517 - Breaking the Approval Cycle
Seeking Approval: Yea or Nay?
To understand approval-seeking, we have to differentiate it from people-pleasing.
Approval-seeking can be defined as a broad term focused on the desire for validation and positive reinforcement from others. It's about seeking acceptance and avoiding disapproval. This can manifest in various ways, like constantly seeking compliments, changing opinions to match others', or avoiding conflict to maintain approval.
Alternatively, people-pleasing is more specific and action-oriented. It involves actively going out of your way to please others, often at the expense of your own needs and wants. This can include things like saying "yes" to everything, taking on too much responsibility, or constantly apologizing.
Sometimes we can become addicted to seeking approval, which often comes hand in hand with things like:
Overly sensitive to criticism: Not just disliking it, but feeling devastated and taking it as a personal attack, even if it's constructive.
Second-guessing yourself: Constantly doubting your own judgment and needing others to validate your decisions, even for small things.
Avoiding conflict at all costs: Staying silent even when you disagree or feel uncomfortable because you fear disapproval or confrontation.
People-pleasing behaviors becoming compulsive: Feeling a strong urge to seek approval even when you know it's not healthy (like checking social media responses).
These behaviors can have a negative effect on our relationships when they get out of hand, like:
Codependency: Developing unhealthy, one-sided relationships where your self-worth is tied to the other person's approval.
Difficulty setting boundaries: Struggling to communicate your needs and limits, leading to feeling overwhelmed and resentful.
Low self-esteem: Needing a constant hit of approval and feeling the lack of it.
Increased risk of burnout: Constantly putting others' needs first can lead to emotional exhaustion and physical health problems.
Difficulty experiencing genuine intimacy: True intimacy requires vulnerability and authenticity, which can be challenging for approval seekers who fear judgment.
Is approval-seeking always bad?
Of course, seeking approval isn’t always a bad thing. If we lived in a world where we had a complete lack of approval-seeking behaviors, social groups would fall apart, since social creatures such as us depend on seeking approval from our peers in order to survive and know how to fit in with our tribe or group.
The benefits of moderate approval-seeking aren’t to be discarded either. Seeking a measured amount of approval can:
Foster connection and empathy and encourages open sharing.
Encourage positive behavior and motivate self-improvement.
Enhance communication by prompting honest dialogue.
Build trust/security by offering reassurance and affirming commitment.
Promote mutual respect by showing consideration for a partner's feelings.
Facilitates personal growth and encourages self-reflection.
We also have to consider cultural influences and differences. In Western culture, particularly American, individualism is highly regarded, whereas there are other more collectivistic cultures (like Japan) where different rates of approval-seeking might be more or less acceptable than in different countries. There’s also the (generally bad) trend on social media that amplifies approval-seeking, and other corners of the internet that seem to idolize a total disregard for others/lack of compassion, which also isn’t great for individuals or society.
Balance is important, though! Remember that moderate approval-seeking can be beneficial, but sometimes in our larger, more modern societies, we sometimes have too many sources of it. Being aware of the possible detriments of chronic or excessive approval-seeking can be helpful as well when trying to moderate it. Some of us may have higher needs for internal self-worth and external validation, and things like medication and therapy can help with these if they’re at a level that is damaging your relationships.
Actionable ways to break the approval cycle
When researching, the most common themes that increased approval-seeking behaviors were time spent on social media, self-esteem levels, and anxiety. Some ways to make improvements in those areas could look like:
Try a “No Apology Day” and see if you can go an entire day without unnecessary apologies.
Have a social media vacation, completely disconnecting from social media for at least one day (or a whole weekend!). This means no checking notifications at all! See how you feel at the beginning, middle, and end of the experience.
Practice appreciating yourself, or using affirmations. This can be out loud or in a journal, but try appreciating yourself for WHO you are, not what you do for others.
There are also some deeper ways you can explore this tendency to seek approval in yourself:
Getting enough sleep and exercise.
Strength training in particular has a lot of benefits for physical and mental health.
Professional help.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) or other therapy can help reframe negative thought patterns.
Somatic therapy can help you work through trauma or fears that aren’t as easy to talk through.
Medication, like antidepressants or anti-anxiety medication, can also be a game changer if you’ve tried other things and they aren’t working for you.
Gradual implementation.
Remember that change takes consistent effort and TIME.
Celebrate your small victories.
Take just one step at a time. Sometimes just knowing is enough to start changing.
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we are talking about the need for approval and how it could be hurting your relationships. We're going to get into some of the differences between approval-seeking and people-pleasing, which can be pretty similar to each other, as well as why this might not be all bad, but definitely can be a problem if it gets out of hand.
With all of that, we're excited to get into this discussion. Also, if you're interested in learning more about our fundamental communication tools that we reference on this show, you can check out our book Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships. You can get information about that at multiamory.com/book or get it wherever you buy books.
To kick this off, let's start at the front door, or rather, we'll start at an entryway with two doors, one of which is labeled approval-seeking and the other is labeled people-pleasing.
Dedeker: Does one of them tell the truth and one of them always lies?
Jase: Exactly, yes.
Emily: Oh, wait.
Jase: No, I'm just kidding.
Emily: I want a third door option, which is that you're not doing either of these things.
