The Hunger for Witness

My struggle, I feel, is the need for validation from women. All through the years, I've always had a girlfriend. Middle school, high school, uh, I always needed a girl in my life to the detriment of my friendship. But even now, right, I'm going through divorce but wanting a girlfriend and seeking girls and women and just the constant need.

Yeah, so the, the need for validation is going to be connected to your self-worth, right? That's primarily what it's always connected to, right? It's connected to how we attempt to garner self-worth from the external environment. So you're saying that you understand that the origin of your low self-worth or seeking validation externally started when your dad was no longer a part of your life and your mom was the primary caretaker, but you were pretty much like a latchkey kid and your needs weren't met, so you were to some degree emotionally neglected. That stunted your self-esteem, your self-worth, your self-confidence. And you notice the early validation seeking when you went to camp with the haiku poems and how they would give awards based on the poems, and you found yourself kind of becoming an overachiever as a way to get validation or recognition. When you say, 'I'm trying to get past it,' or, 'I'm trying to get over it,' or, 'I'm trying to process it,' what, what do you mean by that? What, what is your interpretation of what that looks like? Like, what kind of expectation do you have? Like, what is the end outcome that you're trying to achieve?

The outcome is understanding why, understanding that it's Is it okay? Is it normal? Just a healthy mindset in regards to how I treat myself and how I meet others. So I guess I need help with knowing what that is.

Okay, let's start with number one, okay? Which is, this is a part of you, okay? So what you need to stop doing is fighting with it. You need to stop wrestling with it, okay? It's like, and I give this analogy of a beach ball, right? Imagine you're in the water with a beach ball and the beach ball is representative of this part of you that doesn't feel like he's worthy or valuable unless other people provide him validation, recognition, accolades, or that-a-boy. So there's this part of you that seeks validation, okay? There's this part of you that doesn't feel like he's enough. Stop fighting with that part of you. Just recognize it as a part of you. It's called parts work, right? It's what's called— it's part of what's called internal family systems. It's parts work. So this is a part of you it's just a piece of who you are, and it's more relevant to your past than it is relevant to your present day or for— or your future. So don't, don't fight with it, don't wrestle with it, don't do any of that, because what in essence you're actually doing is you're telling that part of you that you don't want to listen to it, and you're telling it to just go away. And that's a lot of times our, our belief in what healing looks like, right? That basically I have these beliefs that are just gonna go away permanently and they're never gonna come back. And the healed, quote unquote, optimized, self-actualized, self-realized version, version of me is a version of me that never thinks these thoughts again. Not true, man. Not true. This is just a part of you. It's a part of you that you have to learn to live with, you have to learn to deal with, and you have to learn how to manage. First part is understanding that it's there. So you already got a victory there. The second part is to stop wrestling with it, stop feeding it, stop giving it so much attention, and just recognize that it's kind of your cross to bear through this life. It's something that you're going to have to struggle with and you're going to have to manage. And the more that you manage it, the easier it becomes in overcoming it. Okay, so basically what I'm saying is developing a compassionate relationship with yourself, right? That's based on awareness, compassion, integration, right? And the ability for you to just invite that part of you in— don't wrestle or fight with it like the beach ball, just let it float.

But yeah, procrastination and setting goals and habits and sticking to them.

Yeah, procrastination is, uh, it's a coping mechanism. It's an avoidant behavior. So you have 3 types of behaviors. You have approaching, you have attacking, and then you have avoiding. Procrastination is avoidance, right? Procrastination is an inability to self-regulate. I can't handle what I'm about to face. I can't handle the way it makes me feel. So what I'll do is I'll avoid the way it makes— it's really It's a failure to self-regulate. It's a failure to regulate our own emotions. And as a result of not being able to regulate ourselves, we just avoid the action we need to take and we push it off for a later date. So procrastination is something you learn. It allows you to not have to face the discomfort that you're facing in the moment.

Perfectionism and procrastination, do they kind of go hand in hand?

Of course, of course, because if it's not going to be done perfect, I'm not willing to accept any other version than perfection, which a lot of times is unattainable, which will cause me to just push it off, push it off. You need opportunities, right, to fail, fail forward, make mistakes, and realize that You're still amazing regardless. Greatness is in you because greatness made you. Let me ask you this: have you ever gotten victory in crucifying your flesh in that regard? Have you gotten victory in taming your urges, right, to do things that are self-destructive? Have you gotten victory there?

Oh yeah, haven't had any fast food or, you know, stopped at the gas station in the last, uh, year. Sorry.

Yeah, you haven't watched porn in how long?

Uh, since, uh, July of 20—

July 2023. Yeah, that's over a year. So check it out, you've already got wins in this area, brother. Do you see this? That's what I would capitalize on. That's what I would focus on. That's what I would focus on, bro. 140 pounds down, you got 1 year of sobriety from the pornography. You're already killing it, dude. You're, you're already on your way. The only thing you need to do from here is develop a more compassionate relationship with yourself and continue to remember that you have the capacity and capability to fight those urges. And, um, thanks for coming on, man. I'm glad we were able to connect. This was a great call. I hope this was helpful for you. Yeah. So basically what I'm hearing from you is that your way to overcome procrastination is in essence the same skill set internally that you need to develop to avoid the external validation too. So basically, it's your ability to kind of crucify your flesh. It's your ability to control or tame, right, your flesh and your desires. The desire, the fleshly desire. So your flesh, your body, your urges. Your compulsive behaviors. Those are the things. Have you ever struggled with those things?

Oh yeah. I mean, women— I mean, I never— I, I never cheated on my wife, but I definitely found other women attractive. Never acted on it, but had those impulses. Or, I mean, I guess I, I guess I might have acted— or not might have, I did, I did act on it.

Like watching pornography and things like that?

Oh yeah, no, that was, that was the, the pitfall of my marriage was pornography, right?

So you fell into those behaviors probably because your need to feel connected to your wife, right? You didn't feel very connected to your wife, probably.

No, not as connected as either of us would have liked.

So in the disconnection, right, there was basically you were vulnerable in that state to either, A, assert yourself and express the fact that your needs were not being met in the relationship, you felt emotionally disconnected. But for you, that's a difficult thing for you to do because of the disorganized attachment style. So setting boundaries, communicating like that, is something that's counterintuitive for you because that's not how you've done relationships in the past, right? It's been primarily about, right, um, you becoming who you— who people wanted you to be so they would give you what you needed, which is to feel connected, belong, feel secure in the relationship.

It.

So you kind of had— it was kind of like the solution to that problem in that moment was something that was completely counterintuitive to how you were normally used to living your life. So then you fell into a pit that many men fall into, which was the vices and the self-destructive behaviors, right? Yeah. So basically, in essence, what you can see is the need for validation, even in your marriage, and the need to establish and set boundaries made you really uncomfortable, so you procrastinated Basically what you did is you avoided it. You avoided it. As a result of avoiding it, you fell into the instant gratification, right, of the vices, the self-destructive tendencies. Then in essence, to this day, right, that part of you that feels like he's not enough. It's like every time when we engage in something self-destructive, like the people that we hurt, the person we hurt the worst is really ourselves.

Yeah.

You know, the way that it makes us think and feel about ourselves, that it creates so much cognitive dissonance because my actions don't line up with my values. So to me, brother, I think that if you really strip this down to its core, I think it comes down to you living in a way where you can think greater than you can feel.