Approval Seeking Is Self-Abandonment: Signs, Causes and How to Stop

You send the text, then check your phone every few minutes. You rewrite an email four times so no one could possibly be upset. Someone looks at you a little differently, and you spend the rest of the day wondering what you did wrong. It can look like caring. Underneath, it is something else.

Approval seeking is the habit of looking outside yourself for proof that you are okay. It is a form of self-abandonment, because every time you shape your words, choices and feelings around someone else's reaction, you leave yourself behind. Healing begins when you learn to give yourself the approval you were waiting for, starting with the younger part of you who first learned that love had to be earned.

Not sure which pattern is running underneath your need for approval? Take my free 3-minute Sacred Pattern Decoder Quiz and find out.

What is approval seeking?

Approval seeking is the need for other people to confirm that you are good, lovable, right or enough. We all enjoy being appreciated. That is human. Approval seeking is different. It is when your sense of worth rises and falls with how others respond to you, so their opinion becomes the measure of whether you are okay.

When that happens, other people start to feel like judges. Every conversation becomes a small test, and you are always waiting for the score.

Why is approval seeking a form of self-abandonment?

Self-abandonment is the quiet habit of leaving yourself to keep connection with others. Approval seeking is one of the most common ways it happens.

Think about what you actually do in the moment you are seeking approval. You stop listening to what you feel and start scanning for what they want. You set aside your own truth, your preferences, sometimes even your own memory of what happened, so that you can land in their good graces. Your attention moves out of your body and into theirs.

Each time, a younger part of you learns the same lesson again: your feelings matter less than their reaction. That is why approval seeking can leave you feeling empty even when the approval comes. Someone else's yes cannot fill the place where your own yes is missing.

What are the signs of approval seeking behavior?

Approval seeking can be loud or very quiet. Here are some of the ways I see it show up in the people I work with:

• Saying yes when you mean no, then resenting it later.
• Over-explaining and over-apologizing, even for things that do not need an apology.
• Changing your opinion depending on who you are with.
• Replaying conversations for hours to check whether you said something wrong.
• Needing reassurance before you can feel settled about a decision.
• Feeling crushed by small criticism, or by silence when you expected praise.
• Hiding the parts of you you think will not be accepted, your needs, your anger, your spiritual life, your big dreams.
• Performing, being the helpful one, the easy one, the impressive one, so that love keeps coming.

If several of these feel familiar, please know there is nothing wrong with you. This pattern made sense once. It was how you stayed connected.

What causes approval seeking behavior?

Most approval seeking begins in childhood. Maybe love in your home felt conditional, warm when you were good, quiet or helpful, and cold when you were not. Maybe a parent was unpredictable, and you learned to read every face in the room to stay safe. Maybe you were praised for achieving, and you came to believe that what you did mattered more than who you were.

A child cannot survive without connection. So a young child does something wise: if being myself puts love at risk, I will become what earns love. That younger part of you was not being weak or fake. It was keeping you safe.

The trouble is that the strategy keeps running long after we grow up. You may be a capable adult with a full life, and an eight-year-old inside you is still waiting for someone to say, "You did well. You are good. You can rest now." This is why I so often find approval seeking connected to a self-love wound, and why simply deciding to stop rarely works.

What is the difference between approval seeking and people pleasing?

They are close cousins. People pleasing is the behavior: doing, giving and saying yes to keep others happy. Approval seeking is the need underneath it: the hunger to be told you are okay. You can people please without anyone noticing, and you can seek approval without doing anything at all, simply by shrinking, staying quiet and waiting to be chosen.

Both lead to the same place. The more you live for someone else's reaction, the less you know what you actually want.

Is approval seeking a form of control?

Often, yes, and this surprises many people. If I can say exactly the right thing, look the right way and give enough, then maybe I can control whether you stay, whether you are pleased with me and whether I get hurt. Approval seeking is the ego's attempt to feel safe by managing how others see us. I write more about this in Control Is the Master Addiction.

Seeing it this way can be a relief. It means approval seeking is not a character flaw. It is fear, looking for safety in the only place it has learned to look.

How do you stop seeking approval from others?

Stopping approval seeking is not about becoming cold or not caring what anyone thinks. It is about coming back to yourself, so that other people's opinions become information instead of verdicts. Here are the steps I walk my clients through.

1. Catch the moment you leave.

Notice the instant your attention moves out of your body and into someone else's reaction. Maybe your chest tightens, or you start rehearsing what to say. Simply noticing, "I just left myself," is the beginning of coming back.

2. Ask what you actually feel and want.

Before you answer the text or agree to the plan, pause and ask yourself, "What is true for me right now?" You do not have to act on it yet. You only have to hear it. Many people are surprised how long it has been since anyone asked.

3. Meet the younger part of you who needed approval.

Ask, "How old do I feel right now?" Often the answer is very young. Through age stage healing, we go back to that age and give that part of you what it was missing: the words "You are already enough, and I am not leaving you."

4. Forgive yourself for the judgments.

Approval seeking is held in place by judgments like "I am too much," "I am not enough" or "If they are upset, I did something wrong." In Spiritual Psychology we practice compassionate self-forgiveness, gently forgiving ourselves for believing those judgments. Each one you release loosens the grip.

5. Practice small acts of self-loyalty.

Say a kind no. Share a real opinion. Let someone be disappointed without rushing in to fix it. Start small, with people who feel safe. Every time you stay with yourself, your nervous system learns that you can survive someone else's reaction.

6. Let your worth come from the inside.

Your worth was never something to be earned. It is part of who you are at the level of your soul. When you begin each day by connecting with that truth, through prayer, meditation or a practice like the Light Filled Day Prayer, you need less from the outside, because you are already full.

When is it time to get support?

You can begin these steps on your own. But approval seeking is often woven so deeply into how we relate that it can be hard to see from the inside. If you keep finding yourself exhausted, resentful or unsure of who you are without someone else's reflection, support can help.

In our sessions, we begin with centering and prayer, so you can arrive in your body. Then we find where the pattern began and gently heal it at the root. Using Spiritual Psychology, age stage healing and ThetaHealing, we clear the beliefs that tell you love must be earned, so you can stay with yourself and still stay close to the people you love.

I am a Spiritual Life Coach and Spiritual Psychology Coach in Santa Rosa, working with women and men in person and online. I am a coach, not a therapist. If you are struggling with anxiety or low mood that feels overwhelming, please also reach out to your doctor or a licensed mental health professional. Coaching works beautifully alongside that care.

If approval seeking deepened in a relationship with a narcissistic partner, read How to Rebuild Self-Trust After Narcissistic Abuse.

What else do people ask?

Is approval seeking a trauma response?
It can be. Many people learn approval seeking in homes where love felt unpredictable or conditional, and their nervous system came to link approval with safety. Approval seeking is not a diagnosis. It is a pattern that can heal when you meet the younger part of you who first needed it.

Is it wrong to want approval?
No. Wanting to be appreciated is human. It becomes self-abandonment when you need approval to feel okay, and you set aside your own feelings, needs or truth to get it.

How long does it take to stop seeking approval?
Most people notice a shift within a few weeks of catching the pattern and choosing themselves in small ways. Deeper change usually comes over a few months, as you heal the beliefs underneath and your nervous system learns it is safe to be yourself.

Do you work online?
Yes. I work with people in person in Santa Rosa and across Sonoma County, and online by video, so you can work with me from anywhere.

If you are ready to stop waiting for permission to be yourself, I would love to talk. Book your free Soul Aligned Call and we will begin.

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