Dedeker: Just the exit, the emergency exit.
Emily: There you go.
Jase: Right.
Emily: You're living in a secure way where you don't have to do either of these things. I always go through at least one of these doors. It's not that one that I just referenced, sadly.
Jase: Right. Let's start by just talking a little bit about the difference between these because there is some overlap. Maybe it's a little bit of a quantum door where they're-
Emily: It's quantum door.
Jase: -overlapping each other a little bit.
Emily: Cool.
Dedeker: Wow. The doors exist on multiple planes of existence?
Jase: Yes, something like that.
Dedeker: Wow.
Jase: I think it's that the doors exist in a super position with each other.
Dedeker: That's exactly what I was going to say.
Emily: We're in the quantum realm, is what we're saying. Great.
Jase: Approval-seeking is this term that's focused on the desire for validation and positive reinforcement from others, like the name says, "approval-seeking." It's about avoiding disapproval, seeking acceptance.
This can be something like constantly seeking compliments or constantly doing something and then checking like, "Oh, was that good?" It's like a little bit of this, maybe doing somethings like avoiding conflict or changing opinions to match others, but based on the reactions. It's like you want that approval. You want to know that you're accepted. Another way approval-seeking could show up is something on social media, like really paying attention to how many comments, or likes, or that sort of thing that you get.
On the other hand, people-pleasing, which we have talked about before on this show, is more tied to your specific actions that you take. This can be things like going out of your way to please others, changing your opinion to match what the other person has just stated versus doing it for approval. That's why they're so similar. There's a lot of overlap here. This could be saying yes to everything, not being able to say no to stuff, taking on too much responsibility, not bringing up conflict because you don't want to have anyone be upset, or just constantly apologizing.
We'll see there's some overlap here, but I tried to come up with an analogy to explain a little bit of the heart of the difference. Imagine that you are a performer on stage.
Emily: I can imagine that.
Dedeker: Yes, I can also imagine that.
Jase: Great. Approval-seeking is like them constantly looking to the audience for applause and cheers, wanting to make sure people are liking it. Then people-pleasing is changing the way they act based on what they think the audience wants to see even if it means compromising their artistic integrity or making a choice that doesn't seem right for the character. It's like, "Oh, that's what I think the audience wants. They want funny here, so I'll do that instead," versus doing the thing and then looking. You can see how they're related. You can have a little feedback loop between the two.
Dedeker: Yes, they're related, but it seems like approval-seeking is more like something that could motivate you versus people-pleasing, it sounds like there's maybe a little bit more self-betrayal potentially in there or just an obliteration of what you want or what your boundaries are, perhaps.
Jase: Yes, that's a good way to put it. Now, of course, the question is which door did you choose?
Emily: I have quantumly leapt through both at the same time. No, this is really interesting because, as you were describing it, I was realizing that in my work life, I tend to do a lot of approval-seeking, and in my relational life, I tend to do a lot of people-pleasing. I feel like I am better at the people-pleasing now that I'm out of my last relationship.
Dedeker: Better at not doing it, you mean?
Emily: Yes. I do it less because it resulted in a lot of diminishing of self in order to try to fit and mold myself into a box that was going to be comfortable enough for my partner. A lot of that is because maybe of conflict and family of origin stuff, et cetera, that you choose to put yourself on that route. In terms of approval-seeking, I think especially at the beginning of jobs, I try to ask for a lot of approval or make sure that somebody really likes me, that I am on a track where I'm never going to be someone that they dislike or I want people to know that they can rely on me, et cetera.
It has done really well in terms of the kinds of jobs that I have gotten and how I'm able to escalate in them. I don't know. I feel like that one in particular has actually been okay for me, whereas the people-pleasing has done really bad things for my relational life. How about the two of you? Dedeker's like, "I've never done this in my life, either of them."
Dedeker: That's not true. No, that's not true. I think, for me, maybe my own approval-seeking tendencies are a little bit more wrapped up in my own maybe perfectionistic tendencies. There's a certain amount of, "Well, I'm going to do it perfectly because that's how I'm going to get approval," or, "I'm going to get an A+." That's the main channel to approval, I suppose. Then I also think, I don't know, in my relationship with you, Jase, I do some approval-seeking, but I can't tell is that for me or is that more your influence and now approval-seeking has become a little bit of a love language-
Emily: Oh, that's interesting.
Dedeker: -in this relationship where-
Jase: Interesting.
Dedeker: -we will go through some moments of being like, "Oh my God, do you like me? Do you think I'm cool?"
Emily: That's a Jase's thing 100%.
Dedeker: You see? Exactly.
Emily: I say now you have taken on that trait. You got it.
Dedeker: Yes. Now, I think I've taken that on a little bit because I-- I don't know if that's something that I've done as much in other relationships.
Emily: I don't recall you ever doing that before Jase started doing it to you. Now, the two of you do it to one another. That's very interesting.
Jase: Right. It's an interesting mix of, on the one hand, asking for the reinforcement that you need, and then, "Am I crossing a line into, now I'm relying on this too much? Am I putting too much of my own self-esteem or my own wellbeing outside of myself?" I feel like, for me, the way that approval-seeking has shown up is usually in times when I felt bad about myself wishing that I had more clear approval.
