• What Makes Most Teens Need To Be Accepted Or Validation?

What makes most teens feel they need to be accepted/validated?

All growing up, I had a friend who never cared about other people's opinions. She had the kindest heart and was always making others feel needed. She helped people realize that others opinions don’t matter unless you make them matter. Notice how I said “had” instead of “has”? That's because she went to highschool. Ever since, she became like every person she disliked. She seeks validation from others and makes people feel less of themselves. So what happened when she came to high school? She started receiving lots of validation and that made her start needing it more and more. The validation started to consume her and made her a different person. Psychology Today says that validation

But why do some people not feel this way? How are some people able to ignore society's “standards” and how other people see them? Often times, people feel like they need to be accepted to be popular. They feel that if people don't compliment on their clothes or their hair, it isn't cool enough. This is a bad thing for teens because many teens suffer with low self esteem and insecurities. When they receive validation from peers, this is giving them a false sense of temporary acceptance. But when this feeling wears off, they can be left feeling more insecure than ever. In adolescence, the need to seek approval from peers is particularly strong. This may be because they are transitioning from being part of a unit (family) to being their own person and want people to accept them as the individual they are. However, teens who don't seek approval from others are likely to accept themselves and strive to reach their full potential. Eventually everyone goes through something where they aren't accepted and if they are reliant on others acceptance it can cause them to do stuff that is inappropriate and out of

It makes them feel things that they cannot make themselves feel. According to Lauren Suval, “feeling approved of makes us feel secure with ourselves as a person. There is a huge degree of inner peace and security connected to feeling good about who we are” (Suval, Online). But when we aren't met with approval, we no longer feel safe and protected. As Suval said, when “we meet ridicule or rejection, it can undermine our view of ourselves” (Suval, Online). This can make us begin to doubt our personal worth. We don't like this feeling because it threatens our sense of security and disrupts our inner harmony. But when did this start becoming important? Sometimes, this need for acceptance comes from our childhood. According to Understanding the Psychology of Guilt, most children were “taught from a young age to seek approval from their parents for the things they said or did” (Erupting Mind, 2016). Every clap, every smile from our parents told us we were doing something right and egged us on to do better. “Since the need for approval, love and acceptance from our parents is strong, we become conditioned over time to seek approval from others as well. Whenever we don’t receive approval, there is an automatic trigger and desire to win it back”. We concentrate all our school years and careers on trying to fit in, fearing criticism, and doing whatever it takes to be accepted. We spend our whole lives waiting