Dear Tristan: on differentiation and self-validation

Dear Tristan,

Like your dad said the other day, we don’t talk in advance about what we’re writing about. But we do talk a lot and our brains seem to run on similar tracks. So today I’m writing about a big word (and big concept) called differentiation – that your dad also wrote about today (he just got his letter done first!)

I think the simple way of explaining differentiation is to say that being differentiated is “knowing where I stop, and you begin.” Or conversely, “Knowing where you stop, and I begin.”

It’s having a clear concept of self. It’s knowing the answer to the questions, “Who am I? What do I think about that? What do I want?”

Unfortunately, most people don’t really know the answer to these questions. They look to those they love – parents, friends, spouses, and even their own children – to find the answer. They don’t know where they end, and where their {parent/friend/spouse/child} begins. This is called fusion. It’s where I feel like I have to think what you do, just because it’s what you think. Or it’s where I feel like I shouldn’t say what I think, because I know it’s different than what you think. It’s where I look to you to know that I’m okay, what I think is okay, what I feel is okay.

Basically, it’s not being okay until someone else tells you you’re okay. 

This is called other-validation. It’s requiring someone – friend, spouse, parent, child – to tell you your worth, your value, your standing in the world.

The thing is, we all start out undifferentiated, and that’s okay. Right now, as a baby, you don’t have a concept of self. I’ve read that you don’t understand you’re a separate person from me until between the ages of 2 and 3. (This might be why tantrums are so common at that age.) Right now, you think that you and I are the same person, and that’s okay, because you’re a baby.

When you’re a toddler, you’ll start understanding you’re a separate person, but you’ll still depend on me to help you know that you’re okay, that you’re valued, that “you’re okay.” And again, that’s fine, because it’s developmentally appropriate.

But gradually, over the course of our life, we should gradually move from that baby stage of total fusion into a place where we understand where I end and others begin, and where others stop and I begin. This is a long process and probably isn’t ever fully complete. Hopefully as an adult you will be more differentiated than as a teenager.

Sadly, many adults never really differentiate. They move from the child-fused-with-parents to the teenager-fused-with-friends to the spouse-fused-to-spouse. They constantly depend on all these other people to validate them, to establish their personhood. If someone disagrees with them, they feel like they’re falling apart, like they’ve lost their bearings. This is why some people take disagreement so very personally. They depend on you to agree with them so that they know that what they think is okay.

I think a true adult is a person who self-validated – that is, they give themselves the empathy I talked about yesterday, and they are confident in their own personhood even if no one tells them that they’re okay, even if no one thinks like they do. They can truly self-soothe (a concept that people think babies should learn but really it’s a very adult thing to be able to do.) They can have hard conversations with people they love, and not feel lost and uncertain about who they are.

It’s a tough, tough thing to self-validate. It means telling the truth to yourself and to those you love. It means saying hard things. It means thinking independently. It means developing your self instead of taking the easy road of letting every person around you tell you what your self is (or should be.)

Some people think differentiation and self-validation mean living like a lone ranger, aloof and distant from those around them. Not at all. On the contrary, differentiation allows true intimacy.

You see, it isn’t intimacy to be so fused with someone that you don’t recognize each other as separate beings. That pseudo-intimacy can sometimes feel like closeness but it is tenuous, often requiring a walking-on-eggshells-to-not-disrupt-the-status-quo. Real intimacy is knowing your self deeply, and offering your self, unafraid, to another. When the other person reciprocates, it becomes intimacy.

Intimacy based on differentiation doesn’t require that you think the same things, or that you avoid all potential conflict. Because you recognize that there are two separate beings in the relationship, you can give each other to freedom to be who you are, where you are, without requiring that the other person be where you are. You don’t take it personally when they disagree with you. You don’t feel threatened when they can’t validate your position.

Your dad and I started reading about differentiation when we were engaged and now, six years later, we are still just at the very beginning of this journey. Your dad and I are a lot alike, but when we differ it’s still hard to say so. But we’re learning. And my hope is that in learning how to be differentiated ourselves, we can give you the gift of being an example of self-validation so that as you become an adult you can self-validate as well. Right now it is hard to imagine that there will come a day when I don’t know everything about you, that I’m not the person your world revolves around. But that day will come, and it will be okay. Because the whole point of being a mom is to create life, nurture life, and then set that life free to truly live.

love,
mama

other letters in this series:
on failing to live up to ideals
on curiosity
on intrinsic motivation (and why we won’t do sticker charts)
on disagreements and choosing a different path
on being open
you are not what you do
on perspective taking
on the most important thing
when the going gets hard
on falling in love
on feelings and needs
on empathy

Daddy’s letters:

I love you
I’m sorry
Be Yourself
Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be
Be Powerful
Be…just be
Do it for you
On Rewards and Punishments
Choose Wisely
Hold onto Yourself
Cultivate Empathy
Be Differentiated