The Unconscious Urge to Please and Seek ...

The Unconscious Urge to Please and Seek Others' Approval

Mar 11, 2024

  • Who are you still trying to please?

  • And who are you still trying to prove something to?

    These are two very powerful enquiries to ask about our motivations for anything we feel the desire to do, as often potent unconscious urges are behind our ideas and plans.

    We like to think we’ve outgrown these urges and that we are no longer a slave to our unconscious, unmet needs. But this is just an illusion, for they remain forceful and compelling and like to fool us into thinking we’re acting from a place of clarity and truth. When in fact a lot of the time our desires are still mixed with the murky unclear waters of unmet needs from long ago.

    When we ask ourselves these questions of every new impulse and idea we can be surprised to find that still lurking in the background is the desire to impress someone key to us in our early life, usually a parent. Still we are seeking their unconditional love, applause and approval at some deeply unconscious level. Still we are craving recognition and validation for being just who we are, and these attempts to prove and please are the only way we’ve learned how to go about this.

    Yet, there is another way.

    But we can only get to this much clearer, authentic, heart and soul-centred place within when we’ve carefully explored our motives, and recognised and transmuted the urges behind them.

    When we do this we might be surprised to find that the idea or impulse falls away, and then we discover another goal, usually one which is much more centred on what is truly right for us now in our life and our own healing, rather than always being so outwardly orientated. We can come full circle now and start to give ourselves the kind of unconditional love and acceptance we didn’t receive back then and let go of all false notions of obtaining this from those people or indeed their present substitutions.

    Now we can honestly explore what we really do want and need to do next, rather than be led there again by this old and damaging need for approval and acceptance.

    ©Angela Dunning

    Image by Nick Bondarev, via Pexels.

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