Validation is essential for personal confidence

Date:   12/2/2005 3:55:55 PM ( 19 y ago)

Everyone needs to have validation.
It grows from early self-awareness to what we call EGO. Or Eggo if you had my experiences!!

It starts as Validation of our basic view of life, even just validation that what we see around us is real, to know that our eyes are working, that our senses are giving us the essence of the world around us. Without that, there can be no confidence.

Later, we need validation of our experiences - are they real? are they important? does anyone find them interesting? If this validation is strong and good, you might want to write a book about you or your experiences just because people are interested in your experiences... write a book, or draw, do music - any expression of what you have seen. Thats where ART comes from - having the confidence to express yourself because you have had validation. Maybe it was a hugely negative experience, but it is still yours, and it was real, and your charachter traits [courage] got you thru it - people like to hear about that stuff. Its real life.

When an artist fails, despite some inborn talent and drive to do art, it is usually because they don't have that validation of themselves.
When anyone lacks validation, they will almost certainly become depressed if they fail to find it anywhere. Many of us who didn't have it as youth will spend most of our lives looking for some validation - if not at home, maybe in my job or my sports or my art.

Nobody is giving any away either. People don't like to see that need [of needing validation]in others - maybe it reflects their own shortcomings. Cowards R Us. There are those special people who see the need and immediately want to help out - they will actually search you for something to give you encouragement over, to validate you in any way they can:"I like you hairdo - did you do it yourself? - You've got such a great way with hair!" . People like that radiate love. They have a security in them that allows this praise and validation of others. Sometimes they are seeking your validation of them, but that phoney neediness is evident.

WHERE it starts is at home, for the nuclear family types.
My siblings first, and then my parents, were my primary reference point of what was real. When I needed validation, I suppose I would go to them and say something like "the sky is blue", hoping for a reply that would confirm it. Instead, what I got was a question...nothing was ever straightforwards in our house, allways challenging, allways competition. As the youngest, I could never win an arguement or come up with an idea that was "a good one", not in the face of all those experts.

Well before my teens, I became frustrated about not getting validation.Its a fine line between the need for validation and the desire for attention. Parents might miss out on opportunites to validate their kids by allways refusing to give in to demands to be noticed. Whining becomes the language used to get their needs fullfilled, and its a road to nowhere.

AT some point, we look outside the family unit, esp when it isn't giving us what we need.

I guess that will be another chapter, but to say that when I went to the outside world to get my validation, I moved to the big scity and started a music education and carreer. That would be the least likely place to get validated unless you are a massive talent [but you would not likey have any un-met need for validation]. What you get instead is helpfull suggestions that are taken as insults. You withdraw and study on your own.

Nobody should go into the music business unless they have a good degree of self-confidence first!!

My motivations were different than most musicians - I wanted to do something really hard, something very special, to impress my family. Obviously, I was set up to fail at both a music career and my quest for validation, but thats exactly why I was doing music.

I still compose songs even now. I still want to have my 15 minutes of fame, at least one moment in the spotlight, one song that makes it big. I would take the first copy to show mother and say "look what I did!".
Thats quest for validation never ends in those who failed to get it. The way to go would be to look elsewhere for validation - why keep banging my head on the same wall? Well because when it is family, there is only one family, and validation from anywhere else is just not as sweet.

As an aside, my chronic illness needs validation too - just simply being believed.

This illness of mine just might all be part of the original validation needs, in that I got sick to get sympathy or something, or from the conflicts and turmoil within me due to lack of validation. But NO, I am quite sure my illness has physical basis, with mental issues as complications.

Chronic illness denied. Thats a real bad one for people with it. That is the kind of validation I refer to , The only explanations other than a real illness is that we have a psycho-somatic illness, or something of our own making , or an illness for which we ourselves are to blame - and that really hits us hard because we know that we will not get any help at all

I have been in pain and heard I am lying about being in pain. It is really hard to hear. I react by getting excited and that is taken as evidence that I am a lying. I start to wonder if anyone believes me. In doing so, I arouse suspicions about my truthfullness. Catch 22.

So validation must come from within, a lesson learned again and again. There is no reason the world can't give it to us, they just don't often do it unless you are successfull. Again, I blame our industrial-corporate mindset culture for this de-humanizing situation. They don't want people to be strong and well, better that they are weak and afraid.

Karlin

 

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