September 25, 2025 • 42 mins
In our twenties, the feedback sources that once defined our worth - grades, report cards, and parental praise - start to disappear. This leaves a void, which many of us instinctively turn to external sources like social media, career achievements, and the opinions of others, to fill. And while this external validation isn’t inherently bad, we need to be mindful of refilling our own sense of self before becoming reliant on others.
In this episode, we discuss why a life built on others' approval is like living on quicksand and how to cultivate a sturdy, reliable sense of self that will withstand the inevitable ebb and flow of external opinions.
We’ll explore:
• The difference between external and internal validation
• Why our brains are wired to seek social approval
• The looking glass self and the inherent need to belong
• How contingent self-esteem can quietly erode confidence
• How to recognise when you’re outsourcing your self-worth
• Balancing feedback without letting it define you
If the number of likes on your Instagram post has ever dictated how you feel - this episode is for you.
Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg
Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast
For business: psychologyofyour20s@gmail.com
The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode as we of
course break down the psychology of our twenties. Today, we're
going to talk about external validation. We're going to talk
about external validation and why it is that we seem
to spend so much of our short, precious, miraculous lives
(00:49):
looking for approval. It's this thought that seems to like
stalk us in the back of even our most confident moments.
You know, but do they like me? Am I enough? Like?
What are they secretly thinking about me? Have I proved
myself yet? And I can't be the only one who
has kind of realized how much these thoughts just like
take from being able to just exist in my own timeline,
(01:13):
in my own body, in the moment, in the things
that I enjoy. It's like, every single time I do something,
there is always this thought that has to be devoted
to someone else, which is honestly pretty exhausting. In our twenties,
I think we are particularly susceptible to the hunger and
the need for external validation. It is a decade of
first first jobs, first autut relationships, first time living independently,
(01:38):
and because everything feels uncertain, sometimes it feels like we
just keep looking to our left, keep looking to others,
looking over our shoulder, looking for someone to give us
a sign or give us some sense of guidance that
we are getting it right, that we ourselves are right
and don't get me wrong. You know, validation feels good.
There's like a rush, a warm like a sense of
(02:01):
being seen. But it's how much we rely on that
feeling that actually makes a difference. When we rely on
others to tell us we're worthy, we basically hand over
the keys to our self esteem and say, like, do
whatever you want with this. You know, every compliment or
moment of praise can be kind of make or break,
and every critique is like a threat to a much
(02:22):
deeper part of who we are, and that is what
we're going to talk about today. It can be addictive,
but external validation is remarkably fragile, as many people who
have had it and lost it will tell you, and
it can leave us feeling deeply hollow if and when,
because it is a situation of when it disappears. So
(02:43):
in this episode, we're going to break down why it
actually feels so good, why some part of us really
needs it, but then also how we can shift back
towards internal validation. What are the hidden costs of relying
on this a little bit too much? How does people's
experience with fame tell us about it external validation and
social approval? And what does it due to our internal compass?
(03:05):
What does it due to our values? What does it
due to our authentic nature when other people's voices are
always allowed to speak over our own. I'm super excited
for this episode, Thank you for tuning in. Without further ado,
let's get into why we crave external validation as much
(03:26):
as we do. So you've probably heard about external internal
validation is like two sides of the same coin, two
distinct ways we build our sense of self worth, Whilst
both feel really good and are completely necessary as well.
We're not trying to like villainize external validation or make
(03:49):
it seem unimportant. They do come from very different sources,
and they have vastly different impacts on our long term wellbeing.
So what is the difference. It's in the name. External
validation is any kind of affirmation that comes from the outside,
specifically that comes from others. It operates on a bit
of a social feedback loop, whereby when someone likes a
(04:12):
photo of yours, or you experience public praise or someone
saying good job, or someone allowing you into the in group,
that kind of signals that others not only see us,
they approve of us, which therefore makes us feel good
and makes us feel like we are doing something right.
Think of it kind of like a signal from the
outside world confirming your value and therefore your broader acceptance.
(04:35):
That obviously gives us a little bit of a glow. However,
the problem is that the source of our worth, when
it is completely external, it also means it's completely outside
of our control. Even though we can dictate our actions
to try and gain more validation, there's actually no determining
whether we will actually receive it from our desired target. Therefore,
(04:57):
it is what we called a borrow or in constant
sense of value that by its very nature, can be
given or taken away by others at any time, and
more specifically, for any reason. Fair or unfair. Internal validation, however,
is different. It comes from within. Its source is from ourselves.
(05:19):
It's your ability to recognize your own worth, your own effort, integrity,
your own beauty and specialness and intelligence, regardless of whether
others react the way that you want them to. This
type of validation is not about an outcome. It's not
specifically about praise. It's not specifically about social approval. It's
about self approval and self assessment. For example, you know,
(05:43):
instead of waiting for someone to read an article you wrote,
or read or look at something you're really proud of
and acknowledge that for you, you are able to acknowledge your
hard work independently. You are able to kind of put
on your objective lenses and say, hey, that actually took
a lot of time for me, That actually is and
(06:03):
does show real talent for me, I'm allowed to be
proud of that, even if my contributions and my effort
goes unnoticed by other people. I think sometimes we have
like a natural instinct against this, because as much as
we want social approval, we also don't want to come
off as arrogant, and for a lot of cultures individualistic
(06:25):
or collective like humility is something that we prize and
praise beyond anything else. Having internal validation doesn't mean that
you are like an egomaniac. It just means that you
actually are able to be honest about your own skills,
(06:47):
about your own effort, about your own internal worth, Like
humility is sometimes just as dishonest as arrogance. So internal
validation and a sense of strong internal self worth, I think,
when done right, is like one of the most honest
ways we can show up in society and the most
(07:09):
honest ways we can approach ourselves. The difference really comes
down to this external validation really asked do they think
I'm okay? And internal validation asked do I think I'm okay.
Think about someone that's just been on a first date.
Someone reliant on external validation may start thinking, you know,
I really wonder what they thought of me. I really
(07:30):
wonder if they liked my outfit. I really wonder, like
if they really meant that compliment, if they want to
see me again. If I came off as you know,
I came across as as good or how I want
to be seen. All of these are important data points,
but it also at no point asks you how you
value that experience. Having a strong sense of internal validation
(07:53):
is walking away from a first date or any situation
and thinking you know, I was super honest, I showed
up person myself, I had fun one. Whether or not
they text me back their response to this authentic version
of me doesn't change that experience. And importantly, again both
can coexist. One doesn't cancel the other out. But whilst
(08:14):
both types of validation can coexist, they are not equal.
One of them is far sturdier than the other. Internal
validation is far more reliable. Self determination theory, which is
a really well established framework in psychology, really shows that
this is the case, and it suggests that a focus
on intrinsic sources of affirmation like personal growth, like mastery
(08:37):
of skills, like acting in alignment with our values is
directly linked and obviously linked to greater psychological resilience, greater
psychological well being, to being a happier and more well
rounded person. People who are driven by these internal motivators
are also more likely to be authentic, because if you
(08:57):
are constantly looking for social approval or you can see
how that completely and will always bring us back to
a very homogeneous and strict norm. People who are able
to really be guided by what they like about themselves
and what they like about their actions are actually also
more different and interesting. They also have a stronger resilience
(09:20):
to setbacks, They have less anxiety, they have less stress.
This is because they aren't constantly chasing an external price,
They're not constantly chasing gratification. So their focus, something that
is so precious and so prized, is more finely tuned
and comes back to the person who really should be
(09:41):
the owner of that focus and should be at the
center of that self focus, which is ourselves. So if
internal validation is so powerful, why is it not the
natural default? Well, because external validation is more immediate, it's
(10:01):
more addictive, and it is reinforced by both our biology
and our culture as well. From the time, and I
feel like we talk about this in every single episode,
We take it back to childhood. But it's because, like
it really is Pandora's box for so many of these things.
