The Healing Fantasies of Internalizers vs Externalizers

We are all different, but we are eerily similar when it comes to how we cope with life. The one thing we all have in common is coming up with a fantasy about how we will eventually get what we need - to be loved, to be seen, to be accepted, to be valued and to be attended to.

As children, we make sense of the world by putting together a story that explains our life to us. We imagine what would make us feel better and create a healing fantasy - a hopeful story that will make us truly happy one day. A solution that comes from the mind of a child, so it often does not fit adult realities.

Children often think the cure for life’s shocking moments lies in finding a way to change themselves and other people into something other than what they really are. “If only” they say…the optimism you stick to to get through a painful time in the hopes of a better future. Many people have survived miserable childhoods this way. By imagining how their unmet emotional needs will be fulfilled in the future.

But, as we grow into adulthood, we start to secretly expect our closest relationships to make our healing fantasies come true. Our subconscious expectations for other people come straight from this childhood fantasy world. We believe that if we keep at it long enough, we will eventually get people to change. We imagine a knight in shining armour will come and save us, that our emotional loneliness will finally be healed by a partner who always thinks of our needs first or a friend who never lets us down.

What you find instead, is that these healing fantasies are quite self-defeating, which leads to anger covered by anxiety when you realise that your healing fantasy is not coming true…because you have done everything you can to try to change yourself, and other people, into giving you the childhood fantasies you have always wished for.

That, my friend, is not who YOU truly are.

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Instead of being who you are, you’ve developed a role within yourself, probably stemming from childhood, that you think will give you a secure place in the world: with your parents, friends, partner…anyone really that you come across. It is unconscious; nobody sets out to do it deliberately. We create a pseudo-self gradually, and whether positively or negatively, through trial and error, as children, we saw it as the best way to belong. This pseudo-self gradually replaced the spontaneous expression of who you truly are. Then as adults, we tend to keep playing our role in the hopes that someone will give us that unmet need we have been wishing for since childhood.

This pseudo-self might be based on beliefs such as “I’ll become so self-sacrificing that other people will praise me and love me”. Or it might take the negative form of “I’ll make them pay attention to me one way or the other”.

Healing fantasies and pseudo-selves are as unique as the children who invent them. But overall, people cope in one of two ways: either Internalizing their problems or Externalizing them.

I stumbled on this concept in my Current Read: Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson and when I tell you this book is 257 pages of therapy, I do not mean this as a joke.

Let me use this famous story to illustrate this;

There’s an old story about two boys who had a father who was an alcoholic.

They grew into young men.

One son became an alcoholic. “What choice do I have?” he said. “My father is an alcoholic.”

The other son never touched a drop of alcohol. “How could I?” he said. “Look what it did to my father.”

From this simple story, we see that Children who are internalizers believe it is up to them to change things, whereas externalizers expect others to do it for them. In some circumstances, a child might hold both beliefs, but most children primarily adopt one coping style of the other as they struggle to get their needs met.

Which style you’ve adopted is probably more a matter of personality and constitution than choice as Lindsay posits, ultimately, both styles are an attempt to get needs met.

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UNDERSTANDING THE INTERNALIZER’S WORLDVIEW

Internalizers are highly sensitive, mentally active and love to learn things. They try to solve problems from the inside out by being self-reflective and trying to learn from their mistakes. They believe they can make things better by trying harder, and they instinctively take responsibility for solving problems on their own. Their hopes for a close connection can lead them to do too much for others, to the point of neglecting themselves. Because internalizers look within themselves for reasons why things go wrong, they may not always recognize abuse, bad incidents and times of exploitation for what it is and may not recognize it in their day-to-day adult lives.

If you’re an internalizer, you may wonder how you ended up being so alert to other people’s inner states. It could be that you were prompted to be so attuned to the feelings and needs of others by something as basic as your nervous system. From an early age, internalizers can seem so self-contained that emotionally immature people can’t resist leaning on them. Internalizers are so perceptive and sensible that even people they’ve never met before may instinctively trust them in a stressful situation.

Internalizers, far more than most people, notice everything. Their entire personality longs for emotional spontaneity and intimacy, and they can’t be satisfied with less. To compensate for this lack of connection, they often try to make people smile and feel good. They feel as if they will be valued only for what they can do for others, not for who they are.

They react to life as if they were an emotional tuning fork, picking up and resonating with vibrations from other people and the world around them. This perceptiveness can be both a blessing and a curse. It’s like their brain absorbs everything.  ​​Internalizers don’t act out their emotions immediately as externalizers do, so their feelings have a chance to intensify as they’re held inside. And because they feel things deeply, it isn’t surprising that internalizers are often seen as overly sensitive or too emotional.

