Needing validation (general thread)

@albedo

yeah it probably is. sure makes me feel fake, though, a lot of the time, being aware of it. like, i can just step away and roleplay myself, make it a conscious process. but not so much when i'm overwhelmed or really upset or when there is literally no other answer. there are limits to how i can consciously shape myself. i can't become someone entirely different. certain traits are inherent to me no matter what - which is good.

and i read about people being multi-faceted like this in some kinda book about psychology or something, so yeah, normal human thing i'm just extremely aware of.

 

@unknownanonymous Yeah, that sounds reasonably normal. I can sperg if you'd like, but I'm not sure if it would be boundary-pushing? :P I don't like to psychoanalyze too much without checking.

 

I find it kind of interesting that there's no trend between autistic/allistic thinking on this. There are some (maybe not NT but not autistic) people who have a very secure sense of... idk self or something, and there are some people who are emotionally touch-starved. There are some autistic people who want validation that they are humaning to the best of their ability, or that they're doing good by everyone else, and there are some autistic people who don't care about that kind of thing I guess.

 

@pixels Yeah, it seems to me like it's strongly correlated with cognitive empathy and past experience of gaslighting or abuse, but not definitively. But not an autism-specific thing, which is neat because I would have expected it to correlate more strongly with that, given that autistic folks have trouble reading the nonverbal reactions of others.

(Cognitive empathy because only people who are upset by the idea of hurting/upsetting people seem to need verification that they're not Doing Wrong, and gaslighting/abuse because that tends to cause people to mistrust their own reading of events.)

 

@albedo i let @seebs do it and i psychoanalyze (or do something roughly like that) myself far too much (as well as many people close to me) so... sure, you can do it! i'm pretty sure you haven't found anything too bad in me, judging by the fact that we're still talking. and even if you had... i'm willing to risk it!

 

Can confirm. Getting that sort of placating, obligatory, and insincere validation is a little like drinking alcohol instead of water when dehydrated. Similar-looking on a quick glance, but it doesn't really provide what you need, and it further messes with your ability to intake and process the real stuff when you do get it.

 

@unknownanonymous Nah, I wouldn't be chatting so much if you weren't cool. I just don't like to make people uncomfortable; people don't always like to be the focus of my sperging. :T

This seems like it may proceed from several factors.
- I think that to some extent, it's normal to consciously shape one's reaction. A typical example: "Alice's first instinct was to take Bob's question as an insult, but because they were good friends, she realized that he probably didn't mean to hurt her feelings". When there are multiple possible ways to take a statement or to react, it's totally normal to pick one.

It seems like allistic folks are often less conscious of the way they choose which reaction to have, because they often default to a socially normative response. That's why, for instance, an allistic!Alice might just get angry because that was obviously an insult, it's so obvious, how could anyone not see it! Autistic folks are often consciously thinking about social situations, because the "obvious" reading is not always obvious, which leads to a more conscious decision about how to react.

The fact that you say it's more difficult when you're overwhelmed or upset is part of what makes me suspect that this may be autism-related. Many autistic folks can "fake" allistic-type responses reasonably well, but it takes more energy and focus than it would for someone allistic, because it's still largely a conscious process. It sounds like you have more trouble reading "normal" (e.g., passing for allistic) when you're overloaded or exhausted, which seems symptomatic.

- As a corollary, it also seems normal to some extent to shape one's reactions based on the kind of person one wants to be, or the kind of person one wants others to see. For instance, it's normal to avoid swearing or crassness at work, because one wants to be seen as professional. I often am deliberate about my body language, because I want to be read as male, even though that body language is not yet natural for me. Or, in a more extreme example, politicians often very deliberately create a narrative of "this is who I want to be seen as" - e.g., Barack Obama being The Newcomer Who Brings Hope And Change.

The fact that you describe it as a defense mechanism and as a way to get what you want reads as potentially manipulative, but I'm not sure if that's just based on the way you're describing it. It's common for depressed and autistic folks to read themselves as manipulative, when they're really just behaving normally. This kind of "manipulativeness" is only inappropriate if you're knowingly causing harm to other people. For instance, it's appropriate to be sad, and to wallow in sadness sometimes when you "could" cheer yourself up. It is generally not appropriate to pretend to be sad so that someone else will pity you and buy you presents.

- The fact that you feel "fake" sounds like potential depersonalization, which can be a symptom of clinical depression and some other brainstuff. (I've had that too, for depression-reasons, for what it's worth.)

Basically, depersonalization is characterized by stuff like feeling like you're fake, your reactions aren't real, and like you're just piloting yourself like a puppet. It usually is not a sign that you're actually being fake or manipulative, it's a trick being played on you by your brain. In depression-related depersonalization, I believe it may have something to do with one's emotions being muted, and also with one's reward circuit being broken. Because there's less emotion to work with, it feels less genuine and spontaneous, and people often seek out sensations or situations that will make them feel something.

