How to heal the need for validation from others
If you look around, you will see that a lot of self-help advice these days is focused on HOW TO receive validation from others.
Advice like: how to go viral overnight, how to make a man instantly fall in love with you, how to be the IT girl of your cohort etc.
We are led to believing that happiness is on the other side of being seen, approved, and liked by other people. We try to live for a life that would look the best in the eyes of others.
But what all this self-help advice does not tell you is that it’s only a half-cure to the problem.
Because regardless of how popular and “liked” you are, the elephant in the room is still present. That is, the fear of not being liked.
Which means, even if you became the #1 most liked woman/ celebrity on earth, you would still be worrying about what other people think. It means even if you achieved a “goal” that would impress people, you would still be overthinking your way on how to impress people next.
Just because you get to the desired outcome of you being liked by people doesn’t mean that it will be an end to the inner neurosis. In other words, the stress around needing other people to validate you still continues…
Such as:
Overthinking on what to post on social media or what to say, fear that you will not be “good enough” or well received.
The need to do the “right” thing or the “perfect” thing to do. Fear of being wrong or being judged by others.
People pleasing, putting other people first at the detriment of yourself. Needing to be liked by others and be a “good girl.”
Wanting to receive lots of attention, but also afraid of getting criticism. Wanting to be seen but also afraid of being seen.
Being afraid to outshine other people OR needing to always outshine others to get attention
Being willing to put up with someone who disrespects you, trying to fix yourself to earn their validation and approval.
These are just some of the ways of how the need to earn for validation continues, no matter how we try to earn it. I know this because I’ve been a huge sucker for validation myself in the past: from needing validation to my dad in academics to needing validation from social media when I became an entrepreneur.
And when I look into that “validation wound” what I see is a little girl constantly seeking love and approval from other people.
Imagine your inner child holding a big telescope in her hands, trying to always “figure out” what other people are thinking of her. She always needs to overplan her next move because she is afraid of doing something that’s not “good enough.” To the little girl, life feels like she’s always walking on eggshells whenever she does something that’s important to her. This is what is happening in your psyche when you are needing validation from other people.
But what this little girl doesn’t see is herself. She is always busy looking at how people would respond back to her and what she could do to earn their likings/approval. And so little attention is paid to what she actually feels inside.
It is through paying attention to how you feel inside that you let this little girl know that she is okay to be who she is. That she is loved for being who she is. That she is loved for what she feels. Until you learn to love your feelings, you will constantly be looking for other people to love you and life will show you (repeatedly) that they can’t.
Once you feel loved for who you are, the other thing that your little girl wants is to see the truth of who you are. That means being able to see yourself without judging yourself as good or bad. It means being able to sit with “what is” instead of creating a story about why it’s the way it is.
The reason why we feel the need to seek validation from other people is because at one point in our lives, we only knew who we are based on other people. When things don’t work out, we think it’s because it’s “us.” That is, we attach the circumstances of “what is” to who we are.
Like in our childhood when our identity becomes based on what parents say about us. So when people say that you are “boring,” you think that’s who we are. When people say that you are “bad” we also think that’s who we are. It was a time of absorbing anything that other people say about you. It was a time when you didn’t know better of who you actually are.
But when you let yourself sit with “what is,” while putting judgements aside, what you will see is that you are greater than anything that someone says about you.
You are this. But you are also that. You are what they say about you BUT also what they do not say about you. Just like what the Vedic traditions say about the Self, you are “Neti, Neti”: meaning you are not this nor that.
That’s because the true “I” cannot be bound by any one description or truth. The true you (the Self) doesn’t need validation because she is simply “what is.” The True you is the space of love that is beyond matter: an awareness that can turn “imperfections” into innocence and “flaws” into fondness. Who you are is the infinite energy that is one with every being on the planet and the stars in the Universe.
When you live from that awareness, you see that the source of happiness does not exist outside of you but within you.
The reason why we seek validation in the first place is because we think that happiness comes from other people, when the truth is, it is only a reflection of what we feel inside. Nobody outside of you can give you validation that you don’t give yourself–not even your most loving prince charming husband nor 1 million followers on Instagram.
To see the source of happiness within you, not outside of you is how you bring your power back. When we are needing validation from other people, we are placing the source of our happiness in the hands of other people, feeling inside like “please see me, please watch me, please tell me I am good.” Others can sense this neediness energy and may even withhold the validation you so want (unconsciously) because they feel that your state of being depends on them. This is one of the ways of how toxic relationships happen.
But I digress, what I want to say here is that when you believe that others have what you don’t have and you need “it” from them– whether that is love, happiness, money, validation or anything else you value in life, life will show you that they do not. Life is always a mirror of what you believe about yourself. And so when you need validation from others (because you believe you lack validation in yourself), life will reflect exactly that– i.e. that you “lack” what you want.
To truly receive the validation that the little girl in you needs is to shift into the awareness that the Source of all that you’re looking for is within, not without (I talked more about in this article earlier). Nobody else outside of you can blame you nor shame you when you do not have blame and shame toward yourself. Similarly, nobody else can love you fully when you haven’t given the love to yourself.
To me, realizing this self-sourced power has helped me experience total freedom. It is the freedom where you realize that you can become that which you desire, without needing other people to see it first. It is the freedom where you can allow yourself to create what you love, without hesitating and doubting based on what others think. To the soul, it is the kind of freedom that’s even deeper than time and money freedom, for it’s the freedom that nobody can take it away from the Self.
My love, if you desire that kind of unlimited freedom in your own life and are tired of bending yourself based on other people, that’s exactly what I help my clients with. Together, we nourish your soul with all the resources, so you can come Home to yourself and create a fulfilling life of your dreams. To experience a sample of how my 1:1 support is like, you can book a Free healing session here.
