By Guest Writer, Sidrah Ashraf
DISCLAIMER: I’m not a certified psychologist. Psychology is an interest of mine and I write based off of my own experiences.
A person's family is their ultimate support system, or so that is what we have been told. For some of us, our families may indeed be our support system but that is not the case for everyone. At times it is our family, and at times it’s our friend circle or the communities we associate with that become the reason for us needing to become our own support system.
As social beings, supportive figures and groups are important to us. They help us feel good about ourselves, feel seen, heard, recognized, and accepted. It also does a great deal of good for our self-esteem. However, when we cannot find external support, two things are likely to happen.
For example, if Person A never or rarely received support from family or friends, they may lack a sense of self-esteem, struggle with a distorted sense of self, and may delve into people-pleasing and self-repression without really registering it. Their perception of themselves and how others view them would be far from reality, but for Person A, it may be the realest thing. They may seek approval from everyone, and the slightest absence of external approval is enough to damage their already fragile self-esteem.
On the other hand, Person B may start to over-hype themselves, deciding that they are perfect the way they are and any critique or advice is invalid. This may result in a heightened sense of self and overconfidence, accompanied yet again, by a distorted sense of self and how others perceive them. They may feel threatened if they do not receive approval from almost everyone as it stands against their idea of self and who they are.
In both cases, the extreme lack of internal approval or the extreme abundance of internal approval can lead a person to have a perception of the world and themselves that is far from reality.
By becoming our own support system, we are essentially working on becoming self-reliant and this only comes from having a healthy relationship with ourselves. As someone who had nearly no self-awareness and a rather loud internal negative critic, I set off on a journey to create a relationship with myself to understand myself better and to figure out what I want and do not want in life. To do that I had to become my own support system and that required help, which I luckily managed to get through a well-trained clinical psychologist. Just like how cars require fuel to keep going, my sessions with my therapist were the fuel and I was the car - constant work in process.
What therapy highlighted for me was the fact that for all our lives we are taught to be kind to each other and respect each other.
To be a well-behaved, decent person to others. Yet, we are never actively taught to direct all these things to ourselves first.
With a heavy reliance on external approval, we are giving others the power to increase or decrease our sense of self and our sense of being enough, which ends up damaging our emotional and mental health far more than we may realize. Unintentionally, we may often set all our self-worth in someone else’s hands which automatically depletes our belief in our own strengths and identity.
To honestly question just how important external approval is for us as individuals, there are certain factors that need to be looked at. First, the importance of external approval naturally varies for everyone. For example, if Person A does something nice for Person B, and that gesture is not verbally appreciated from Person B’s side, Person A will not end up brooding for hours over how their efforts were not recognized if they happen to have strong internal approval and self-awareness. In this case, the lack of recognition is not their problem, and rather it speaks more of the kind of personality Person B has.
Secondly, how much of a relationship do we have with ourselves, and what kind of relationship is it? If there is even enough of a relationship to begin with, that is. The way I came to understand this is, when we are in the process of establishing a new relationship with someone, we generally try to put our best foot forward. We do not direct constant negative critique, complaints, and insults at them. If we try to look at ourselves as that ‘significant other’, it may just help us build a better relationship with ourselves, that may involve working on forgiving our past mistakes, and processing any regrets that we may be dragging along over the years.
External approval can also matter differently based on our personalities, our genes, the atmosphere we were brought up in, and the experiences that may have made us who we are. For instance, a person with childhood trauma may find it very difficult to process out the people-pleasing habits out of themselves. In their situation, external approval is everything.
All these factors and perhaps more, alter our belief in ourselves which leads to distorted thoughts, and those thoughts bring out feelings which may or may not be accurate. When I say accurate I mean whether the way you feel is indeed the case. For example, if Person A thinks that Person B does not care about being honest and open with them, when in reality Person B is riddled with anxiety and is unable to communicate clearly, then Person A might just decide that what they feel is true - that Person B is not interested in being honest. Person A would be unable to see the fears and anxieties that keep Person B from speaking up, unless they communicate about the situation.
Approval feels good, that is natural and human, may it be external or internal. However, external proof never speaks of a person’s worth. Our own beliefs about ourselves do.
When we disapprove of someone’s action or opinion, are we judging that person as a whole? Generally, disagreeing with someone’s opinion means only that you do not agree with how they think, but it is never a declaration of disapproval with their entire being.
When it comes to external approval from specific people, there are certain important questions that come to mind:
Why is this certain person’s approval important?
What difference would it make if they do not approve of me/my certain attributes?
Is this a person I consider special and is there room for communication void of defensiveness? Are we both/all willing to be vulnerable and empathetic?
How self-aware am I with the level of my self-esteem?
A good sense of self-awareness helps us rationalize why someone may be disapproving of a certain aspect of us. It may be a difference in belief systems, societal norms, traditions etc. Strong internal approval and self-awareness would help us distinguish what the case is, rather than feel like that our worth as a human being has been diminished. Good emotional maturity can help us navigate the situation in a way that would protect our self-esteem, even in the face of hostile comments or actions.
Hostility is more of a ‘them’ problem, not ours. With that maturity, one is able to realize that differences exist everywhere and are to be respected, but they can not be allowed to tarnish our self-esteem.
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