But from the time we are like little tiny humans,
most of us are conditioned to tie our worth to
other people's approval. We learn that good behavior or certain
(10:25):
behaviors earn praise, bad behaviors bring punishment. We internalize the
idea that our worth is really dictated by people's reactions
to our actions. In other words, I am what others
say I am I am dictated by how others respond
to me. This is where the concept of the looking
(10:46):
glass self comes in. It was presented by this sociologist
called Charles Houghton Cooley, and he basically argued, and I
agree with him, that our social interactions act as a
mirror to reflect back how we should view ours. Else
we really do develop our sense of self, not in
a bubble, but by imagining how others see us, by
(11:07):
interpreting their reactions, and then building our identity around that reflection.
If people laugh at your jokes, you start to believe
you're the funny one. If they criticize your looks or
make sly digs, you start to believe you're unattractive or
that you need to change something about yourself. If people
tell you you're creative enough, you will begin to see that
(11:28):
you are a creative person and begin to internalize that
and believe that. We start to view ourselves in the
way we think others view us. And that's the key thing.
This is to just add another layer to this mirror.
This is only our perception of what they think they
are perceiving. We can never actually know. We can try
(11:49):
and know, and we can gather information from their praise
and their compliments and their approval, but at the end
of the day, like they don't know who we are,
they don't know ow and ternel motivations for doing things,
and we can't really know why they like something about us,
why they think that that's good, and whether that's a
path we want to continue to follow. Laid onto this though,
(12:12):
is the need to belong. This is a theory, it's
a truth called the need to belong theory, and it
basically argues that human beings, you've probably heard this explanation before,
they are hard wired to seek acceptance and approve of
because for most of our history, to put it bluntly,
you know, exclusion, ment, death, and that wiring is still
(12:35):
in our brains today. It's in an area called the
ventral striatum. A study from uc USC I think University
of California or USC I think it was USC. They
found that forming social ties, which are again essential, relies
specifically on two brain functions, learning from positive outcomes or
(12:57):
learning from social rewards, and tracking how much others value
us through their responses, which is known as relational value.
Both of these systems for literally building relationships and bonds
with other humans could not operate without us being able
to interpret and internalize external validation. And this makes the
(13:20):
need to belong a powerful, albeit of an unconscious force
and shaping our behaviors, shaping our self esteem, shaping our
reliance once again on praise, on external validation. It's all
coming back to it, right, This ventral strayatom that we
talked about, it also helps trigger dopamine receptors and pleasure
(13:40):
centers in our brain when we do receive social approval.
This is a very biological reductionist way of seeing human behavior,
but it essentially says that the only reason we do
anything is if we are rewarded for it, and the
things that are rewarded the most are the things that
we continue to pursue or do more of, whether that
(14:02):
is a drug, whether that is a type of food,
whether that is a type of reaction that we get
from another human. This dopamine surge creates positive feelings, it
reinforces that behavior, leading again to more validation seeking behaviors,
because the more we receive it, the more we crave it.
(14:26):
A twenty sixteen study published in the Journal of Psychological
Sciences really interesting. It looked at this exact mechanism. Basically,
researchers involve the sample of thirty two teenagers aged between
thirteen and eighteen, and they used an fMRI scanner to
look at the teenager's brain activity whilst they looked at
(14:48):
photographs on a computer screen. And they designed like these
photos to basically be presented to kind of simulate Instagram
and to make it feel like a social media feed.
And they also included photos of the teens themselves and
also of others, So when the participants saw their own
photos with a high number of likes, they were told
(15:09):
that other people in this study had really liked those
photos of them. The brain regions involved in that reward
circuit showed crazy spikes in activity. Interestingly, too, participants were
also more likely to like a photo of themselves if
they saw that it had already received likes from others,
(15:31):
so the approval others were giving them directly. This is
the link to the approval and the sense of self
worth they were giving on to themselves. This combination of
reward and imitation kind of suggests that the brain is
not only being told this is a good thing to like,
but also this is a good thing to do. The
(15:52):
brain associates the specific content, the photo, of the pose,
the setting with the positive feeling of social approval. Therefore,
a person would be more likely to want to recreate
that experience of getting that reward by taking a similar
photo of themselves, and would also equally learn from the
moments where a specific photo or a specific behavior wasn't
(16:13):
validated as a sign that it isn't accepted, and having
not been accompanied by a dopamine spike, perhaps by a
dopamine drop, they won't perform that behavior anymore. So if
we consider all these things together, the childhood conditioning, the
evolutionary biology, the modern technology, it really makes sense why
(16:33):
we fall into the trap of chasing external validation. It's quick,
it's powerful, it feels remarkably good until it doesn't. And
this is where we need to explore the potential harms
of being reliant on external validation, and so so much
more and we're going to do so after this short break.
(16:59):
You know what I all end up thinking about when
I talk about external validation, I always end up thinking
about like the modern day fame cycle, you know. I
think about how we treat celebrities and musicians, and like
what it must feel like when they're the it thing,
when they're like really scratching, like the perfect creative itch
(17:20):
that like society wants them to, when they're like behaving
exactly how we want them to, how much praise and
like external validation is like pumped into their veins. And
then at some point, I think this happens with every
single celebrity, especially female celebrities. At some point the tide
turns and they're like not the hot thing anymore, They're
not new anymore. I think about Disney stars like Miley Cyrus,
(17:43):
like Demi Levado, like Lindsay Lohan, and how their entire
identity as children and teenagers would have been built on
people telling them what to do and them doing it
and being told good job. And then like overnight that
goes away for them and they're like suddenly hated. And
I've been watching a lot of interviews that people have
done with these people, and they talk about how cold
(18:08):
and dark and scary those moments feel for them, because
they talk about how they were basically monkeys, like trained
to only respond to external validation, whose own internal compass
was like sledge hammered to death, and so when the
external validation disappeared, they literally didn't know who they were anymore.
And obviously this is like a very very very slim
(18:29):
part of society and maybe not entirely relatable, but on
an individual level, like it kind of is so many
of us, especially if you were like a golden child,
or like a highly academic child, or a child athlete,
or like the oldest sibling. It's the same process. It's
literally the same system. You're just not like sponsored by
the Disney Channel it felt so good to be praised
(18:50):
and uses it as an example. But the tap does
run dry eventually. Eventually you make a mistake. Eventually you
don't win. Eventually you want to rebel a little bit,
or you get tied. And if your entire belief system
is built on the value other people saw in you
and your behavior, there is a long, long drop coming afterwards.
(19:11):
That's the exact trap we're talking about. External validation. Feels
incredible on the moment, it convinces you to trust in it.
But the more you do, the more fragile your sense
of self becomes. If you only live for the nod
of approval, if you only live for other people telling
you you did a good job, you are a good human,
you're a nice person, you're an attractive person. Pretty soon
(19:32):
your identity becomes a performance, and you morth into the
kind of person, a kind of person who is like
a human chameleon, constantly scanning the environment and thinking who
do I need to be today so that they will
like me? And the cost of this is really, really high.
You lose touch with your authentic sense of self, with
(19:57):
your desires. You start making choices not because they feel right,
but because they will appear right. You might pursue a
career that everyone else calls impressive, doctor, lawyer, executive, whatever
it is, and then you just feel numb, You just
feel awful. You have no desire to be there. You
might stay in a relationship that looks picture perfect to
(20:20):
your parents, to your friends, to whoever it is because
everyone else admires it. Everyone else is saying that this
looks great, it must be great, even if behind closed doors,
you know you're really lonely, and you're really restless, and
you're really unhappy the thought of ending it. You know,
it's not just that you'd be going through a breakup,
(20:41):
it's not just that you would be leaving a career.
