Addiction to external validation

[LenKagamine]

I really do not want to still be talking about my NPD mother five years from now, seeking out validation from others instead of providing it for myself.

I know I have been gaslighted my entire life.  I know that my FOO are some of the worst people in the world to turn to for validation of any kind.  I know with my NPD mother, I am going to get nothing but more of the same.

Yet I still feel compelled to bitch and moan about it, so that others can tell me I am not the crazy one in the situation?

Something is very wrong with that picture.

I have been tested a few years ago and it has been proven that I do not live with cognitive or intellectual disabilities.  That has not been sitting well with my FOO, so they have been doubling down on discrediting me to anybody that would care to listen to them.

And I have been complaining about this to my friends.  But the fact is, I have been letting them occupy space in my head rent-free.

The fact is, I have absolutely zero clue where I want to take my life from here, and acting like a whiny person is easy.

I know I need to start looking more at my own faults now.  I can't blame the FOO for my lack of growth over the last couple of years.

[Jade63]

I was the same way (see how I am giving you validation?  ).

It took me over 3 years of NC to even START to not need the constant validation that I was not crazy...that I had been gaslighted and emotionally abused.

Hang in there.

~Jade

[Pepin]

I think the reason I cannot get PDmil off my plate is because she is still a part of my life.  Every weekend there is a chance I might have to see her.  Until DH can recognize her dysfunction and take steps to set boundaries or PDmil expires, I will have to keep writing about her here. 

As for NF -- I went NC with him 11 years ago and he is no longer a part of my life.  I rarely think about him and I hardly write anything about him.  It took years of me writing about him and getting it out in order for it not to affect me.  I didn't have the lingo that I have now and I do not physically tighten up anymore either when I think about him. 

The BIG difference with him and PDmil however is that NF is a raging N Cluster B.  PDmil is a covert N Cluster C.  Dealing with PDmil has been completely different that NF.  PDmil is also not my mother and therefore I don't have the same control with myself as I did with NF.  It has been painful to say the least...and like you, I am tired of thinking about her every day.  Sick of it.

[athene1399]

I feel the same way. It takes up space in my head and I don't want to waste energy on this PD. But it goes in spurts. When nothings going on ,I don't bitch. When I get mad at something she does, then I bitch for a bit until the feeling wears off. So I think NC would help. I will be NC one day soon. With NC, she won't do things that I know about, then I won't be getting mad and wasting energy. I will be in the happy land of not caring. But that's my opinion.

Maybe find out what you're mad about and get that from others. Like with my mom (who I am not sure if she has a PD, but she has some traits), I never get validation for my feelings. My SO validates my feelings so I don't care as much it my mom never does. I get that from him. It sounds like the gaslighting is what drives you nuts so you tell your story to others so you don't feel crazy. In situations like that, I try to vent to someone who I know will be sympathetic, then just let go of it. That way I don't dwell on the same situation over and over, but I can still get it off my chest. . It takes practice though.

[Call Me Cordelia]

Len, I suspect you're being rather hard on yourself. Validation from others is a very human need. Even for healthy people. That's why Facebook is so popular. Everybody loves getting a And when you are like us and your internal dialogue mirrors the invalidation you received every single day of your life, well that's not going to change quickly or even linearly. Seems like we all experience it as a one step forward, two steps back process. And you came from a FOO that were disappointed you do not have a cognitive disability? You're climbing a big mountain, my friend.

I would suggest not deliberately focusing on your faults. Chances are you already do that too much. If you can learn to like and validate yourself, or develop your friendship with God and receive His love if that suits your belief system, it may help with that feeling of being a bottomless pit of need for validation. I'm not very good at this myself yet. Affirmations feel all kinds of hokey to me, and not even true most of the time. But my T says that's why I need them. Journaling has been very helpful for me too. I can write down the truth that I was abused, that I'm fighting off a lifetime of experiences and I have made so many positive changes. But on a bad day it's easy to think that I've made no progress at all. I can write it down, and re-read that validation whenever I need it. I have also saved some particularly validating messages from friends and keep them in my journal as well. On a bad day I just make a cup of tea and read through them. It's okay to take a "mental health day" and do that every once in a while.

[not broken]

Len-

But the fact is, I have been letting them occupy space in my head rent-free.

The fact is, I have absolutely zero clue where I want to take my life from here, and acting like a whiny person is easy.

I know I need to start looking more at my own faults now. 

You have said this so well, and it caught my attention as this is exactly how I have been feeling as well.  I find that it consumes me- researching, learning, going over and over again in my head what has happened or been said.  And then nothing changes.  I am sorry to hear you feel this way but I wanted to let you know that you are not alone.

