Letting go, finally

[JGuy]

Two things I would say , to get validation for your view you asked W !!!!! Who when pushed said yes , she felt you did try to get to her to agree. This is exactly what I said You push until the person appears to agree because it's easier for the person

Secondly you used the line " to stay humble ". Sorry JGuy , that is one term that does not apply to you.

It is precisely because I AM listening to you guys that I went directly to my W to ask her whether I come across like I need to be right. I did this because I really want to know if I am missing something here, not because I want her to agree with me and tell me I'm right and you guys are wrong. If I just wanted that then I could have stopped the conversation when she said no, and I could have come back to you and said "see, my W agrees with me". But I didn't. I continued to explore it from different angles because I'm humbled by what you guys are telling me and I really want to understand what's going on here. I may not come to the same conclusion as you about what it is exactly that I need to learn, but that doesn't mean I'm ignoring you or that I lack humility!!

What came out of the discussion with my W was a useful observation: that when I seek validation from my W, it gives her the impression that I'm seeking for her to agree with me. But that's not the case. To feel validated, I wouldn't need her to agree with me, I would just need to know that she cares about trying to understand why I feel and think what I do. So yes, I absolutely need validation, but I don't need her to agree with me. When we came to that point in the discussion, it was as though a light went on for both of us. There was more to this than either of us had seen before.

From that discussion, I realized something big. If I could learn how to validate myself instead of trying to get others to validate me, then I would always feel OK about myself and wouldn't feel the need to try and explain myself endlessly whenever I get the impression that I am being misunderstood by others. I have always felt so wonderful when others do validate me, so naturally I seek that out to experience it again. Clearly though, it isn't realistic to expect that other people will always be able to validate me. It just never occurred to me that I could learn to validate myself!

Woah... weird, I just realized that I am doing this right now. By writing all of this, I am trying to validate my own need for validation. <<< And right there, I was trying to validate my own need to validate my own need for validation.

Hmmm... I'm reading "Inner Bonding" by Margaret Paul right now and I'm tempted to try an experiment and tell this story from the perspective of little JGuy and big JGuy:

Little JGuy is hoping that someone would validate him in response to this by saying "I understand, JGuy. I can relate to your need for validation. I can appreciate that is truly a challenge for you, and I'm cheering for you". But somehow, what happens is that little JGuy keeps getting the painful and exact opposite response from Rd, Zeus and Azzork, which little JGuy interprets as "You are wrong, JGuy. Your feelings and thoughts aren't valid. They are prideful, condescending, immature, and plain wrong. You should abandon yourself and listen to what we are saying, or else your relationships will always fail and it will be your fault because you didn't listen to us". This really upsets little JGuy and big JGuy does his best to explain himself better so that Rd, Zeus, and Azzork will understand and little JGuy will get the validation he needs. Big JGuy is realizing that perhaps he just needs to learn how to validate little JGuy directly instead of looking for others to do it.

Awesome. I can see that this is all totally valid. Nobody except me can really understand what's going on inside of me with little JGuy. I don't know if it's worth sharing this process here, especially if I keep getting more of the same hurtful responses from Rd, Zeus and Azzork. Big JGuy may need to say goodbye to this forum in order to protect little JGuy. I hope not, but for now I'm celebrating that I feel like I'm getting somewhere!