Hidden Agenda-Hidden Goal

It can be seen as purposeful seeking of an opportunity in which the ultimate goal (parental approval) or an extension/substitute thereof would manifest itself and that leads to ‘Feel-good-about-Self.’

For lack of getting validated by their caretaker as a ‘real person’ in early childhood, some people adopt various behaviors as strategies to get the substitute of approval. So, later in life, the person subconsciously seeks situations or events offering the opportunity to be successful in those behaviors. There is an ongoing attempt to get a different outcome to a crucial given in the relationship with the caregiver who withheld the needed positive mirroring to the child. It is as if these opportunities offer, to them, another chance of getting a sense of being accepted by the person whose approval/acceptance the person is dependent upon.

A person, who is stuck in the past like that, may know that in a specific situation a person isn’t their parent but still in her mind she does experience this person as if it were the parent. The game that is at play with that person is (for her) a substitute for the same play she was playing with her parent. Only, she works like crazy to get a different outcome this time, which since it is SSoS-oriented isn’t going to happen.

Working to get a different outcome to a crucial but negative outcome in the past is what forms the Hidden Goal.

Here’s an example. The person as a child concluded ‘If I don’t sleep well, my mother doesn’t like me.’ That involves this train of (subconscious) thinking: ‘I have to sleep well so my mother accepts me (Hidden Agenda), or doesn’t resent me (Hidden Agenda). The fact that ‘my mother doesn’t resent me’ leads to a SSoS.

A Hidden Goal/Agenda is always fear-based. It determines behavior but is not based on the ordinary content of the behavior but based on the intent to get a (temporary) sense of acceptance, which the person herself isn’t even aware of or only vaguely.

The Hidden Goal is ultimately the SSoS but it isn’t the same. It is ‘what leads to a ‘Feel-good-about-Self’. Ultimately it comes down to feeling acknowledged and accepted, unconditionally loved. But since that is not taking place the Hidden Goal is to get what looks like that: feeling acknowledged, being taken seriously, being admired, being ‘great’…

Note that the Hidden Agenda in people who depend on a SSoS for their Self-experience, is omnipresent in whatever they undertake. It is their way to fill in that void inside

Hidden agendas are thus an inescapable aspect of Indirect Motivation operating in every Substitute Sense of Self-oriented System. Hidden Agendas and Hidden Goals are necessarily generated by Ego-References, and are therefore compulsive and addictive in nature.