I also wanted to share a book with you that I read last week that was so incredibly helpful to me.  It is called, "The Betrayal Bond, Breaking Free of Exploitive" Relationships by Patrick J, Carnes, PHD with Bonnie Phillips, PHD.  For a year and half, I have been reading daily about NPD, object constancy, arrested development and every other term possible and this is THE ONE that has helped me shift my focus to me.  Fault is a tricky word, and I prefer to frame it as responsibility.  It is really not your FAULT that you react, defend or whatever in this type of relationship- it's human nature.  It is also not your FAULT for how you were also treated or what you experienced in your family as a child.  I have found (only recently and trust me, I am still working so hard at it) that feeling fault, blame, guilt or more likely shame may not be all about my relationship now, but it further secures the trauma bond with my hwNPD. 

This book focused on my traumas as a child (it has helpful exercises in a sequenced order) and has offered a shift in my perspective about MYSELF.  Two days after I read this book, I had an overwhelming sadness, and that morning I burst into tears and cried out loud like I haven't in I don't know how long.  The day before I felt anxious and honestly could not think straight at all to the point of questioning if I should be driving.

The focus of understanding how trauma bonding is literally an addiction, what that means in regards to how we behave ourselves and then also things that make us pre-disposed and to connect the dots was so empowering.  I feel more at peace and clear headed than I have in a really, really long time and most importantly I don't feel as reactive to my hwNPD.  I also feel like I am free of the weight of the blame I continued to cast on my hwNPD.  I truly feel that I know myself better than he has claimed or claims to now when he accuses me of doing something- and it doesn't infuriate me.

I share all of this with you because I sought that fault piece for myself for so many years in therapy.  I have found after about 8 years of therapy that is not trauma focused or without a therapist that understands PD, is a bottomless pit because you are not dealing with someone who behaves or reacts rationally.  Unless you too have NPD or BPD, which I doubt since you are even suggesting you want to own your fault, OWN YOU.  Focus on YOU as an individual- not your partner/parent/pwPD NOR the relationship or interactions.  I wish you strength, peace and happiness.

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." -Alice Walker 

[1footouttadefog]

I agree with previous posters who said getting external validation is a human need.

Furthermore I feel like it's part of coming to terms and dealing with the effects of the abuse and psychological trauma one had endured.

I think that getting the contrasting view points and subsequent validation when comparing the abuse environment and those in it to the outside world and trusted representatives is a very important part of healing and stepping Out of the FOG.

I t seems from the OP's post that growth and healing has taken place and you are recognizing a need to no longer depend on outside validation and to seek what was deficient from the FOO, or to decrease the amount you seek it.

This is also part of the growth, standing on your own two feet so to speak.   As with physical therapy, you have to take more steps as you gain the strength needed by healing.  It's a cycle and progress is made in layers.  More steps and hard work, more process, healing etc.

Mixed in with all of this for me was various layers of grief that seemed like regression until I recognized it as processing that past and other aspects of what I had lost.  I burdening that helped alot.

[StayWithMe]

Some external validation is necessary as we build networks for professional and social reasons.  We need to build confidence in ourselves and in our environment to decide whose validation and how much do we really need.  This is why quite often parents, bosses and some friends and dating partners will try to isolate us so that they can wear us down with their negative opinions and then come back with "See how wonderful I am that I am the only one who supports you" and so on.

I needed a to validation at one time as well.  Being accused of "jumping to conclusion" "not giving others a second chance" and so on caused me to explain my decisions to others, lest I be accused of being a hothead.  Big mistake 1) because I was wering my heart in my sleeves and people could holes in it and 2) I noticed that a lot of people would quietly make their decisions ie freezing someone out; badmouthing them without too much explanation.

It does take confidence to make a decision since you may have to live with the consequences.  I have enough experience to be very confident as to how generous I will be to others in my opinion of them and how I will deal with them.

One thing that helped me are assertiveness training courses.  yes, more than one.  But when you find one either at the community college or community center, maybe elsewhere, they're good and cheap and the instructor will remind you what you don't have to put up with.  Imagine my surprise during the role play moments when someone said that they don't want to be pulled into a task at work and how to handle someone who may ask.  no questions asked as to why she doesn't want or shouldn't have to do it or anything, just looking at the words and body language in telling someone to get lost.  What an epiphany for me.

good luck in whatever you choose to do.

[LenKagamine]

Thanks a lot, everybody.  I mean it.

Frankly, at this point, I am considering moving to the East Coast from the West Coast city I am in now.  I have to wait until the lease on my current apartment expires, though, and doing that would mean leaving my 12-step support network behind and forcing me to find a local one out there.

