Stop seeking approval without turning cold
Letting go of the need for the nod is not turning cold. How to train holding your judgment in small things and what to expect.
Ten to seven. The message you wrote three times and did not send
It is ten to seven in the morning. You have your phone in your hand and a message written three times.
It is for the work group. You are going to propose a change in how the tasks are split, and you have spent twenty minutes rewriting the same idea. The first version was clear. The second added “maybe” at the start. The third ended with “but if you prefer it the other way, let’s leave it”. You saved the draft and went to make coffee.
What just happened is not indecision. It is that at the moment of exposing yourself, your head did the usual calculation on its own: what will they think. And the calculation won, again.
If that sounds like you, this text is not here to tell you to stop caring about people — that would be another impossible. It is here to show you how you actually get out: not at once or by decision, but by accumulation of small gestures where you find that holding what is yours does not break anything. And it is here to tell you what to expect from the process, because most people give up just when it was starting to work.
1. How it started (without blaming anyone)
It is worth starting with the origin, not to find someone to blame, but to understand why the reflex has so much force.
At some early point you learned that your place depended on what others thought. It was not your decision: it was a reading of the environment. If affection came with conditions, if an adult’s mood was unpredictable, if disagreement brought silence or punishment, then reading faces was not a vice: it was the skill that kept you safe.
Leary and colleagues (1995) described self-esteem as a sociometer: an internal gauge that tracks how likely others are to accept you. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.68.3.518 In a child, that gauge is vital information, not paranoia. The problem is not that it exists: it is that in your case it got set at a threshold where the alarm goes off before there is any danger.
That is why this does not look like vanity. The person chasing applause knows exactly what they want. The person who has given in their whole life is not seeking anything: they are avoiding something. And what they avoid is a sensation — that of not belonging — that at some point in their history was real.
2. How it installs (and why it keeps running)
The mechanism is simple once you see it: what started as a skill became automatic, and the automatic stopped consulting you.
At six, reading the adult’s face told you if you were safe. At sixteen, reading the group’s face told you if you fit. At thirty, you are still reading faces — in the office, in your partner, in the group chat — but you no longer depend on anyone to survive. The strategy stayed, the real need left, and nobody told you.
That explains why you notice it afterwards and not in the moment. The reaction runs faster than thought: when someone frowns, the body responds in the blink before you can decide. You give in, you apologise, you change what you were going to say. It is not a lack of intelligence: you are answering with a part of the brain that does not wait for your permission.
People who notice the pattern after the interaction, not during. That is the rule, not the exception: the reaction comes before awareness, which is why the work is not “deciding not to do it” but putting a pause in.
People who give up on the attempt by expecting a change of character instead of a change of behaviour. They almost always leave just before it starts to show.
3. Where you are now
Here it is worth being precise, because there is a version of this text that lies and it is not the one on this page.
Where you are now, probably, is at a point where the pattern is costing you concrete things and you no longer want to go on like this, but you also do not know how to start without turning into someone you do not recognise. You are afraid of two things at once: of giving in for the rest of your life, and of turning hard or selfish if you stop giving in. That double fear is what keeps you still.
Crocker and Wolfe (2001) help see why it is so hard. They showed that self-worth can get tethered to specific domains — other people’s approval among them — and that when the source collapses, your mood falls with it. DOI: 10.1037/0033-295X.108.3.593 If you have your worth hung outside, letting go of the nod does not feel like freedom: it feels like losing the ground. And that is why the first move is not to let go, it is to build a floor where there was none.
That floor is not an affirmation in the mirror. It is data that only experience gives: that your judgment can stand without anyone approving it. And that experience is earned with gestures, not with reflection.
4. What it looks like and what it is
Before the method, a table to see yourself in, because this pattern disguises itself as a virtue and that is why it is hard to recognise.
| What it looks like | What it really is | How you notice |
|---|---|---|
| You are flexible | You give in before consulting yourself | Nobody knows what you wanted |
| You are a good person | You fear displeasure | Tiredness shows up with no clear cause |
| You are humble | You do not register achievements without a witness | What you did barely counts until someone sees it |
| You are calm | You avoid friction at any cost | Anger arrives later, with no visible source |
Look at the last column. None of those signals looks like a problem from outside: they look like qualities. That is the disguise, and it is why this pattern can last decades without anyone — including you — naming it. You are not doing something bad. You are doing something expensive, and the cost is paid on the inside.
People who describe the pattern with a quality — “I am flexible”, “I am a good person” — before they can name it. It is not denial: the disguise works so well that you believe it yourself.
People who notice the cost first as tiredness, not as conflict. They run out before realising that the exhaustion is the price of calculating: keeping several people happy at once is invisible, unpaid work.
