Hi Jones,

Actually I think all of us need to be seen by others to feel that we exist. I guess it's just a question of how often and how explicitly we need it. I mean, everyone will go crazy if left in solitary confinement for a few months, but most of us can be alone for a few hours or maybe a day or two without feeling like we've lost ourselves.

How has this issue been manifesting, exactly?

(((((JONES))))

Nice to see you again. To me, it sounds like a form of some kind of need for validation. And that your sense of self is dependent upon the other. Which may mean that you were never able to establish your sense of self independent of the other. This may or may not be due to trauma. My thinking is that it could be caused by the other's needs. The other needing to control you, like for instance, a mother. Some high energy source outside of yourself. A high state of anxiety, for instance, that prevented things from being sorted out.

Another thought is that there may have been trauma involved and that by holding your sense of self away from yourself, you are protecting yourself from feeling the pain. It's as if information comes to you but you can't process it because it's too painful so you put it back out there for the other to process.

IDK if that makes any sense for you or resonates in any way.

xoxox

Liese

Hi Jones,
It's good to hear from you.

I have most definitely dealt with this problem. Still do honestly. I am right now as a matter of fact.

At it's heart, I think it's a developmental issue dealing both with things we weren't taught and lies we learned.

Developmentally, it has to do with an essential paradox at the heart of the human condition. Each of us is ultimately alone, we reach across the gulf between us and another person to make connections, it's why the feeling of loneliness is universal. YET, we cannot know ourselves outside of relationship. I remember once talking to my T about self-worth needing to come from within and he told me "it ALWAYS comes from outside, but when self-worth is effectively communicated when you're young, you can integrate it on a much deeper level so that you carry it as a felt truth." That's also true of our identity. We learn who we are, what are needs are, what our strengths are, from having who we are reflected back at us from our early caretakers. They are the mirror in which we study ourselves and come to know and understand ourselves. So in a fundamental sense, our sense of self is something that is communicated to us.

If you do not have a good mirror, then it is difficult to know oneself. And if you do not have a good sense of self, how do you hang on to it, especially in times of stress?

Which leads us to lies we learned part. Often in neglectful or abusive childhoods, we are unconsciously taught that our needs are not important and are asked, unconsciously and sometimes consciously, to attend to the needs of our caretakers. Sometimes this was done in the hope that if we worked hard enough and met their needs, they would finally pay attention to ours (my mom) OR we attended their needs to attempt to stop them from reaching an emotional state for which their outlet was abusing us (my dad). In both cases, we focused outward on other people's needs, not our own. Therefore, our sense of identity also got wrapped up with them and their needs.

Another problem that can occur in this area is if a caretaker feels threatened by a child separating and interferes with their need to differentiate and become their own person. They act to unconsciously block your sense of self in order to keep you close. In other words, they did not give you want you needed in order to move away from them and still have a sense of identity.

So when a T draws good boundaries and leaves us alone with our needs, it can feel scary and threatening and like we're disappearing, because we can't see anyone. Or if they fail to accurately reflect us, or we are away and cannot carry a felt presence, then we feel like we are disappearing.

I really struggle with this feeling when I contact most of the people in my FOO. They are just incapable of "seeing" me, the person that I am. They actually interact with their construct of who they think I am, which actually has very little to do with the person I really am. And they are SO busy trying to take care of their own needs and pain that they can't see me. I can often start to feel like I am fading away and turning invisible when talking to them.

The solution is twofold. Find people who provide good reflections of you. And by that, I don't mean just tell you that you are wonderful (not that those people are bad, mind you! Or at least I hope not, since I DO think you're wonderful ) but someone who can listen and hear you and clearly reflect back an understanding of you. It is within those kind of honest, caring interactions that we come to see ourselves. The other part is to stay when it gets scary and allow our own needs, desires and longings to surface so we can see them. This absolutely terrified me when it first started happening. And my Ts refusal to communicate ANY of his needs, leaving me without a behavioral compass, led to many threats of throwing pillows at him.

Hope some of this helps.



AG

Hi folks, thanks.

BLT, I totally agree that this is something that everyone needs to some degree. For me it seems a priority need/deficit that is causing problems in some areas. I don't know if I can describe how it shows up, except that a lot of my energy is organised around this, and being seen feels dangerous, soothing and weirdly sort of fascinating. I hate having my photo or video taken but am kind of uncomfortably fascinated with the images - like - that's me! Is it me? I either can't look at all or want to look over and over.