It feels like this, like huge personal failure of yours
would be on display. And this is why external validation
is a driver of people pleasing tendencies. Over time, your
own wants, your own desires, they become muffled. You cannot
hear them clear anymore, because the desire to be liked
(21:02):
or validated has been fed and fed and fed and
has become this big, giant monster. And the irony is
you become so adaptable that you actually start to disappear,
because there is nothing that remains constant about you. As
you visit different social settings, as you see different people,
you change your opinions depending on who you're with. You
(21:25):
laugh at jokes you don't actually find funny. You become
so flexible to the point of erasure. There is also
this very famous series of studies that show how this
can cause us to not trust ourselves and show us
how it can cause us to just like do really
silly things. It's probably one of the most famous series
(21:46):
of psychological studies ever done. It's called the ash conformity experiments.
In these experiments, if you're a psychology student, I'm so sorry,
but going back to psyche oh one, but I'll be
brief and i'll describe them. In these experiments, the research
is one participant in a room with a group of
people who they also thought were participants, and the one
(22:07):
participant didn't know that these other people were in on it.
I think the room had like seven or maybe ten people,
and they were asked to do this task. It was
super simple on the screen. They were shown one line
and then they were shown three other lines, and they
were basically like link up the one line to the
other line that it matches, like genuinely a task that
(22:29):
a child could have done. And then what they would
have happened is all of the fake participants would say
the wrong answer, like it was glaringly incorrect. Seventy five
percent of the time, the participants would just go along
with it because they didn't want to experience disapproval. There's
another risk here, obviously. It can cause you to say
(22:51):
the wrong thing. It can cause you to just do
things that you know aren't right and not really understand
those reasons. A more insidious risk is that people who
rely heavily on external validation become very easy targets for manipulation.
You know, a boss that sees that you light up
when they offer you praise can withhold it strategically. Suddenly
(23:13):
you're working like seventy hours a week, not because you
want to, but because you're desperate for that tiny hit
of recognition. You know the partner who withholds affection unless
you do what they want. You know, they realize that
your self worth depends on their attention, and so they
can ration it to keep you insecure, giving you love
one day, pulling away the next until you're hooked. You're
(23:35):
hooked on chasing their approval instead of really questioning, like, hey,
what do I actually deserve here? The sibling like to
give one more example, like the sibling who showers you
with approval when you serve their needs and withdraws at
the next Again, is operating based on the functions and
the leavers of external validation and how it can be
(23:58):
pulled and shifted and moved to dictate our behavior. That
is the hidden danger of maybe accidentally building your entire
worth on what other people think. It doesn't just cost
you your own voice, it puts power in someone else's hands.
This is actually a state that has a name as
known as contingent self esteem, and this occurs where your
self worth is entirely dependent on external outcomes. Research has
(24:24):
consistently shown that those who have higher levels of contingent
self esteem are significantly more likely to experience greater depressive symptoms.
They are also more likely to report a less coherent
sense of self less confidence in their abilities as well,
And this totally makes sense, Like, yes, we are built
to operate within social systems and around community, and approval
(24:49):
as part of those systems is something that we want.
But you are also an individual with unique thoughts and
feelings and desires and intentions, and that has to be
honored as well, otherwise you will feel completely detached. And ironically,
the more you do, the less people actually know you,
and maybe like you. They know like the agreeable version
(25:10):
and the adaptable version and the one who never rocks
the boat, but that's not actually you. They don't know
the parts of you that maybe you feel are too
vulnerable to share. Because it might upset them. Also, you know,
intimacy requires friction. Sometimes it requires disagreeing with people, it
requires upsetting them, you know, because that's just human nature.
(25:32):
Sometimes you're not always going to get along. People do
things that may hurt you. But if you're afraid of
calling them out or afraid of putting them on the spot,
you're never actually going to be able to resolve anything
or be get to know someone deeper. Some people don't
agree with me when I say this, but I've found
this to be true from my own experience. You don't
(25:54):
really know a friend, and you don't really have the
promise of a long life friendship until you have survived
your first disagreement or your first argument. Because it shows
you can meet each other on a deeper level. You
know that you want to understand the other person, and
it shows that like you're willing to just be like,
this is my opinion, this is my perspective, this is
(26:14):
who I am, and I need you to respect that.
But if you're constantly running away from that vulnerability, or
you're constantly running away from uncomfortable moments because it might
mean that someone may like you less, it actually does
mean that your opportunities for intimacy platonic to do with
family romantic, they become more limited. This brings me to
(26:37):
a concept I talk about a lot which I love,
called validation debt. We can think about it like this.
When you finance your sense of worth through other people,
you're essentially taking out loans, and at first the interest
seems super manageable. You know, a compliment here, like a
bit of encouragement, a bit of engagement there. It sustains
(27:00):
you and you can kind of also rely on yourself
a little bit as well. But over time the debt
piles up. You need bigger and bigger payments, more praise,
more reassurance just to feel stable. And when those payments
don't come, you go into a deficit. That's validation debt.
(27:21):
The more you outsource, the more you borrow, the less
capable you feel of doing it yourself. And here's the
thing about debt is stressful. Emotional debt, validation debt is stressful,
and so as you're facing that stress, you do actually
chase reassurance even harder, which ironically actually makes you feel
(27:41):
even less capable of holding yourself up. So how do
we get our authority back? How do we get our
internal validation back, especially if it does feel like you've
outsourced it for years, and I get it. I have
done that for a while myself. It's not your fault,
it's not that I'm sitting here and judging you for it.
(28:02):
I just want to help you kind of unlock the
magic and unlock the ordinary things that you do and
you can do to bring yourself back to having a
stable internal sense of self worth. I think the first
step is really noticing the moments when you do tend
to outsource your worth. Maybe you know you change your
(28:25):
caption like a million times before posting a photo, Maybe
like you rehearse your opinion in your head a million
times before saying it out loud, just to make sure
it won't be wrong. Catching yourself in these small moments
of self monitoring can be uncomfortable, but awareness in those
moments is also everything. Without it, you really can't shift
(28:48):
the pattern. What this allows you to do is notice
the kind of things that you actually might be a
little bit insecure about, which is why you feel like
you need that extra boost from If you only feel
confident and satisfied with how you look when your friends
compliment your outfit or your makeup. Then it's likely that
this is an area of deeper insecurity for you, and
(29:10):
you can use these moments as kind of target practice,
as opportunities to really understand where you need to pour
more deeply into yourself. Another piece of this is really
reconnecting with your values and reconnecting with the fact that
you are an incredibly unique and worthwhile person, whether someone
else sees that or not. While you're busy trying to
(29:32):
earn the validation of others, what you may not realize
is that you have everything you need within you to
validate your own experiences, and that there are going to
be a lot of times people won't understand why you're
doing something, or won't understand you, or won't like you
for whatever freakin' reason and for whatever projection they've got
going on, and you're still going to be okay. Spend
(29:55):
some time just with relearning what you really care about
and more importan, only what kind of person you want
to be? Really ask yourself this, really try this exercise
for me. Imagine what kind of old person you want
to be, Not the next person you want to be
in five years, not the person you want to be
in twenty in like forty years, Like what kind of
(30:16):
person do you want people to say that you were?
What kind of person do you want to operate as?
What kind of person do you see in your life
who you think, Wow, they are really amazing and they're unshakable?
How could you make yourself more like that? And how
you make yourself more like that is by prioritizing what
you value as a daily act, whether it is kindness,
(30:38):
whether it is creativity, honesty, independence, When was the last
time you did anything that was in line with these things?