It's not even like someone stated that they didn't like something, but I didn't quite get enough approval or didn't get the approval that I wanted and so, "They must dislike me," or, "They must have hated what I did and they were just being polite." That kind of thinking is how this has shown up in my life the most, I think.
Emily: It's that external validation that you're asking somebody to give you in order for you to internally feel good about yourself. That's what it is for me, for sure, especially when I start a new job and I'm like, "Do they like me? Are they going to want to promote me and tell me that I'm doing the thing good."
Jase: That's an interesting thing. In part 2 of this episode, the middle section of this episode, is when we're going to get into some of the positive aspects of approval-seeking, but to start out, let's look a little bit at the dark side. You could even think of it like an approval addiction, or an over-reliance on external validation, or too much approval-seeking.
Just to give a little bit of background, I'm not going to go in-depth on any studies for this one, but there have been a number of studies that have looked at the link between approval-seeking and self-esteem, so not surprisingly, lower self-esteem tends to be correlated with higher approval-seeking. There have also been some links between approval-seeking and anxiety levels, which again, I think is not surprising, at least based on my own experience, that higher anxiety would lead to more feeling like you need that external validation to maybe stabilize you. Then specifically social anxiety and approval-seeking have been correlated pretty strongly with each other.
There was one study I wanted to point out partly because the name just really captured me. This is a 2016 study by Steers et al, and this is called, I Want You to Like Me: Extraversion, Need for Approval, and Time on Facebook as Predictors of Anxiety. You can tell it's a 2016 study because it's Facebook instead of TikTok, or something else, or Instagram.
This was a relatively small study of 280 college students. What I thought was interesting was they had people fill out a questionnaire to get a sense of their overall well-being in terms of feelings of anxiety, how introverted or extroverted they were, and the amount of approval-seeking that they did. That was baked into the questions. Then they looked at how much time each of these students spent on Facebook.
What they found was, people who spent more time on Facebook had higher levels of anxiety. Just in general there was that trend, but they found that the people who spent more time on Facebook, but who identified as extroverts had less of a correlation. Their anxiety in that group didn't go up at the same rate as the social media use did versus the introverts where the anxiety and the Facebook use both went up similarly.
The other one was that people who had more approval-seeking behaviors also had higher anxiety the more time they spent on Facebook. Now this is not a causation, but just a correlation between them. I do think that's interesting. We don't know if is it the anxiety causing them more time on Facebook, is it the introversion causing that, or is it the other way around? That we can't really say. I just thought it was interesting that it's like there are some factors that can mitigate this and so maybe this could be a bigger concern for us, introverts, in terms of this social media-based approval-seeking anxiety.
Dedeker: Why do you think that is?
Emily: I'm fascinated by that as well because again, I'm looking at what I would perceive as two introverts in front of me and one is far more likely to seek approval versus the other one, and yet you both are fairly introverted.
Dedeker: I have a theory, and it actually has nothing to do with Facebook. I'm realizing just by looking at the title of that study that the sentiment of, "I want you to like me," is, I would think, pretty universal, pretty human, pretty innate. We'll get into that more in-depth later in the episode that most of us want to be liked by other people. That's one truth, but then there's this other competing truth that it's impossible to be liked by absolutely everyone. There's a certain amount that is out of our control as to whether or not someone likes us.
I think how we deal with that inherent tension is really interesting that I think for some people it pulls them in the, "I want you to like me," direction. I feel like I need to overcompensate because it's hard to live with the discomfort that not everybody is going to like me. I think for other people it pulls them in the opposite direction, a little bit more of this, "Screw it anyway. I'm not going to seek liking."
Emily: I'm looking at those two directions in front of me.
Dedeker: You see these two doors nested within the approval-seeking doors. There are two wolves inside you.
Emily: Yes.`
Jase: I've been pondering this while you were talking about your question about the introverts versus extroverts, and social media and approval-seeking. I'm not an extrovert and this is not what I researched specifically for this, because this episode wasn't about introversion and extroversion. I just thought that was an interesting tidbit. If people want to jump into the Discord in the thread for discussing this episode, I'd actually love to hear other people's experiences, especially those of you who identify as extroverts. That's in our Discord, which you can join by going to multiamory.com/join and joining our community there on a sliding scale.
To answer the question, my two guesses, one is I wonder if extroverts may- either because of being an extrovert or it goes the other way around but may have less social anxiety, which we learned about in other studies has linked to approval-seeking. Just by nature of being an extrovert, it seems like social anxiety and extroversion are less likely to go together. Again, don't know, just guessing here.
The other one is, I feel like as an extrovert there's more of this sense of like, "I'm connecting with new people a lot, I like connecting with new people," versus an introvert where there could be this sense- I know I've felt this sometimes, this sense of, "This group of people I've managed to become close with is hard to replenish, and so if any of these end up not liking me, that's a bigger problem than if I had a much wider--" feeling of like, "Oh yes, I make new friends all the time. I get close with people really easily, really quickly." Just throwing those out there. There's no science behind that at all. Just my own speculation.
Emily: I do think that that's an interesting distinction because for myself when I meet a new person, I don't necessarily really care what they think of me. It's fun to get to know them, but you're building a potential relationship, whereas if you know somebody well, or if they're in a position of power over you, for instance, then I feel like the approval-seeking in me at least kicks into high gear.
