The world is full of subliminal messages that tell us we’re not good enough. Not smart enough, pretty enough, handsome enough, buff enough, skinny enough and, well, you get the picture. In this multipart series on approval, Erik sheds some light on the subject.
Me: Erik, can you tell us about the loss of approval and the loss of confidence so many of us have?
Erik: Loss of approval.
Jamie: He’s peering around the corner.
He ran out of the room after teasing us with some disparaging remarks.
Erik: You mean the human-to-human kind of thing?
Me: Yeah. No, loss of approval of a dog. Of course I’m talking about human-to- human!
Jamie laughs.
Erik: I didn’t know if you meant spirit to human.
Me: Oh, no. We know spirits approve of us, and if they don’t, we’ll go there when we pass over and we’ll beat them up! But yes, loss of approval. Stay on track here.
Erik: Loss of approval comes from, hands down, expectations and assumptions because you to expect something to happen a certain way and if you assume someone will behave a certain way. That means you’re already coming in with a set of fucking rules–
Jamie blushes and puts her hand over her mouth.
Erik: That doesn’t belong to them, just you. You didn’t tell them, but you wanted them to perform that way. Then commonly what happens in our culture because way back in the 50s or whatever, we thought time out, time out, is the greatest thing you can ever do. Like if your child doesn’t do what you want him to do, then you go, “Time out. I will no longer give you love. I will no longer praise you, which—”
Jamie: Phew! Rant, Erik! Go.
I thought he was talking about putting a child in time out. Erik is very familiar with the “black time out chair.” He’s really talking about a time out from parental love.
Erik: That’s not what you should be doing, not even to another adult. When that starts to happen and you stop giving you love and you stop giving your respect and you start putting your expectation on their performance on the person because you’re not going to see eye to eye, you’re going to see all sorts of disintegration.
Jamie: Disintegration? Is that what you’re saying?
Erik: Erosion.
Jamie: Now he’s teasing me and calling it different words right now.
Erik: It crumbles. It crumbles, and not only do you lose respect on both sides, you’re the one who’s lost the approval because 99.9% of the time, you don’t know why. You don’t know why because the communication doors weren’t open. The person who decided they were going to hold the power in the relationship whether it was a business relationship or a family relationship, friend relationship—they decided to be the one in power—then they’re the ones who have the rules. They’re the ones who are withholding approval or praising. So, loss of approval for me, Mom, is totally based on the punishment reward system with very little communication, especially with emotional authenticity and emotional needs.
Me: Say a child seeks the approval of a parent and they don’t really feel like they have it. Are you saying that both sides need to keep communicating their emotions with each other?
Erik: Yes!
Me: Well how can a child do that? It’s very difficult for a 7 year-old, for example, to communicate about his or her feelings.
Erik: Not unless you have one of those loud mouth ones who talk all the time. You parents know who I’m talking about.
Me: Oh, yeah!
Erik: But if you’ve got those quiet ones, you’re right. It’s going to be the other person’s responsibility, whether it’s the parent or the teacher or the therapist to notice that the child has a need that’s not being met, and normally you can tell from their body language. You can tell it by the way the child is performing in certain areas of their life and see that there’s a lack. They’re not reaching their potential. That’s when you gotta not only point your fingers at your child’s environment; you gotta point your finger at yourself.
Me: Yeah, that’s true. Now when you feel like you lack approval, it seems like you also lose your identity. Can you speak to that a little bit? You get to the point where you don’t know who you really are.
Erik: When you lack approval like—
Me: Like when a friend doesn’t approve of you or a parent doesn’t approve of you eventually it seems like some people get lost. They really don’t know how to define themselves.
Erik: Potato, Pototo.
He sings that old song about potatoes and tomatoes.
Jamie: He tilts his head from side to side.
Erik: Cuz when we look at the makeup of the brain, like –
Jamie: That didn’t make sense. Do it again.
(Puuse)
Jamie: No, I promise you. It didn’t make sense.
Erik: When you’re looking at how a person is thinking or where they’re getting their thoughts from there’s this chemical in the brain—like if we put 20 people in the room, and we hold up a color and we ask, “What color is this?” Fifteen people might say, “pink,” Two say, “salmon,” and one says “red,” and the others, I don’t know, some other color. Magenta. Those five people that didn’t side with the masses who said it was pink—their brain actually sends out a chemical reaction that tells them that they’re not on the right path. They’re not with everybody else. There’s this animal instinct that if we stay with the pack, we’re going to be safe. Some people handle that chemical reaction just fine. They thrive off of is and they go, “Hell yeah, I’m different. That color is salmon, bitch!”
Jamie and I laugh.
Erik: But what about that person who said, “Red?” Their brain sends off this chemical and they go, “Oh my god. I wasn’t right. It’s not red, is it? It’s pink.” They might say, “Oh no, no, no. I think it’s pink more than anything else.” They start to surrender and lose their individuality and their uniqueness because they’re thinking that their brain’s smarter than them and their soul energy, and this is what helps people feel separated. The great divide. That’s one of the reasons. So I think that the lack of approval, not getting it from friends, makes this chemical reaction start to happen. They’re being notified inside their body that they’re not in the right place. That’s going to feed other lines of thinking if they weren’t taught that whoever you are, you’re your greatest. At every moment, you’re your best. If parents aren’t telling them that, if their community isn’t doing that, then they don’t know how to self-counsel, and they can spiral down in a heartbeat. Now imagine some children or other people who have a chemical imbalance already and the brain is going, “Whoo! You’re off!” Your bipolar side meets with the other chemical side and you’re like fucked up!
Me: Aw.
Erik: And you just want to hide for days. So these chemical things happen and feed the weakness or the unknowing inside of the body, and they steer off path much easier.
Poor Erik had to deal with all that in life. I guess that put him in a better place to teach us on this subject. I lot of his suffering was to help him become a better guide for you and me. I’m so grateful to him for that, and I hope we all never forget what he went through to do what he’s doing for us now. It’s been a hard sacrifice.
