The Approval Addict

Today we come to the lesson you have all been eagerly waiting for. We are going to look at the problem of being hooked on other people’s opinions. Right there at the beginning of chapter 4 we can see today’s big lie:

I MUST BE APPROVED BY CERTAIN OTHERS TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT MYSELF.

This big lie, which most people have as a false belief in their heart, results in us craving approval, affirmation and acceptance from other people. The great problem here is that the need for approval is legitimate, but the way we seek to meet that need is not.

Let us first establish that seeking approval is actually legitimate, meaning that we were created with this need in our soul, by looking at Jn 12:42-43:

Nevertheless many even of the rulers believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they were not confessing Him, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the approval of men rather than the approval of God. NASU

Here we can see that the Apostle John is telling us what was happening within the leadership of the Jews in Israel. Many of them actually turned to Jesus and believed. However, because they substituted the approval of men in the place of the approval of God, they didn’t confess that Jesus was Lord. This statement from John tells us that approval is legitimate as a need, and that it is found in God.

I want to be very clear here. We all have the need for approval built into us, it is God designed for the purpose of internally pointing us toward Him. Whenever you feel the need to be approved of, or affirmed, or accepted, or validated, it is legitimate. There is no reason to carry any sense of guilt about feeling needy. God gave each one of us this need for our spiritual benefit, so that might connect with Him as our provider, as our “need-meeter”. It is when we deal with this legitimate need in illegitimate ways that we get off track in all our relationships.

Let us look at some of the sources of this illegitimacy. Starting with the knowledge that our need for approval is given to us from God, can we identify where our need for men’s approval might have come from? This is my list, and it is prioritized.

· Our parents.
· Our immediate family.
· Our childhood friends.
· Our loose social groups. (Like church or the boy scouts or school)
· Our extended family.
· Co-workers.

In my opinion the top two have way more influence than all the others combined. Why might this be so? Let us look up a famous verse from Proverbs, Pr 22:6:

Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it. NASU

Mostly we hear about this verse in the context of raising kids, which it does apply to. It is usually focused on pointing kids toward understanding right and wrong and knowing God, but it has a deeper significance. The Hebrew word “chanak” translated here as “train up” has a better translation and it is “point down a narrow path”. When you add it to the Hebrew word “derek”, meaning “the way”, or figuratively “in the true things of life”, you get a slightly different and deeper picture. Let’s look at Jn 14:6:

Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. NASU

Putting these things together what do you see? It is the essentially the same message, in one we are told to teach our kids that what the way, truth and life is, in the second Jesus is clarifying it, He is the way, truth and life. The verse in Proverbs is telling the person raising the child to point them toward God in everything. In the context of our lesson about approval, it means that even as a child we are to point them toward God as the source for approval, from as early a time as possible. A child sees his or her parents as god in the flesh, and from the beginning of their life seeks approval from them. This is normal and natural, but it won’t serve them well when they get older, because they begin to replace parental approval with other’s approval instead of God’s approval. And men’s approval is always conditional!

It happens to all of us, at some point we realize we are not approved of by somebody important to us. What do we experience at that moment? (Open) That is right, we experience rejection. How many rejection moments does it take before we start to have a fear of rejection? I don’t know, but I suspect it is not many.

The single biggest original source for the fear of rejection is abandonment during childhood, the second biggest is child abuse. I am an abandoned child, and this fear of rejection is a core issue with me. It has led to some significant “acting out” over the years, and I may never get it conquered, but I’m working on it. Does anybody else identify with the fear of rejection? (Open) Did anybody take the “fear of rejection test”?

Let’s move on to some of the more practical aspects of the results of the fear of rejection. The book lists several:

· Anger, Resentment and Hostility.
· Being Easily Manipulated.
· Codependency.
· Avoidance of People.
· Control.
· Depression.
· Repeating of Negative Messages.
· Hypersensitivity to the opinions of others.
· Hypo sensitivity.

Due to the constraints of time I am only going to cover in detail three of the items from this list. These are Codependency, Avoidance of People and Hypersensitivity.

Codependency

There are as many definitions of codependency as there are codependents! So let us see what the class thinks it is. (Open) As we have heard all of us have some form of understanding of what it might mean. CODA, Codependents Anonymous does not have a definition because of this very issue of being unable to define it accurately. So they define it through a list of behaviors, which I am handing out now.

