The Velvet Rage (5 page)

We all seek validation every day. It is one of the essential psychological needs of every person.

For example, when you are at work and make a comment during a meeting, you want to know that you were heard by those present. They don't have to agree with you (although agreement would be perceived as even more validating), just hear what you had to say. To take this example a step further, imagine speaking up at a meeting and in the middle of your comment, someone else starts talking. That would be experienced as invalidating, and you would probably attempt to make your comment again.

When you come home from work that night, you tell your partner about your day. If he ignores you, falls asleep while you're
talking, or immediately starts talking about his day, you'll likely feel further dismissed and invalidated. What you want from your partner at that moment is recognition that you may have had a difficult day at work.

When you really pay attention, you realize that much of life's everyday pleasure and frustration comes from either being validated or invalidated, even in interactions with complete strangers. You complain at the restaurant about your meal, and the waiter whisks it away for improvement. That's validating. If he were to argue with you and tell you that the meal is perfectly fine the way it is, that's invalidating.

As you have probably noticed, there are different levels of validation. Just being acknowledged, recognized, or heard is a low-level form of validation. Having someone genuinely compliment you is a higher level of validation. In most everyday situations, we are seeking low-level validation. We don't need complete agreement or compliments (although these are awfully nice to receive), just acknowledgement and a little understanding will do.

The only type of validation that really counts, however, is authentic validation. For example, if you go to see your therapist and he responds to everything you say with standard phrases like “Tell me more . . .” or “That's interesting . . .” while not offering concrete advice or analysis, his interest in you begins to feel false and, consequently, less validating. Or, for example, if you drive your neighbor's new convertible to the store and get lots of compliments on it, you're not likely to feel all that validated since it really isn't your car. Authentic validation is honest validation of something that matters to you.

Why is
authentic
validation important? Because when we are validated for a pretense, the validation is hollow, it's baseless, it's
not at all satisfying. For example, if you had someone else write your term paper for a class and you subsequently received an “A” on it, that isn't validating. Or more to the point, when a gay man presents a false, inauthentic self to the world and is subsequently validated for that façade, he will feel hollow, and the validation won't be satisfying.

The young gay boy who learns to “fake out” everyone and act straight becomes starved for authentic validation. He immediately and unconsciously discounts all validation since he knows what he is presenting to others isn't authentic.

Authentic validation is absolutely necessary for the development of a strong sense of self. Without it, the self does not develop properly. Further, authentic validation inoculates us from the ravages of shame. If we are receiving adequate amounts of authentic validation, then shameful comments or feelings simply have little impact on us. After all, if others are providing authentic validation, what do we have to feel shameful about?

Without the inoculating effects of authentic validation, shame is debilitating. It is a hugely powerful emotion that is very distressing. It causes us to immediately withdraw and try to hide. We want to cover up our mistakes and run away.

Because shame is so distressing, we are highly motivated to avoid feeling it. There are two tactics we can use to avoid shame, and we often use them both. The first tactic is to avoid situations that
evoke feelings of shame (e.g., not returning the call of a friend who criticized you). The second tactic is to elicit validation to compensate for the shame (e.g., flirting with another man after having a fight with your boyfriend). Later, we will discuss in detail the ways in which we use both of these “shame-fighting” tactics to protect ourselves against the emotional ravages of shame.

With an inability to self-generate authentic validation, to feel good just because we are who we are, we walk through the world feeling frequently invalidated. At times, we see it everywhere: at home, with our lover, at work, or just walking the street. Even the most minor slight can be perceived as invalidation.

This reminds me of a client who once said to me, “Tom (his lover) told me that he really liked the dinner I made, and afterwards, all I could think of is ‘he must have really disliked my other meals.'” When we are vulnerable to invalidation, we tend to find it in places where it does not exist.

Because we are very vulnerable to shame and because it is triggered so easily within us, our lives become solely focused on avoiding shame and seeking validation. Almost everything becomes either an avoidance strategy or an invitation for validation.

For the young gay man, his life often becomes obsessed with avoiding shame. He attempts to avoid situations that evoke shame or increase the validation he is receiving. The young gay man avoids gym class (where the other boys make fun of him), and he becomes a straight-A student to achieve some validation. Or perhaps he surrounds himself with friends (mostly girls) who don't seem to notice or care that he is different, and he achieves validation by wearing the most up-to-date and stylish clothes. Or he attempts to become “hypermasculine” by working out at the gym and becoming the star athlete so that no one suspects the real truth about him. One common thread runs through all of
these examples:
The avoidance of shame becomes the single most powerful, driving force in his life.

The consequence of this is that his true self remains undeveloped and hidden deep within him. Who he is, what he really likes, his true passion, and more are all colored and buried beneath the façade he has developed to avoid shame. While this helps him to cope with the distress and subsequent avoidance of shame, it is a recipe for trouble in life. At first, the trouble is seemingly minor, but as he grows older he becomes increasingly aware that he doesn't really know what he wants out of life and what might make him ultimately fulfilled and content. As the years go by, his awareness of this deficit grows, causing various maladies including deepening depression, conflictual and faltering relationships, substance abuse, and sleepless anxiety.

