Dear Serife:

You have Brandy’s posts, Lewis’s recent post, and my following post to you is long and has lots in it, so please take your time, do not rush through the responses you are getting. There is no time limit here, we can communicate over a long time and over many pages, if you need to.

In my following post I will ask you a few questions (italicized). It is fine with me if you choose to not answer them. I ask questions because I believe it can help you to look into what I will be bringing up to you:

Everyone needs to be valued by other people. It is impossible for me (it is true to you and to every other person) to value myself if someone outside of me didn’t value me first. To experience self esteem we have to first see it in a mirror, and that mirror is another person. If a parent adequately values a child (mirroring value to the child), then the child has a good start in life. But too often, this is not the case.

Once a child/ teenager is in school, among her peers, she/ he needs the peers’ to value her. If the child was not/ is not valued at home, her need to be valued by her peers may be even stronger than otherwise.

We are social animals, and that’s why we need to be valued by other people. Therefore it is natural, not shallow of you to care about other people valuing you (“It’s really shallow of me to base my self-worth on how much other people value me”).

1. You wrote: “I wish I could change how much I cared about what other people thought of me”- maybe “how much” you care has to do with you not having that good start in life, that is, being adequately valued by a parent or parents. Does it?

“there’s always the people that individuals gravitate to, like everyone WANTS them around and tries to impress them and prioritise them over other people”- I will refer to the individuals gravitating, like before, as X, Y, and Z, three individuals. And I will refer to the individual they are gravitating toward as A.

Every person (and animal) is motivated by a pleasant, good feeling. For example, it feels good to eat sweets, so we are motivated to look for sweets and to eat sweets.  The good feeling is either something we are already experiencing (eating sweets), or something we anticipate. X, Y, and Z gravitate toward A because they feel good around A or because they anticipate to feel good around.

ex.: X – A reminds X of X’s father who is rejecting but at times accepting, and because the accepting is rare, her father’s acceptance feels intensely good; A appears rejecting, therefore the anticipation of getting A’s approval feels intensely good (this is what I suggested to you in a previous post). Motivation: to gain acceptance from a rejecting person.

Y-  peers sometimes pick on her, on the other hand, it looks like no one picks on A or on the people in A’s group. It feels bad to be vulnerable to being picked on, and the thought of being protected feels good. Motivation: to be protected from being picked on.

Z – she often finds herself alone, and she feels sad being alone. A has many friends  and she acts like the leader of the group, the one deciding who is in and who is out of the group. The individuals in the group seem to have fun. Z feels good anticipating being part of A’s group. Motivation: to be a part of a group.

In other words, different people, different motivations, but all motivations have one common, basic motivation: to feel good.

“people never work for my attention or my kindness and respect, it’s just naturally given to them cause that’s who I am… people don’t really value my affection or respect”-

2. Can you give a few examples of how you give your attention, kindness and respect to your parent or parents, and how they respond?

3. Can you give a few examples of how you give your attention, kindness and respect to your peers and how they respond?

anita