Self-validated sexuality

From self-validated sexuality to self-validated life?

Why are we so dependent on others’ validation? Why is it so strong in us and even when being aware of that, we are still compelled to measure ourselves by external frame? 

It begins early in life. When growing up, we are told that we are not okay and we get corrected. Whatever it is: too much noise when playing, perfomance at school… Your mom’s really upset with you now! What do we learn from that? We better comply with our parents‘ view on us, otherwise they withdraw their love. Something we are in desperate need for as little creatures… 

This is the beginning of social programming that we are not okay the way we are. This is how the first hole in our heart is created. The void. We learned to dislike the parts of ourselves that our parents don’t validate. We learn to hide and we learn to be ashamed of it. The parts that we believe are not okay.  

Society at large is based on exploiting this void. It is enforced by school, by church, by our well-meaning friends and family. Society is not interested in healing the original trauma. It serves better to keep us in the “matrix”, to keep us in the belief system that is beneficial for society. Society makes it easier for us to follow the social narrative, seemingly easy. We get social approval and momentary release (release with watching porn, with consuming, with playing on-line games etc), but in the long run it makes our void grow bigger. Try to pause shopping and enterntainment, try to swich off the TV for a moment and feel into ourselves, we will feel it immediately. Sadness. Frustration. Anger. Resignation. 

When we strive to change it and to claim our authority over ourselves back, we need to go through two-fold process:

First, we need to go inside of ourselves, and look at the original wound. Face this hole in our hearts. This is very painful, that is why we avoid it. We want to look, but we are afraid of pain. So we work around it. This is how we become so good in so many esotheric and “conscious” practices without ever making a real change for ourselves. 

Second, we need to realize that everything we know or believe is not true. We need to come to terms with the fact that we live in illusion, kind of a “matrix”: socially imposed model, which teaches us something that is beneficial for this model, but not nessesarily true. Layer by layer, testing our own beliefs, finding out if it feels true for us, and deciding how much of that we need in our life. 

How do we know what is true? We feel it in our bodies. Sometimes that takes learning too. 

One by one, getting confronted with the social narrative and feeling if it is true, we can start the process of reconstructing our lives, one element after another: my sexuality, – what am I really attracted to? My family rituals and traditions. My finances and my beliefs about security. My image of my own body. My purpose in life. My values. We might start with our most urgent topic and the other elements of our lives will get stirred up. Once we tell the lover what we like sexually, we will feel the pull to finally set up boundaries with our parents. Once we talk to the parents, we won’t tolerate that job anymore.  And so on. Trust the process. 

It won’t be easy, but it is possible to make a change that we really want. The opposite of settling for an abusive relationship or dissmissive family is not complete isolation and living alone in the woods, it is finding the tribe or community where we feel loved and accepted. Self-validation doesn’t mean we don’t care what others say or do. That means we won’t compromise our values, that means we live in accordance with what we really care about and what we have chosen to create and to grow.  

We can create the reality we want to live in.