B
y the time the gay boy becomes a man, he is well-practiced in the art of achieving validation for his actions that may be praiseworthy, but are inauthentic to him. He is, so to speak, a validation junky. He moves from friend to friend, lover to lover, job to job, and city to city seeking the nectar he craves. Make no mistake about it, he is driven in his quest.

For some gay men, the quest takes him into more traditional roles. He finds a mate and makes a home. He seeks validation through the traditional veins that his father mined, albeit with the opposite sex. A good job, a beautiful home, lavish holidays, and exotic vacations are the tools he uses. He may augment his exploration with adopted children, a home in the country or on the beach, and even a prestigious position at the local church or synagogue. All of these are laudable and socially valuable pursuits, but the gay man who does so solely in the pursuit of validation is never satisfied, no matter how good he is at these endeavors. All he accomplishes satisfies for only a passing moment before the relentless hunger for more that is better burns once again.

Other gay men seek validation through sexual conquest and adoration. If this is you, you'll spend most of your spare time at the gym, building what you believe is the body that will one day earn you enough adoration to satisfy your craving for it. You keep score meticulously, noting each and every admirer who might throw a ravishing glance your way.

The stories are varied and mixed, but the outcome is the same. The gay man who isn't able to believe in himself, to be satisfied with himself, seeks validation from the world around him, but he finds what validation that he does receive increasingly fails to satisfy.

Unable to satisfy his own needs, feelings of rage begin to emerge. His tolerance for invalidation becomes dangerously low and his hunger for validation is all-consuming. Sometimes, even the smallest of perceived slights ignites a flash of red-hot anger within him: The catered brunch isn't flawless and he explodes at the caterer. The business partner fails to fully execute his directives, the client is lost, and he explodes with a self-righteous fury. His lover no longer lavishes him with praise, and he withdraws into an angry emotional shell, and perhaps seeks out an affair in retribution.

The rage he feels is the natural, emotional outcome of being placed into an impossible dilemma. Nothing he does solves the enigmatic riddle that plagues him. He is driven by a hunger for validation, yet when he achieves it, the feeling is emptiness. The
harder he tries, the less he is satiated. More and better yields only less and worse. Nothing he does seems to really change the forces that pin him to the mat. No amount of struggle, wriggling, even retreat makes a difference.

Rage is the experience of intense anger that results from his failing to achieve authentic validation.
Since authentic validation can occur only in the context of one's true, authentic self, he finds himself incapable of achieving the one thing that will bring him lasting contentment. Like a cornered and terrified animal, he is provoked, snarling and demanding that he be set free from the cage to which he has been leashed.

Of course, his rage only pushes others away, and the sacred validation that he craves goes with them. So he hides his anger in the velvet glove, quickly returning to the gracious friend and lover he aspires to be.

Life, then, becomes an ever vacillating seesaw between rage and gentility. He reaches out to his world for validation, always sensitive to the slightest invalidation to which he responds with swift rage.

Josh was extremely bright. At thirty-five, he was an Ivy League MBA graduate and very successful marketing executive. He came to therapy because of depression and loneliness.

Josh had been in several intense, long-term relationships. Each had followed a different course but the similarities were all too familiar. In each relationship, Josh would start to feel invalidated by his lover: He wasn't getting enough attention, the lover wasn't interested enough in sex, the lover was more interested in his friends than Josh, etc. Finally the day would come when Josh had
had all he could take. A big blow-up would follow and the lover would move out.

Josh adamantly denied feeling any rage. Sure, he would admit to having been angry during fights with his lovers, but on the whole he saw himself as a very compassionate, tender human being.

Months later, Josh came into therapy reporting that his depression had worsened upon receiving the recent news that he hadn't been promoted to a district vice-presidential position he wanted. The feedback from his boss was that Josh was too difficult as a supervisor. Too many of his employees—some apparently very qualified—had quit because they found Josh too demanding. Josh spent much of that therapy session venting about how wrong his boss was, and how unfair it was that feedback from disgruntled employees had been used to deny him the promotion.

What happened in Josh's case is similar to what happens for many of us. Because he has spent most of his life successfully avoiding shame—academic and business success being just a few of the tactics he used—he hadn't felt the debilitating onslaught of shame for years. That is, not until now. The denial of the promotion was the battering ram that broke through his brittle defenses and allowed the shame to come flooding in. Josh was drowning in his shame, to the point where he was even considering suicide.

Josh's story illustrates a monumental problem gay men experience. Because we learned at a very young age to successfully avoid shame, we don't often experience the shame in its full intensity. Our avoidance tactics keep the shame at bay, until like with Josh, we are hit by the force of an intense invalidation.

Marc was a client who came to therapy seeking help for a relationship that was falling apart. Quite unrelated to his treatment goal, I happened to discover that Marc had not flown in an airplane for more than fifteen years. He had plenty of opportunity
to fly, but had always managed an excuse not to do so. While it was quite clear to me that Marc had a phobia of flying, when I asked him about it, he said, “I don't really think that I'm afraid to fly. I used to be terrified at the thought of it, but now I actually think I could do it if I wanted to.”

Marc had avoided flying for so many years that he actually had convinced himself that he wasn't afraid to fly. Because he hadn't exposed himself to the experience of flying and his intense fear of it for many years, it seemed to him that he was no longer afraid to fly. One can only imagine that putting plane tickets in his hand and driving him to the airport would bring all the fear and anxiety rushing back.