Exploring the Compulsion to Win Approval
Have you ever found yourself doing things or making comments to please others? Perhaps afterwards, a silent and intimate feeling of self-betrayal emerges for having mutilated your true expression. You might even feel estranged from yourself... This condition can occur in isolation, and, in some way, we all do it under certain circumstances. However, if we make a habit of this behaviour and establish it as a way of life, what do you think will happen? In the effort to win others' affection, we will lose the most precious thing: our authenticity and real identity.
The Roots of Approval-Seeking
Where does this fervent desire to gain external acceptance come from? The longing to be approved by our group has an ancestral explanation. It is based on the powerful instinct for survival, which is why it remains an adaptive mechanism to this day. The personal unconscious stores "everything" that was useful at a certain evolutionary moment. It does not judge whether this is good or bad, right or wrong. This individual unconscious feeds on the wisdom of all the sentient beings that preceded us. Thus, each of us dwells as a universal heritage, which Carl Gustav Jung called the collective unconscious. An ancestral reservoir from which we all drink and to which we contribute moment by moment.
Our unconscious "knows" that, in past times, being excluded from the "pack" meant exposure to hungry predators. The mass guaranteed safety and gave more chances of surviving a crossroads. It also ensured procreation and, by extension, the preservation of the entire species. It is evident to conclude that, in that context, belonging and being approved by the herd was fundamental, as it was a matter of life or death.
But...what once saved our lives today can mess up our existence. If we only repeat learned mechanisms automatically, we can miss the mark! What was a resource in a certain context can today be an impediment that stops our growth: "belonging at the cost of ceasing to be."
Knowing the origin of many human behaviours helps us become aware of and update and contextualize them if they no longer function or promote our development. If we look around, there are no more hungry wild beasts; the lions only live in our heads. However, sometimes, we go through life feeling so vulnerable and unprotected that we desperately seek "a pack" that guarantees us protection, paying the high cost of constantly gaining approval. The fear of being left out—of the family, the peer group, what society dictates—emotionally connects us with that ancient fear. In our Unconscious, there is a direct connection to that emotion, and a red light turns on every time disapproval is associated with the danger of death! Thus, an external criticism that "leaves us out" can shatter us into a thousand pieces because, for our unconscious, in this case, there is no difference between a real threat and a virtual danger. The result of this equation is unprotectedness. That's why, for many people, criticism in this wild society can be much more threatening than coming face-to-face with a lion.
For many people, criticism in this wild society can be much more threatening than coming face-to-face with a lion.
Being aware of this reality transcending us means understanding that in each of us lives a fearful animal that feels defenceless and that, in its desperation, is willing to lose identity if the guarantee is to come out alive.
How do you deal with this part of oneself that is so primitive and innocent?
Well, as we would lovingly treat an animal, we care about it by domesticating it with tenderness and determination. Maturing the most primitive part is part of the genesis that did not end.
This part of us that thirsts for approval must recognize that "our life does not depend" on pleasing someone, that criticism can hurt but not bleed us, and that someone's opinion is nothing more than a personal appreciation that we can take or leave.
No gained place is good if the price of it is to renounce the authenticity of who we truly are. If the cost of "belonging" is to stop BEING: we will mutilate very valuable parts of ourselves with which we need to count, as they form part of our real identity... Cutting off here, forcefully exalting there, reducing what is too much... distorting and alienating us. It's not the same to live as to seek to survive. The former is based on abundance. The latter is born of our deficiencies. Every time we desperately seek to be accepted, we impoverish ourselves internally, and we become more insecure and needy because secretly, we conclude that "they like us, not for what we are but for what we appear to be." It becomes a never-ending story... The more people to please, the more we keep cutting "by public demand" until the fabric runs out or we get tired of using the scissors. If we keep responding to the expectations of others, we will end up becoming spectators of what others want instead of being the protagonists of our lives. When the enthusiasm for "being part" is behind, we feel the "bitter taste" of losing our identity.
No gained place is good if the price of it is to renounce the authenticity of who we truly are.
Embracing Authenticity
To be true to ourselves, to present ourselves to the world without so many bows, ties, and armours, is to give others a chance to choose us for who we truly are (with our tastes, interests, limitations, and virtues). And it is to give ourselves the serenity to build light and real connections that don't demand a continuous effort to maintain nor makeup to use to disguise what might not be liked. Only authentic relationships in which one can be oneself "nourish" our affective life. And these are well worth taking care of! That is not the same as decorating and adorning.
To please or not to please?
It's not about setting up an arbitrary dichotomy but rather about accompanying these questions with appropriate reflections... Who? How? At any price? Under what conditions?
We can choose to please a loved one by giving a compliment or a gesture. There is nothing wrong or pathological in this attitude. On the contrary, it builds love among people who choose each other mutually. What harms us is to say what we do not want to say, do the opposite of what we want to do, and agree to what another expects of us... under the only desperate attempt to avoid feeling out or fearing the removal of approval and acceptance. Sometimes, yielding to avoid conflicts outside orchestrates a much noisier and more maddening internal conflict.
It's about pleasing by doing what pleases us, where the inspiration and true motivation are love for the other and not fear of the other's reaction. The result is the same: what gives it its origin differentiates the healthy from what is not, the unreal from the authentically real.