Category: Books

From I Built This Prison, Chapter 1, Pride Desperately Seeking Validation

“…I used to think of my unhappy self as some sort of a special brand of weirdo.  And in many ways the circumstances that have shaped my life were very specific.  However, the tangible outcome, the resulting state of mind – that yearning for validation – and not by everyone, but by a particular someone – it is not unique at all.  In fact, many people live the same daily struggle and suffer the overwhelming despair that comes with it.  

Since the moment I accepted that I have a problem and began examining my own condition, I started seeing it in others as well…

…Various forms of this desire for one’s value to be acknowledged and appreciated by the specific people we anoint as our yardsticks can be traced all the way to biblical and mythological sources. “Father’s blessing” as a token of love and recognition is at the center of practically every single sibling rivalry in Genesis, Greek mythology, and Norse lore.

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Despite its relative commonality, it’s not easy to define this condition in one straightforward formula. It’s full of paradoxical qualities.

For example, one of the most prominent common denominators among people who suffer from the rift within their self-image in the same way I do is the drive for overachieving. In spite of the deep, dark emotional abysses inside, on the outside we go out and display the superior levels of functionality.

It’s easy to confuse low self-esteem with the lack of confidence. Even some dictionaries explain one’s meaning with the other.  But they are, by far, not the same. Somehow, being absolutely clear about the extent of my capacities and striving to fully utilize them have always coexisted in me with thinking of myself as utterly worthless. In fact, the awareness of the merit I invested into my accomplishments made my craving of the acknowledgement that much more intense.

This malady is a bizarre cocktail of contradictions. It definitely paralyzed my aspirations and stunted all impulses of positive daring, but conventionally I was doing just fine. I still went about being a straight A student, acquiring multiple academic degrees, expanding my professional expertise, positioning myself at the executive level of the companies that hired me.

It’s like a dual-action trauma: on one hand, I was pounded into the chasm of neglectful diminishment; and on the other hand, I was motivated to swim up and out…”

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Beyond my parents “…my recognition-thirsty psyche… fixated on the worst option possible: my bosses. Granted, I’m not talking about some middle-management hired hands. At the very beginning of my professional career back in the 1990, I made a conscious choice of advancing it in the precarious environment of flat-structured, privately-held, owners-ran companies. I’ve held Controller and CFO positions since 1993 and I’ve never had any layers between myself and the Founder/CEO/President. It placed me and my efforts into the spotlight held by ‘the only people who mattered’ – the ones directly responsible for my appreciation and rewards.

A totally unbalanced logic led me to seek and expect (!) approval from these little Napoleons, the tiny kings in their kingdoms, the self-made entrepreneurs, from whom I chose to accept employment. It is mind-boggling that, even though I usually managed to quickly identify their professional shortcomings and human deficiencies, I remained completely blind to the futility of my hopes to be assessed by them in accordance with my merits.

Nietzsche saw the conscious understanding of one’s value as a natural distinction of someone with a ‘master’ mentality. And he attributed a man’s ‘waiting of an opinion about himself’ to the concept of a ‘servant’ mentality. He called the latter an ‘immense atavism’, implying that it belonged to the old times, when the society was clearly divided.

No matter who we are, when we submit into Employment, we are forced to adapt ourselves to the idea of servitude. And in some of us, it clashes terribly with our true identities.

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Naturally, the continuous mental battle between the two modes of existence – the one, in which you know your value and are recognized for it, and the one, in which you are ignored and mistreated by those who matter the most – builds an incredibly debilitating pressure inside. This constant back-and-forth switches between someone’s recognition vs. someone else’s disregard, make you sick – and I don’t mean dizzy.       

My agitated mind needed to defend itself in one or another way. While I consciously refused to admit to myself that I had a problem, my subconsciousness has built a defense mechanism all on its own: It learned to seek comfort in the familiar groove of misery carved into my psyche by the repetitive escapes into the dark corners of depression, anxiety, self-loathing, and self-pity.

Just like a gramophone needle, I would drop into this loathsome rut and let myself run, and run, and run in it. And then again, and again, and again…  Every time I felt hurt by one or another situation, a word, or someone’s action – big or small, didn’t matter – I would habitually seek solace in an emotional state most psychiatric professionals would consider highly problematic.

I guess, my depression symptoms have always been somewhat plain to see, because even my primary physicians would suggest a medication. I’ve been on one or another anti-depressant and anti-anxiety pill for some stretches of time since I was 18 years old.  And then I’d stop taking them for the periods just as long.  Sometimes, for very legitimate reasons – like when I was pregnant. And sometimes I would quit for no reason at all. Probably, because I didn’t want to think of myself as crazy or weak.

But you see, even when I did take the medication, it didn’t really work on the internal turmoil.  Like most pharmaceuticals, psychiatric drugs are not the cures; they don’t treat the underlying conditions, they just mitigate the superficial symptoms, which is presumably important but hardly sufficient. 

I would come to a doctor and within the allotted appointment time give a brief description of the darkness and the jittery nervousness that in me manifested itself in cardiological-like aches. “It’s stress,” was the invariable conclusion that satisfied all parties involved: the doctor knew what to prescribe and the patient accepted the chronic nature of the affliction.  What can be done about Stress in the contemporary circus of bread-winning intercut with the single motherhood?  Nothing, really.  And who has the time to look closer, let alone deeper?

Meanwhile, the banal shield of ‘stressful life’ had completely obscured the fact that amidst the unyielding battle between my self-value and low self-esteem I have gradually become severely addicted to Praise and would do anything to achieve it.”