Coping with RSD: What is Hyper-Externalization?

Hyper-Externalization is perhaps the most tragic of the seven maladaptive coping behaviors. When you find it increasingly difficult to pursue self-validation, the pleasure you experience from receiving external affirmation from a select number of close relationships leads you to entirely shift your efforts from yourself to the people closest to you. As long as they’re happy, you’re happy… Not really. 

You might say that hyper-externalization is like people-pleasing and approval-seeking behaviors on steroids. It puts increased pressure on the people you love most to make all of that attention worth it for you. It never leads to self-acceptance and true validation. You get angry and resentful towards those people as you lose your sense of self. You are putting so much into your relationships while not expressing your needs, boundaries, desires, and goals. Those people that you feel are now holding your leash feel conflicted because while they benefit from your devotion, they never wanted to be in this position. It was just the path of least resistance, because you actively encouraged it. 

The imbalance comes because you want them to express their needs, boundaries, desires, and goals, but you also want them to read your mind and see that you’re suffering. You couldn’t even clearly express those things if you wanted to, because while you have intellectualized your circumstances over and over in spiral after spiral, it has been ages since you have actually forced yourself to think about what you want and need and what it would take to get it. Eventually, neither them nor you know how to help you.