Addicted to Validation

Photo by Vlada Karpovich

Our first year in the city we lived next door to a trap house. People would come and go at all hours of the day to get high. Our nickname for the neighbors’ house was Baskin Robbins because you could pick out any flavor you liked.

Wherever you be, there is so much to get a high from these days that the choices are staggering. For some it’s gin, for others it’s weed, or online sports betting, chocolate chip cookies, weightlifting and sexual experiences.

But a sneakily addictive drug is other people’s validation. It will get you high as a kite and when the buzz wears off, you will come crashing down. You’ll stalk the neighborhood and workplace searching it out like a junkie going through withdrawals. In those desperate instances when none is to be found, you might head to the black market of social media where likes, retweets and followers give you that unnatural buzz that’s been manufactured in a lab.

Addiction to validation is dangerous and debilitating. It’s hidden and unspoken. There’s no 12-step group you can join to break free, no community of fellow sufferers to commiserate with in recovery.

To rely on others for your self-esteem will keep you from the difficult but important work you are destined to do in this life. Instead of doing what needs to be done, your day to day existence becomes like a piece of live theatre. You’ll walk and act in a performative manner intended for your audiences’ pleasure.

Who is in that audience and whose approval do you crave? Maybe it’s the online crowd who will cheer from their seats. After all, in the social media age, a hit of validation and others attention is just a few clicks away. But the audience could look different as well.

Maybe it’s only a few people: your family, a small group of friends, a few colleagues whose respect you want. Perhaps you perform for an audience of one, your spouse or partner. You sing and dance to the best of your ability, hoping to gain their deepest approval. Anything less than total praise, sends you into a violent mental spiral.

This is how addiction to validation works, though you receive from others a little bit is never enough. The soul feels depleted, drained, and dehydrated. You’ll try to fill a profound spiritual emptiness with promotions at work, advanced degrees, awards, new loves, and recognition.

When you’re empty on the inside, you can eat and eat on others validation, but seemingly never be satiated. You become a bottomless pit that will never be full no matter how much others tell you how good you are.

Walking around empty, the risk is high that you’ll succumb to what psychologists call “all or nothing thinking”. That means the world and everything in it, yourself included, are black or white. You are either the most special person who has ever lived or a total loser.

In this regard, failure of any kind becomes a major trigger. When a project at work falls through, or your creative endeavor doesn’t pan out, it’s an ominous sign pointing to your utter worthlessness. Terrified, you seek out others’ validation in both small and large ways.

There are many other triggers too, take rejection for example. There have been stretches doing comedy when I needed the audience to love me. When I was highly sensitive to their rejection it usually didn’t end well. Contrast that with times when I was in a healthy headspace and didn’t really care. Just having fun being creative, the audience sensed there was no pressure from me to have them laugh. This counterintuitively made them far more likely to laugh.

Being in the limelight is not inherently bad, but it can quickly devolve into “all or nothing” thinking and be a severe struggle for those with addiction to validation.  The clapping approval of the crowd makes you feel special, while their stony silence shatters your shallow confidence.

Photo by Dayvison de Oliveira Silva

The effect validation addiction can have on others is subtle, but powerful.

You are primarily responsible for your own self-esteem and when this responsibility is outsourced to others you will begin to exhaust them. They will experience you as needy, which then further triggers your desire for their validation. This in turn pushes them even farther away. It’s like a person with no self-awareness who stands too close to you, as you step back they step forward, causing you to step back even further.

Taking charge of your self-esteem begins by examining your thoughts. Write them down and read them over. Perform a careful analysis to see if they match reality or if that “all or nothing” mentality has taken hold. Just reviewing thoughts alone can be a huge benefit as many people walk around feeling their feelings without stopping to think about their thoughts.

Some social validation is necessary and good. Receiving it from those around you is a lot like eating spinach: it’s a portion of any balanced psychological diet, being that humans are inherently social creatures. But taken as your sole source of nutrients, you will soon begin to starve off of something otherwise healthy.

Rather than listening to everybody’s voice, perhaps it makes more sense to have a small group of people whose feedback you really take to heart. Persons in this small group should know you through and through, and really have your best interests in mind. They want to see you flourish.

Otherwise, you will be blown about by the numerous and often fickle voices occasionally telling you how wonderful you are.

 And finally, healthy validation must come in some form from the universe that you inhabit.

It’s probably no surprise to you that someone who works as a church pastor holds a Christian worldview. Part of why I choose to believe it is that the narrative feeds the soul. The opening chapters of the Bible tell the story of humans having a piece of the divine embedded within them, a beautiful reflection of the One who created everything.

You may believe something else, yet the bedrock beliefs about our purpose form the foundation of our day to day lives.

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Everyday I’d come home from work, and everyday someone from Baskin Robbins would be getting high in my driveway. The people in those cars had little interest in talking with me, in fact they weren’t aware of much going on outside their vehicles at all.

Seeing them come and go, my overall feeling wasn’t fear, or anger, or judgement. More than anything else it was heartbreaking seeing all that wasted potential, all the moments of life that they would miss.

For who knows what maestros, saints and artistic geniuses sat in those cars smoking away their precious gift? Like Esau trading his birthright for a bowl of soup.

And who knows what masterpieces will be left undone, what potentials will never be reached as validation junkies sit around greedily imbibing the honey-dipped words of those whose opinion doesn’t matter.