Dedeker: Totally.
Jase: That's interesting.
Emily: Yes, because I'm like, "Oh God. In order to maintain this relationship or further it, I'm going to have that approval-seeking come into play," whereas if I just meet them and, I don't know, it's going to be one evening of seeing them and hanging out with them, I don't really care that much what they think of me. If they don't like me right off the bat, whatever. I don't have to ever see you again potentially.
All right, let's move on to signs of approval addiction, which is interesting. I didn't even know this was a thing, but I suppose it probably is that one might be addicted or have addictive tendencies regarding seeking approval.
Jase: I'd say this is addiction in the nonclinical sense, more of just, maybe you've gone too far down the hallway that's past the door labeled "Approval-seeking."
Emily: We're really going on this-
Dedeker: We're really building a horrible labyrinth.
Emily: -really leaning into the metaphor.
Dedeker: When do we get to David Bowie? That's all I care about.
Emily: Ooh, definitely.
Jase: Sure, let's see.
Dedeker: The ultimate prize.
Emily: One of the signs is that you might be overly sensitive to criticism. That's not just disliking criticism in a way that feels fairly normal to people. It's hard to receive criticism, but if you're left feeling really devastated by that and you take it as a personal attack, even if it's constructive, that might be a sign that you are seeking approval too much, or that it is become something in your life that is detrimental to it.
Another sign of approval addiction is constantly second-guessing yourself, so maybe doubting your own judgment, needing other people to validate your decision even for small things in your life, little mundane tasks, or small things that you're doing at work, for instance. You constantly need approval on absolutely everything.
Dedeker: Another sign of approval addiction could be avoiding conflict at all costs, as in when you disagree with someone, or maybe you want something, or you have a particular preference, but you stay silent about it because you fear their disapproval or confrontation.
Again, I guess to differentiate it from people-pleasing, that maybe people-pleasing would be that you change what your preference is to try to better match what the other person is saying, versus, leaning on the approval-seeking side of it, maybe you don't go so far as to change your preference, but you go out of your way to not bring up your preference if you're worried that it's going to be disapproved of in some way, I would imagine.
Of course, there's a lot of overlap. It's like this can be an on-ramp into full-blown people-pleasing behaviors that can become compulsive, so feeling strong urges to seek approval constantly even when you know that it's not healthy, like compulsively checking social media responses, compulsively checking in all the time. I had an ex who I think had a little bit of this tendency of, all the time wanting to check like, "Did I do it right? Did I do this thing right? Did I handle this situation correctly?" Stuff like that.
Jase: That's a good example there of that, "Needing you to approve of everything that I do." Yes, that's a good one.
Dedeker: Also I know what I noticed in this person was often a projecting of my disapproval.
Emily: That's really interesting.
Jase: An assumption of disapproval.
Dedeker: Assumption of disapproval and therefore always feeling like they had this mountain, I guess, to traverse first.
Emily: That's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy there that-
Dedeker: Yes, a little bit
Emily: -if you continue instilling that in another person's mind, they may start to believe, "Perhaps, I should be checking-
Dedeker: Should I disapprove of this or something?
Emily: -checking in on this person and what they're doing before I really can absolutely say with certainty that they're making the right decision in something."
Dedeker: Sometimes I get a little bit of that from you, Jase. A little assuming that I might disapprove of something that you do or like or want or something like that when it's maybe not the case.
Jase: I was going to say I think this is interesting because she's not talking about me in this example here and yet yes, I do think that I have some of that and that's all stuff that I have been working on, but it's a work-in-progress. That sense of- like I mentioned earlier, of that assumption of if you didn't get negative feedback but maybe it wasn't the right positive feedback or enough of it, that there's this assumption of, "Oh, well, it must be negative then. It must be that these people disapproved of me," that that was something that I wrestled with a lot and that that has been getting better.
It's like I can relate to it but I think with all of this, it's a matter of degrees. We might all do this to a certain extent, and I think I do this one a little but not as much as that other partner that Dedeker was mentioning. With these different behaviors, it's also worth looking at it all holistically and seeing, "How is this actually affecting my life and affecting my relationships?"
In that, just some examples of how this can negatively affect your relationships and your well-being. The first one that comes to mind is codependency, which is basically what Dedeker was just getting at right there, is this unhealthy, one-sided reliance on the other person validating you in order to get your self-worth or your self-confidence or your self-esteem.
Another one can be difficulty setting boundaries. This one overlaps a lot with people-pleasing as well. It's that like, "Well, I don't want to do anything too challenging to you because I need your approval, so I'm just going to go with what I think that you want," which is a little more people-pleasing but I think these overlap a little there. This one is maybe unclear about the causation versus correlation but low self-esteem. I've seen myself get into a loop where it feels like by seeking that external validation and seeking that approval can lead to a lower baseline of my own self-esteem and which caused which is hard to say but definitely I think that's something that we can see happening there.
Emily: This is reminding me a lot of our episode on the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. It's the fawn. It's this trauma response where we have to make sure that everyone is okay around us. I think that that is the more insidious part of the people-pleasing that we get into. It's interesting that you're talking about the fact that one goes into the other over time potentially, that maybe if you are approval-seeking all the time, that can become people-pleasing and that can become this just fawn response where you're second-guessing everything.
