Why You Trust Everyone Except Yourself
The pressure is ON to make a good decision, to make the right decision. If you don’t make the right decision or you realize later it is the wrong decision… what happens? You were wrong, it could have been prevented, if you had only made the right decision.
SO you cope by asking everyone what their opinion is on everything. What should you do? What should you say? It’s like you are doing a poll… but why do you do it?
You do it because then if you take that persons advice… you aren’t to blame - they are. They were the ones that gave you the bad advice and now you can take some pressure off of you because it wasn’t you who made the call, it was them. They are to blame.
BUT why do we do this? We do this subconsciously, and what is underneath it???
Three Scenarios of Where This Pattern Came From
What I have seen when working with hundreds of women over the years with this pattern is that, is how they were raised and there are three scenarios.
They were raised with guilt. The parents made them feel guilty for every single decision they made. They never felt like it was the right one. They were always falling short. They became worried about making decisions because they didn’t want that guilt and blame to follow. They were being told subconsciously that the parent was right and the child was wrong and that they can’t trust their own decision making skills. This parent isn’t controlling your life, they are just judging you each time you make a decision. This leaves you feeling super confused because you don’t know what will make them happy. You keep trying to make them happy so that you can feel love but oftentimes with this type of parent, nothing will make them happy. This means you continue to search for water in the desert hoping you will find it. So your search continues in adulthood and your subconscious pattern is that making the right decision means you get love. So you try all of your tools to make the right decision or not be blamed for the wrong one.
Now a second stage of this is that not only is their guilt involved but also control. This is the parent who picks out your clothes in the morning. This is the parent that pays for things IF you do something that they want. This is the parent who tells you they will pay for your wedding but they control the guest list. This is where the decision making growing up was taken from you completely. You have no idea how to make a decision. You are like a deer in headlights when you try to decide on anything and it bleeds into other areas of your life. Relationships, career, where to live… you just look to your parents to tell you what to do and have no autonomy in your life.
The emotionally unavailable parent. You had no idea what your parents wanted or needed or if they were happy because they were emotionally not there. We look to our parents to read them to know how to interact with the world. If your parents aren't present or able to give you facial cues then as an adult you might find yourself looking at other people and never trusting yourself or your own judgement because you never got that feedback. Life can feel really confusing. I think about all of the youth growing up in this digital age with parents with their face in their phones, distant and involved in someone else that they have never met’s world and their kids are begging them to look at them and give them facial cues.
Looking for outside opinions and reassurance is external validation and it is one of the 6 patterns that I have seen the most in my clients over and over again. This one is a big one and it’s one that a lot of people don’t even realize they are doing or how deep the roots are. You even think about social media, we can easily fall into the trap of how many likes? How did my post do? What is my follower count? This is another form of external validation where we are taking that data as a measure that we are okay, that we are enough.
Looking for External Validation With My Husband
I remember falling into the external validator pattern at the beginning of my relationship with my husband. This was a big pattern for me and I look back at my past relationships and realize just how much I was letting it control the dialogue. With my husband, he was the first person to love me unconditionally. I would tell him how I look. Do you think I look beautiful? I would ask him this every single time we would go out because it calmed me to know that he thought I was beautiful and then maybe other people would think I was too. He looked at me and didn’t give me the answer I wanted. He said “Do you think you are beautiful? I can tell you over and over but you will never truly believe it”. I told him to eat shit…. No joke, I was so mad. But that was one of the BEST lessons I have ever received. I thought about it all night and asked myself why I was always asking for approval? Did I think and believe I was actually beautiful? Could I go out next time and not ask?
That first night I went out after that conversation, I didn’t ask… partly mad, partly because of the experiment. Now, my husband will randomly tell me how beautiful I am. It’s never forced; it comes from a place of pure love. I never ask because when I feel myself questioning it, I look in the mirror and ask myself… Do you believe you are beautiful? And if the answer is no then I ask myself for three things that I do find beautiful about myself.
What Shifts The Overthinking Pattern
The overthinking pattern is a thief of joy. You are constantly in your head thinking things over and over and never in the present moment. The overthinker is always living in the past or the future and trying to control the situation… usually because they couldn’t control things as a child. Control does not set you free. Trust does.
Like really trusting what you decide and not overthinking it just owning your decision. If you have been stuck in this pattern for a long time, the thought of that will make you want to throw up. I am telling you, when you try it for the first time, you might throw up. It's scary but you need to become comfortable with being uncomfortable. Our nervous system is always trying to bring us back to safety. Even if that means that we are not doing what is best for ourselves. Your nervous system doesn’t know that. It just knows comfort and familiarity.
So when you go to pick up the phone to call someone to ask them what they think, pause and ask yourself what you actually want. What is your gut response? How quickly do you get uncomfortable with needing to make a decision? Where do you feel it in your body?
Join The Shift
These are all of the questions that I love digging deep in my sessions with clients. If this is the kind of work that you feel that you need, then come join me in September for group coaching. It is weekly on Fridays for 12 weeks where we will be digging in together and rewiring our brain pathways. The women in this program are learning to trust themselves in real time. They can now spot the pattern happening and are able to redirect it and choose differently. It takes time to have that kind of awareness and to know where the pattern came from in the first place. I want that for you! Join the waitlist HERE to receive a special promo.