Many of us grew up in family dynamics where one or both parents may have had borderline personality disorder or narcissistic personality disorder signs and symptoms. Lacking a clear blueprint and unaware of how others were raised, we assume everyone else had the same experiences.
One of the most significant effects of this family dynamic is the constant effort to gain our parents’ acceptance and approval. When we are young, we try to get good grades, get on the sports team, or be on the debate team. A lot of it was for personal gratification but much of it was for outside validation from our parents. We would do these things to get kudos from mom or dad. Sometimes we received the validation and sometimes we did not.
Growing up in this dynamic creates certain types of adults. Adults who have developed in this environment try to make everyone happy and calm situations down.
The most significant thing though is trying to get acceptance and approval. When we are raised in this type of situation, we do not stop trying to get mom and dad’s approval even as adults. We still tell them about our accomplishments from the raise we received at work to the accomplishment of our children.
No matter what, we never seem to get the feeling we are searching for. We start looking towards other people in our lives for this acceptance and approval. It seems as though they do not give it to us either. We continue to find people who do not give us approval and acceptance.
We have to be aware of this programming of this conditioning that we are living. It takes us away from our happiness, what we want, and our goals. It takes away the happiness of acquiring our goals. We are doing this for the wrong reasons. We are doing it to get someone else’s attention, acceptance, and approval. Eventually, we need to realize that this is a by-product, it is not healthy or how we are supposed to live our lives. Life was not intended to be this way; it is about what makes us happy. We need to be accepting and approving of ourselves
Once we begin to accept and approve of ourselves, we do things solely for the fact that they make us feel good about them. We go out and do things to have personal achievement and feel good about it.
There will be people around us who triumph and be happy for me but in the end, it is soothing something inside of myself. We have to come to terms with the fact that this is the only way we are going to get acceptance and approval from these types of people.
It is important to remember that people like this don’t even accept and approve of themselves. They are insecure and unable to deal with their own emotions. These people feel out of control and most likely are unhappy with many parts of their own lives. They may hide this and create a façade that it is not the case. They are not happy and so enmeshed in their own emotions that trying to make them happy or get approval from them is not going to happen.
We need to look at how often we are trying to still get that approval from our parents even as an adult. How often are you trying to get approval from people outside of you, friends, family, or even your spouse? How can you turn this around and start telling yourself that’s great but I don’t need this. This is something that I was conditioned to do, but it is not my truth.
When we can do this we can begin to find more harmony in our lives as well as realize that we are in charge of our domain. We are in charge of what makes us happy and approve of ourselves. When we can approve of ourselves it seems like everyone gives us approval because we are not looking for it anymore.