 

@albedo that's fascinating. and you're right on the money about me feeling manipulative. 'cause yeah, i don't try to cause harm to people, but nonetheless, still feel bad.

i dunno about depersonalization. i always thought it was more intense and noticeable than, "watch me think and choose how to react." 'cause like i definitely feel like i'm in my body, not out of it. the body's mine and reality is reality.

though i feel the muted emotions and possibly the reward circuit thing. sometimes i do things that i know i like - i outright sperg - yet i also feel numb emotionally. which is a weird combination, liking something and being really into thinking about yet... also feeling detached. and hella weird when my brain does something like that while i have a crush - i simultaneously think that person is, like, the best and have a detached voice in me going, "why do you think they're the best?" and the answers come up hollow, even though they really aren't that hollow.

 

@unknownanonymous I am not a professional but... it is my sperg. >>; I will write essays about brains all day.

Yeah, my understanding is that there are degrees of depersonalization; it's not always just 'feeling that you're outside your body and reality isn't real'. Mayo Clinic's pretty reliable, and they definitely seem to imply as much - like, 'feeling emotionally disconnected from people' and 'feeling numb' is a lot less obvious than 'feeling like your head is the wrong size'. And while they don't explicitly discuss feeling fake, it certainly seems to be in the same vein. http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-...ization-disorder/basics/symptoms/con-20033401

You can certainly judge better than I can; just thought it might be a useful point of data.

Yeah, that's self-soothing behavior. That definitely sounds like depression, if you don't have it diagnosed. Your brain knows what actions will make you feel better, and they kinda-sorta work, but not as well as usual because your reward circuit's broken. That's why depressed people do stuff like 'lying around in bed watching trashy tv all day', or 'playing too much WoW'. Your brain knows is trying to get the most bang for its buck, the best feels it can get for the fewest spoons, because it doesn't have very many spoons available. So you focus on things that you know are easy and will make you feel good. They still work better than most things; it's just that nothing works as well as it should, because depression.

 

@albedo thanks!

and i recognize the memories-lacking-emotion thing on the page. mom says that i sometimes forget how fun something is and then aren't keen on doing it - particularly if it involves a lot of effort or tearing myself away from something that seems more enjoyable. like, we have family movie/tv nights at the cottage and i sometimes decide not to participate in them, even though i know i enjoy them, 'cause i'm just not feeling it or there's something that i'm feeling more.

also, no i'm not diagnosed with depression, though i remember getting a (tentative?) seebsnosis of it one time on anon. so, that's 2 votes in the "might have depression" pile.

and yeah, i often spend a lot of time just looking at my tumblr dash and yet having it not make me very happy. which, of course, makes me wonder, "why the hell am i not doing something else then?" but wondering that doesn't often make me actually do it. like, there's so much art I could be doing or stuff i could be writing and so on... but i just don't.

 

@unknownanonymous Yeah, you definitely sound depressed, from what you've said. This definitely sounds like 'go see a professional if possible, this is affecting quality of life' level of issue.

Yeah, and a certain amount of that is normal, but the way you've described it definitely sounds symptomatic. It's worth noting that depression itself fucks with memory. When depressed, people remember times when they were depressed more strongly than times when they were happy, and they remember themselves as more depressed. This makes depression worse, because it feels like you're depressed all the time, when that actually may not be the case at all.

(This is pretty well researched - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1500616 is one of the earlier studies, but there's a bunch iirc.)

So for instance, it's harder to remember and internalized that you really do enjoy movie night. It's harder to get up and do movie night, because you have fewer spoons, and depression impairs executive functioning. (So you're more tired, and you also have more trouble switching between or initiating tasks.) And you're likely to enjoy it less than you would if you weren't depressed, because your reward circuit is faulty, which reinforces the feeling that maybe it's not worth it.

Yeah, Tumblr is in many ways a Skinner box. This is actually a really good description: http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html

Basically, a Skinner box is a way to get a subject to push a button over and over and over, forever. You give rewards, some of the time, on an unpredictable and slowly increasing schedule. So your subject starts out seeing something neat on almost every page, and they slowly come to find it acceptable to keep pushing 'next page', 'next page', in hopes of seeing something neat. Until they're just compulsively doing it all day long, even though they're not getting many rewards at all anymore.

It's worth noting that Skinner boxes only work on depressed or deprived mice. You put a mouse in mousey heaven, with friends and neat things to explore and nice food, and they totally ignore the button. They have better things to do. But when a mouse is lonely and doesn't have much to do, they'll keep pushing the button forever.

Logically, people who're depressed seem to be especially prone to Skinner boxes. It's the easiest and simplest way to get your 'fix' of 'oh yay a cool thing', or 'someone likes me, I feel validated', or 'I feel like I accomplished something!'. I believe that's why people with clinical depression stereotypically tend to pursue repetitive, solitary behaviors - watching TV, playing WoW or FarmVille, refreshing Tumblr dashes, etc.

