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Do You Want to Stop Seeking
Approval?
6 tips to help overcome your addiction to approval seeking
"A truly strong person does not need the approval of
others any more than a lion needs the approval of sheep." ~
Vernon Howard
Not long ago, the archetypal 'rebellious' teenager sat
across from me. Jason wore the conformist non-conformist
off-the-peg disaffected youth uniform: the kind of low-slung
jeans that makes running for a bus resemble the sack race
from a pre-teen sports day. His defiant stare dared me to
say something he could find stupid. His mother had brought
him to see me in an attempt to 'make him more pleasant'. And
Jason did admit to sometimes upsetting his parents
deliberately. He'd stumbled into the well-trodden adolescent
role of finding everything wanting, 'lame'. Contempt for
reality outside of himself or his friends had become his
default setting. It didn't matter what I said or did; he was
determined to - and here's the crux - not just be, but seem,
unimpressed. I'm not sure I helped that young guy (or his
mother) as much as hopefully time and experience (sometimes
the best therapy a person can have) will, but it occurred to
me that constantly seeking disapproval - being rebellious
for the sake of it - is, in essence, just the other side of
the coin from craving continuous positive approval. The
common denominator is still an over-preoccupation with
imagining what people are thinking about you and trying to
control their perceptions of you.
In sharp contrast to Jason, Susan seemed blighted by a
constant need for positive approval. She was easier to help
because she wanted to please me by getting better;
eventually she told me, only half-jokingly, that she didn't
give a damn whether I was pleased with her progress or not -
at which point, we knew she'd made plenty.
So what's wrong with wanting to please others? Seeking
approval whilst compromising yourself. Nothing, up to a
point; approval seeking is only a real problem if you feel
as though positive approval from others is the very oxygen
that keeps you alive. Susan actually said she felt like
she'd almost 'die' if people thought badly of her. She'd
felt rejected by her parents, particularly her mother; yet I
could tell she was keen that I didn't think her a 'bad
person' when she spoke semi-critically of her mom, who had,
it seemed, only very conditional regard for Susan. Unless
Susan was how her mother wanted her to be at all times,
affection was withdrawn. In this way, Susan had been
conditioned as a young girl to feel that approval was vital
at all times.
Susan's father went along with her mother, but she felt,
deep down, that his love for her was 'at heart,
unconditional'. The problem was that now, as a
thirty-seven-year-old woman, Susan felt that anything she
did or even thought only had any 'validity' if it was 'the
right thing' to say and think. I asked her what she meant by
'right' and, after a long pause, she admitted she didn't
really know - that perhaps it was what other people thought
was 'right'.
Reliance on approval seeking leaves you open to abuse
One grave problem with chronic approval seeking is that it
leaves you vulnerable to being manipulated by others. People
pick up that you're anxious to please them, that your main
priority is that 'everything be okay'. For example, Susan
found that a particular co-worker would go into silent moods
and look disapprovingly at Susan, but this woman didn't seem
to respond to other people like that. Somehow, she'd picked
up that Susan cared too much and used this knowledge to
psychologically control Susan. Susan admitted that she only
cared about doing a good job so that other people would be
pleased.
The sleeping man and the snake
Another problem with being too eager to gain approval is
that it can get in the way of actually being effective in a
situation. I'm reminded of the story of a man who fell
asleep under a tree. As he slept, a venomous snake slithered
into his open mouth. Another man, seeing this situation,
immediately pounced upon the sleeper and beat his back, held
him upside down, and generally seemed (from a superficial
perspective) to be abusing him. The man who had no idea he'd
swallowed a snake complained bitterly, thinking the other
guy was deranged. Eventually, the snake was dislodged and
tumbled out of the first man's mouth. He was saved and in
that instant knew the 'attacker' had really been seeking to
save him, not seeking his approval. It's important to
remember that the needs of the situation sometimes far
exceed the needs for instant approval.
The fact is that some approval seeking is probably
inevitable. It makes sense to 'fit in' with other people and
even Jason (our less than affable teenager) was, by his own
account, keen to maintain strong social bonds with his
friends. He cared that they had a good impression of him.