Their main sources of anxiety are feeling guilty when they displease others and the fear of being exposed as imposters. Their biggest relationship downfall is being overly self-sacrificing and then becoming resentful of how much they do for others. Internalizers are always caught off guard when someone shows genuine interest in how they feel. They’re convinced that their deepest feelings are a nuisance to other people. Because internalizers routinely take on so much responsibility for others, they’re deeply grateful for even the smallest bit of recognition. In fact, this is one of the hallmarks of an internalizer: an almost over-the-top gratitude for any kind of recognition or special affection.

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UNDERSTANDING THE EXTERNALIZER’S WORLDVIEW

Have you ever felt the urge to act quickly, almost instinctively, before fully considering the consequences? This might be a sign of an “externalizing” approach to life. Here’s how it can manifest:

Externalizers take immediate action before they think about things because it feels like the best way to escape worries and anxieties. They do impulsive things to distract themselves from their immediate problems. It’s a quick-release valve, a way to blow off steam in the moment. However, this impulsivity can create new challenges down the road. When faced with difficult situations, they tend not to be self-reflective as it’s natural to look for external reasons for our struggles. They assign blame to other people and their circumstances rather than their own actions to offer temporary relief, but it takes away the opportunity to learn and grow from our experiences. This lands them in a vicious cycle of impulsivity followed by feelings of failure that prompt still more impulsivity.

Strong emotions are undeniably powerful and externalizers don’t get a chance to grow or learn from mistakes because they expel stress as soon as it hits. Therefore, other people are likely to see externalizers as having a behaviour problem (believing them to have a “bad attitude” or be “badly behaved”) rather than an emotional issue, even though emotions are causing the behaviour.

Externalizers often see life as a series of adjustments. They might firmly believe that if only the external world changes – if only other people would act differently or give them what they want – then their problems would be solved. This constant “trial and error” approach can feel exhausting and unfulfilling. Their coping style is frequently so self-defeating and disruptive that other people have to step in to repair the damage from their impulsive actions.

Regarding self-image, they either have very low self-confidence or a sense of inflated superiority. They depend on external soothing, which makes them susceptible to substance abuse, addictive relationships, and many forms of immediate gratification. Their main source of anxiety is that they will be cut off from the external sources their security depends upon.

The key to understanding externalizing behaviour lies in recognizing the emotional undercurrent. Externalizers feel that competent people owe them help because their childhood healing fantasy tells them that they cannot do it themselves. Because of this, they tend to believe that good things have come to other people rather unfairly. While the impulsive actions take centre stage, it’s important to remember that there are often strong emotions driving them. By acknowledging these underlying feelings, we can begin to address them in a healthier way.

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Understanding our tendencies is the first step to change and ultimately, externalizing and internalizing are just two sides of being human. Like everything in human nature, personality characteristics don’t occur in pure forms. ​​Under the right conditions, each type can display behaviours and attitudes ordinarily associated with the other type. For instance, once externalizers hit rock bottom, they sometimes open up to the idea that they may need to change instead of expecting the world to adjust to them. And when under severe stress, some internalizers start reacting as impulsively as any externalizer, becoming shocked at their behaviour and feeling shame, wanting to hide from the world.

Being aligned with your true self is the most important thing, the most important journey you should forever be on. You have, from childhood, been criticized and shamed, and you learned to feel embarrassed by your true desires. You have for a long time pretended to be what people want you to be to win their love, their affection and their approval. You silenced your true self and lost touch with both your inner and outer reality

Look, whatever coping mechanism you have adopted, Internalizer or Externalizer, it is time to look inward, to break yourself off of an ill-fitting role you have been playing for too long. Painful symptoms like depression, shame, regret, feeling like a failure, imposter syndrome,  anxiety, chronic tension, and insomnia can all be signals that it is time to rewrite your reality, and that old strategies have become unsustainable. These are all warning signs, telling us that we need to get back in sync with who we are and how we really feel.

Imagine your true self as a vibrant, flourishing, healthy child. What does that child need? To be known, to be accepted, to be loved, to grow, and to express itself. That is what YOU need too. Above all, your true self keeps pushing for your expansion, as if your self-actualization were the most important thing on earth.

However, this true self can’t thrive in the shadow of a “pseudo-self,” those limiting beliefs and behaviours formed in childhood. True connection requires dropping the facade and embracing your genuine desires. It’s about expressing enough of your authentic self to connect with others on a deeper level.

Without that, we are all just pseudo-selves walking this earth.

When people decide to stop playing the role and live more from their true selves…that, is when life truly starts.

I hope you enjoyed reading this.