5. How you get out (the method, in order)
Now the practical part. How you get out, without magic formulas and without promises that do not hold.
First, change the size of the bet. Do not start with the hard conversation you have been avoiding for years. Start with a small decision where you have a preference and there is almost no cost: what you eat, what music you play, when you leave, what you say when someone asks what you want. The pattern does not move with heroics: it moves with repetition.
Second, take the prologue off your judgment. The harmful part is not the opinion: it is the “this might be silly, but…” that comes before it. That prologue is the retreat in advance, the way of asking permission before speaking. Say it without it. It is not aggression: it is letting your sentence exist without an escort.
Third, learn to tolerate discomfort without fixing it. When you hold a judgment and someone does not nod, tension will appear in your body. That is the alarm, not a signal of danger. The urge will be to soften it, withdraw it, apologise to bring the tension down. Do not do it once. Notice the tension and let it be for thirty seconds. It is uncomfortable. It is not dangerous. That distinction is the whole work.
Fourth, tell holding apart from imposing. Holding your judgment is saying what you think and leaving it standing even if you are not agreed with. Imposing is needing the other person to accept it. They are opposites, and confusing them is what makes people believe that working on this means turning aggressive. The goal is not to win the conversation: it is not to disappear from it.
Fifth, review the contexts where you always lose. There are places — a family, a boss, one particular friend — where the pattern is stronger and you always give in. Those contexts ask for two things: even smaller gestures, and sometimes professional support, because there the pattern is not only yours: it is sustained in a relationship that has organised itself around you giving in.
6. Holding is not imposing
It is worth separating two things that get confused all the time, because the confusion is what makes many people believe that working on this means turning aggressive.
| Holding your judgment | Imposing your judgment | |
|---|---|---|
| What you do | You say what you think and leave it standing | You need the other person to accept it |
| What depends on you | Your sentence | The other person’s nod |
| If they do not agree | It bothers you and you go on | You push until you win |
| How it feels afterwards | Clean tiredness | Emptiness or guilt |
The first column leaves your judgment on the table without demanding anything. The second turns the conversation into a need to win that is never satisfied, because the other person can always withhold agreement. When you confuse the two, two bad things happen at once: either you give in so as not to impose (and you disappear), or you push so as not to give in (and you turn hard). The middle point is not in the middle: it is in changing what you ask for. You do not ask for approval, you ask for room for your sentence.
Personas que sostienen mejor cuando empiezan por el cheapest ground — friends, minimal decisions — and carry the trained muscle to their partner or job afterwards. Going for the most expensive first is the most common cause of giving up in the first weeks.
7. The case: the one who had just lost her job
Let us go to a case, because the method lands better attached to a life. Composite, with details changed. It is not a real person.
She is a woman of forty-one. She had been laid off three weeks earlier, along with four other people in her area, in a cutback. It was not performance: the company closed a whole department. She knew it.
And still, she spent three weeks apologising for existing.
Apologies for arriving at the ex-colleagues’ meeting without a job. Apologies for telling her situation. Apologies for not having an answer when they asked what she was going to do. At a lunch with a friend, she heard herself say “sorry, I should not complain, there are people worse off” after barely three sentences about what she felt.
That “sorry” is the pattern in its purest form, and it showed up exactly when she most needed to talk. The loss — the job — triggered something older: the idea that without a place in the world, she had no right to take up space. And since she could not hold the right, she borrowed it with apologies.
What she started to do was small and concrete, following this text’s method. Once a day, she told her situation without apologising and without adding the “but there are people worse off” at the end. Nothing more. And she noticed something that surprised her: people were not uncomfortable. She was the only one who was uncomfortable. The alarm was ringing only on her side of the phone.
Weeks later, something had changed, and it was not that she stopped caring what people thought. It was that “sorry” stopped coming out on its own. It became a decision. Sometimes she decided to apologise, when it was due. But it was no longer a reflex that took the place before she arrived.
8. What to expect from the process (the part almost nobody says)
This is where it is worth being honest, because this is the point where most people give up.
It is not linear. You will have weeks of holding your judgment without effort and days where you give in about everything. That does not mean going backwards: the pattern moves by accumulation, not by perfect streaks. A good month does not erase a bad day, and a bad day does not erase a good month.
The body adjusts after the behaviour. The first thing that changes is what you do: “sorry” comes out less, the automatic yes takes a little longer. The sense of peace at holding a judgment comes later, and it will come. If you wait to feel different before noticing the change, you will conclude it is not working just as it is working.
The relationships will move. If you have been giving in for years, the people around you learned to count on that. When you stop giving in, some will notice and not all will be glad. That does not mean you are doing something wrong: it means the change is real and touches the relationship, not just your head.
