In the past, we needed our parents’ approval of us because we used to depend on them for survival.
We as children, can’t survive on our own, we need an adult to depend on in order to survive, we need an adult to provide food, shelter and protection for us, without an adult, we are practically dead, because we weren’t able to provide those things for ourselves.
Getting approval from our parents, felt critical for our survival, if our parents approved of us, we felt secure, safe and granted that they will keep taking care of us and providing us our survival needs.
On the other hand, if we did something that our parents didn’t approve of, or if our parents didn’t approve of us at all, we felt like our survival was in danger, unsafe, insecure, like they were about to abandon us and throw us since we didn’t meet their standards.
This perception of abandonment has the same effect as real abandonment in the mind of a child, we felt like we were about to thrown away, to the unknown, to danger, where anything at anytime can harm us without anyone to defend us, where we will starve to death, where we will freeze to death, without any help…
We have every right to feel this horrible fear, like our world/life is about to finish, like we were thrown to a void with no way out.
The thing is, our parents were never(or might have never) going to abandon us, we weren’t abandonned, we just perceived that abandonment, but it still feels horrible.
Back to approval, in the past we needed our parents approval in order to survive, in order to feel safe and secure since we used to depend on the for survival.
We are stuck in that loop, but that is not the case anymore with other people, with other adults(why don’t we feel that same fear when interacting with a toddler? Exactly, because we are still stuck in our childhood loop, wanting to please the adult, the caretaker) because our survival doesn’t depend on them like it used to depend on our adult parents in the past, now our survival depends only on us, we don’t need other people to provide us food, shelter and protection, we provide these for ourselves now, we are adults with power(we can defend our selves), we have jobs, we have money(we can provide food for ourselves), we have(own/rent) our own place(we can shelter ourselves) and we have allies and friends to help us in difficult times.
Thus, we literally don’t need other people’s opinion or approval, other people’s opinion can’t harm us anymore, it used to, but it doesn’t anymore because we only need oursrives now.
Happy healing!