THE VALIDATION-SEEKING MINDSET TYPE
Welcome to the Small Jar Podcast, where we moms of teens find the power to step off the emotional rollercoaster between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode number 98.
Hello, my friends, and welcome back. If you've been following along with me, you know that I've been covering mindset traps, essentially counterproductive ways of thinking that we can fall into as moms navigating life with teens and the transition from motherhood to the empty nest. That period of time, honestly, from as early as the twin years through maybe even beyond when our kids graduate from college, I call it the empty nest straddle.
In this latest addition to the series on mindset traps, I've been exploring what I call mindset trap types. So far, I've discussed the worry mindset type and the fix-it mindset type. And so today, I want to get into the validation-seeking mindset type.
Now, as a reminder, these types are not meant to be labels. If you notice that you tend to fall into one or more of these ways of thinking, I don't want you to start calling yourself a worrier or a validation seeker. Again, this isn't at all about who you are.
This is about understanding your mind and the thought errors or counterproductive ways of thinking that our primitive minds can fall into in a well-intentioned effort to keep us safe and comfortable. Now, over the past two weeks, as I explored the worry mindset type and the fix-it mindset type, the primary motivation underlying these mindset traps is safety, essentially the elimination of danger. And the danger in our minds is emotional pain, some feeling that we want to avoid or get rid of.
I go into much more detail in each of these separate episodes. But just to say that, on the one hand, it sounds perfectly rational and even a good idea for us to try to avoid emotional pain, right? I mean, why experience pain if you don't have to? But the bottom line with these mindset traps, like catastrophizing, all-or-nothing thinking, or personalization, is that the way we're thinking about the situation is actually counterproductive. We're trying to escape emotional pain, but in the process, we create more emotional pain, the opposite of what we want.
So today, as I dive into the validation-seeking mindset type, there's an element of this that involves avoiding emotional pain for sure. But even more, I think it's our way of trying to create more positive emotions in our life. Think love, connection, a sense of purpose, and self-worth.
These emotions are lovely. Sign me up for feeling more love, connection, and worthiness. But when thinking about the series of mindset types, these particular ways of thinking, again, are counterproductive, meaning they don't actually accomplish what our brains hope they will accomplish.
Now, quick reminder, as I describe these mindset traps at a really basic level, the reason we fall into these traps is because our instinctual behavior as humans is governed by the motivational triad, that we seek pleasure, avoid pain, and conserve energy. In our modern world, the primary type of pain our primitive brain wants to avoid is emotional pain. And when it comes to pleasure, I want to invite you to stop to consider how many forms of pleasure exist out in the world compared to when we were all, say, living in caves.
Back then, pleasure was finding some berries or the comfort of having eaten a meal at all. It was sex and a warm fire, the feeling of being in a small community that provided protection from physical danger. Our primitive brain is designed to seek pleasure because it was essential to our survival as a species.
If we weren't motivated to eat, prolong our lives, and have sex, we would have died off quickly. Instead, we've learned over centuries how to continually improve our lives. And notice how one of the major areas of improvement we've made over our lives is to give ourselves the opportunity to experience more pleasure, more comfort.
Pleasure is, in fact, readily available in concentrated forms everywhere you look. Sugar, alcohol, drugs, porn, anything you like to do, is readily accessible assuming you have the time and the money. Now, I want to dive into this for a moment because I think it might provide an interesting insight as we tackle mindset traps around validation seeking.
For example, you might love sweets. Or maybe you're more of a savory person. But let's say there's one food or set of foods that you truly love and find that you have a hard time stopping eating once you've started.
I think we all have that one food. Or maybe for you it could be wine or alcohol. It helps you unwind, makes you feel content and at ease.
Or maybe it's online shopping or watching Netflix. It could even be working out or taking long walks. And you might say to yourself that these things, whichever of these things you love, that they make you happy.
But I want to challenge this for a moment. Do they? Does the cake or the cheese or the wine actually make you happy? Does the online shopping make you happy? Does working out make you happy? You might be thinking, yes, depending on which one of those makes you happy. That does give me pleasure.
It makes me happy. Okay, so then why don't you enjoy these things all of the time? Well, the answer is too much cake will make you feel sick. Same with cheese, wine.
Too much online shopping will put you in debt. You can't walk or work out forever. So I guess too much of a good thing doesn't make you happy then.
And certainly there's nothing wrong with enjoying things you like in moderation. But is it actually those things that make you happy? Or is it just the way you're thinking about those things that makes you feel pleasure? Notice that some of us love cookies. Others don't like sweets, but love wine.
Or maybe prefer vodka. Or don't like to drink at all and prefer online shopping. Whatever your source of external pleasure.
