Approval

Written by Zentai from the series "Beyond the 12 Steps"

Approval

Needing approval is tantamount to saying "your view of me is more important than my own opinion of myself." You may be spending far too many moments to acquire the approval of others or in being concerned with some disapproval that you have encountered. If approval has become a "need" in your life, then you have some work to do.
You begin by understanding that approval seeking is a desire rather than a necessity. We all enjoy applause, compliments, and praise. It feels good when we are stroked. Who would want to give this up? Approval in itself is not unhealthy, in fact, adulation is pleasurable. However, approval seeking is a waste only when it becomes a need rather than a want. If you want the approval, you are simply happy to have the endorsement of other people, but if you need it, you are going to collapse if you don't get it. That is when the self-destructive forces move in.
Similarly, when approval seeking becomes a need, you give up a chunk of yourself to the outside person whose advocacy you must have. If they disapprove, then you become immobilized even if in a small way. So, you see in such a case you have chosen to wear your self-worth on your sleeve for someone to rub or not rub off as they see fit. In other words, you feel good inside only if they decide to administer praise to you. The need for approval of another person is bad enough but the real trouble comes with the need for approval of everyone for every act. Obviously, if you carry around such a need, as most chemically dependent people do, then you are bound for a great deal of misery and frustration in your life. Moreover, you will be incorporating a wishy-washy non-person self-image that will result in the kind of self-rejection that we are desperately working against.
The need for approval must go. No question marks. It must be eradicated from your life if you are going to gain personal fulfillment. Such a need is a psychological dead-end with absolutely no benefits accruing to you. It is impossible to go through life without incurring a great deal of disapproval. It is the way of humanity. The dues you pay for your aliveness are something that simply cannot be avoided. When approval-seeking is a need, possibilities for truth are all but wiped away. If you must be lauded and you send out those kinds of signals, then no one can deal with you straight. Nor can you state with confidence what it is that you think and feel at any moment. Your self is sacrificed to the opinions and predilections of others.
I suppose politicians are a class that fall into this category for approval-seeking. The end result is a lack of trust, as we know. Inevitably, they seem to speak out of both sides of their mouths, saying one thing to please group A and another to win the approbation of group B. There can be no truth if the speaker is shifty and moves around the issues with a skillful kind of maneuvering that is designed to please everyone. Behavior like this is easy to see in politicians but more difficult to see in others.
Perhaps you cooled it in order to placate someone or you find yourself agreeing with someone whose disfavor you fear. You knew you would be unhappy if you were censured, so you modify your behavior to avoid it. It's tough to handle rebuking and easier to adopt behavior that will bring approval but when you take this easy way you are making others' opinions of yourself more important than your own self assessment.. It's a vicious trap and a difficult one to escape in our society.
In order escape the trap of approval-seeking which gives others' opinions control over you, it is important to examine the factors that foster the approval-seeking need. Here is how it appears in our cultures: The need for approval is based on a single assumption. "Don't trust yourself; check it out with someone else first." Our culture is one that reinforces approval behavior as a standard of life. Independent thinking is not only unconventional; it is the enemy of the very institutions that constitutes the bulwark of our society. If you have grown up in this society, you have been affected by this attitude. You make someone else's opinion more important than your own, then if you don't get their approval you have every reason to feel depressed, unworthy, or guilty since they are important to you.
The bestowal of approval can also be a great manipulator. Your worth is lost on others and if they refuse to dole out their approval, you have got nothing. You are without worth, and so it goes. The more flattery you need, the more you can be manipulated by others. Any steps in the direction of self approval and independence of the good opinion of others are movements away from their control. As a result, such moves get labeled as selfish, uncaring, inconsiderate, and the like in an effort to keep you dependent. To understand this vicious circle of manipulation consider the profusion of approval-seeking cultural messages which began when you were a child and which continue to bombard you today. It is important to recognize here that young children truly need acceptance from significant adults in their formative years, or what I call positive reinforcement. But remember that approval should not be contingent upon being proper, nor should a child have to get his parents' sanction for everything he says, thinks, feels, or does. Self reliance can be taught in the crib and approval seeking ought not be confused with love seeking.
In order to encourage freedom from the need of approval from adults; it is helpful to give the child an abundance of approval from the beginning.. But remember, if a child grows up to feel that he cannot think or act without first securing the permission of a parent, then the neurotic seeds of self doubt are planted early. Approval-seeking as a self defeating need is mentioned here as a child being conditioned to check it out with mother or dad rather than the very healthy sense of wanting the love and acceptance of a caring parent. Unfortunately, our culture teaches the child to rely on others rather than trusting his own judgment. Check out everything with Mommy or Daddy: what do I eat, when, how much, who can I play with, etc.
You can never escape disapproval. For every opinion you have, there is a counterpart out there with exactly the opposite view. Here are some examples of approval-seeking behavior. Like self-respect, approval-seeking encompasses a large category. Among the most common kinds of approval seeking activities are those detailed here:
1. Changing a position on what you believe because someone shows signs of disapproval
2. Sugar coating a statement to avoid the reaction of displeasure
3. Apple polishing in order to make someone like you
4. Feeling depressed or anxious when someone disagrees with you
5. Feeling insulted or put down when someone states a contrary statement to your own
6. Labeling someone a snob or stuck up which is just another way of saying "pay more attention to me"
7. Agreeing excessively and head nodding even when you don't agree at all with what is being said
8. Performing chores for someone and feeling resentful about not being able to say "no"
9. Being intimidated by a sharp sales person into buying something you don't want or fear taking it back because he won't like you
10. Apologizing for yourself at every turn with excessive "I'm sorries"
11. Behaving in non-conforming ways for the purpose of gaining attention, sort of like negative strokes, like wearing tennis shoes with your tuxedo, or eating a handful of mashed potatoes just to be noticed.
12. Being pathologically late. Here you can't help but be seen and it is an approval-seeking device and gets everyone to pay attention.
13. The list could go on and on
The following are the six payoffs for approval-seeking as a need:
1. Placing responsibility for your feelings on others if you feel the way you do, lousy, hurt, depressed, etc. because someone else doesn't approve of you, then they, not you, are responsible for how you feel
2. If they are responsible for you, you feel, because of withholding their approval, then any changes in you is almost impossible since it then becomes their fault that you feel the way you do. Thus approval-seeking helps you avoid changing.
3. As long as they are responsible and you can't change, you don't have to run any risks. Consequently, hanging on to approval-seeking is a way of life and will help you to conveniently avoid any risk-taking activities.
4. reinforcing a poor self image and therefore encouraging a self pity and do nothing-ism. If you are immune from the need for approval you are immune from self pity when you don't get it.
5. Reinforcing the idea that others must take care of you and, therefore, you can revert to the child in you and can be coddled, protected, and manipulated
6. Blaming others for what you are feeling, thereby creating a scape-goating effect for everything you don't like in your life. It's the same as projections demonstrating to yourself that you are liked by those others you like more than yourself, and thus feeling outwardly comfortable even though there is a cauldron of discontent seething inside of you. As long as the others are more significant, then the outward appearance is more important.
I could go on and on, but these neurotic payoffs are strikingly similar to the rewards for self hate. In fact, the treatment of avoiding responsibility - change and risk - is at the heart of all of self-destructive thinking and behaving. It is just plain easier, more familiar, and less risky to hang on to neurotic behaviors, approval-seeking being one of them.