Your identity and your internal sense of self worth? And yeah,
your identity is a verb, like you have to actually
act on the things that you want to be. You
have to act on your creative instinct instead of just
(30:58):
continuing to tell yourself that you or creative. You have
to act on your generosity, You have to act on
your independence. You have to act on the parts of
you that you want to remain stable, so that you
aren't just relying on the kind of less nourishing forms
of external validation people might incidentally give you. It might
(31:19):
feel really weird at first, but you'll be really surprised
about how much stuff you actually do for some kind
of gratification from others, and how little we actually do
for ourselves. So when you stop engaging with those things
and you start really tapping into the things that you
really want to do, you do start to live more
authentically and a lot of stuff follows in and flows
(31:42):
in from that. It's like you open up the doors
to just feel a deep sense of like confidence and
love for yourself. The next step speaking of self love
is to practice self recognition. This can sound a little
bit corny, but it's powerful. Every time you do something
that you're proud of, whether it is completing a reject
at work, setting a healthy boundary, committing to a goal,
(32:04):
taking a pause, and like resisting the urge to just
do something, making something creative, doing something creative instead of
just being like cool, I'm gonna tell someone about that,
or I'm just gonna move on from that. Really notice
how you feel on yourself. Bask in that feeling for
a little while, that feeling of pride. It's okay to
(32:24):
feel proud of what you have done. It's not arrogant.
Reflect on it, cherish it, bury it deep inside of you,
like even if it's just for a minute. Reinforce this
idea through this act that your own self evaluation matters,
and that you are able to pour into yourself and
acknowledge yourself as much as anyone else is able to.
(32:45):
Part of this is also about tolerating discomfort. When you
start to rely less on external validation, there will be
moments that feel completely unbearable. I'm not gonna like sugarcoat it.
There will be moments where people will respond negative to
the fact that you don't need them to valid at
you anymore, and it's gonna feel really awful. There will
(33:06):
be moments when you want someone to reassure you and
they won't, and that gap can feel like rejection. But
if you can just sit in it, breathe through it,
and just notice that you are okay after it has happened.
Notice how you survive those moments. Notice how, yeah, someone
not liking you is uncomfortable, it doesn't mean the end
(33:27):
of the world. You are strengthening once again that internal muscle.
And of course there will always be those moments, no
matter how hard you try, where someone will not like you,
where someone will disagree with you. I always say this,
(33:48):
like every single person has a hater, even the most brilliant,
magnificent person that you know who you think, no one
could hate, no one could disagree with they have a hater,
And how much time would they waste? How much time
would you waste if you just only could think about
(34:10):
how you could change their mind and never thought about
how you could change yours in terms of valuing their opinion.
So here are some reminders, some final reminders to carry
with you in these situations. First, remember that being liked
is not the same as being loved. I spent a
(34:31):
lot of time in my early twenties desperately like changing myself,
switching things up, hiding parts about myself so that people
and especially guys like would like me, would want to
date me, would find that I was conveniently able to
slot into their life. Did they love me? No? Did
(34:55):
they respect me? Probably not either. Being liked it often
it feels like you are like smoothing out a rough
edge so that it doesn't you know, clip someone on
the way past. It feels like you're adapting, fitting in.
It feels like you are doing other people the favor,
and it feels like you are winning love. You're not
(35:15):
being loved. Being truly loved means someone seeing those rough
edges and staying anyways and liking those quirks. It also
means not asking for someone else to change just so
that it's easier for you to fit them into your life.
Ask yourself, am I chasing likability at the expense of authenticity?
(35:39):
Second the second reminder, every time you perform for approval,
you lose a little bit of intimacy with yourself. And
you know what I'm not talking about like wearing makeup,
and I'm not talking about putting a little bit of
extra effort into you know, your appearance, and I'm not
talking about asking for a compliment from your boss. What
I'm talking about here is that emotional debt we mentioned earlier,
(36:02):
that emotional debt whereby you choose something that is less
comfortable for you so that you can gain something from
someone else by changing yourself. Again, it's not love. And
it's also like I always imagine like my inner child
(36:23):
sitting there and like loving my outfit, loving what I'm wearing,
and me being like, no wrong choice. We're gonna do
what Todd wants me to wear. We're gonna choose an action,
We're gonna make a decision based off like some anonymous, inanimate,
cumulative force of other people's opinions. Your opinion doesn't matter
as much to me. When you override your real thoughts
(36:46):
and feelings just to fit in, you are telling yourself
that your opinion and your truth isn't valid unless someone
else approves of it. And we know how dangerous of
a message that is to internalize, because you end up
being someone who can be easily swayed, easily manipulated, and
easily cruel and mean to yourself. Third, and this is
(37:10):
similar to what I was talking about before, but I
just want to give it its own space in this episode,
you actually can't control other people's opinions, even if you
think that you dictating your actions and dictating your behaviors
is you can twist yourself into knots to appear perfect
and someone still won't like you. You can be perfect
for one person and someone else will hate you for it,
(37:33):
not because you did anything wrong, but because people carry
their own preferences, people carry their own projections, their own insecurities.
You know, you can be the ripest, juiciest peach in
the world and there's still going to be someone who
doesn't like peaches. Right the relief isn't realizing that that's okay,
and their opinion is like literally none of your business,
(37:57):
the same way that your opinion of them none of
their business. Either. As much as we want social approval,
we can live without the social approval of people who
we need to bend over backwards to obtain. There are
plenty of people in the world who will give you
what you need without you needing to change, And even
(38:18):
if those people never show up, you always have yourself. Lastly,
a really simple mantra that you might want to keep
close if any of today's conversation has resonated with you,
is that I want to be chosen for who I am,
not for the version of me that performs best for approval. You,
(38:40):
at the end of the day, have a very short
time on this earth. Sometimes reinforcing and reminding yourself of
that existential perspective that you really don't have much time
reminds you that if you don't have much time, you
have even less time for the opinions of others. You
have even less less time for the opinions of others
(39:03):
who want to tear you down, either consciously or unconsciously.
If this is all you have this experience. Your time
and your energy is precious. Please do not waste it
on someone else. They've got the time for themselves. You've
got the time for yourself. Make sure that you are
using it sparingly and in an important manner. Again, we
(39:25):
are social beings. It's not that getting social approval or
being loved or heard or seen or complimented is a
bad thing. These things are deeply nourishing. It's just that
these are the decorations. These are the decorations like in
the house, these are the decorations that come secondary. You've
(39:46):
got to build the foundation. You've got to have a roof,
you've got to have wolves, you got to have plumbing.
You've got to feel stable and tall on yourself before
asking other people to decorate your internal home for you.
At the end of the day, the strongest and most
consistent kind of validation is the one that is steadily
within you. Please do not forget it. Please do not
(40:10):
forget to cherish it. Don't forget that like you're a
freaking badass, and that you're really freaking cool, and that
you're an amazing, intelligent and kind person, and all of
that would still be the case if every single person
in your life was replaced with a whole other group
of people tomorrow. There is something within you that no
one else can have, no one else can change, no
(40:32):
one else is entitled to, and which will exist regardless
of approval or not. Make sure that your relationship with
what makes you you remain strong in the face of
all of that. Thank you for listening as far as
you have. If you've made it to the end of
the episode, I really really appreciate it. Leave some suggestions
(40:53):
down below with what makes you confident and what makes
you I guess able to fight off the desire for
constant external validation for me, like that's music for me.
That's like spending time with people that I love. For
me as well, that's like every single morning waking up
(41:17):
and just being like I want to I just want
to be and I want to experience this in the
way and experience life in this day in the way
that is most profound for me. And if people criticize
me or if people don't understand that, like I really
don't owe them an explanation. And I think it's really
having that value set, that system of like Okay, I
(41:38):
know what I want and I know where I'm going
and I know who I need to be. Everything else
is a distraction. So what's your tip? What is your advice?
