In a world where everything has to be shown and performative, struggling to actually feel satisfied with your own accomplishments without having to show them to someone has become normal. With seeking validation being a trend, people started to depend on their sense of success on someone else’s reaction, making the fear of disappointment even stronger.
Struggling with mental health
The culture surrounding younger generations leads a big group to a scenario where being approved by external factors is necessary, which changes the way they value themselves and how they react to certain circumstances.
Having good grades at college, getting a new haircut, and buying new clothes. Things that should feel ordinary turn into enormous pressure to do things perfectly. Your actions are no longer based on what you like and what’s important for you, but on whether someone else likes.
Having low self-worth can be the result of lifelong experiences, such as childhood trauma or growing up in a critical or highly competitive environment.
According to psychologist Cristina Leme, many families, driven by a constant desire to protect their children, end up limiting their ability to make their own decisions and develop self-validation skills — both of which are essential during childhood:
“The earlier this happens, the more difficult it becomes for a child to develop a healthy relationship with their mental well-being. And the effects often extend beyond childhood. Depending on what they experienced, it can compromise their self-confidence and their ability to understand and trust their own feelings”, she explains.
Cristina also mentioned that the judgments from others only feed the problem, as it reinforces the idea that they are not capable of making decisions on their own. Seeking validation, however, became a romanticized idea on social media, which makes mental health struggles seem normal to crave or express online.
Videos all over the internet show that the validation comes in different forms: partner validation, validation from friends, family, and academics. According to the Still Mind Florida Residential Mental Health, those who constantly search for approval from others have strained relationships, especially because people around them feel drained by the nonstop need for reassurance. This cycle can create even more insecurity, since the search for validation often comes with the fear of abandonment.
Once treated as casual, the romanticized version of a constant state of insecurity creates a scenario where the individual’s actions start to be programmed to impress others instead of pleasing themselves.
The concept of “performance” made that scenario stronger. Things started to be posted online or done in person just to look good in someone else’s eyes. Not only that, but people stopped expressing their true selves just to fit into a box, developing a crisis with their self-image.
It became common to look for a level of perfection that is unreachable, which builds a mentality of not being good enough. Once the expectations are not reached, it creates a feeling of failure, and the need to prove yourself to others keeps growing.
Acknowledging each other’s individuality
Nowadays, having a different lifestyle has become something to avoid instead of embracing. The idea spread among people, especially teenagers, is that if you are outside of a pattern imposed by society, you don’t belong in certain places or groups of people.
Within this scenario, shaping your personality to fit it in is changing the self-esteem of individuals, once they stop feeling like themselves, only to be approved by a social standard of what’s considered right
Even though it had a big negative impact when it comes to feeding this feeling, social media has also helped encourage people to start doing things for themselves.
Using the style you like, wearing what makes you comfortable, and being able to fully express yourself is starting to slowly become a more emphasised idea than the constant need for validation.
Even though the need for approval remains strong among the youngest generations, being authentic is becoming something that encourages them to live a calmer life. With all the stress already caused by the daily routine, feeling like yourself can help to improve your humor and build a happier state of mind.
The unstoppable search for feeling included is slowly being replaced by the effort to genuinely enjoy life without constantly seeking others’ approval.
The article above was edited by Isabella Simões.
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