The need for approval

The need for approval. So where does it come from? Why is it so powerful? It comes from childhood and the need to conform and fit in. That’s my view.

It’s really gotten out of hand since social media took off and the whole psychology behind the likes, kudos, ‘friends’ and followers. Every single social media platform is tied into our basic need for approval and that’s obviously an ego thing. Yeah, so trying to undo that, it’s not just a need for approval,it’s tied into a lot of other things, fear of conflict, for example. The need to be liked is a big thing, we’ve all got a basic human need to be liked and popular. Social media is feeding this and it’s creating the pressure whereby we’re motivated by only posting stuff that’s going to be liked or approved. And there seems to be a weird sort of psychology around negativity on social media getting more attention than positivity. I suppose it goes back to ‘any attention is good attention’. You know, the children who misbehave because they just need attention. If they’re not getting the attention positively they’re going to create an issue to get attention by being told off or disciplined.

So going back to where where does it come from? No idea at the moment. But I would be really keen to undo that within myself because pretty much most things I do are geared around approval. So it would be really nice if I could just be honest without the fear of upsetting somebody, without the fear of rejection, or without the fear of conflict. Yeah, that’s my aim. Well, I’m not sure where this ‘my inner self’ is going but one of the aims is to be comfortable with who I am and what I think and what I say without the fear.

I used a speach to text app to record this, which is why it may sound different to when I type. The text needed a fair bit of editing as it was literal in the conversion (i.e. my hesitation and repetition was translated). It’s something I can practice as talking and typing are completely different forms.