Share it down below. Make sure to leave a five
star review if you are listening and if you enjoyed
this episode, and make sure you're subscribed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
the iet radio app where wherever you are tuning in from.
(42:01):
You can also follow us on Instagram at that psychology
podcast if you want to break down of this episode,
if you want to give us an episode suggestion or
a guest suggestion, if you want just to talk further
about your thoughts on this episode, I'd love to hear
from you. And until next time, be safe, be kind,
be gentle with yourself. We will talk very very soon.
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode as we of
course break down the psychology of our twenties. Today, we're
going to talk about external validation. We're going to talk
about external validation and why it is that we seem
to spend so much of our short, precious, miraculous lives
(00:49):
looking for approval. It's this thought that seems to like
stalk us in the back of even our most confident moments.
You know, but do they like me? Am I enough? Like?
What are they secretly thinking about me? Have I proved
myself yet? And I can't be the only one who
has kind of realized how much these thoughts just like
take from being able to just exist in my own timeline,
(01:13):
in my own body, in the moment, in the things
that I enjoy. It's like, every single time I do something,
there is always this thought that has to be devoted
to someone else, which is honestly pretty exhausting. In our twenties,
I think we are particularly susceptible to the hunger and
the need for external validation. It is a decade of
first first jobs, first autut relationships, first time living independently,
(01:38):
and because everything feels uncertain, sometimes it feels like we
just keep looking to our left, keep looking to others,
looking over our shoulder, looking for someone to give us
a sign or give us some sense of guidance that
we are getting it right, that we ourselves are right
and don't get me wrong. You know, validation feels good.
There's like a rush, a warm like a sense of
(02:01):
being seen. But it's how much we rely on that
feeling that actually makes a difference. When we rely on
others to tell us we're worthy, we basically hand over
the keys to our self esteem and say, like, do
whatever you want with this. You know, every compliment or
moment of praise can be kind of make or break,
and every critique is like a threat to a much
(02:22):
deeper part of who we are, and that is what
we're going to talk about today. It can be addictive,
but external validation is remarkably fragile, as many people who
have had it and lost it will tell you, and
it can leave us feeling deeply hollow if and when,
because it is a situation of when it disappears. So
(02:43):
in this episode, we're going to break down why it
actually feels so good, why some part of us really
needs it, but then also how we can shift back
towards internal validation. What are the hidden costs of relying
on this a little bit too much? How does people's
experience with fame tell us about it external validation and
social approval? And what does it due to our internal compass?
(03:05):
What does it due to our values? What does it
due to our authentic nature when other people's voices are
always allowed to speak over our own. I'm super excited
for this episode, Thank you for tuning in. Without further ado,
let's get into why we crave external validation as much
(03:26):
as we do. So you've probably heard about external internal
validation is like two sides of the same coin, two
distinct ways we build our sense of self worth, Whilst
both feel really good and are completely necessary as well.
We're not trying to like villainize external validation or make
(03:49):
it seem unimportant. They do come from very different sources,
and they have vastly different impacts on our long term wellbeing.
So what is the difference. It's in the name. External
validation is any kind of affirmation that comes from the outside,
specifically that comes from others. It operates on a bit
of a social feedback loop, whereby when someone likes a
(04:12):
photo of yours, or you experience public praise or someone
saying good job, or someone allowing you into the in group,
that kind of signals that others not only see us,
they approve of us, which therefore makes us feel good
and makes us feel like we are doing something right.
Think of it kind of like a signal from the
outside world confirming your value and therefore your broader acceptance.
(04:35):
That obviously gives us a little bit of a glow. However,
the problem is that the source of our worth, when
it is completely external, it also means it's completely outside
of our control. Even though we can dictate our actions
to try and gain more validation, there's actually no determining
whether we will actually receive it from our desired target. Therefore,
(04:57):
it is what we called a borrow or in constant
sense of value that by its very nature, can be
given or taken away by others at any time, and
more specifically, for any reason. Fair or unfair. Internal validation, however,
is different. It comes from within. Its source is from ourselves.
(05:19):
It's your ability to recognize your own worth, your own effort, integrity,
your own beauty and specialness and intelligence, regardless of whether
others react the way that you want them to. This
type of validation is not about an outcome. It's not
specifically about praise. It's not specifically about social approval. It's
about self approval and self assessment. For example, you know,
(05:43):
instead of waiting for someone to read an article you wrote,
or read or look at something you're really proud of
and acknowledge that for you, you are able to acknowledge your
hard work independently. You are able to kind of put
on your objective lenses and say, hey, that actually took
a lot of time for me, That actually is and
(06:03):
does show real talent for me, I'm allowed to be
proud of that, even if my contributions and my effort
goes unnoticed by other people. I think sometimes we have
like a natural instinct against this, because as much as
we want social approval, we also don't want to come
off as arrogant, and for a lot of cultures individualistic
(06:25):
or collective like humility is something that we prize and
praise beyond anything else. Having internal validation doesn't mean that
you are like an egomaniac. It just means that you
actually are able to be honest about your own skills,
(06:47):
about your own effort, about your own internal worth, Like
humility is sometimes just as dishonest as arrogance. So internal
validation and a sense of strong internal self worth, I think,
when done right, is like one of the most honest
ways we can show up in society and the most
(07:09):
honest ways we can approach ourselves. The difference really comes
down to this external validation really asked do they think
I'm okay? And internal validation asked do I think I'm okay.
Think about someone that's just been on a first date.
Someone reliant on external validation may start thinking, you know,
I really wonder what they thought of me. I really
(07:30):
wonder if they liked my outfit. I really wonder, like
if they really meant that compliment, if they want to
see me again. If I came off as you know,
I came across as as good or how I want
to be seen. All of these are important data points,
but it also at no point asks you how you
value that experience. Having a strong sense of internal validation
(07:53):
is walking away from a first date or any situation
and thinking you know, I was super honest, I showed
up person myself, I had fun one. Whether or not
they text me back their response to this authentic version
of me doesn't change that experience. And importantly, again both
can coexist. One doesn't cancel the other out. But whilst
(08:14):
both types of validation can coexist, they are not equal.
One of them is far sturdier than the other. Internal
validation is far more reliable. Self determination theory, which is
a really well established framework in psychology, really shows that
this is the case, and it suggests that a focus
on intrinsic sources of affirmation like personal growth, like mastery
(08:37):
of skills, like acting in alignment with our values is
directly linked and obviously linked to greater psychological resilience, greater
psychological well being, to being a happier and more well
rounded person. People who are driven by these internal motivators
are also more likely to be authentic, because if you
(08:57):
are constantly looking for social approval or you can see
how that completely and will always bring us back to
a very homogeneous and strict norm. People who are able
to really be guided by what they like about themselves
and what they like about their actions are actually also
more different and interesting. They also have a stronger resilience
(09:20):
to setbacks, They have less anxiety, they have less stress.
This is because they aren't constantly chasing an external price,
They're not constantly chasing gratification. So their focus, something that
is so precious and so prized, is more finely tuned
and comes back to the person who really should be
(09:41):
the owner of that focus and should be at the
center of that self focus, which is ourselves. So if
internal validation is so powerful, why is it not the
natural default? Well, because external validation is more immediate, it's
(10:01):
more addictive, and it is reinforced by both our biology
and our culture as well. From the time, and I
feel like we talk about this in every single episode,
We take it back to childhood. But it's because, like
it really is Pandora's box for so many of these things.