Also for yourself, for your wellbeing, there's an increased risk of burnout. If you are constantly putting others' needs first it can lead to emotional exhaustion and physical health problems even.
Dedeker: This brings back memories of being in a relationship when I was much younger where I think I really, really wanted this person's approval. I was just remembering, like you said, that emotional exhaustion of, I have to constantly track this person's reactions to what I do and I have to constantly create, again, those mental gymnastics of like how I present something to this person about what I want or what I'm deciding to do or things like that.
I think even if you're someone who, maybe, has some pretty good boundaries around your time, for instance, or your limits that-- I think there is a little bit of this amorphous burden of always having that little voice in the back of your head wanting to check in on whether or not somebody approves of you. In my case, it was a specific person but I imagine that for somebody, it could be either a specific person or it could be, I don't know, the world at large or your community or a particular community
Jase: That just made me think of something else. I'm curious what the two of you think in terms of where this falls on the people-pleasing approval-seeking spectrum. It's about if you have something difficult to talk to a friend or a partner about. I think we've all encountered some version of someone doing this to us or us doing this to someone where you start saying the thing you need to say.
Maybe it's that you want to break up or you want to de-escalate, or you want to stop doing something or start doing something, that there's this sense of, I'm starting to tell you, and then based on how you're reacting to it, I may just stop and not tell you all of the truth of what I actually wanted to come here to say. Maybe I'll overly soften it. Maybe I'll leave some open ends that I actually didn't really want to leave. It's more like, "No, I'm done with this," not, "Well, we'll see, we'll take a break." It's that last-minute pivot that involves not being quite totally honest in our communication.
I'm wondering if that actually might have more to do with approval-seeking than people-pleasing, because it's about I'm evaluating the reactions I'm getting back and then I'm pivoting or stopping where I think I'll still get some approval.
Dedeker: Well, what it makes me think of, specifically to use a breakup example, I think about how-- what I see, and I've seen this both in myself and other people and people that I've worked with, in clients, that sometimes during a breakup specifically, people can really bend over backwards to try to make sure that they're not seen as the bad guy by the other person.
Emily: Yes. Interesting.
Dedeker: I feel like that's maybe a weird backwards version of approval-seeking. I want to leave this relationship for my own reasons. I recognize that those reasons may be hurtful to you but I still want you to approve of me as a person. Again, I think we can put ourselves in this bind of just not knowing how to deal with the discomfort that our actions, even if it's the right action, may hurt somebody's feelings. Therefore, I do see people sometimes get caught in these ongoing cycles with a partner they're trying to break up with or an ex because they're still trying to salvage this sense of like, "Yes, but you still approve of me at the end of the day even though I broke your heart."
Jase: I might say that the people-pleasing is the one that maybe keeps you in a relationship longer because you don't want to have conflict, and then the approval-seeking is where you chicken out partway through or overly soften or something to avoid disapproval.
Emily: Are you just talking to me right now?
Dedeker: This is a very
Jase: I'm talking to my past self and you and to everybody. No, I've definitely done this and I've definitely encountered this in other people. I think if you're someone who tends to be attentive to how other people feel, you might be extra susceptible to this. I think that's definitely been the case for me.
Emily: Another thing is that you might have difficulty experiencing genuine intimacy with another person because true intimacy does really require vulnerability and authenticity. That can be really challenging for somebody who is a constant approval seeker and who fears judgment of another person.
Again, if you're just constantly looking for that approval, asking for that approval, trying to do things in order to get that approval from someone, you are potentially setting yourself up for never really being vulnerable and maybe even causing somebody to have a moment of dislike or a moment of, "Ooh, that was hard to take," or, "That was hard to hear." I think that true intimacy is being able to offer yourself up fully to someone, even if it's not always going to look pretty or perfect.
Jase: Before we go on to talking about how approval-seeking is good, just throw everything we just said right in the garbage and try to approach this from the other direction. Before we do that, I just wanted to say we've been really excited about the last few months of making a lot of improvements and changes in our Discord community specifically. One of those I mentioned earlier in the episode is that we have different threaded conversations in our episode discussion channel.
Even if you are behind on episodes, you could go in there and either start a new thread, if it's an older episode, or on any of the current ones, you can join in the discussion on that particular episode. It allows you to have those sorts of conversations with other people, even if you are separated in time. It's like that one movie, what was that, The Lake House? Was that the one?
Emily: Oh, yes.
Dedeker: Is that the Sandra Bullock movie?
Emily: Keanu Reeves.
Jase: Keanu Reeves, yes.
Emily: Oh, that’s random.
Jase: Where they're writing letters to each other but they're at different points in time. Spoiler alert. Sorry.
Dedeker: I watched a Hallmark movie like that once.
Emily: No. It was a Hallmark movie, Dedeker. No, I'm kidding.
Dedeker: Oh, really?
Emily: No.
Dedeker: Okay. I wouldn't be surprised.
Jase: It wouldn't surprise me.
Emily: Yes. It might as well have been.
Dedeker: I did actually watch a Hallmark movie but that wasn't just a joke.