And we all have our own preferences. Preferences based on how we each think about those things. So again, consider it's not the thing, the cheese, the wine, the workout, that's making you happy.
But perhaps the way you think about that thing. So what does this have to do with validation seeking? In the same way we can desire food or wine because our primitive brain perceives that this concentrated form of pleasure is a really good thing, we can also desire feelings of love and connection and purpose. But surely those feelings are more real than just the enjoyment we get from eating food or drinking wine, right? Love is different than pleasure.
Purpose and self-worth are much more valuable than enjoyment in connection with food, right? But interestingly, from the standpoint of evolutionary psychology, the way we seek pleasure in the form of food and shelter is similar to the way we seek pleasure in the form of social acceptance and belonging. Again, consider how critical it was for our early ancestors to be accepted into a tribe for their basic survival. Being included in a group, receiving acceptance or validation that we belong actually activates reward pathways in the brain, similar to the rewards we experience when we eat or drink something we like.
Here's how this works. When we experience something that fulfills our basic need for safety, comfort, and pleasure, our brains release dopamine. Now we tend to think of dopamine as a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure, but in fact it's even more associated with learning.
The reward of dopamine is actually teaching your brain to seek out more of this thing. Whatever we've experienced that fulfills our basic needs brings us pleasure, for example. And so now we've created this connection in our minds between this external thing and our own feeling of comfort and pleasure.
Again, all of this is our brains functioning perfectly, a well-orchestrated symphony of learning that has propelled the human race's evolution from caves to skyscrapers. It's so powerful. But stop and consider, in this day and age where safety and comfort and pleasure are readily accessible at every turn, how if you don't supervise this tendency of your brain to desire more of those things that they associate with comfort, pleasure, and belonging, we can end up in real trouble.
Think addiction, diabetes, and obesity, and the validation-seeking mindset. Now just as we need food for survival, we do, as humans, have a basic need to belong. We're social animals.
We're constantly scanning the people around us for signs that we're accepted or acceptable. We want others to approve of us. When we think that we belong, we feel good.
Based in contrast to when we think we don't belong or that people don't approve of us, then we feel anxious, stressed, rejected, definitely not pleasant feelings. And because our primitive brains associate these emotions of rejection as a threat to our survival, you can begin to see why the feelings we experience when we feel left out or rejected can seem so painful. It's not about not being invited to that lame dinner party you saw your so-called friends posting about on social media.
Your instinctual reaction to this is much more primal. Now dopamine also plays a role here in reinforcing our desire for validation and social acceptance. Feeling welcomed into a group has likely reduced your anxiety in the past.
When we think we're accepted, we feel secure and comfortable. We might feel a heightened sense of self-esteem and self-worth. As we experience these positive feelings, the release of dopamine is providing a reward that reinforces the lesson in our mind that we want more of this, more belonging, more acceptance.
Now, my friend as a mom, just think about how much your role as a parent has provided you with opportunities to feel a sense of self-worth, of acceptance, and belonging. I don't think I have ever experienced in my life the same level of adoration, the sense of someone needing me, thinking I'm the most important person in the entire world. This is the level of belonging and self-worth we can experience when we have kids.
In those moments when they look up at you and they just adore you. Of course, back when they were a lot younger. But such unbridled love and acceptance.
Here you are with all of your faults and insecurities. And I'm talking about my own faults and insecurities here. And despite all of that, this little human thinks you're just perfect.
If chocolate cake or a glass of wine provides a dopamine hit that teaches us to want more of it, think about what the dopamine from those beautiful experiences as a mom have taught your brain. And let me be very clear here, because I don't think any of this is a bad thing. There's something absolutely beautiful about all of the joy and the feelings of self-worth and belonging that we've come to associate with motherhood.
And if I'm honest, and I don't know if you can relate here, but those beautiful feelings have also gotten me through the pain of the sleepless nights of infancy and the tantrums of the toddler years. That sense of purpose and connection and love that I've felt for my boys from the very beginning means that I'm willing to muddle through some of the hard times. Even now, for the past six or seven years, when it hasn't exactly been smooth sailing as my boys became tweens and teens and eventually want to be adults, our instinctual desire to seek out connection is not a bad thing.
And of course, it isn't limited to life with our kids. We want connection with our partners, our friends and other family members, our co-workers, the other moms in your kids' class. Some of the most meaningful relationships I've built over my life have been because I put myself in situations where I could have the potential to meet new people and make new friends.
As an introvert, that's not always been the easiest thing for me to do. And yet I still crave connection and a sense of belonging. In fact, when most people reflect on the meaning of their life, they would probably count the quality of their relationships as the most valuable, most meaningful aspect of their lives, well beyond material things, professional success, and certainly beyond the favorite food or glass of wine.