But seriously, now my mother is claiming that I am "hurting her" because I am not giving her the phone numbers of my friends.  She is claiming she "needs" those numbers, "in case something happens to me, she wants to talk to the last person who saw me alive.".  I am 40 years old, and her attitude around this is creepy.  When I told her I was not going to give her those numbers, she started to say that I was the only one making a big deal out of it.....  Then she called me back ten minutes later and was disappointed that I moved on from the first phone call to play some Call of Duty.  I think she was genuinely hurt that I was casually playing CoD instead of doing shots of whiskey and bitching to my 12-step friends about her insanity at that moment.

It goes to show that she loves taking up space in my head rent-free.  In fact, when she harassed my therapist fifteen years ago, she kept on telling the therapist, "I know what he is saying about me, I don't care, just know that I love him more than you ever will, you do not know what's best for him at all!"  Funny, because back then I had MUCH larger issues to talk through with the therapist than her at the time, dealing with an addiction to one-night stands and always putting myself and potentially others in danger was not something I was going to talk to my mother about.  I was not talking about my mother at all to this therapist until she started actively harassing this therapist, actually, and to this day, my mother claims that therapist was a horrible influence on me because she kept on telling her, "I am not going to talk to you about what goes on in our sessions, because that would be illegal".  To this day, she still has no idea what I was putting myself through back then, and I intend to keep it that way.

Look at me, slipping back into looking for validation in this very post.  Bloody hell.  I know exactly what has been going on throughout my life.  I have been tested for cognitive disabilities a few years ago, and those tests came up with results that showed that I suffer from no such thing.  When my mother heard that, she changed her rhetoric to, "Even people who don't have cognitive disabilities can convince themselves that things that did not actually happen were real, you just like to think of the past as being horribly dark, and I am here to say that it was all very positive instead."  Oh, and now she is also saying, "I read a scientific study that says that many people who believe in all their heart and soul that they were sexually abused only convinced themselves about that over time, usually over a resentment over a minor slight, and that it does not mean the sexual abuse actually happened at all."  She only ever wants to apply that study to me, though, when I am talking about her sister.

I know this is all BS, all these things they are saying.  I wish I were made of spiritual Teflon.  I wish it could all just slide off my surface and not penetrate my outlook on life at all.  I know this woman just is not worth the effort to get angry over at this point.  I wish my wounds from her words did not sting, for I wish I were strong enough to not be wounded by it all to begin with.  I want to pack my bags, pick myself up, take a bus to the other coast, not give her an address of where I am staying, perhaps not even a phone number, but a PO box if anything at all.

It is like this.  I know her words deserve no merit.  Yet my kneejerk reaction is to validate them by giving them space in my heart.

[Pepin]

As for NF -- I went NC with him 11 years ago and he is no longer a part of my life.  I rarely think about him and I hardly write anything about him.  It took years of me writing about him and getting it out in order for it not to affect me.  I didn't have the lingo that I have now and I do not physically tighten up anymore either when I think about him. 

I moved from the East Coast to the West Coast 22 years ago.  For the first 4 years I had NC with NF because he discarded me after I left.  I left because prior to that he told me to get out during one of his tantrums -- then it all blew over -- but, his words really hit me hard and I followed through. 

We resumed contact after I was married and was about to become a Mom.  I "tolerated" NF because we lived on opposite sides of the country and because I was now a wife and not just a daughter.  Like many, I thought that NF having a grandchild would change the dynamic of our relationship.  It sort of did but NF was horrible to my siblings and played us off each other constantly. 

One of my siblings announced his engagement and NF went NUTS!  It was sickening.  NF threw the mother of tantrums again and even threatened legal action.  I know, absurd and utter lunacy.  It was then that my siblings and I agreed to remove NF from our lives collectively.  That was 11 years ago and we will never allow him in our lives again. 

Sadly, over the years, NF has continued his abuse, stalking, hoovering, etc. through anyone that he could enlist to help him -- including his MD, attorney and various flying monkey relatives that hover for financial handouts.  He even has hired private investigators and admitted it! 

I have had tons of therapy.  I have read many books, visit here and have recently started following various life coaches.  All of this combined has been incredibly validating.  I used to think that putting myself before others was selfish.  Not anymore.  I have had to painstakingly rebuild the foundation I never had thanks to NF. 

[HeadAboveWater]

I know I need to start looking more at my own faults now.  I can't blame the FOO for my lack of growth over the last couple of years.

May I play devil's advocate here? What if the work to be done isn't all about probing what's wrong with you? What if the work to be done is finding your joy? Maybe moving toward the relationships, interests, etc. that bring you satisfaction will allow you to release some of the negativity.

And I agree with others that seeking validation is natural. It's just that some forms are more fulfilling and some forms are more addicting.