67. She turned men off by her need for approval

Some years ago a woman friend in her 60s was telling me about how she felt a constant, low-level ache inside because she didn’t feel loved and approved of. She noticed that she was always striving to be extra nice to people and to do what she thought they might want, so they’d give her a few scraps of approval. She was single and realized this was affecting her dating life immensely. She knew she was turning men off by her needy behavior.

I think that happens a lot. As little people we don’t know enough to discriminate between someone who’s telling us the truth about ourselves and someone who’s blistering us with their judgmental criticism. So to survive we do the best we can, and we usually create some form of what we’d now call manipulation. We try doubly hard to be good, to please others so they’ll think well of us. Our whole concept of ourselves is put together from the things we take in from others since we don’t yet have the ability to filter what they say through the lens of reality. As children anything they say to us is true.

If a parent tells you you’re stupid, you think that thought over and over and build what seems to be a hard fact: you’re stupid. If a teacher tells you your purple cows aren’t right you know you have no artistic talent. And so it goes. I saw the movie about Johnny Cash’s life yesterday. It was clear he fought his dad’s harsh judgment about him virtually all his life, even after he was a huge music success. He never felt he was good enough.

Virtually none of us gets through childhood without hearing negative things about ourselves. We assume those things to be true so that’s the self-image we carry around as us. Even when we get beyond childhood we continue to hear the echo of those negatives statements from ourselves. I used to say, “When I grew up I took over the job of beating myself up.” We’ve heard we’re stupid, we put the thought into a little garbage bag and as adults every time we do something that doesn’t work we grab our little bag, pull out the “you’re stupid” garbage and remind ourselves again – “Yep, you’re stupid.”

The question then is how do we live life now without that baggage from the past? How do we get rid of that faulty self-image so we can approach life and dating with spontaneity and freshness and authenticity? What we can do is question to learn the truth. Whatever you think about yourself, is it really true? A woman I know was told as a child by her mother that she had piano legs. She didn’t feel good wearing dresses. When she investigated, though, she realized it wasn’t true at all. She didn’t have thin legs but they were certainly shapely. She began to wear dresses and felt quite feminine.

The point is, whatever you believe about yourself – whatever it is! – question it. Beliefs are just thoughts from the past that we’ve held for awhile. They’re dead, not alive like the present moment is. So do we want to believe these ill-formed, dead concepts or do we want to see what’s true right now? If you keep looking you may even see that the very concept of a “me” is just another thought. With that, you simply notice from your pure, unchanging reality, what life is, with no opinion, no judgment, no good or bad self-image. Just life living itself.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer