Do You Find Yourself Always Seeking External Validation? How Exploring Your Validation Patterns Can Help You Find Balance.

If you’re constantly searching for approval, you’re not alone. Explore the quiet pull of external validation and the path back to yourself.

We all need validation. To feel seen, valued, and understood. It can be a really lovely experience; it’s part of being human. Validation can be deeply affirming. It only becomes tricky when our sense of worth depends on it. When needing validation begins to shape how we show up in the world, we can slowly lose touch with what we truly feel, need, or want.

Over time, the need for approval can become so familiar that we may not even realise how much it quietly shapes us. Beneath it, there’s often something deeper, a quiet kind of hunger many of us carry. For some, it’s been there for as long as we can remember. For others, it’s harder to name, but it lingers in the background.

It can show up when...

– You light up when someone compliments you, and when they don’t, you assume the worst about yourself.

– You put extra effort into sounding “smart,” “together,” or “nice” even when it’s not what you truly mean or want to say, just to gain approval.

– You feel a deep sting when someone doesn’t acknowledge your effort, especially when you know you gave it your all.

– You question your worth when you're not praised, noticed, or chosen, as if it must mean you’re not good enough.

– You hold back your opinion until you know what others think, because it feels safer that way. The idea of being rejected for what you say is almost unbearable.

– You look around the room or online to see how you measure up, and even when it isn’t true, you almost always come up short.

– You can’t fully enjoy your success until someone else tells you it matters, because they seem to get to decide what’s worth celebrating.

– You offer help, advice, or kindness not from a place of fullness, but hoping to be noticed—even if it’s just a small glimmer, even crumbs—because sometimes something is better than nothing.

– You downplay your needs, ideas, or dreams, afraid of being seen as too much or not enough.

– You silently hope your partner, friend, or boss will notice you, because being seen by them feels like the only way to feel good, and valid.

– You chase achievements or milestones, hoping each one will finally make you feel worthy, but it’s an exhausting, never-ending cycle of chasing the next best thing.

It can leave you feeling lost or unsure when that approval doesn’t come. You might feel anxious, with your heart racing and your mind swirling, waiting for a sign that you’re okay. Sometimes you feel ashamed, wondering if you said too much or weren’t good enough. It can make you feel small, invisible even, like you don’t really matter unless someone else says you do. You might second guess yourself, confused about what you really think or what you really want. For some of us this turns into a restless replaying of moments over and over, scanning for clues where things may have gone wrong. All of this can leave you feeling distant from others, feelings of aloneness, especially from yourself. This kind of disconnection can create separation from your own needs, beliefs and desires.

If this feels familiar to you the need for validation is not just a passing desire. It can feel like it rises from deep inside, like a hollow well that never quite fills. The idea that you could offer this kind of validation to yourself might not even feel possible. It may never have been something you were taught or shown. This has been your way of surviving, so of course the idea of an internal compass feels unfamiliar. When we do not have a steady sense inside that tells us we are okay, we naturally turn to others to reflect that back to us. To feel like we are on the right track. To feel like we belong. For many, seeking validation has nothing to do

with vanity or ego. It can feel like a matter of emotional survival.

How Did I Get This Way?

Gentle Look at the Origins of Validation Seeking and Self-Worth Struggles

Sometimes you explain it away with things like:

“I just don’t want to get it wrong.”

“I like making people happy.”

“I overthink everything, that’s just how I am.”

“I’ve always been the quiet one.”

“I’m just really sensitive.”

“I hate disappointing people.”

“I just want to be liked.”

“I’m a people pleaser, I can’t help it.”

“I don’t like conflict.”

“I’ve never been confident.”

“I’m just better at following than leading.”

These can be spoken with a shrug, or even a laugh. Often, underneath them, is something tender. But what if these aren’t just personality traits or quirks? What if they’re protective patterns, they are ways you learned to stay safe, accepted, or close to others?

You may have needed to be agreeable, quiet, or helpful because that’s what kept the peace. You may have learned to overthink or stay small because that felt safer than being criticised, ignored, or too much. So instead of asking, “What’s wrong with me?” Maybe choosing to turn inwards with some curiosity and consider, “What did I learn I had to be in order to feel okay?”

The need to seek approval often starts long before we're conscious of it, woven into how we first learned to relate to others. These patterns often take root in childhood, shaped by unspoken rules we felt we had to follow. As children, we don’t always question them. We simply understand that being a certain way helps us feel safe, accepted, or loved.

Maybe you learned that being quiet and agreeable earned praise, while expressing anger or sadness led to disapproval or withdrawal. If difficult emotions were met with dismissal or rejection, you may have learned to tuck them away. Over time, this becomes an internal rule: certain feelings aren’t safe to have or share. This creates an internal belief that If I show this part of me, I might not be accepted or loved. As an adult, you might find yourself avoiding conflict, pushing down sadness, or striving to always be the “good one”, all in the hope of keeping connection.

Perhaps you were the responsible one in the family. The helper, the achiever, the one who didn’t cause trouble. There simply wasn’t space for your needs. Or maybe love felt unpredictable, and you learned to stay hyper-aware of others’ moods to avoid conflict or earn closeness.

Sometimes, what we carry was never ours to choose. Passed down through family dynamics, social norms, or cultural expectations. Patterns of ways to love, survive, or hold things together. The rules you internalised early in life were often protective and adaptive. They helped you stay safe and belong, what every child deeply needs.

An invitation to turn inward

My hope is to gently invite you to notice how some of these internalised rules, often shaped by early experiences of needing to meet certain expectations to feel loved or accepted, (sometimes called conditions of worth) might still be shaping how you move through the world. These ways of being may have been necessary once, but they might no longer serve who you are now, or who you are becoming.

Learning to recognise these underlying rules that are steering you to seek out external validation repetitively might bring unease or confusion to start, and possibly a quiet hope as well. A sign of turning inward to that something inside you is yearning to come forward, ready to change. It marks the start of a deeper relationship with yourself, one where you begin to ask: What do I truly need? What matters most? How can I live in alignment with me?

Looking inward can feel both freeing and scary. You might feel guilt, anxiety, or doubt. You might wonder who you are without the old rules to guide you. This discomfort is real, and very normal. It means you are beginning to see with fresh eyes, your eyes. And like all new things, it can really suck at times and it will takes time. You don’t have to do this alone.

Sometimes the strongest step is to say what’s been quiet inside to a therapist, a trusted friend, or someone who can listen without judgment. Being met with empathy helps us see ourselves not as broken, but as people who adapted, and who now have the choice to grow in new ways. Healing the need for external validation is not about cutting off connection. It’s about becoming your own safe place, building a relationship with yourself grounded in kindness, patience, compassion and trust. Your worth is already here, and you don’t need to earn or prove it.

If this resonates with you, know that you don’t have to navigate it alone. If you feel ready to explore more deeply how seeking external validation might be affecting you, I’m here to walk alongside you with kindness and patience. Together, we can gently guide you to reconnect with yourself, paving the way for a more authentic, balanced life and a deeper sense of internal belonging.