When the desire for approval is driving many decisions, it is a “defense value.” It distorts your choices and actions and undercuts your successes and sense of self. Fortunately, this is a problem that can be remedied by taking an active approach to reprogramming your value hierarchy to eliminate this distortion.

What is a defense value?

A “defense value” is something that you have consistently sought out in order to avoid some bad feeling. It is something you have “acted to gain and/or keep,” not because it helps you create values you need to flourish in the world, but because it helps you feel better.

For example, for many people, approval is a defense value. Receiving disapproval from someone you care about is an unpleasant experience. Nobody enjoys receiving disapproval. For various reasons, some people decide that this unpleasantness must be avoided if possible. They wind up adjusting their goals, their actions, and even their thoughts to “go along” with other people to get their approval.

In the short run, this creates apparent harmony in relationships. And in truth, seeking approval is sometimes important. If you are in a cooperative project with a boss, family member, or co-worker, it’s important to make sure you are in alignment on how each of you is proceeding. That may involve checking with others to make sure they approve of decisions you make that could affect their parts of the project or the overall direction you are taking together.

However, if approval is sought consistently, it is self-destructive. In the medium-term, it creates inner conflict, resentment, and a sense of victimhood. In the long-term, it significantly reduces the stored importance of your genuine values, making them difficult to identify.

The practical problem with a strong desire for approval

The practical problem with a strong desire for approval is that it undercuts every social situation, especially once you realize how self-destructive it is in the long term.

For example, a questioner at a talk I gave recently confessed that he was ambivalent about asking his question, because part of him wanted to get approval from me and the audience for asking a “brilliant” question. It was a good question (on this exact topic), but I suspect he felt ambivalent and guilty in racing to the microphone to ask it. He had convinced himself that it was proper to ask, but the desire for approval reflected a part of him that he didn’t approve of.

So there he was, doing something perfectly rational, yet experiencing some guilt and maybe a little self-doubt. That doesn’t seem fair, does it?

Well, it is a metaphysically given fact that your past choices and actions will create your current emotions. Every single choice and action, especially conscious ones to set and pursue goals, strengthens some values and weakens others. Your choices and actions create your value hierarchy. The current state of your value hierarchy is the primary determiner of what emotions get triggered at any given situation and with what intensity.

So, there is not an issue of fairness per se. Your memory and affect systems are working as you programmed them to work.

But if you value yourself and you value your happiness, changing the strength of those stored values to be in alignment with your conscious convictions is a high priority. In this case, if you could stop valuing approval so much, you will raise your baseline happiness by making all of your social interactions more genuine and less conflicted.

How you reintegrate approval into your value hierarchy

Approval can be reintegrated so that it has a proper place in your value hierarchy. This is achieved by taking the initiative to consciously analyze every incident in which you notice a desire for approval. You need to do three things:

1. Identify the top “deep rational value” at stake in that specific incident. A deep rational value is something that is always rational to pursue. It is so fundamental that you can make the case that it is always constructive to go after it (barring true life-threatening emergencies). It is optional which deep rational value you pursue at any given time.

In the case of the questioner, his top rational value at stake was understanding or knowledge (about the topic) or support (from me). That was what convinced him it was right to ask the question.

2. Identify the lesser “deep rational value” that would be gained if you gained the defense value in this incident. Our questioner got my approval and approval from many in the audience, who all agreed it was a good question.

Lots of people were curious about the topic, and also wanted to understand. When this is the case — several people holding and pursuing the same value at the same time — there is a very pleasurable kind of bonding that occurs. This is the deep rational value of connection.

In addition, I was eager to communicate my ideas on this exact topic. Communication is a deep rational value. In this case, the communication involved teaching — which is a cooperative effort. Since my desire to explain was indeed matched with the listener’s desire to hear the explanation, we had a mutual goal, and together we gained the deep rational value of cooperation.

Some people think of this as reframing. But more deeply, this is making your values more precise. Connection, communication, and cooperation are the deep rational values that make the desire for approval rational, when it’s rational. Thinking of the value in those cases as “approval” muddies the issue. It makes it seem like the valid cases have something in common with the invalid cases. Reconceptualizing those cases with different concepts weakens the stored value of approval and strengthens the stored value of each of these critical, life-affirming deep rational values.

3. Identify the unpleasantness that would be avoided if you gained the defense value in this incident. Facing and processing the fear(s) that motivated the pursuit of the defense value is critical to weakening its hold on you.

Suppose some people in the audience felt superior to our questioner. Suppose they felt contempt rather than approval for his question. You can imagine the kinds of snarky thoughts some people might have: “He’s just a newbie” or “I don’t have a problem with that” or “He should just suppress it” or “This is not on the real topic. He shouldn’t have asked this question.”

First of all, suppose this was the dominant reaction. If everyone laughed or smirked or tsked at the question, he might feel humiliated. His worst fear had come to pass!

This is when you really need to introspect your emotions and put the incident into perspective. Granted, it’s unpleasant. Very unpleasant. But can you handle it? Yes, in that it won’t kill you. Such an incident might trigger a lot of self-critical thoughts. It might put you in a bad mood until you get a chance to process all of your emotions. But it would not be the end of the world.

Recognizing that it’s not the end of the world gives you the strength to undertake the most important work you need to do. Your job at that moment is to introspect that entire mass of thoughts and feelings in order to resolve all of the contradictions and conflicts that are built into it. That is the most important way that you lessen its hold on you.

You do this after the fact, in your journal, using tactics such as “thought records” from Mind Over Mood or “mood logs” from When Panic Attacks or “empathy bath” from the Thinking Lab.

Even if your worst fears didn’t come to pass, you should still process the fear. Imagine what you were afraid of, or what some people might have thought, and then process the negative emotions that come up when you imagine that. They’ll be strong enough that processing them will be just as effective as if you had had the humiliating experience — without that additional suffering.

This will not be fun, but it is the way that you reprogram your memory banks. Every contradiction you uncover straightens out the logic of your stored knowledge. Every conflict you resolve clarifies the relative importance of your values and reprograms the relative strength a bit.

Keep doing this with each new incident, and each time you will feel a little less desire for approval and more eagerness for authentic connection, communication, and cooperation.

The payoff of doing this work

The process of facing fears is unpleasant. But doing the work always has a significant payoff, if you do it right. It won’t have a payoff if you ruminate. It won’t have a payoff if you freewrite. But if you undertake a rational process of self-understanding and self-development, you should gain significant insights from identifying the values at stake, and you should increase your emotional resilience by facing your fears.

If you attempt this process and it doesn’t work for you or you fall into a funk, then it’s time to join the Thinking Lab where this methodology is explained in detail.