So getting back to the validation seeking mindset, if we're instinctually motivated to seek connection and a sense of belonging, why is validation and the other mindset traps I put into this mindset trap type? Why are these traps counterproductive and potentially even harmful to us? Well, there are quite a few ways actually. One, and I think the biggest from a mindset point of view, is that we can develop a dependency on things outside of us to determine our perception of our self-worth and ability to experience happiness. More to the point, when our happiness and self-worth is dependent on other people, we end up needing other people's approval and positive opinion to generate those positive feelings.
And even those people that really love us can't give this to us all of the time. In fact, it could even be a burden on those we love when we need this approval from them constantly. And people who don't love us or don't care about us particularly are definitely not good at providing us with this validation.
So if we're in a position to need this positive input from the outside world, we can find ourselves constantly in a position of lack and insufficiency. Needless to say, when we're stuck in this mindset and then we don't feel validated by things outside of us, for example, when we see signs that we're being judged or that someone doesn't like what we've done, we can feel anxious and insecure, which only further erodes the feelings of self-worth and adequacy we were hoping to find through external support. Here's another risk of validation seeking.
It leads to a situation where your authenticity is diminished. I actually have a client who expressed this perfectly once. She discovered that she falls into traps associated with the validation seeking mindset type.
And as she looked for clarity within herself to let go of these ways of thinking, she expressed to me that what she really wanted was to be authentic. It's something she realized she hadn't entirely been with people she loves. Because here's what can happen.
If you think your feelings of self-worth, purpose, maybe even feelings of happiness and peace come from others' approval, their appreciation, or the way they reciprocate their love, then it can actually become one of the primary motivators of your interaction with other people to access these feelings of self-worth and happiness. So if your goal is to feel worthy and happy, you find yourself looking for evidence from others. And to generate this positive feedback, you might even do things that you don't really want to do, potentially even compromising your values.
In short, you might be inauthentic in order to get other people to appreciate you, or to say that they love you, or maybe just not to be mad at you. And this doesn't necessarily mean that you're doing anything bad. But consider what happens when you constantly say yes to things you don't really want to do, just because you want the other person to think you care, or that you don't want them to be upset with you.
Or as another example, consider how you feel if you're always giving in to your team, giving them money or letting them stay out late. In your heart, you know you should probably be setting firmer boundaries. But you also fear what will happen in your relationship with your team if you're too strict.
We can shy away from being who we really want to be, simply to please others. I also just want to say that not everyone has your best interest at heart. Some people are simply preoccupied with their own lives.
That's normal. But then there are others who will use your need for validation against you. Maybe it's an ex-husband, or a friend, hopefully not your teen.
But this is something to keep in mind. Needing validation from others can make you vulnerable to manipulation. There are four specific traps that I've put into the category of the validation-seeking mindset type.
And these are, of course, validation-seeking, which is itself a mindset trap. Also the comparison trap, perfectionism, and the identity crisis. I'll touch briefly on each of these traps here, but I invite you to dive in further to each of these traps in my past episodes specifically focused on each one.
Now, validation-seeking, as I've mentioned, involves looking for external approval or recognition from others. So think about this specifically. When you're looking for validation, you're looking for someone else to do something or say something specific in order for you to give yourself permission to feel something you want to feel.
Now, I'm being really intentional with my wording here because notice other people can't make you feel anything without your permission. Someone could say I love you, but if you don't know them or you don't like them, then them saying I love you won't make you feel anything. But if someone you do love says the same thing, well, now you have a different story in your mind that this is someone you love and you're glad that they love you back.
It's always a matter of your individual perspective and how that shapes how you feel about the world around you. So with a validation-seeking mindset trap, ask yourself, why do you need to wait for others to do or say something in order for you to feel loved, worthy, or appreciated? In order for you to feel like you belong, remember that instinctual, primitive motivation. Belonging means safety and comfort.
Not belonging means danger and pain. This is at least how your primitive brain can interpret perceived rejection if not supervised. And this brings me to the next mindset trap in the validation-seeking mindset type, the comparison trap.
Again, we want to fit in, to belong. So we evaluate our perception of families and friends' expectations of us, or the example we think that they set in terms of what it means to belong. And in our primitive minds, we have two options, conform and belong, or go against what's expected and feel cast out.
It can seem a little high school to be concerned about this as women in our 50s, but if you're honest with yourself, you know that feeling. For me, it happens all the time. You go on social media and you see how particular groups of women who you know get together regularly and post photos, only you've never been invited.
You know rationally it's because you're not particularly close with any of the women, but maybe you wonder why that is. Is there something wrong with you that you haven't been included in this group? Or you go to a school function and everyone else seems to know each other. In these cases, maybe there's nothing you can do but just feel kind of left out.