This can be valuable; even knowing this, I sometimes engage in that behavior, because damnit, it makes me feel better. But when it becomes compulsive, and when the rewards come farther and farther apart, it can become destructive and, I believe, worsen a depressive episode. It's giving you a momentary flicker of enjoyment, but it's not making you feel existentially fulfilled, because you don't feel like you're really accomplishing something that matters. And it can interfere with physical and emotional needs, like getting enough sleep, or getting enough human interaction, which makes depression worse.

 

@albedo oh, it does? i see.

and yep, very much a Skinner box. so is the tribez iPad game that i play a lot. so yeah, that's more proof on the "suspectible to skinner boxes" type of thing. heck, the way i constantly refresh kintsugi and individual tumblr blogs, even when i'm sure that not enough time has passed for anyone to have written a new post is also very skinner boxy. like, i'm making these things into skinner boxes, even if they aren't meant to be that.

i definitely see how it can be either a bad thing or a good thing.

 

@unknownanonymous Yeah, depression is a jerk. You may not have the spoons, but I try to keep a diary, which gives me hard data to counter my brain's EVERYTHING IS DOOMED FOREVER. I am a hard data guy, though, if that, uh, wasn't obvious.

Yep. Skinner boxes are sneaky. I say, while refreshing Kintsugi and playing an iOS game.

 

@albedo i've tried out doing a diary, for fun, when i was younger, but I always ended up forgetting about it so yeah... mightn't have the spoons or the attention span for it or something.

very sneaky.

on another (or maybe, haha, related note), my norm the genie thread? like, i don't wanna be an annoying asshole about it, but are you going to continue with the convo there?

 

Yep! I'm just at work and have been low on spoons - as you may have gathered from my other posts, work is overloading me real bad right now. So it's easier for me to sperg about my special interests than to respond to things I'm less familiar with, and I'm also slow about longposts when I'm at work, because if I'm posting, it's in the few seconds while I wait for something to work. Definitely going to respond though. :)

 

@albedo awesome - the gonna-respond-eventually part, not the low on spoons part, of course.

that makes sense! :D the rational part of me was expecting it was something like that; the irrational part was like, "does albedo hate my most recent post on it? does kintsugi hate my thread?" and other stuff of that nature.

 

@unknownanonymous Yep, sorry for the slowness. :) I'll respond over lunch, if not sooner; just running a little slow.

 

Holy shit, @albedo, please continue to sperg about psychology forever. I didn't even know that was depersonalization, but that's definitely how I feel when need-validated, is "emotionally disconnected," like there's this glass wall between me and People. Also, that thing about Skinner boxes is delightfully creepy. And why I don't use Tumblr anymore.

@unknownanonymous, have you tried private diary apps? I use DayOne right now. It's like a blog, only just for me. If nothing else I use it to say what I got done that day, which makes me feel less like a shitheel. I also track where I went, to make sure I'm not getting shut-out-the-outside-world again. Sometimes if I feel up to it I also keep an entertainment/music diary (to track earworms and timesucks) and/or a food diary (to keep myself from going to Starbucks every day, and to track how many days with/without caffeine/alcohol). It took me a while to get used to it but now I just feel weird if I go to sleep without making a "blog" entry. And it super-helps for introspection, navel-gazing, and general self-awareness.

 

@pixels nope. didn't even know they were a thing. guess i'll look the app up and see what i think! and with how i seem to do introspection and navel-gazing a lot, it's shocking that i haven't taken more to diaries. then again, i am ridiculously confident in my memory (it's really bad at emotions, but good at remembering thoughts and facts and whatnot), so... i didn't feel the need to archive stuff in a more concrete form. yeah...

 

@unknownanonymous I'm really inattentive and my memory is shit, so starting a diary was really important for me not just to remember things but to process what happened to me during the day etc. Also, DayOne the app is $4.99, but you can use other "apps" as diary apps. For example, Evernote is completely private unless you want to share something with someone, and it's also free (unless you want the incredibly huge storage space that comes with being a subscriber). You can also use Evernote on any laptop, not just a Mac (which DayOne is solely compatible with, might also be a separate price). DayOne only allows one photo per entry, but Evernote will let you have multiple. Downside to Evernote: no inherent ordering by time/day, more disorganized because multiple notebooks, no appending weather to entries (important for people with SAD or who just want to track mood+weather), you might still be able to append location to entries but I don't know how you'd do that on laptop, DayOne can auto-append music or activity, things like that.

Also, re: the need-validation feels, I find it's more helpful to whine at myself in DayOne to process what I really need and what I need to ask the people around me for. If I just feels-vomit at people it feels gross to me. If I sort through the vomit myself, it's yucky, but at least I don't show other people all the mess. (And if I tag it #mental health, then I know that I was cratering and I know to track when/what days I crater.)