But from the time we are like little tiny humans,
most of us are conditioned to tie our worth to
other people's approval. We learn that good behavior or certain
(10:25):
behaviors earn praise, bad behaviors bring punishment. We internalize the
idea that our worth is really dictated by people's reactions
to our actions. In other words, I am what others
say I am I am dictated by how others respond
to me. This is where the concept of the looking
(10:46):
glass self comes in. It was presented by this sociologist
called Charles Houghton Cooley, and he basically argued, and I
agree with him, that our social interactions act as a
mirror to reflect back how we should view ours. Else
we really do develop our sense of self, not in
a bubble, but by imagining how others see us, by
(11:07):
interpreting their reactions, and then building our identity around that reflection.
If people laugh at your jokes, you start to believe
you're the funny one. If they criticize your looks or
make sly digs, you start to believe you're unattractive or
that you need to change something about yourself. If people
tell you you're creative enough, you will begin to see that
(11:28):
you are a creative person and begin to internalize that
and believe that. We start to view ourselves in the
way we think others view us. And that's the key thing.
This is to just add another layer to this mirror.
This is only our perception of what they think they
are perceiving. We can never actually know. We can try
(11:49):
and know, and we can gather information from their praise
and their compliments and their approval, but at the end
of the day, like they don't know who we are,
they don't know ow and ternel motivations for doing things,
and we can't really know why they like something about us,
why they think that that's good, and whether that's a
path we want to continue to follow. Laid onto this though,
(12:12):
is the need to belong. This is a theory, it's
a truth called the need to belong theory, and it
basically argues that human beings, you've probably heard this explanation before,
they are hard wired to seek acceptance and approve of
because for most of our history, to put it bluntly,
you know, exclusion, ment, death, and that wiring is still
(12:35):
in our brains today. It's in an area called the
ventral striatum. A study from uc USC I think University
of California or USC I think it was USC. They
found that forming social ties, which are again essential, relies
specifically on two brain functions, learning from positive outcomes or
(12:57):
learning from social rewards, and tracking how much others value
us through their responses, which is known as relational value.
Both of these systems for literally building relationships and bonds
with other humans could not operate without us being able
to interpret and internalize external validation. And this makes the
(13:20):
need to belong a powerful, albeit of an unconscious force
and shaping our behaviors, shaping our self esteem, shaping our
reliance once again on praise, on external validation. It's all
coming back to it, right, This ventral strayatom that we
talked about, it also helps trigger dopamine receptors and pleasure
(13:40):
centers in our brain when we do receive social approval.
This is a very biological reductionist way of seeing human behavior,
but it essentially says that the only reason we do
anything is if we are rewarded for it, and the
things that are rewarded the most are the things that
we continue to pursue or do more of, whether that
(14:02):
is a drug, whether that is a type of food,
whether that is a type of reaction that we get
from another human. This dopamine surge creates positive feelings, it
reinforces that behavior, leading again to more validation seeking behaviors,
because the more we receive it, the more we crave it.
(14:26):
A twenty sixteen study published in the Journal of Psychological
Sciences really interesting. It looked at this exact mechanism. Basically,
researchers involve the sample of thirty two teenagers aged between
thirteen and eighteen, and they used an fMRI scanner to
look at the teenager's brain activity whilst they looked at
(14:48):
photographs on a computer screen. And they designed like these
photos to basically be presented to kind of simulate Instagram
and to make it feel like a social media feed.
And they also included photos of the teens themselves and
also of others, So when the participants saw their own
photos with a high number of likes, they were told
(15:09):
that other people in this study had really liked those
photos of them. The brain regions involved in that reward
circuit showed crazy spikes in activity. Interestingly, too, participants were
also more likely to like a photo of themselves if
they saw that it had already received likes from others,
(15:31):
so the approval others were giving them directly. This is
the link to the approval and the sense of self
worth they were giving on to themselves. This combination of
reward and imitation kind of suggests that the brain is
not only being told this is a good thing to like,
but also this is a good thing to do. The
(15:52):
brain associates the specific content, the photo, of the pose,
the setting with the positive feeling of social approval. Therefore,
a person would be more likely to want to recreate
that experience of getting that reward by taking a similar
photo of themselves, and would also equally learn from the
moments where a specific photo or a specific behavior wasn't
(16:13):
validated as a sign that it isn't accepted, and having
not been accompanied by a dopamine spike, perhaps by a
dopamine drop, they won't perform that behavior anymore. So if
we consider all these things together, the childhood conditioning, the
evolutionary biology, the modern technology, it really makes sense why
(16:33):
we fall into the trap of chasing external validation. It's quick,
it's powerful, it feels remarkably good until it doesn't. And
this is where we need to explore the potential harms
of being reliant on external validation, and so so much
more and we're going to do so after this short break.
(16:59):
You know what I all end up thinking about when
I talk about external validation, I always end up thinking
about like the modern day fame cycle, you know. I
think about how we treat celebrities and musicians, and like
what it must feel like when they're the it thing,
when they're like really scratching, like the perfect creative itch
(17:20):
that like society wants them to, when they're like behaving
exactly how we want them to, how much praise and
like external validation is like pumped into their veins. And
then at some point, I think this happens with every
single celebrity, especially female celebrities. At some point the tide
turns and they're like not the hot thing anymore, They're
not new anymore. I think about Disney stars like Miley Cyrus,
(17:43):
like Demi Levado, like Lindsay Lohan, and how their entire
identity as children and teenagers would have been built on
people telling them what to do and them doing it
and being told good job. And then like overnight that
goes away for them and they're like suddenly hated. And
I've been watching a lot of interviews that people have
done with these people, and they talk about how cold
(18:08):
and dark and scary those moments feel for them, because
they talk about how they were basically monkeys, like trained
to only respond to external validation, whose own internal compass
was like sledge hammered to death, and so when the
external validation disappeared, they literally didn't know who they were anymore.
And obviously this is like a very very very slim
(18:29):
part of society and maybe not entirely relatable, but on
an individual level, like it kind of is so many
of us, especially if you were like a golden child,
or like a highly academic child, or a child athlete,
or like the oldest sibling. It's the same process. It's
literally the same system. You're just not like sponsored by
the Disney Channel it felt so good to be praised
(18:50):
and uses it as an example. But the tap does
run dry eventually. Eventually you make a mistake. Eventually you
don't win. Eventually you want to rebel a little bit,
or you get tied. And if your entire belief system
is built on the value other people saw in you
and your behavior, there is a long, long drop coming afterwards.
(19:11):
That's the exact trap we're talking about. External validation. Feels
incredible on the moment, it convinces you to trust in it.
But the more you do, the more fragile your sense
of self becomes. If you only live for the nod
of approval, if you only live for other people telling
you you did a good job, you are a good human,
you're a nice person, you're an attractive person. Pretty soon
(19:32):
your identity becomes a performance, and you morth into the
kind of person, a kind of person who is like
a human chameleon, constantly scanning the environment and thinking who
do I need to be today so that they will
like me? And the cost of this is really, really high.
You lose touch with your authentic sense of self, with
(19:57):
your desires. You start making choices not because they feel right,
but because they will appear right. You might pursue a
career that everyone else calls impressive, doctor, lawyer, executive, whatever
it is, and then you just feel numb, You just
feel awful. You have no desire to be there. You
might stay in a relationship that looks picture perfect to
(20:20):
your parents, to your friends, to whoever it is because
everyone else admires it. Everyone else is saying that this
looks great, it must be great, even if behind closed doors,
you know you're really lonely, and you're really restless, and
you're really unhappy the thought of ending it. You know,
it's not just that you'd be going through a breakup,
(20:41):
it's not just that you would be leaving a career.
It feels like this, like huge personal failure of yours
would be on display. And this is why external validation
is a driver of people pleasing tendencies. Over time, your
own wants, your own desires, they become muffled. You cannot
hear them clear anymore, because the desire to be liked
(21:02):
or validated has been fed and fed and fed and
has become this big, giant monster. And the irony is
you become so adaptable that you actually start to disappear,
because there is nothing that remains constant about you. As
you visit different social settings, as you see different people,
you change your opinions depending on who you're with. You
(21:25):
laugh at jokes you don't actually find funny. You become
so flexible to the point of erasure. There is also
this very famous series of studies that show how this
can cause us to not trust ourselves and show us
how it can cause us to just like do really
silly things. It's probably one of the most famous series
(21:46):
of psychological studies ever done. It's called the ash conformity experiments.
