Book Nook - Approval Removal: Finding Freedom from Fitting In

Our need to be liked, validated and accepted by others is a silent epidemic that can damage our relationships, careers, and overall wellness. However, by looking back into childhood and recognizing the experiences that ignited a small sense of self-worth and approval from others, we can begin to heal and find that acceptance within ourselves.

I had a chance to interview Dr. Rob Allan, a renowned social psychologist specializing in breaking free from approval-seeking behaviors, who wrote the upcoming book Approval Removal: Finding Freedom from Fitting In (November 10). This includes:

• Re-examining the moments in our childhood that have impacted our need for approval and self-worth.
• How value becomes a driving force of behavior even at a young age, and shapes our Approval Needs. 
• How parents can instill strong self-worth and a sense of value at any and all stages of childhood.
• A closer look at Dr. Rob's Approval Removal and the outsized power of people's opinions on our identity and self-worth.

How can our childhood experiences affect our need for approval and self-worth?
Our childhood experiences have a huge influence on the sense of self-worth we carry into adulthood. That sense will be shaped, in part, by the messages we absorb about our value, and by what the people raising us seem to value about us.

One thing childhood doesn’t determine, though, is the underlying need. Wanting to feel valued is a core human need, and one of the most powerful drivers of our behavior. Your child did not develop it. She arrived with it. What she learns is something more specific. As a child, she has no other way to get that need met than through the people around her, just as she depends on them for food and safety. That part is not a problem to be solved. The question is what she learns

about the terms. Does being valued arrive freely, or does it arrive attached to how well she performs?

Picture two children, both loved exactly the same amount. One grows up hearing two messages, always on separate occasions: that she is loved, and that she did well on her spelling test. The other hears those messages arrive together every time, and draws an obvious conclusion. I am loved when I do well. Nobody ever said that to
her. She worked it out herself. The first child may grow into an adult who can fail without losing her sense of worth. The second may do brilliantly but never feel able to stop performing for approval. The difference is not whether we need approval, but whether we come to believe we have to earn it by performing well for others.

How can parents and caregivers instill strong self-worth and a sense of value at all stages of childhood?
Separate the messages children receive about how much you value what they do from how much you value them, regardless of what they do. Language is very important, and the habits we establish early can have a lasting influence.

When a preschooler hears “good boy” every time he does something that pleases you, or “you’re so pretty” every time she picks a certain dress, we can unintentionally
teach them that feeling valued comes from doing what someone else values. At that age a lot of it is about timing. Make sure your warmth and affection are just as visible when nothing has been achieved as when something has gone well. Through the school years, watch the language around mistakes. There is a world of difference between “that was unkind” and “you’re so naughty.” 

The first is about something he did, and he can change it. The second is about who he is, and that is a much heavier thing for a seven-year-old to carry around. The same goes for disappointment. When something goes wrong for them, resist the urge to fix it immediately. A child who finds out that someone was cross with her and she came through it has learned something far more useful than a child who was carefully protected from ever finding out.

With teenagers, give them responsibility the family genuinely relies on. Not a job invented to build character, which they will see through immediately, but something that actually matters and that someone will notice if it does not get done. Being needed teaches a young person something about their own worth that praise simply cannot. One reassurance, because this worries parents more than it needs to. A six-year-old who looks to you to know he is valued is not a problem to be corrected. He is six. Learning to carry some of that yourself is the work of adulthood, not childhood. What you are doing in these years is simply making sure that what he depends on arrives freely not conditionally.

How can we learn to form our own self-worth independently of the need for approval from others?
This is exactly the right way to frame it. You never become independent of the need to feel valued. That one is core, and it doesn’t leave, any more than the need for food does. What you can become independent of is needing other people to be the ones who supply it, and that shift is the all important one.

One way to begin, particularly as a parent, is an honest reality check on how much of your own validation and self-worth you are drawing from your children’s achievements and milestones. The team they made, the recital they were selected for, the grades they got, the school they got into, and on it goes. We call it being proud of them, and from the inside it’s almost impossible to tell how much is delight in them versus how much is something you are hoping to get back as validation from others. Which is why one question cuts through so much self-examination: if I could never tell another soul how my child was doing, would it still feel as good?

More broadly, most of us are running almost entirely on outsourced validation, which simply means other people’s reactions. It is fast, plentiful and completely unstable. The way out is to learn to source your worth from two other places. Self-sourced validation: judging yourself against your own standards rather than other people’s reactions. And, better still, purpose-led validation. For a parent, that starts with asking yourself what kind of parent you want to have been, regardless of how your children turn out. That gives you a measure of your worth that a disappointing report card cannot touch. And your children will learn far more from
watching you hold steady through criticism than from anything you ever tell them about confidence.