Emily: Got it.
Jase: I love it. On this episode, we're discussing how approval-seeking is great. Just kidding. We are going to look a little bit at why it's not all bad. I have a thought experiment for you at home and you two sitting here with me.
Emily: Okay.
Jase: Imagine a world in which there's a total lack of approval-seeking, so no matter what you do-
Emily: I don't think I can, but okay, I'll try.
Jase: -you're not paying any attention to how other people are reacting to it. It doesn't matter to you at all. I think sometimes when we're worried about our self-esteem, we'll say things like that, of like, "Oh, I wish I just didn't care what other people thought." If you imagined, if you will, the reality of that world where you actually don't care and nobody cares, I feel like any kind of relationship would be impossible, because I think that requires a certain amount of attentiveness to the other person and how they're feeling and what their needs are, and what makes me gel in this particular social group, or what feels good for both of us in this relationship.
As social animals, approval-seeking is actually super important. I would even put it in a vital skill for survival as a human, as a species as a whole, that we needed to have a certain amount of approval-seeking, or at least approval awareness, you could say, in order for us to team up and be all that we can be.
Dedeker: Look how far we've come, Jase.
Jase: How far we've come, indeed.
Emily: I think that's the issue at hand, is the potential lack of awareness for other people, that by seeking approval in somebody else, we have an awareness of what it is that they like and what it is that they want.
If we just completely got rid of that, it might be really difficult for us, in social constructs, in social moments to be able to say, "I can tell that this person is done with this conversation right now, I'm going to let them be," for instance, or, "I can tell that my partner is going through something, even though they're not necessarily telling me immediately, and so I want them to feel okay. I'm going to ask them or I'm going to check out, 'Is this thing that I did fine with you? Is it okay?' Because I want to make sure that I'm not hurting them, for instance."
Jase: It's a certain amount of being aware and checking in. It's also making me think about, basically, the trend we've seen in the last several decades in both dog training and also child rearing, which is this moving away from, I'm going to focus on punishing you for your bad behaviors by spanking you or yelling at you or something like that, into more rewarding for good behaviors. If there were no approval-seeking, the babies wouldn't care. The dogs wouldn't care. Clearly, it's like we'd rather focus on the approval-seeking than just having to rely on punishment to get our message across. I think there's a clear example of why we don't want to actually get rid of this completely.
Dedeker: There's plenty of benefits to moderate approval-seeking. Actually, I liked you framing it as approval awareness, because it does help us to foster connection to create more of a sense of empathy because it encourages us to maybe share a little bit more openly. Sometimes, ironically, I know we've shared all these stories about how approval-seeking can shut us down or prevent us from sharing openly, but I also do think that sometimes it can motivate us to take these little risks of, "Hey, I need to tell you that this is something that I want," or, "This is something that I like," or, "This is something about me. Do you approve of that? Is that okay?"
Taking those little risks, I would argue, are the building blocks of close intimate relationships. It can encourage positive behavior, so it can motivate self-improvement. It can motivate like, "I want this person to see me in a positive light, and so I'm going to show up for them," or, "I'm going to apologize for my past bad behavior," or, "I'm going to try to do something so that I can hold them in a better way, in a more reliable way in this relationship."
It can help enhance our communication, again, prompting us to have more honest dialogue. It helps us to build trust and security especially if someone's able to offer you that reassurance of like, "Yes, I do approve of you. Even though you shared this vulnerable thing, or maybe this thing that doesn't paint you in the best light, that I do still love you, care for you, want you in my life."
It can promote a sense of mutual respect in the sense that you are conveying to someone that like, "Hey, you are important and your feelings about me and my actions are important, and so I am bringing you into the fold." That's just a marker of consideration, or can facilitate personal growth. It can encourage that sense of self-reflection around, how do I show up in my relationships? What are the things that people do approve or not approve as far as I'm concerned? Are there areas of where other people disapprove of that I can learn to live with or that I should change, for instance?
Jase: One thing just to be aware of with all of this is that there are cultural differences here too. For example, something we like to mention is that in our North American and Western culture, there's a lot of emphasis put on individualism, versus places like Japan, where there's more of a collectivistic culture. I would say that in those, whatever this sweet spot of approval-seeking is might vary a little bit, or it might just look different in terms of the types of behaviors that show up more than others.
Something that I find is that we'll often idolize antisocial people in our media, which can be a bit of a problem, but I think that might be something that we find fascinating because it's so different from actually how most of us live our lives. I don't know. There's something there.
Then of course, social media being this new factor, that as humans, approval-seeking and being aware of other people's opinions has been important for us evolutionarily, and yet never before have we had access to what all of these people think about us, or at least what we perceive they think about us by how many likes they gave our post, or how many comments it got, or something like that, that we have a lot more input that can be used negatively in this. Just a couple things to throw out there to be aware of with all of this, I guess some little caveats there.
Emily: Moderate approval-seeking is good, but we want some balance here with that. It is important to be aware of the risks of excessive or chronic approval-seeking. You need to, hopefully, develop a sense of internal self-worth and get some external validation. That's always good. We do need that from people like our partners, people that we work with, people that we're close to. All of those things are really important, but it is all about finding that balance.