In these experiments, if you're a psychology student, I'm so sorry,
but going back to psyche oh one, but I'll be
brief and i'll describe them. In these experiments, the research
is one participant in a room with a group of
people who they also thought were participants, and the one
(22:07):
participant didn't know that these other people were in on it.
I think the room had like seven or maybe ten people,
and they were asked to do this task. It was
super simple on the screen. They were shown one line
and then they were shown three other lines, and they
were basically like link up the one line to the
other line that it matches, like genuinely a task that
(22:29):
a child could have done. And then what they would
have happened is all of the fake participants would say
the wrong answer, like it was glaringly incorrect. Seventy five
percent of the time, the participants would just go along
with it because they didn't want to experience disapproval. There's
another risk here, obviously. It can cause you to say
(22:51):
the wrong thing. It can cause you to just do
things that you know aren't right and not really understand
those reasons. A more insidious risk is that people who
rely heavily on external validation become very easy targets for manipulation.
You know, a boss that sees that you light up
when they offer you praise can withhold it strategically. Suddenly
(23:13):
you're working like seventy hours a week, not because you
want to, but because you're desperate for that tiny hit
of recognition. You know the partner who withholds affection unless
you do what they want. You know, they realize that
your self worth depends on their attention, and so they
can ration it to keep you insecure, giving you love
one day, pulling away the next until you're hooked. You're
(23:35):
hooked on chasing their approval instead of really questioning, like, hey,
what do I actually deserve here? The sibling like to
give one more example, like the sibling who showers you
with approval when you serve their needs and withdraws at
the next Again, is operating based on the functions and
the leavers of external validation and how it can be
(23:58):
pulled and shifted and moved to dictate our behavior. That
is the hidden danger of maybe accidentally building your entire
worth on what other people think. It doesn't just cost
you your own voice, it puts power in someone else's hands.
This is actually a state that has a name as
known as contingent self esteem, and this occurs where your
self worth is entirely dependent on external outcomes. Research has
(24:24):
consistently shown that those who have higher levels of contingent
self esteem are significantly more likely to experience greater depressive symptoms.
They are also more likely to report a less coherent
sense of self less confidence in their abilities as well,
And this totally makes sense, Like, yes, we are built
to operate within social systems and around community, and approval
(24:49):
as part of those systems is something that we want.
But you are also an individual with unique thoughts and
feelings and desires and intentions, and that has to be
honored as well, otherwise you will feel completely detached. And ironically,
the more you do, the less people actually know you,
and maybe like you. They know like the agreeable version
(25:10):
and the adaptable version and the one who never rocks
the boat, but that's not actually you. They don't know
the parts of you that maybe you feel are too
vulnerable to share. Because it might upset them. Also, you know,
intimacy requires friction. Sometimes it requires disagreeing with people, it
requires upsetting them, you know, because that's just human nature.
(25:32):
Sometimes you're not always going to get along. People do
things that may hurt you. But if you're afraid of
calling them out or afraid of putting them on the spot,
you're never actually going to be able to resolve anything
or be get to know someone deeper. Some people don't
agree with me when I say this, but I've found
this to be true from my own experience. You don't
(25:54):
really know a friend, and you don't really have the
promise of a long life friendship until you have survived
your first disagreement or your first argument. Because it shows
you can meet each other on a deeper level. You
know that you want to understand the other person, and
it shows that like you're willing to just be like,
this is my opinion, this is my perspective, this is
(26:14):
who I am, and I need you to respect that.
But if you're constantly running away from that vulnerability, or
you're constantly running away from uncomfortable moments because it might
mean that someone may like you less, it actually does
mean that your opportunities for intimacy platonic to do with
family romantic, they become more limited. This brings me to
(26:37):
a concept I talk about a lot which I love,
called validation debt. We can think about it like this.
When you finance your sense of worth through other people,
you're essentially taking out loans, and at first the interest
seems super manageable. You know, a compliment here, like a
bit of encouragement, a bit of engagement there. It sustains
(27:00):
you and you can kind of also rely on yourself
a little bit as well. But over time the debt
piles up. You need bigger and bigger payments, more praise,
more reassurance just to feel stable. And when those payments
don't come, you go into a deficit. That's validation debt.
(27:21):
The more you outsource, the more you borrow, the less
capable you feel of doing it yourself. And here's the
thing about debt is stressful. Emotional debt, validation debt is stressful,
and so as you're facing that stress, you do actually
chase reassurance even harder, which ironically actually makes you feel
(27:41):
even less capable of holding yourself up. So how do
we get our authority back? How do we get our
internal validation back, especially if it does feel like you've
outsourced it for years, and I get it. I have
done that for a while myself. It's not your fault,
it's not that I'm sitting here and judging you for it.
(28:02):
I just want to help you kind of unlock the
magic and unlock the ordinary things that you do and
you can do to bring yourself back to having a
stable internal sense of self worth. I think the first
step is really noticing the moments when you do tend
to outsource your worth. Maybe you know you change your
(28:25):
caption like a million times before posting a photo, Maybe
like you rehearse your opinion in your head a million
times before saying it out loud, just to make sure
it won't be wrong. Catching yourself in these small moments
of self monitoring can be uncomfortable, but awareness in those
moments is also everything. Without it, you really can't shift
(28:48):
the pattern. What this allows you to do is notice
the kind of things that you actually might be a
little bit insecure about, which is why you feel like
you need that extra boost from If you only feel
confident and satisfied with how you look when your friends
compliment your outfit or your makeup. Then it's likely that
this is an area of deeper insecurity for you, and
(29:10):
you can use these moments as kind of target practice,
as opportunities to really understand where you need to pour
more deeply into yourself. Another piece of this is really
reconnecting with your values and reconnecting with the fact that
you are an incredibly unique and worthwhile person, whether someone
else sees that or not. While you're busy trying to
(29:32):
earn the validation of others, what you may not realize
is that you have everything you need within you to
validate your own experiences, and that there are going to
be a lot of times people won't understand why you're
doing something, or won't understand you, or won't like you
for whatever freakin' reason and for whatever projection they've got
going on, and you're still going to be okay. Spend
(29:55):
some time just with relearning what you really care about
and more importan, only what kind of person you want
to be? Really ask yourself this, really try this exercise
for me. Imagine what kind of old person you want
to be, Not the next person you want to be
in five years, not the person you want to be
in twenty in like forty years, Like what kind of
(30:16):
person do you want people to say that you were?
What kind of person do you want to operate as?
What kind of person do you see in your life
who you think, Wow, they are really amazing and they're unshakable?
How could you make yourself more like that? And how
you make yourself more like that is by prioritizing what
you value as a daily act, whether it is kindness,
(30:38):
whether it is creativity, honesty, independence, When was the last
time you did anything that was in line with these things?