But if we are led through life always and only really
doing and being what we've come to believe is 'expected of
us', then, in a way, we cease to exist, to live, and be
real. So how can you start to care less about gaining other
people's approval? I've written a little about this before
in 'How to Stop Worrying What Other People Think', but here
I want to offer a few more pointers for being less bound by
approval (or disapproval) seeking.
1) Practice saying what you think
Not always, of course, but why should it always be you who
has to 'tread carefully'? Start practicing speaking your
mind a little more and let the 'consequences' sort
themselves out. What you'll find is that most of the time no
one is offended at all - and, as long as you don't set out
to hurt others, if they are upset it's only because you've
started behaving in a way that lets them feel they have less
'power' over you.
2) Practice pleasing yourself
Constantly seeking approval means we're perpetually worried
that others are forming a bad opinion of us. We come to feel
vulnerable and prey to whether other people are pleased with
us or not. This steals the fun, creativity, and spontaneity
from life. Make a point of doing stuff now and then purely
because you want to. This is not being selfish; it's letting
other people know that you're a multi-dimensional person
with your own tastes, ideas, and enthusiasms.
3) Remember you can't control what others think, anyway
Anxiously seeking approval is often an attempt at trying to
gain and keep a sense of control. If we can just make people
'happy' by being what we imagine they want us to be, then we
won't be rejected or abandoned. That's the common
assumption; but does it work?
Well, people like 'nice' people, for sure; but,
paradoxically, trying to be all things to all people can
make us less appreciated, because people are generally drawn
to an aura of self-confidence. So remind yourself regularly
that you can influence other people's perception of you some
of the time, but you can't control it. People tend to think
what they'll think.
4) Remember that sometimes 'doing the right thing' means
appearing not to
If you had lived in Nazi Germany as a non-Jewish
blond-haired blue-eyed person, to seek approval from people
around you (the ruling Nazi party) you would have to have
done and believed some monstrous things. Peer pressure can
make us go against what we truly know to be decent and
civilized behavior. Was it decent and civilized of the
helping man in the story to beat the snake out of the
sleeping man? Pack mentality can work on any scale. The
'leader' decides what is 'right and wrong', and the
followers sometimes comply to impress the leader and others
or because they are afraid of the consequences if they
don't. This is obvious in a huge cult like Nazi Germany or
in lesser cults, but it happens much more in day-to-day life
than many of us realize. Focus on what you believe to be
right in situations, rather than what peer pressure may lead
you to do. Be your own person.
5) Don't assume people make black or white assessments of
you
I've noticed that people who are overly concerned with
approval assume that I and others will think them 'a
terrible person' or 'a loser' if they say or do something
that isn't somehow right. But most people don't make heavily
judgmental decisions about other people based on a few words
or even actions. Constantly worrying that someone else is
inwardly going to condemn you as an 'awful person' is
over-estimating the 'black or whiteness' of other people's
perceptions of you. I might sometimes be baffled or
surprised (or assume I have misunderstood them) when someone
says or does something, but I rarely conclude: "She/he is a
terrible person!" As we know, generally good people can do
bad things. If you're around people who do make blanket,
negative, and premature assessments of you based on a few
words or actions, then you need to remember that is all
about them - not you.
6) Don't play the game of disapproval
Some people use disapproval as a weapon. If you've had what
amounts to a phobia of disapproval, then such people will
scare and therefore control you if you play their games.
Seeing reality through a narrow and prejudiced lens of 'does
this please or displease me?' makes people pretty
tyrannical. People who are quick to disapprove (even if they
just imply disapproval) can make you on edge, to say the
least. Focus on what you think and want. If someone seems to
disapprove, call them out on it. Ask them what their problem
is. As weird as it sounds, you have every right to
disapprove of their disapproval! Ultimately, disapproval
fails to deliver what it threatens. When the 'bomb drops',
you learn there is no bomb. When you let people disapprove
of you if they want and cease to worry, a whole new world of
personal possibility opens before you.
Article is written by
Mark Tyrrell.
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