In co-dependency, others have control over us because we care more about their needs and feelings than our own. When we have a need for approval that gets met by serving the needs of others, and receiving a reward of other’s approval, then we have become codependent. Let me step through that again so that we all understand it well:

· First, we all have a need for approval.
· Second, we find that serving others results in us feeling approved, and our need is at least temporarily met.
· Third, we go back to this approach again, and it works again, so we develop a compulsion.
· Fourth, we start to do this frequently, and it becomes necessary for us to be able to emotionally survive each day.
· Fifth, we hand over the emotional control of our lives to others, usually just one or two individuals, and we are addicted to it.
· Sixth, our life is totally out of control, and we don’t know it, as we appear to be functioning normally.
· Seventh, if we don’t get help we break down.

Usually most of us get stuck at the fifth point, we are addicted to people pleasing. We don’t feel that life is okay unless those around us are okay.

At the root of this problem, which started with a legitimate need for approval, is self-centeredness. The legitimate need is met through our own efforts; we control how we meet it, and sometimes try to control the people around us to get it met. Is it all about us!

What we call codependency is a significant barrier to our personal spiritual growth and our ability to serve God. In a section of Scripture (Gal 1:6-10) that deals with the preaching and teaching of a false gospel, Paul identifies the reason it was happening, he didn’t call it approval based codependency but that is what it is. He concludes with two simple rhetorical questions in verse 10, let’s read it:

For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ. NASU

Paul presents this as and either/or challenge. This is because we all face the problem of making men as our object of worship, which is either secularism or humanism, versus making Christ our object of worship, which is Christianity. Jesus Himself summed it up as part of His “Sermon on the Mount” in Mt 6:24:

No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. NASU

I have quoted the whole verse here, but, in my opinion, it really ought to have been split into two verses. The relevant part here is the first sentence. Jesus says you can’t serve, and be devoted to, two masters. In the context of the need for approval and codependency or approval addiction it means this. You are not able to serve and worship God while you are serving and worshipping your own self-focused needs.

Tough words indeed! Codependency generated through the need for approval or fear of rejection can actually stop a person from being able to live for Christ. Let’s look now at some of the ways we exhibit codependent behavior in our normal daily lives. Let’s refer to the list I handed out earlier, and we can pick on one or two of them:

· Denial of feelings: codependents often have a hard time feeling their own emotions. They are too busy feeling other people’s emotions for them to connect with their own.
· Projection of feelings: A codependent will often project his or her feelings onto others, assuming that they feel the same things. This can be particularly damaging for a parent to do this to a child, as the parent will often tell the child what to feel.
· Enabling behavior: The fear of rejection can lead us to contribute to the bad behavior of another person. One example is the spouse that keeps buying booze for their alcoholic partner. Another is the girl who turns to prostitution to keep her boyfriend in drug money. And what about the mother who does her kids homework for them?
· Hanging on: This is where we fear losing a relationship and feeling abandoned so much that we tolerate bad stuff. This could be the wife who stays with her abusive husband, or the boy that dates a girl who belittles him with others.

There are so many more examples we could bring up, but you get the idea. I personally believe that we live in a culture where codependency, driven out of the need for approval, is the biggest compulsive behavior problem we have.

Avoidance of People

Here we have a seemingly big contradiction. We live with a need for approval from people, and the fear of rejection that goes with it, but we avoid people. What is going on here? (Open)

Have you ever been told that your work is not satisfactory or that your hair doesn’t look good or something like that and experienced a sense of personal rejection? I have! When you meet people who say these things to you consistently, you then do your best to avoid them. You might say it is because they are so negative, but it is not! It is because we feel rejected. It wouldn’t surprise me if we all know someone who stays at work to avoid going home to his or her spouse. Now we know that it may all be about the “worker” feeling rejected in their own home.

Some of these “avoiders” can also be the life and soul of the party, and they are good at socializing. The problem is they never go deep with others for fear of rejection. They will often have no true friends, the kind you share secrets with, for fear of receiving disapproving messages, and consequently feeling bad about themselves. The “avoiders” are actually lonely people.

Can any of us here, apart from me, identify with this “avoider” label? (Discuss)

Hypersensitivity

Some of us are devastated when another person says something remotely negative about us. A comment about how we look or how we are dressed can ruin us for the day. Some of us worry about what complete strangers are thinking about us. These are all examples of being very sensitive to other people’s opinions.

This particular problem gets so bizarre that some of us even take negative self image thoughts about ourselves and project them to others as if they thought them. This means that we can, in our own minds, turn an accepting person into a critical monster. We all know people who are accepting of everyone around them. However, there may be one or two individuals in the group who believe that they are not accepted or approved of by this person. This could be the projection/rejection phenomenon at work.

Does anybody have any examples that they can share about hypersensitivity in people in their lives?

Finally I want to say this. Approval of others is a big deal, and we all have to pay attention to what God says about this subject. I think it is best summed up in Rom 15:7:

Therefore, accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God. NASU

Next week we will cover God’s answer to the problem of approval addiction and codependency; reconciliation.