But there are other times when we feel pressure to give in to belong. Drinking can actually become one of those things that's really hard not to do when you're around people who are drinking. If you've ever given up alcohol for any period of time, you know how awkward it can be to say you're not drinking, or ask for a seltzer, and all of a sudden everyone wants to know why you're not drinking, if that's something you've done in the past.
Just to clue you in on something, other people being in your business about whether or not you're drinking says more about them and their own drinking than it has to do with you and your choices. But still, it can feel like you're putting yourself in a position of being cast out, to the point of even worrying that people won't want to hang out with you if you don't drink. The bottom line is that sometimes, when we conform to what people expect from us, just to fit in and feel like we belong, like we're accepted, then this can go against what we really want for ourselves.
Again, there's this question of authenticity. The next mindset trap that falls into the validation-seeking mindset type is perfectionism. Now, I can't say this enough because it's so counterintuitive, but perfectionism isn't about being perfect.
This mindset trap is actually about how we set the bar for ourselves based on what we think will keep us safe from pain. And this is a common theme with the traps I've covered so far in this episode. We seek validation because we want to avoid the pain of rejection.
We compare ourselves to others to avoid the pain of feeling cast out or different, of not belonging. And we set impossible standards for ourselves because we think if we can just do the right thing, then we can avoid the pain of disappointing others, being rejected, not feeling good enough. The last mindset trap that I'm including in the validation-seeking mindset type is the identity crisis.
Now, similar to validation-seeking, this trap involves us thinking that our identity comes from things or roles outside of ourselves, that your purpose is dependent on how you spend your time or how successful you are. Notice, as I've been talking about these traps as a related set, you can also experience an identity crisis if you're not getting the validation you crave from others. And this can happen to us a lot as moms of teens as our kids start to pull away and show their affection quite a bit less, to the extreme of actually being dismissive and mean at times.
The comparison trap can make us question our identity. Should we conform to fit in? What does it mean if we don't? Should I conform to my teen's expectations so that they don't reject me? In perfectionism, often our perception of what we think is the right way to act or the right choice is informed by the way we view our identity, or maybe the identity we're trying to live into. So interesting how interwoven all of these mindset traps can be.
And if I were to summarize how they all relate to each other, it has to do with our desire to feel the safety of belonging, the safety of feeling accepted and worthy. We crave these positive emotions. Of course we do.
But the common theme here is that with each of these traps, you end up looking for things. Proof, approval, some accomplishment, some specific reaction or outcome, something outside of you to allow yourself the permission to believe that you belong, that you're enough, that you're worthy, that you're loved. I dedicated an entire podcast on this just a few weeks ago.
I called it I Am Enough because honestly, every one of us forgets this sometimes. The example I'd love to go back to is this. Think about when your child was born, each one of your children.
At the moment they came into this world, did you think that they were worthy and enough at that moment? Before they had done one thing to prove themselves, they were enough. When you think about your child, no matter the ups and downs of your relationship as they've grown up, I'm willing to bet that you still believe they're enough and worthy at their core, lovable because of who they are. Even if some of the things they do sometimes are unlikable, their worthiness is an entirely separate thing that never wavers.
And if you can imagine this for your child, consider that this is true for you as well. You have always been worthy, enough, and there's nothing you need to do, no proof you have to get, no one else's opinion you need to sway for it to be true that you're enough. It makes perfect sense that we don't want to feel rejected.
We don't want to disappoint others or feel less than. We don't want to be perceived as incapable or uncaring. But consider that some of this fear may just be driven by the mindset trap rather than the truth of who you really are.
Living an authentic life does not mean that you stop caring about how other people feel, nor does it mean lowering your expectations for yourself. But it does mean being willing to decide that you're worthy, to decide that the way you choose to show up is enough, that you are in charge of deciding who you are. These are always decisions you're making anyway.
The question is, are you making them consciously or are you falling into a mindset trap? Take responsibility for this decision. Explore the mindset traps connected to the validation-seeking mindset type. Learn how in an effort to create positive emotion, you actually create pain, insecurity, self-doubt, lack of worthiness, inauthenticity.
Consider that you can skip the trap and go straight to deciding, to create feelings of worthiness and belonging. It's a choice you get to make. To get started, go to my website to take the mindset trap type quiz.
If you score high for the validation-seeking mindset, take a listen to the companion small jar podcast episodes on validation-seeking, the identity crisis, perfectionism, and the comparison trap. You are enough, my friend. Stop waiting for the world to prove it to you.
Until next time, friends.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and check out our coaching program mom2.0 at www.thesmalljar.com. You have more power than you think, my friend.
