The Need To Be Admitted And Approved Of By Others

Do you refuse to take part in games to avoid feeling crushed if you lose? You may be someone who stays away from others, pretending you don’t need family or friends, or you may deliberately lose a game so you can make out that winning doesn’t matter to you anyway. If you were to lose everything overnight and wake up tomorrow with no job and no relationship, would you think less of yourself or blame others? These people often come across as humble and cheerful. They’ll fight hard to achieve their goals, but they won’t think their lives are over when they fail. The academics refer to this as periods of downfall, which happen to us all, but which they have discovered are likely to be more common when we transition from one life stage to another, say from the end of our teens to young adulthood or from midlife to eventual retirement and old age. If you had to say where you think you stand in that social pecking order right now what would you say? Would you be able to put your hand on your heart and report that you feel seen and heard and valued and respected by not only those you care about and love but those you work and socialize with too? If your teenage years are a recent or even a distant memory, think back to those perhaps turbulent times and ask yourself the same question. Did you feel seen, heard, valued, and respected? You may have landed the job of your dreams or be living with a partner you love, you may be thinking of starting a family or hoping to take time to travel extensively before you become more tied by responsibilities. There are so many positives we can associate with this phase of our lives, you could probably write a long list here of your own which will be unique to you. Now, compare this with what was happening when you hit your teens. Perhaps you felt you had woken up one morning in some strange limbo land where you were no longer a child and not yet an independent adult which meant nobody really knew the right way to treat you. Perhaps the world looked a little bit scary, and there were times you wanted to hang on to the safety of childhood or perhaps your childhood had not been safe and you couldn’t wait to transit into young adulthood and all the freedoms that would bring with it. If I asked you to list all the things that were positive about being a teenager would your list be as long as the list of positives you could write for young adulthood, even with all its challenges? Nobody can live up to these ideals, unless they succumb to airbrushing, but that doesn’t stop teenage girls from feeling like failures because they are striving but failing to achieve the impossible! This then sets up a cycle of certain failure and can trigger serious mental health challenges, including depression. It can also mean you find yourself avoiding those activities and life choices that you fear others may not approve of.

Goodbye To Innocence

It means that you truly believe you are good enough, just as you are. No changes required so you can feel valued and trusted and that there is a place in the world for you. You may even believe that people will only like you if you are a success and so end up hiding your perceived failures, instead of seeking help. They don’t change, depending on which group of friends they find themselves spending time with and they don’t ditch their core values in order to please others and court some kind of meaningless popularity and win that pointless contest. Have firm core values and principles which they live by and will defend in the face of opposition. Of course, there can be too much of a good thing. The worst characteristics of a narcissist include having a highly inflated and grandiose view of themselves and their achievements, of their positive traits and competencies and, as a result, of their entitlement. This is my kind of place, as if they have been born with a right to privileges that may be denied to others. I promise you, you will know if your path has ever crossed with that of a narcissist. You will find yourself feeling confused and befuddled by all the grandiose claims and the excessive need for admiration this person will demonstrate. Hang on, weren’t we just reading about the need to be admitted and approved of by others? Who was it that had that character trait before? They see themselves as if they were the only reality worthy of esteem, the rest being mere generators of their supposed grandeur and worth. Narcissists are always talking about their supposed greatness and worth, about their uncommon, marvelous experiences, their extremely interesting projects, about how much they have done to improve in life, and even to help others.

A Mean Disposition

As well as being expected to stay young and beautiful forever and to meet someone impossible and idealistic glossy magazine idealization of what beautiful means. She may put herself last on the to care for list and be too scared to ask her partner, family, or friends to help her meet her own needs. These women may struggle to set boundaries with their partners and their children and because they don’t respect themselves, finding parenting difficult because they cannot set limits or demand the respect they deserve. I will show you how these changes for the better can only happen once you allow yourself to change how you feel about yourself. We need to be able to trust our judgement and believe we can make the best decisions for ourselves and our growth. We need to believe, too, that we can overcome those challenges life throws at us, on our path and that when we ’fall over’ we can get back up again.