How Approval Dependence May Thwart Achievement

I know from my own experience that social anxiety seems mostly unreal, a trumped up excuse for avoiding interaction with others, especially those unknown to us. It is unreal but powerful nevertheless.

And so is born within the recesses of one’s soul a wish to overcome the disinclination that you strongly suspect is poorly placed and inadequately justified

I suspect for many who feel socially gauche or awkward around strangers that it stems form a loss of true self in childhood. The loss makes one passive and avoidant living with the conviction that only alone can one be his natural self. It gives you an “approval complex.” Which is to say you become eternally wary of doing anything that might incur disapproval. For me it means I inhibit, fail to speak up, express, or initiate for fear of disapproval or fear of abandonment which narrows my existence considerably.

Approval dependent people tend to avoid failure, be unassertive, have difficulty dealing with hostility, and are compliant and conformist.

There are also of course those who carry this to an extreme. I am reminded of an article in the SF Chronicle some years ago, (May 31st, 5/31/99) by journalist Michael Taylor that talked about people posing as medal of honor winners. The writer thinks America has put such a premium on wining that people think their normal lives and self images are not good enough. Judges and millionaires say: “What I was was insufficient, so I had tried to be someone I am not.”

“Why do we use connections to get into a college we normally couldn’t’ get into? Why do we use human growth hormones in the Olympics? Second place is not good enough. We’ve placed such huge value on cosmetics because how we look is never good enough. Winning has become everything. That’s the society in which a faker or a fraud presents himself.”

It’s true that our culture puts a crazy amount of pressure on people to be successful, to have glory and fame in unlimited amounts. And one of its distorting effects is that people then go out of their way to misrepresent themselves as being more than their accomplishments actually warrant.

But a worse thing in my view is the trouble the socially anxious get into when they permit irrational beliefs to dictate their orientations to others.

In psychology, the rational emotive therapy approach of Alfred Ellis insists on jettisoning the beliefs and assumptions that curtail engaging with others
As Ellis argues: “If I screw up, I screw up. It’s too bad that I did that bad thing, but I’m not a worm, not a louse. I give myself what we call USA—unconditional self acceptance, just because I am alive and human, for no other reason. So therefore, if you don’t like me, I don’t like that---I’d like you to like e, but if you don’t who really cares? What’s going to happen to me—very little!”

An attitude of not caring about others opinions seems very liberating indeed for those suffering from an over abundance of social anxiety. As Montaigne said:

“I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing. “

By: Ozark

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The author has a blog entitled Overcoming Reclutance at Overcomingreluctance.blogspot.com. This blog focuses on strategies for overcoming common forms of reluctance in communication, self improvement and relations with others.