As humans, we crave connection. Whatever result we get on the Myers-Briggs personality test, whether we’re an introvert or an extrovert, as social animals, we all need to feel seen and heard.
As I wrote about here, it’s why the trope of ‘attention-seeking’ is misguided, because simply by virtue of being human, we can all be classified as ‘attention seekers’ in that we all want to be met with approval from others.
Should we stop seeking approval from others?
Where everything in life is about balance, there has to be a balance.
Listening to others but being stable enough within yourself to not be controlled by outside forces = Balance.
If you’re constantly seeking approval from others in order to feel good about yourself though, then that’s unhealthy.
Giving other people permission to determine your worth and value, is unhealthy…
But likewise, if you never seek approval from others, if everything that you do is for you and only you, then that is unhealthy too…
Not caring what people think because… you just don’t care is, I would argue, a symptom of sociopathy.
We should all care (albeit, some of us care slightly too much, a category which I, for one, certainly fit into)…
With a ‘fear of being perceived’, deep-rooted alongside autism, I have seemingly spent my whole life ‘on the outside looking in’, wishing that the world would just…let me in.
Despite being an adult nearing her 23rd year (when did that happen?!), I still very much feel this way, like I am on the outside looking in, overwhelmed by a world that isn’t designed for neurodiversity/a world where not making eye contact is seen as ‘rude’/where there is an unwritten rule as to how much you’re supposed to share upon meeting someone for the first time…
Unable to maintain eye contact, with a tendency to overshare to the extent that you’ll know my life history upon the first hour of meeting me, I worry a lot about making the ‘wrong’ first impression.
A ‘fear of being perceived’, in practice…
Posting poetry on Instagram only to delete it an hour later- ‘too much?’ Selfies- ‘not enough?’, a running commentary in my head as to all the reasons why I am ‘unlikeable.’ Craving approval from others on social media, someone to tell me; ‘You’re doing alright you know…’
Am I doing alright?
I just want someone to tell me what to do, to give me an instruction manual, a ‘how to’ guide for life, but there is no one to tell me what to do, is there?…
And so, I have to figure it all out for myself, ‘learning on the job.’
It’s the times that I’m feeling most insecure in myself that I seek approval from others, naturally. Where, in the ‘thrill of the chase’/having a ‘crush’ on someone/feeling 16 again, I can forget about everything else, ‘escapism’, and just focus on this new, all-consuming rush of oxytocin I get every time my phone lights up with their name.
The issue with this though, however ‘exciting’ it might feel in the moment, is that in devoting everything to someone else, I inevitably wind up losing myself. Thus meaning that when the ‘thrill of the chase’ is no more, either because it’s been caught, or because…
(Well, I’m still not sure what actually follows the ‘because…’ Is everyone else emotionally unavailable, or is my emotional turmoil the problem? ‘Too much?’),
the void that I was trying to fill, having temporarily been filled, only ends up getting bigger and bigger until the blackness consumes me whole…
Getting under them to get over myself, it’s always futile when one cannot escape themselves…
And this is why addiction always ends badly. Whatever your ‘poison’- drugs, alcohol, food, people:
It’s hard to get enough of something that almost works.
And so, I have to catch myself when I find myself mindlessly swiping on dating apps- ‘What are you doing it for?’
I don’t want to be ‘needy’, I don’t want to ‘need’ someone, and I definitely don’t want to use someone (unintentionally) as a ‘distraction’ from life, I want to be comfortable enough in myself to feel as though a person compliments me rather than completes me… But, until I prioritise myself, that is something that I will never be able to do…
Alas, that is what I am trying to do
(try, fail, try again)…
Prioritising myself, realising my worth, for which I want to be remembered for more than just being ‘someone else’s girlfriend…’
Because I’m not [just someone else’s girlfriend]...
Whereas in the past, as women, our credentials would be based entirely on our marital status/on who our husbands were, today, we are owning the power that we hold, by and for ourselves…
I am not Lisa, ‘X’s girlfriend’, I am Lisa, writer, poet, editor, photographer, HUMAN BEING, and I want to take the time to just be… To sit with myself and my emotions every time I want to run from them…
Because, only when I realise my own worth/only when I stop putting my own needs at the back of the queue behind other people’s, will I be able to form ‘healthy’ connections.
What does a ‘healthy’ connection look like?
To ‘compliment, not complete’, a healthy relationship sees people being together because they WANT to be together, to ‘compliment’ each other, not because they feel like they NEED to be together, to ‘complete’ each other.
Are you with them because you want to do life with them, or because you want them to BECOME your life?
People often hold the misconstrued idea that when they meet someone, their whole life will be complete when, in reality, it is only when their own life is complete that they will be in a healthy position to meet someone…
So, fill your life with all the hobbies that you enjoy, and all the people that you love, and come to recognise that relationships are not the be-all and end-all and that you are your own person, (for which, you should be focusing on her, on yourself)…
How I’m focusing on myself
The hour a day that I ordinarily spend swiping on dating apps, hoping to meet someone who can stop me feeling, (or make me feel, depending on the day. Nothing or everything/manic or numb, no in-between), I am, instead, spending on working out what I want to do with my life, and taking steps to get there…
Because, when ‘nothing changes if nothing changes’/when ‘if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got’, change won’t come to me unless I actively pursue it (hence why yesterday I sent my applications off to universities for a master’s degree).
Having been feeling stagnant in life recently, I’m forcing myself out of my comfort zone in order to escape that stagnancy.
And so this September, I will either be moving to London for a year, or I’ll be going travelling- getting out to experience a world outside of my hometown, feeling what it means to LIVE, truly and wholeheartedly, not just survive, and making peace with myself, for myself…
(And, if I did happen to meet someone along the way- things often come to us when we least expect them- then I vow to *never* lose myself under the guise of trying to ‘find’ myself in someone else, ever again)…
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