Hello ♡,
I am back with Part 3 of our four part series on Approval Seeking. (Click here to read Part 1, Click here to read Part 2.) I loved hearing from so many of you both weeks!!
Last week we talked about the ways in which we cross our own boundaries by prioritizing someone else’s approval of us before, during, and after interactions.
But, it doesn’t stop there…What I find is that this dance, that may have begun in an important relationship, or context, is often globalized to many of our other relationships and interactions.
There may be someone specific (or several someones) who come to mind when thinking about boundaries and seeking approval. This may be a parent, a sibling, or a friend you’ve known for years. Likely it is a person you have some history with.
The thing for us to know about these patterns, is that we often globalize them. By this, I mean we take the same rule we learned in an important foundational relationships and we apply it to other relationships as well. It is often the way our brains work to protect us.
Imagine if you burned your hand on a stove really badly that you didn’t know was hot. Your hand may instinctively retreat back just a bit each time you are near a hot stove again - an instinct of survival. The stove may not even be hot, but your hand remembers. (True story, this example comes from my own experience of burning my hand twice, yes twice, on a electric stove at “cooking camp.” Why would I put my hand on it? Who knows. To be fair it never showed signs of heat - not unlike some people who erupt unexpectedly. My hand remembers the potential for a bad burn.)
So whatever your particular dance is - which felt necessary in some relationships - it may be transferred to other relationships in your life. You may fear disappointing that friend that is actually really supportive, because you couldn’t disappoint people growing up and still get affection. Or you may find yourself more comfortable with dramatic, self-involved friends until you realize you are still playing the “I have to support your drama” role you played growing up in order to avoid criticism and rejection.
We learn a specific equation that being pleasing (in some way) is what worked to keep love in an important relationship. And so, in an attempt to keep love and not be rejected in other relationships we may continue this pleasing behavior. It is just a type of brilliant survival strategy.
Think through the strategies you developed early on to get love, feel loved, or be accepted in important relationships. We often carry these strategies forward to other contexts and relationships. For example, if you needed to overacommadate in order to keep the peace, not get yelled at, not be seen as selfish, or be the “good child” while a sibling struggled, you may find yourself doing that in your relationships today.
Sometimes you may find yourself today in a relationship that mimics those old expectations put on you, sometimes you may not. Either way, when you were a kid you had no other options or information, so you developed a strategy. But, much like a t-shirt from childhood, that would no longer fit, needs to be replaced, so might this globalized strategy. (This is a topic in my new book I am finishing up too!)
As you begin to notice this boundary pain, if it applies to you, just be gentle.
Lovingly noting, “oh, here I am doing it again.”
Remembering, you didn’t choose to seek approval because you just prefer not to be fully yourself - you learned to seek approval because your sense of being loved and accepted on some level felt dependent on it. And that deserves compassion.
Today, if it applies, we can reflect on where we might be globalizing, or transferring without question, a pattern onto our relationships.
Finally, we often learn not to repeat this pattern in the context of a safe relationship, even a relationship with a therapist, where we are accepted without being pleasing. But sometimes, this isn’t available for us, and sometimes even when we have learned it with someone safe (and that has helped tremendously as we had a "corrective emotional experience”) we may still repeat the pattern in other places. Next week we will wrap up this series with one way to work on rewiring this pattern.
With you,
Monica