yourself; it is the result of a conditioning process that this course helps you undo in order to realize your own authentic thoughts and feelings.

Those inauthentic IPV thoughts and feelings mostly come down to generating fear and anger, and they can create tension in your muscles, headaches, insomnia, and depression.

These inauthentic sensations are so overwhelming that they squeeze all other feelings out of your system that would have been expressed or sensed if you had a healthy Sense of your Self and were not dependent on approval. This dependency kills any potential for experiencing your own feelings because the fear of not being able to live up to the internalized judgments ingrained in you as a child overshadows what your genuine feelings could have been.

GUIDING QUESTIONS

• Who were the people you looked to for acknowledgment when you were growing up?
• Why were they unable (or unwilling) to really see you for the person you were?
• Was there ever a time when you felt acknowledged, or have you always ended up accepting approval instead?
• When you were young, in what ways or at what times was it not acceptable to be your own Self?
• Name a few ways in which you are and a few ways in which you are not distinct from your parents. How have these aspects affected your experience of life?
• When were you first consciously aware that external approval was important to you? Is there some recent event that made you realize this, or have you been aware of it for a while?
• How strong is the voice of your mother or father in your head when you are making certain choices, even choices as minor as what to eat for breakfast?
• Can you describe the ways your IPV “speaks” to you?

READING

Here is the selected reading for Unit 7 of the course.

• Healthy Sense of Self, How to be true to your Self and make your world a better place!
• Also available on Amazon the second improved edition (2017) under the title: “Healthy Sense of Self, The Secret to Being Your Best Self”

ACTIVITY

When you have been brought up in Enmeshment with one (or more) of your caregivers, you choose strategies that are aimed at fulfilling your Ego-References and reaching your Hidden Goal. Once you have lived long enough to internalize these strategies, even your own body seems to remind you to keep those processes going. Can you see how, if you don’t consciously object to this procedure, you end up being the victim of your own IPV?

• Do you suspect there are moments, in either your personal or professional life, when your IPV influences your decisions?
• Could these moments be improved (or avoided) by the intervention of YOUR real voice?

In the previous unit, you were invited to consult your inventory from Units 1 and 2 and to drop an activity or behavior that was tied to something important to your caregiver. Based on that activity, use the following questions to detect your IPV.

• How did your time without that behavior feel? Was your experience positive, negative, or a mixture of both?
• How strong was the urge to resume that behavior?
• How did that urge manifest itself? What would your parent say to you if they saw you letting go of the behavior?
• From the way you reacted to the decision to stop the behavior, can you distill what your IPV’s judgment was about it?
• If you look at the reality of what occurs when you are not performing that certain behavior, what is the factual consequence of dropping it?
• On the other hand, if you consult your emotions, what FEELS to be at stake? (Take note of any discrepancy between reality and your emotions!)

Now try to dig deeper into your IPV:

• Are there still things, even as an adult, you won’t bring up or discuss with your parents or other authority figures because a voice in your head shuts you down as soon as you feel an urge to express yourself?

If so, what would you want to say about something that has previously felt like a dangerous or taboo topic of discussion? Imagine a situation in which you could speak freely to your caregiver without interruption. While doing this activity, monitor your emotional and physical experience.

One way to do this is to write out an imagined monologue. Another way is to look in a mirror and make eye contact with yourself, talking to yourself as if you were the one you want to safely express yourself to. Speak or write as if you are really and truly being heard by the other person.

When done, ask yourself: How did that feel?

Then ask yourself: What am I willing to do in order to become strong enough to really have this dialogue?

QUOTE FROM THE GUIDED JOURNAL

Day 39

Developing your own set of values
instead of working off the ones you inherited
creates the difference between
doubting and trusting yourself.

RECAP

A child sometimes (due to unhealthy Mirroring) becomes Enmeshed with a parent and doesn’t develop their own Sense of Self. The child doesn’t have a Self to call “home”—a place to rest in and feel safe. Instead, indirectly, the parent is the basic reference point for the child’s inner life/self. A dangerous situation develops from this: the parent (with their own unhealthy inner needs) becomes the anchor for the child’s psyche, and the child must keep that anchor stable in order to feel safe.

The IPV is the voice of the belief system that is based on the parental criteria and the child’s interpretation of it. This voice does not merely have a presence in the child’s mind, it becomes hardwired within it, and it is perceived as an opinion of “myself.”

Those living in this situation risk being in a state of constant emotional exhaustion and suffering throughout their entire lives, with the ghosts of their parents’ judgment coloring everything they do. Even sadder, these children are bound to repeat the cycle of dependency with their own children if they do not take action to heal themselves and restore their Sense of Self.

LOOKING AHEAD

The next unit will connect the dots of all the insights you most likely have gained from previous units about what happens if we grow up with a Lack of SoS. To sustain our false Sense of Self as the one and only anchor point in our lives, we have to go out of our way to maintain the internal psychological mechanism we created in the first place. It will be revealing to see how that affects our lives, our real Selves, as well as others.

In Unit 8, all the information of the previous units comes together and will clarify for you what the SoS Theory—and Method—are all about.

*IMPORTANT NOTE* All comments left on the course are PUBLIC to course takers and Healthy Sense of Self employees. If you would like to send a private comment please email antoinetta@healthysenseofself.com