I’m now facing a ridiculous — but real — problem. I recently got my first visible tattoo, and I know my parents will be very upset. I’ve wanted one for a while, and wanted not to let my parents’ opinions shape my whole life. First step toward not caring, hurray!
Yet here I am, shopping for long-sleeve rash guards for our annual beach vacation.
Why am I like this, and how can I stop? Is it good to avoid the tattoo confrontation, or do I have to face the music?
— Tattooed Disappointment
Tattooed Disappointment: You’re like this because your parents apparently taught you to chase their approval. They did this by: 1. Withholding it most of the time, establishing hunger. 2. Praising you just enough to instill cravings for that sweet relief from their harsh judgments. 3. Giving approval unpredictably enough for you never to be sure you’d get it — so you always had hopes it was coming.
If you were a lab rat, you’d be mashing the reward button all day for two? zero? random cubes of cheese.
So what you describe is not a “first-child” flaw, it’s a parents-abusing-their-power flaw.
A person can both be competent and struggle with the self-doubt that grows out of a childhood like that — because, fundamentally, the training denies you a sense of control over outcomes. How are you supposed to develop confidence without a meaningful connection between work and reward? Your parents taught you the connection was erratic and out of your hands.
Think about it: They’re “extremely judgmental” parents who (still!) “don’t offer praise” for something good. Kind of mean, right? And why — is there a “congratulations” tax they’re avoiding? Yet you flog yourself six or seven times in a short letter for still feeling the effects of their meanness.
No matter how our parents raise us, to be fair, it’s our responsibility as adults to find our own way to health — because who else will do it for us? But your heaping all the blame on yourself looks more like a symptom of emotional injury than proof of recovery.
Enter the tattoo. You want to feel judgment-proof; you want to be the rat who walks away from the maybe-cheese! button. Great.
But you don’t trust yourself. So you chose a statement in a secure moment that will force your hand in an insecure one (i.e., around your parents). Yet you’re doubting that plan as the insecurity creeps in.
You ask whether to hide or own the tattoo. I say this in the warmest way: I don’t care.
Because the more productive work is to see your struggle (shaky marriage included?) as the current expression of your past training to doubt yourself and crave external assurance.
Sometimes counseling is the answer. Sometimes the “aha” is all you need to spot the lab-rattery before it hurts you. Either way — knowing where the chip was implanted is Step 1 for digging it out.