From People Pleasing to Self-Love: A Primer on Overcoming Approval Seeking [Authentic Life – Part 1]

Apr 09, 2024 | 6:00 p.m., Mountain Time

April is all about living an authentic life and breaking free from the Nice Guy Syndrome. We will explore what it means to be authentic, that is, being who you are, and accepting yourself for who you are. This means being honest, living with integrity, and not hiding behind a facade.

One of the main things that keep us from being authentic is toxic shame. This is the deep-seated belief that we are somehow defective, and it can prevent us from truly being ourselves. We also develop covert contracts as a way of managing this toxic shame. These contracts are essentially the anxiety management skills, defense mechanisms, and shame-hiding mechanisms we learned as children.

The problem with these covert contracts is that they don’t work. They are based on the inaccurate belief that if we do everything right, people will like us and love us. However, being a good person is just the bare minimum that is expected of us. We will never live in a problem-free world, no matter how right we do things.

We will talk about the importance of internal validation versus external validation. As children, we needed external validation to establish our sense of self. This came from our parents meeting our needs in a timely, consistent, and judicious manner. However, as adults, seeking validation outside of ourselves keeps us stuck in a loop of seeking external validation. This leads to a never-ending cycle of needing more recognition from others because we aren’t validating ourselves.

We will also talk about how to break this cycle and validate ourselves through integrated action.

Join us this week as we kick off Authenticity April.

In this four-part series of discussions, we’re going to talk about internalized shame, and how to work through it to live a more overt and authentic life.