Sometimes you do need things like therapy, medication, which Jase, you are on both of those paths that we've talked about. Hopefully, that has been helping you with this specifically. For myself, getting out of a situation that wasn't good for me ended up being something that I think has put me on a path of not necessarily needing to people-please so much because I saw how that was really detrimental to my mental wellbeing and my health as well. I think that approval-seeking is one thing, but hopefully, I personally have a little bit more of a balance now.
Jase: From here, we want to get into, what does that look like? How do you put this into practice? How can we get back that balance that we were missing before or that maybe we've identified? I think I might be a little too far on one side of this or the other.
Emily: Now, we're going to get into some actionable steps and tools for you if you feel like, "Wow, I am just looking for approval all over the place, and maybe even have some of those addictive tendencies and I want to move away from that." In the research, the common themes related to increased approval-seeking were time spent on social media, your own personal self-esteem, if you have a lot of it or not. Probably if you are seeking approval, then that self-esteem is going to be lower. Then also anxiety, how anxious you are in general. Let's see if we can come up with maybe some fun ways to explore these areas and hopefully make improvements.
Jase: For this section, I wanted to shake it up a little bit, because there's the normal advice that you'll get and that is good, of contemplating these things, thinking about where it's coming from, maybe learning about your attachment style or learning better communication. All of that's great, and we'll talk about that in a little bit. I wanted to see if there were some fun shorter-term things that you could try to see to get a sense of what might work for you, where there might be a pathway to making progress. For this, we have three separate- I could think of them like games or maybe challenges. Challenges are hot, I think, so maybe we'll call them challenges.
Dedeker: What do you mean challenges are hot?
Jase: On social media, there's the whatever challenge.
Dedeker: I don't know if the kids do challenges anymore.
Jase: Is that not a thing?
Emily: The Ice Bucket challenge was a millennial thing for sure.
Dedeker: I think challenges are more millennial. Now it's only dances, Jase.
Jase: The dance challenge.
Emily: Only dance.
Dedeker: It's only dance.
Jase: Okay. Shit. I should have made this into a dance.
Emily: Don't put it on social media and ask for approval.
Jase: Oh, man.
Emily: That's your challenge,
Jase: I did one TikTok dance ever. It was just a couple weeks ago on my sister's TikTok.
Dedeker: How do you feel?
Jase: I wish it had more likes. That was hard. However, I did get a lot of approval from my sister and some of her friends for how fast I learned to dance.
Dedeker: Okay. That's good.
Emily: That's good.
Jase: That felt good.
Emily: That's good. Here's a little challenge for you, and this is a good one for me. It is a no-apology day. See if you can go an entire day without apologizing to someone for, I don't know, like, "Oh, I'm so sorry that I took this plate away from you out of your hands and put it in the proper place where plates are supposed to go."
Dedeker: Wait. What is the situation you're describing?
Jase: I'm also curious about this.
Dedeker: Is this a restaurant industry-
Emily: That was a restaurant thing, but I realized it probably wasn't a great example. I'm sorry about that. I'm sorry.
Dedeker: No. No apologies.
Jase: See? This is a challenge for you, yes.
Emily: No, for sure.
Dedeker: It's about unnecessary apologies specifically however you might interpret that?
Emily: Yes, I say, "I'm sorry," all the time for really silly things. This is a great one for me to just try to go an entire day without saying, "I'm sorry."
Dedeker: Report back to us when that happens.
Emily: I will try that. This is another good one for me, is taking a social media vacation. Completely disconnect from all social media for at least one day or maybe a whole weekend. I do see people doing this fairly often or saying, "I'm going to log off of Facebook for a month," for instance. All social media, that's a big one because I really like Twitter or X, whatever it's called now. It's fun to scroll on Twitter. If you just go a whole day without scrolling or Instagram or any of the above, that's good.
Jase: Here's the part that I think is interesting about it, is to get a sense of how you feel at the beginning, in the middle, and the end of that experience. This means not just not scrolling, but this is like turning off notifications so you're not getting messages, you're not getting anything. That's the part where you maybe need to tell anyone who relies on reaching you through Facebook Messenger or through Instagram DMs or something that you're not going to be available for a day.
It'll be interesting to see how you feel, because I think Emily, in your example, you might go through a little bit of this, "What do I do now-
Emily: Panic.
Jase: -when I'm sitting here not scrolling through X?" You may find yourself being antsy or wondering or worrying, "Oh, but people won't know what's going on with me. They'll be worried about me," or something like that. Then see how that changes throughout that day or that weekend. How do you feel in the middle of it? Then how do you feel by the end when you're thinking about going back to it? Has that changed your relationship at all? I find that a lot of people are surprised by how much everyone didn't notice.
Emily: Yes, because everyone's doing the same thing and they're worrying about themselves.
Jase: There just so much going on. Exactly.
Emily: Exactly. The three of us, I guess it was probably four or five years ago at this point, but we did a really amazing meditation retreat together where we had our phones taken away from us in the first day.
Dedeker: We didn't have our phones taken away from us.
Emily: We didn't? I think they took them.
Dedeker: No, we put our phones away somewhere. They don't take it. They don't forcibly take it from you.
Emily: Not forcibly, but I was like, "Please take this out of my hand so that I cannot look at it."