And there is no finish line. You will not wake up one day not caring about others’ judgment, and that is not failure: wanting to belong is human. Baumeister and Leary (1995) showed it: belonging is a basic need, not a vice. DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.497 The goal is not to switch it off, it is to keep your judgment from collapsing every time someone frowns. That state is reachable. The other does not exist.
And if I feel worse at the beginning?
It is common and it has an explanation. Before, giving in gave you quick relief: you lowered the tension and that was that. When you stop giving in, that instant relief disappears and only the discomfort remains, until the body learns that the discomfort passes on its own. That middle stretch — without the old relief and without the new floor yet — is the most uncomfortable, and it is also where people give up. Knowing it is coming helps you not read it as a sign you are going wrong.
9. The exercise: say one sentence of your own
The earlier method says what to do; this exercise turns it into concrete practice, step by step. Do it today; it takes ten minutes.
- Pick the cheap ground. A small decision where you have a preference: what you eat, what music you play, when you leave. Not the hard conversation you have avoided for years.
- Write the sentence. Draft exactly what you want to say, without the retreat prologue. “I prefer this” instead of “this might be silly, but…”.
- Take off the escort. Delete the apologies and justifications around it. Leave only the sentence and, at most, one reason.
- Say it once. Out loud, in the moment. Do not take it back after ten seconds even if you notice tension.
- Notice the discomfort without fixing it. The tension that appears is the alarm. Watch it for thirty seconds without softening, taking it back or apologising.
- Record the outcome. Afterwards, note what happened. Most of the time, nothing serious — and that check is the real training.
10. The day you forget
There is a moment almost no text mentions and it is worth leaving ready: the day you go back to giving in about everything, without having decided to, as if you had practised nothing.
That day comes. It usually arrives with tiredness, with hurry, or with someone who has authority over you. And the temptation, that day, is to read it as proof that you are no good at this and to quit. Do not. One relapse day does not erase a month of practice, just as a month of practice does not vaccinate you against a relapse day. The pattern does not move by perfect streaks: it moves by accumulation.
What helps, when it happens, is one single thing: write down the trigger. It is almost always one of three — tiredness, hurry, or someone with authority. Knowing which one beats you lets you lower the next gesture to a smaller one in that same context, instead of trying the same thing and losing again. And if it is always the same context that beats you, that is no longer a lack of practice: it is a bond that needs other help.
11. The question you can now answer
Back to the beginning, to that person who comes out of a conversation knowing what everyone else thinks and nothing of what she thinks. That scene opens this text, and that scene is where it returns now, with something new: you already know the alarm does not measure reality, that holding a judgment is not imposing it, and that the muscle is trained cheap before it is used expensive.
What is left is not a task. It is a question, and it now has a possible answer: of the reasons you gave yourself to keep giving in — “it is not that bad”, “better not to make anyone uncomfortable”, “it will pass” — which one is really stopping you, and what would happen if you tested it as false this week, with something small?
You do not have to answer with a big decision. It is enough that the next time the reflex appears, you ask yourself the question before obeying it. That is the whole work, repeated: hearing the alarm and choosing, instead of just complying.
If you want to keep going, the piece on what a need for approval is separates the pattern from healthy kindness, and the one on the origin and how it installs goes into where it comes from. And if you have been giving in for years and feel this goes very far back, therapy at rdkterapia is one possible door.
A question left hanging: what if the other person really gets angry when I stop giving in?
It can happen, and it is worth not pretending otherwise. Some relationships have organised themselves around you giving in, and when that changes, the other person may react with anger, coldness or reproach. That does not mean you did something wrong: it means the change is real. Now, if the other person’s anger turns into systematic punishment, control or abuse, that is no longer a problem with your need for approval: it is a relationship that needs other help. Sometimes the work of holding your judgment uncovers, underneath, something that had been there for a long time.
And a last one: does this apply the same if I am a man or a woman?
The pattern does not tell gender apart, but the context does change the disguise. Men with this pattern are usually read as “calm” or “good guys”, and that is why they notice it later. Women are additionally asked to be warm and not to make anyone uncomfortable, which reinforces the pattern from outside. The internal mechanism is the same — a miscalibrated alarm — and so is the work. What changes is how much social pressure pushes in the same direction.
Caja de crisis. If you are in an acute crisis right now — thoughts of harming yourself, or that nothing is worth it — do not keep reading. Call right now. Colombia: 123 (emergencies) and 106 (psychological crisis line). If you are in the US: 988 (Suicide and Crisis Lifeline). If you are in the UK: 116 123 (Samaritans). If you can, stay with someone while you call.