Seeking Validation
For years, I’ve been trying to get to the root of some of my issues. Many of them stem from a constant need to be validated. Whether that be artistic—with all of my creative ventures that are too many to name—or just having someone I respect give me a well-deserved nod on occasion. I need to know I’m not completely missing the mark.
I grew up being told what I couldn’t be, that I wasn’t good enough, and I’ve carried that weight most of my life. Two competing voices rage within me. One says, “You’re not good enough, so why even try.” The other says, “Screw what they think you’ll prove them all wrong.” I teeter between a fire to deny those voices substance and the insecurity that thinks maybe they’re right. It’s a balancing act I don’t wish on anyone.
Recently, in a writing class I’ve been taking, we were advised to write until it felt uncomfortable. The idea is to be vulnerable to get at the deepest truth. This is me bleeding on the page. Week after week, I feel exposed, and yet I keep poking at that nerve to get at the essence of who I am to try and connect with others. Still, my insecurity rears its ugly head. I get wrapped up in self-doubt and damn near quit altogether every week.
Getting rejection letters as a writer is par for the course. You get used to it. Sometimes, they feel personal. Lately, they’ve felt that way. It’s not the one rejection that stings, but the years and years of creative rejection in one form or another that suppurate to the surface. That loud voice I’ve heard since childhood screams, “See! I told you that you weren’t shit.” Those negative thoughts rise to my frontal lobe, and the tragedy is that I believe it most days.
Talking through it with my wife, I realized that I’ve always had something to prove. My ambition is partly motivated by proving I’m good enough. I have to assault that voice that says I’m not enough. I have to earn my place in this world. If I produce something of value, then ipso facto, I am valuable because people won’t like me if I don’t DO something worthwhile.
So, sometimes, when I get those rejection letters or bad reviews from creative endeavors, I revert to a broken child just wanting attention and to be loved. I have the perverted view of love that says I can’t just be loved; I need to produce value first. The worst part is I know all those voices are liars—the good and the bad. Yet, that self-doubt cripples me sometimes. I seek validation. I need affirmation, and when I don’t get it, I feel as if I’m worthless. It’s a vicious cycle.
Do you want to hear the worst part of all of it? When I DO get affirmation, I don’t believe it! My mind usually says, “How does this person think THIS is good?” or “What do they want from me?” When I have produced something of value in the past, that thing gets exploited, and I am all used up after. So, good is never good enough, and bad is just what I expect. I shouldn’t take any of this personally, but I do.
My entire life has revolved around producing content of one form or another and somehow being both good and not good enough to rise above the noise. Yet still, I remain like some artistic sadist because, in the end, every word, every picture, painting, and creative idea expresses who I am. I can’t stop doing it. It’s who I am. This is likely why I take rejection so hard, but conversely, it’s why I couldn’t quit if I wanted to.
As I wring the blood out of the page, I find clarity through the process. If you’ve read this far, I’m thankful for you, truly. You offer me that glimmer of hope to keep plodding this course forward and allow me a voice to the dissonance that I wade through daily. You let me know someone is listening, and sometimes that’s enough. So, thank you for sticking around.
Last week I wrote an essay on value. Many of the sentiments herein were echoed. Funny thing, I didn’t think it was good enough by my standards of myself so I didn’t post it.
I think if you’re a writer then you’re a person who has wrestled with validation, both internal and external. We aren’t digging ditches after all. The work is us and we are the work. So criticism or rejection seems a criticism or rejection of us. It isn’t. But it is a difficult thing to differentiate. Even more so when it’s self inflicted.
My wife finally read my new book last week and told me with a straight face that it was sophomoric. Granted, the book she read before that was Dostoyevsky’s masterpiece Brothers Karamazov, but still. You want to talk about the opposite of validation.
Here is what I understand, it is rejection and criticism that moves the artist forward, so long as they have the internal calm to accept that the rejection or criticism is not of them but of something they did, a ditch they dug. And so the next ditch may be straighter, deeper.
Keep digging, Stan.
You really have to do it for you. Every time I publish, I find something I didn’t do as well as I wish I did. Or an editor changes something to a way I don’t love. And then there’s the rejection letters or worse yet, the ghosting.
Do this for you. Anyone/thing else is gravy.