Hey Liese! (((((Liese)))))

Thank you for those thoughts - there's definitely something in that about sourcing self with the other, having self perception located outside me. I don't know. The T was talking like it was a Known Thing so now it's driving me crazy until I can find out exactly what it IS. It doesn't feel so much like painful, just not real inside me, more real out there. It feels quite specifically visual and my psych-curious mind was wondering if it has something to do with the 'mirror stage'.

Ah, AG, there you are with the mirrors! Thanks for this, it's very helpful. I do have the sense of - if I can mould myself to the other's needs, I will be functionally important, but if someone LOOKS at me and sees ME, my being as it is, it's overpowering, narcotic stuff - I can't do much in that state but swoon. and pen verse and dance about on clouds. Without that I can adapt myself to functional things and others' needs and get by pretty happily for a time, but I start to disappear and sooner or later it's the chasm for me.

I guess I don't have much experience of keeping that balance of being in relationship and BEING THERE, holding that balance of being myself and being present to the other, because the question of being seen is so all or nothing.

I guess I trace this to my parents being pretty distracted through my childhood but it feels like a specific age or phase and I'm having trouble pinning it down.

Thanks again.

Love,
Jones

Jones,

My brain is kind of muddled right now, so this might not make much sense. I have a very similar experience to what a lot of you have been describing. I often feel my existence has to be validated from the outside for it to be fully real to me. And, I also find myself extremely fearful of being noticed, truly seen, and also overwhelmingly compelled by that sort of connection (especially as I am allowing it to happen more with T and some others).

For me, it also goes beyond that, to truth itself. For something to be true, it must be externally validated, confirmed, understandable. If I say something to my T and he questions me to get a better understanding, my immediate response is to say, "Nevermind." And I literally begin to feel as if I must be wrong or have made it up and the like. I do not know if these two phenomena are related, but my assumption is that the former has more of its roots in neglect at a crucial time and the latter in direct invalidation of my thoughts/feelings.

Both of these feelings increase significantly if I have contact with my family. I cannot see my family without immediately triggering a part of me that is responsible for constantly saying, "You are making all of this stuff up," before anyone else can do that from the outside. The invalidation gets so bad at times, my T and I have discussed how I could probably convince myself that I am not real without much effort, like I am just somebody's dream or imagination and don't have an independent identity of my own. I have gotten stuck in that sort of thinking in the past and freaked myself out with it. It's what I imagine being on certain drugs is on, but I never have tried them, so I wouldn't know.

For me, I think a lot of this is tied up in some of my issues with identity. I spent the greater portion of my childhood being nearly completely malleable, having to shift to meet a variety of oft-conflicting needs, whether it was between people who were in conflict or just my mom saying one thing was true one minute and completely contradicting it the next. So, in a way, I learned to keep myself "soft," transparent and permeable in order to survive. I think I must have learned it at a very young age, because it is incredibly natural for me and having my own "self" is not.

((((JONES))))

Am reading this book called, Schopenhauer's Porcupine. I got to this passage and thought immediately of you. Don't know if it's relevant but here goes:

"A vast amount of modern psychoanalytic theory deals with our desire for recognition from other human beings. Since Freud, no issue has so dominated the conversation about psychoanalytic theory or practice. Self-psychologists, following Heinz Kohut, write about the "mirror hungry" personality. Students of Winnicott define the "good enough mother" largely in terms of her ability to recognize her infant. That means seeing the child as a separate being, not simply an extension of herself. Followers of Jacques Lacan believe that the ego is developed in the "mirror phase," which begins around eighteen months of age. Lacanians empahsize the trouble caused by a lifetime of searching for ourselves in a place external to us (either the physical mirror or the approving gaze of others). No one else can tell us who we "really are." Even the physical object we call a mirror deceives by reversing right and left. ..

.....

We spend our energies figuring out whose recognition counts - which mirror to consult and how to read the images we discover. Some people are drawn to trick mirrors. They will check their reflection only in the gaze of someone guaranteed to diminish them. In contrast, a few lucky souls walk right by mirrors that elongate flaws and foreshorten virtues."

pg. 161.

Fascinating stuff!

Hi Yaku,

It's interesting what you're saying about invalidation/neglect and not having a stable sense of self. I am also a really malleable person - flexibility is one of my strengths, but perhaps for me too it's closely tied to this sense of transparency/invisibility. Great insight, thank you.

Hey Liese! Thank you so much for the quote, that was right to the point. A mirror-hungry personality, that's me! It makes me really wonder what life was like for me before I remember - I wish I knew.

Echoes my love, it's me too! Oh yeah, course it is, I said it.... Miss you too - it's lovely to see you all.

xxxJones