Your identity and your internal sense of self worth? And yeah,
your identity is a verb, like you have to actually
act on the things that you want to be. You
have to act on your creative instinct instead of just
(30:58):
continuing to tell yourself that you or creative. You have
to act on your generosity, You have to act on
your independence. You have to act on the parts of
you that you want to remain stable, so that you
aren't just relying on the kind of less nourishing forms
of external validation people might incidentally give you. It might
(31:19):
feel really weird at first, but you'll be really surprised
about how much stuff you actually do for some kind
of gratification from others, and how little we actually do
for ourselves. So when you stop engaging with those things
and you start really tapping into the things that you
really want to do, you do start to live more
authentically and a lot of stuff follows in and flows
(31:42):
in from that. It's like you open up the doors
to just feel a deep sense of like confidence and
love for yourself. The next step speaking of self love
is to practice self recognition. This can sound a little
bit corny, but it's powerful. Every time you do something
that you're proud of, whether it is completing a reject
at work, setting a healthy boundary, committing to a goal,
(32:04):
taking a pause, and like resisting the urge to just
do something, making something creative, doing something creative instead of
just being like cool, I'm gonna tell someone about that,
or I'm just gonna move on from that. Really notice
how you feel on yourself. Bask in that feeling for
a little while, that feeling of pride. It's okay to
(32:24):
feel proud of what you have done. It's not arrogant.
Reflect on it, cherish it, bury it deep inside of you,
like even if it's just for a minute. Reinforce this
idea through this act that your own self evaluation matters,
and that you are able to pour into yourself and
acknowledge yourself as much as anyone else is able to.
(32:45):
Part of this is also about tolerating discomfort. When you
start to rely less on external validation, there will be
moments that feel completely unbearable. I'm not gonna like sugarcoat it.
There will be moments where people will respond negative to
the fact that you don't need them to valid at
you anymore, and it's gonna feel really awful. There will
(33:06):
be moments when you want someone to reassure you and
they won't, and that gap can feel like rejection. But
if you can just sit in it, breathe through it,
and just notice that you are okay after it has happened.
Notice how you survive those moments. Notice how, yeah, someone
not liking you is uncomfortable, it doesn't mean the end
(33:27):
of the world. You are strengthening once again that internal muscle.
And of course there will always be those moments, no
matter how hard you try, where someone will not like you,
where someone will disagree with you. I always say this,
(33:48):
like every single person has a hater, even the most brilliant,
magnificent person that you know who you think, no one
could hate, no one could disagree with they have a hater,
And how much time would they waste? How much time
would you waste if you just only could think about
(34:10):
how you could change their mind and never thought about
how you could change yours in terms of valuing their opinion.
So here are some reminders, some final reminders to carry
with you in these situations. First, remember that being liked
is not the same as being loved. I spent a
(34:31):
lot of time in my early twenties desperately like changing myself,
switching things up, hiding parts about myself so that people
and especially guys like would like me, would want to
date me, would find that I was conveniently able to
slot into their life. Did they love me? No? Did
(34:55):
they respect me? Probably not either. Being liked it often
it feels like you are like smoothing out a rough
edge so that it doesn't you know, clip someone on
the way past. It feels like you're adapting, fitting in.
It feels like you are doing other people the favor,
and it feels like you are winning love. You're not
(35:15):
being loved. Being truly loved means someone seeing those rough
edges and staying anyways and liking those quirks. It also
means not asking for someone else to change just so
that it's easier for you to fit them into your life.
Ask yourself, am I chasing likability at the expense of authenticity?
(35:39):
Second the second reminder, every time you perform for approval,
you lose a little bit of intimacy with yourself. And
you know what I'm not talking about like wearing makeup,
and I'm not talking about putting a little bit of
extra effort into you know, your appearance, and I'm not
talking about asking for a compliment from your boss. What
I'm talking about here is that emotional debt we mentioned earlier,
(36:02):
that emotional debt whereby you choose something that is less
comfortable for you so that you can gain something from
someone else by changing yourself. Again, it's not love. And
it's also like I always imagine like my inner child
(36:23):
sitting there and like loving my outfit, loving what I'm wearing,
and me being like, no wrong choice. We're gonna do
what Todd wants me to wear. We're gonna choose an action,
We're gonna make a decision based off like some anonymous, inanimate,
cumulative force of other people's opinions. Your opinion doesn't matter
as much to me. When you override your real thoughts
(36:46):
and feelings just to fit in, you are telling yourself
that your opinion and your truth isn't valid unless someone
else approves of it. And we know how dangerous of
a message that is to internalize, because you end up
being someone who can be easily swayed, easily manipulated, and
easily cruel and mean to yourself. Third, and this is
(37:10):
similar to what I was talking about before, but I
just want to give it its own space in this episode,
you actually can't control other people's opinions, even if you
think that you dictating your actions and dictating your behaviors
is you can twist yourself into knots to appear perfect
and someone still won't like you. You can be perfect
for one person and someone else will hate you for it,
(37:33):
not because you did anything wrong, but because people carry
their own preferences, people carry their own projections, their own insecurities.
You know, you can be the ripest, juiciest peach in
the world and there's still going to be someone who
doesn't like peaches. Right the relief isn't realizing that that's okay,
and their opinion is like literally none of your business,
(37:57):
the same way that your opinion of them none of
their business. Either. As much as we want social approval,
we can live without the social approval of people who
we need to bend over backwards to obtain. There are
plenty of people in the world who will give you
what you need without you needing to change, And even
(38:18):
if those people never show up, you always have yourself. Lastly,
a really simple mantra that you might want to keep
close if any of today's conversation has resonated with you,
is that I want to be chosen for who I am,
not for the version of me that performs best for approval. You,
(38:40):
at the end of the day, have a very short
time on this earth. Sometimes reinforcing and reminding yourself of
that existential perspective that you really don't have much time
reminds you that if you don't have much time, you
have even less time for the opinions of others. You
have even less less time for the opinions of others
(39:03):
who want to tear you down, either consciously or unconsciously.
If this is all you have this experience. Your time
and your energy is precious. Please do not waste it
on someone else. They've got the time for themselves. You've
got the time for yourself. Make sure that you are
using it sparingly and in an important manner. Again, we
(39:25):
are social beings. It's not that getting social approval or
being loved or heard or seen or complimented is a
bad thing. These things are deeply nourishing. It's just that
these are the decorations. These are the decorations like in
the house, these are the decorations that come secondary. You've
(39:46):
got to build the foundation. You've got to have a roof,
you've got to have wolves, you got to have plumbing.
You've got to feel stable and tall on yourself before
asking other people to decorate your internal home for you.
At the end of the day, the strongest and most
consistent kind of validation is the one that is steadily
within you. Please do not forget it. Please do not
(40:10):
forget to cherish it. Don't forget that like you're a
freaking badass, and that you're really freaking cool, and that
you're an amazing, intelligent and kind person, and all of
that would still be the case if every single person
in your life was replaced with a whole other group
of people tomorrow. There is something within you that no
one else can have, no one else can change, no
(40:32):
one else is entitled to, and which will exist regardless
of approval or not. Make sure that your relationship with
what makes you you remain strong in the face of
all of that. Thank you for listening as far as
you have. If you've made it to the end of
the episode, I really really appreciate it. Leave some suggestions
(40:53):
down below with what makes you confident and what makes
you I guess able to fight off the desire for
constant external validation for me, like that's music for me.
That's like spending time with people that I love. For
me as well, that's like every single morning waking up
(41:17):
and just being like I want to I just want
to be and I want to experience this in the
way and experience life in this day in the way
that is most profound for me. And if people criticize
me or if people don't understand that, like I really
don't owe them an explanation. And I think it's really
having that value set, that system of like Okay, I
(41:38):
know what I want and I know where I'm going
and I know who I need to be. Everything else
is a distraction. So what's your tip? What is your advice?
Share it down below. Make sure to leave a five
star review if you are listening and if you enjoyed
this episode, and make sure you're subscribed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
the iet radio app where wherever you are tuning in from.
(42:01):
You can also follow us on Instagram at that psychology
podcast if you want to break down of this episode,
if you want to give us an episode suggestion or
a guest suggestion, if you want just to talk further
about your thoughts on this episode, I'd love to hear
from you. And until next time, be safe, be kind,
be gentle with yourself. We will talk very very soon.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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