“But what would others say?” – A sentence almost everyone of us, or at least everyone of the Asian community, can relate to. When you are one of those, who are overprotective or caring, then this article is especially written for you. What you have to know is that the “First them, then me” – mentality is already programmed in our childhood.

Caring for others and striving for external validation has different motivational aspects. WHY we care for someone else says always something about ourselves. Especially as little girls we get the responsibility to take care of what others may think. Taking care of our siblings, parents, grandparents, our marks in school and the list goes on. Every time we fulfil the responsibility, we get validation from outside.

„Sentences like ‚You should be happy to have a daughter like her.‘ validate our parents that they are doing everything right. So, society starts to condition our behaviour.“

The „good“ versus the „problematic“ child

Hereby we get taught, that external validation matters a lot and must play a big role in building our self confidence and self-esteem. External validation is seen as a big source – sometimes even the only source, which defines ourselves. When some young people don’t do what society expects them to do, they don’t get the positive supportive validation from outside. They are often seen as a “problematic child” which most of same aged children and adults try to avoid.

„So, they are pigeonholed, from which it is very difficult to escape from.“

Everyone waits for getting the proof that this young people are displaying behavioural problems. Using drugs, having fights or joining street gangs are extreme examples. Meanwhile the children, who are always good in school, do what their parents say and are a big help for them and the society, are the standard the “problematic children” must compete with. So, the gap between those both groups is growing over time.

Sometimes we can even find those both types in between a family, where someone is the “good” child and the other one the “bad”.

„It is a competition which has its fundamentals already in the childhood and gets bigger and bigger as soon as we grown up.“

How external validation accompanies us until adulthood

As adults this behavioural pattern defines how we see ourselves and our environment. The pressure to be always the best, is a competition nobody can ever win. There will only be losers: On the one side there are people who are sad, because they did everything possible and didn’t get the expected validation

“But what did I do wrong? I was caring, loving and giving – there was nothing what I could have done better.” 

On the other side people are frustrated because their behaviour is measured up to a standard they can never reach.

“Everything I am doing is wrong”

A vicious cycle of lowering the self-esteem and self-confidence. The result is that some people even create a capsule around themselves to protect them from others – to avoid being hurt by words and rejection. In most cases they get rejected, because they are different from what the society wishes them to be.

The drawback of external validation: Fearing rejection 

The truth is even to strongest human being is vulnerable and fears rejection. Rejection is the complex result, where someone doesn’t like us for what we are standing for, what we express through our actions or simply doesn’t like us for being who we are. I remember when I was scrolling through my feedback to my last articles, I discovered that someone made fun of one of my articles on a bigger plattform. Sadness, disappointment and selfdestruction crossed my mind. I tried to understand why someone reacted that way – and that is what we do in most of the cases when we face rejection: We overanalyze the situation and ask ourselves

„Could I have done something different to prevent this situation?“ The answer is simply NO.

We must make ourselves clear, that we all are complex individuals and throwing every day something out into this big world. There will be people who like what we are saying and there will be people who won’t agree with us. The mistake here is, that we overanalyze this situation and give our personality the fault for what happened.

We learned in our childhoods „Take care of what others say, what others might think and talk about you or you will face negativity“

„Why I recieve rejection even I am looking for what others are expecting?“

No one tells us, that we will face negativity even if we follow the given path. So, we are hurt when we earn critisism – critisism that has nothing to do with us primarily. More with the selfhate, someone else has inside him or her. The actions of this person are a radiation of self-denial, seeking for approvol and even seeking for power.

That’s why we have to educate our children to be confident and to stand for what they are regardless of what others might be thinking! The „others“ or the society won’t only judge you by what you are doing, but also as a reflection of themselves – their thinking patterns, jealousy, standards etc. The question behind this is:

“When are we enough? When the external validation is not received, who are we?“

Another example for external validation: Social Media

In some way it is funny to write about external validation on social media. But what would an article about external validation be without mentioning the dark sides of social media shortly? In times of likes, shares and followers a lot of egos are built by the online activities of others – me included. I won’t deny that getting feedback via social media pushes my self-esteem. Everyone of us wants to be seen, attention or how we call it in the psychology: external validation.

„Did you know that the dopamine shots which are crushing through our brains as soon as we get a new double tap on Instagram are almost the same as during the usage of heroin? So, we are nothing more than drug addicts. The slaves of external approval.“

Have you already been in the situation, in which you deleted a picture on social media, because it didn’t get the number of likes you expected? In this situation you may have thought: “What’s wrong with this picture? What’s wrong with me?” We sense that something outside of us is different than we thought and justify the absence of external validation with a mistake with ourselves. “So better I delete this picture before someone notices that I uploaded a new picture no one likes. It seems I’m looking ugly.”

The results: Anxiety, depressions and Self-destruction 

Maybe you even heard of the awesome women, the unseen queens, who are picking an immature man as life partner? What characterizes these women is, that they love to care for someone else and they unconsciously look for a man, who has to be constructed. So, they get the approval from outside what a great job they did with their love and care. The man by her side as “project” – an incomplete project given in the hands of this caring woman. Don’t understand me wrong – I don’t want to potray men as evil – there are also cases in which a man is overprotective.

„Rather I want to make clear that being overprotective can end up in a self-destructive behaviourial pattern.“

What everybody forgets is that no love and no care can heal a person from their destructive behaviour if they don’t want it themselves. So, the caring person starts to give and give and give without seeing any positive results. Instead he or she will be even mistreated by the partner. This is an example for a story where external validation fails, – even damages the mental health of a person.

Another great example is our shopping behaviour. When we buy something from Apple or other powerful brands we want to be seen. There is a message behind what we show and what we buy.

„Look who I am, what I achieved and what I made out of my life.“ 

The solution is social recovery

When we have a closer look on our society typical every-day questions are

„Who has the biggest house?

Are my children the most successfull?

Who has more than one car?

The biggest wedding? – Will be mine!

Who has a high job-position?“ etc.

I am not blaming anyone. Sometimes I am a victim of this behaviourial patterns as well. Moreover, I hereby want to express that this way of comparison and the everlasting competition among children is continued in our youths and adulthoods. So, we will never escape from this – until we decide ourselves to do so.

„Are all the sleepless nights, the hours of not calming down and the depressive days are worth the external validation? A question only you can answer for yourself.“

When we got taught that external validation is the only way to define ourselves in our childhood, we will seek for external validation in our adulthood, too. Ask yourself if you are an over-giving person because you learned it that way. Validation is needed and everyone of us is seeking for validation and attention in some way, but it shouldn’t be the only source which defines who you are.

„Only if we are ready to recover individually, we can recover as society. And most importanly: Don’t define your own value by lables like „good“ or „bad“. You are only good or bad as you define yourself!“

Illustrations in this article by Anushan R. Thank you for creating this amazing work for this article! Check out his page on instagram for more. 

I wrote and published this article also on Tamilculture. 

If you want to read more about mental health, click here.