Jase: I think you had the option to give it to them.
Emily: I'm pretty sure I took that option because it would have been really difficult for me to not look. Initially, yes, you go through a little bit of panic, but by the end, I didn't want them to give it back to me. I was like, "You can keep it."
Jase: "You can keep it."
Emily: "You can keep it." Going through something like this, I think it puts into perspective how much you do tend to look at your phone. I'm saying this to myself, even though I know all of us are addicted.
Jase: That's a good challenge. I love that one. Then the third one here, this is the appreciate yourself challenge. Now this one could look a few different ways. Essentially, it's the idea of affirmations. Either out loud or in a journal, writing down or saying some kind of affirmation that you appreciate yourself for who you are and not just what you do, because we're human beings, not human doings.
This is one that actually just last week in talking to my therapist, this was her thing was like, "I think you should try saying this." That one was just, "I appreciate myself." It was super simple. We toyed around with different wordings and I kept trying to change it to be like, "What if it's like, I appreciate myself for working really hard, or I appreciate myself for whatever?" She was like, "See, you're falling back to things you do that make you worthy of being appreciated, not just being, not just who you are."
I'm still struggling with it. This is still my homework right now, so I'm working on this myself. This could be something like, "I appreciate myself. I am a kind and caring person. I am a good friend," and not something like, "I take good care of my family," or, "I appreciate myself for how hard I work," or, "I appreciate that I'm a perfectionist," or I don't know, whatever it is to focus on more of a state of being. For me, unlike the social media challenge that I think takes a little bit to start feeling weird, this one, the second she said it to me, I was like, "I don't know about that." She's like, "I can tell this makes you uncomfortable." I was like, "Yes."
Emily: It's probably why you should do it.
Dedeker: I think also generally, if you think that this is something that you tend to slide into, just check in on how well you're taking care of yourself. I constantly think of this image that I saw that floats around the Instagram therapist space sometimes, but it was illustrated specifically in raccoons for some reason. I don't know why, but it made it stick in my brain.
Basically it said, if you hate yourself, go take a shower. If you hate everyone else, go get something to eat. If you feel like everyone hates you, go get some sleep, because these things really do influence how we perceive the world and our relationships with other people. The thing that I would add to that is maybe some of those, any of those, getting in some movement also, again, can just help to shake things up. I think all of these things, if you're taking care of yourself, it can help you feel a little bit more grounded and have more resources to be able to handle a world that sometimes doesn't always give you approval all the time.
Jase: These both came up. I just recently had a doctor visit with a new doctor who's great, but we were talking about depression and anxiety and things like that. The two things he talked about right away was sleep, asking how I'm sleeping, if I'm getting enough, and then if I'm exercising. He was saying that just based on the research in terms of depression and anxiety, that it's specifically strength training exercise, and getting enough sleep are the things that have this really, really strong causative effect, actually. You can actually study the causation and not just a correlation in those, showing those are the big ones.
He's like, "As long as you're doing those, let's talk about how else we can treat this." He's like, "That's always where I have people start, is make sure you've got those two things going or at least improving that you're working on those."
Dedeker: Also, of course, professional help. If this feels like this is a little too big or there's something that's really sticky or overwhelming about this, that CBT-based therapies can work to help reframe any negative thought patterns that you have about yourself. Somatic therapies can help you to work through traumas, embodied fears that aren't maybe so easy to just reframe in your brain and talk through.
I think affirmations feel a little bit more CBT to me. For some people, that works really well to give a replacement thought to focus on. For other people, if your sense of not feeling like you have enough approval feels like it lives somewhere from the neck down and is really hard to get that emotional sense, exploring it somatically could be really helpful too, or things like antidepressants or anxiety medications, it could be a game changer for you if other things haven't done the trick.
Jase: With all of this, just remember that it's a gradual process. Change takes time and consistent effort, but celebrate the small victories in reducing your approval-seeking. If you want to try one of those challenges, celebrate the fact that you did that at all, even if you started with just a few hours of not apologizing or not being on social media or appreciating yourself. Even if you try it just a little bit, celebrate that, enjoy that.
I know that something Dedeker has been trying to bring into our lives more is the sense of feeling relief. If you get through something that's difficult or something you were worried about doesn't happen, of taking a moment to just appreciate that feeling of relief, because so often we just blow past that into whatever the next thing is.
I think with these challenges or with any of this stuff, if you do notice like, "Hey, actually, I did get better sleep last night and I'm noticing I don't feel as much of this anxiety or worry that people might not like me, hey, cool, let me take a moment, just a moment, to enjoy that for a second." That sometimes we forget to focus on when we're not suffering, and so just having that moment of like, "Hey, cool, this is nice, this is good," can be really valuable.
Start today, just take one small step, could be one of those games, could be therapy, could be affirmations, any of that, and just do that and appreciate yourself for it. I appreciate you for it too. Not that you need it-
Emily: We all appreciate you.
Jase: -from me, not that you need it from us, but we do also appreciate you for it. We would love to hear from all of you out there on our question of the week, which we post to our Instagram stories, which is, how does approval-seeking show up in your social media habits? It's a good question for us to ask on social media because we know you're there if you're answering the question. How does approval-seeking show up in your social media habits? What does that look like for you?