I am sick and tired of being a constant approval seeker! (rant)...
<rant>
AAAAAGGGGHHHHH!!!
I just finished listing my main core emotional issues over in the Mental Health group. To me my main issues are:
Social Anxiety
Avoidant Personality
Perfectionism
Approval seeking
Depression
And secondarily issues that arise from these primary ones include
Timidity and fear of rejection
Procrastination
Emotional Immaturity
Now, I believe that 3 or 4 of the 5 primary issues I am starting to get a handle on slowly. The first 2 is really just desensitization. Depression will take care of itself, and largely has. The life changes I've made in the past month or so have moved me in the right direction. Perfectionism is a hard one but I think I can approach that from a self talk, meditative approach. The one that really gets me though is the approval seeking. I never feel good unless I'm validated by someone externally. This feeds into the perfectionism as well.
It's there in almost every interaction I have with people. I'm hyper nice to a fault because of it, I know I'm just a nice guy as well but there's almost an edge of desperation lent to my niceness by this. I have very little if any feeling of security in my own skin. Everything needs to be validated, checked off and OK'd before I can relax. I don't have a strong central core like most other people. You can't believe how much I wish I could stick to my guns about things just because I fucking feel like it. Because that's ME, my views, my personality. I have strong views on things, don't get me wrong. But if I run afoul of someone else who disagrees with me I'll immediately start entering compromise mode. OK maybe there's still some way to get him to like me, to come to an agreement. Maybe I can say I only believe 1/2 of what I said, that he's 1/2 right and on and on and on... I'm fucking sick of this shit! It has to end, it's not healthy. I don't want to end up being an ass hole of course. Just self confident and assertive where it's necessary. I want to stop giving away bits of myself and compromising just to reach a level of approval. The world is going to fucking use me, walk all over me, if I don't fix this. But this one aspect I don't really have a handle on yet. Where do I start?
</rant>