NOTE: This article is a heavily revised and edited version of the original, which was published 9 years ago.
Anxiety serves a useful purpose when we are aligned with our fitra [nature]. The greater the degree to which we have deviated from our nature, the greater degree to which we are anxious in a generalized way. A common form of anxiety is often said to be from us wanting completion from what is external to us, yet is always just out of reach. That is on the level of existential need, which is different from wanting validation where competence is concerned. Despite this difference, they overlap due to the overlap of competence with survival on a primordial level. However, where they differ is at the point where competence is not relevant for survival, and where survival becomes conjoined with perceptions of the world through the lens of the self. This latter type is typically what is referred to as a need for external validation as a dysfunction, where the most powerful form of external validation is the desire to please others in order to receive their approval and acceptance because it has become tied to the false perception of the ego that it needs this in order to survive. The greater this need, the greater the desire for approval and that need for validation, and thus the greater the anxiety. And thus it is said that there is misalignment from our nature due to the vehicle of concept and perception, that is, of the mind.
The Qur’an is interesting for many reasons, and one of the most convincing aspects of it is its lucidity with regards to human nature. Throughout the Qur’an, it mentions certain desires, certain inclinations, as aspects of the lower self that lead to ruin. When we map what these desires are according to the landscape of human nature, we find that these desires all pertain to primitive survival mechanisms. As primitive survival mechanisms, they are conjoined with the complex pathways of our reward centers. We become dysfunctional when these pathways no longer correspond to survival but to mere desire, where desire and need become confused within us. The Qur’an identifies people pleasing as one such spiritual disease of the heart, which is significant because it reframes what appears to be a psycho-social phenomenon as something deeper and more fundamental, an ontological misalignment. The dysfunctional human being, also called the addicted person, describes the human being who has become deviated from nature. When these addictions are normalized in society, even embellished as virtues, especially through media where movies romanticize status seeking and popularity, extreme wealth and pomp, society no longer recognizes them as addictions or compulsions, as harmful patterns that destroy us from within. Indeed, the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ mentioned what is understood as the two poisons, saying that “Even two wolves let loose in a fold of sheep would not do more harm than love of wealth and repute does to faith.” These are two desires, the desire to have great wealth, and on top of that, the desire that people pay attention to you and extol you on account of having that wealth. So then, the acquisition of wealth is no longer about survival and pragmatic consideration but simply for another desire, the desire for status and approval. Two desires originally meant for survival become conjoined to each other, feeding off each other, reinforcing each other cyclically. We become trapped in a cycle of feeling the need the chase and to acquire, never ending because status is relational, a never ending competition. In this way, it is like chasing a mirage that does not actually lead to an oasis of reality but only to unending thirst that kills the heart. The death of the heart, which the Qur’an describes as a dry land, is marked by a condition where your sense of self and the value of your being has become defined by illusions, namely, by status. The acquisition of wealth and whatever passes as currency for status, including physical beauty, has reduced the value of your essential being to these outward ephemeral forms.
Neuroscience has begun to illuminate why these desires become so deeply entangled. The same dopaminergic reward pathways in the brain that evolved to motivate survival behaviors, such as seeking food or forming social bonds, are also activated by status, wealth, and reputation. A 2024 study published in Nature Human Behaviour found that dopamine fluctuations in the human brain track not only the value of monetary gains but also the social context in which these gains occur, suggesting that social approval and financial reward are processed through overlapping neural circuitry. A research program funded by the German Research Foundation similarly proposed investigating whether social recognition is processed by the brain like other non-social goods, such as money, highlighting the hypothesis that reputation itself acts as a form of currency for the brain’s reward systems. Additional neuroimaging research has shown that social status activates the mesolimbic dopamine system, the same canonical reward pathway implicated in substance addiction and behavioral compulsions. When low social status is experienced, this system becomes dysregulated in ways that resemble addiction vulnerability, as a study in Nature Neuroscience demonstrated that low-ranking individuals exhibited a stronger reward circuit and a weaker executive control circuit, making them more prone to compulsive reward-seeking. This underpins the psychological phenomenon sometimes called “status anxiety”, where perceptions of low social status active a stress response within us. In this light, the pursuit of wealth and repute becomes neurologically conjoined, each desire reinforcing the other through the same dopaminergic pathways, caught between the highs of dopamine release and the lows of cortisol. We are not merely chasing two separate goals but feeding a single neurological hunger that was never designed to be satisfied by status alone. This explains why the acquisition of wealth does not quell the thirst for approval, and why approval, once gained, only amplifies the drive for more status. The two wolves, as the Prophet ﷺ described them, are not merely metaphorical but reflect a deep biological reality.
This way of perceiving the world has a strong basis in early childhood conditioning, primarily our experiences with our parents as well as our early and formative relationships outside the family structure. The Merrill-Palmer study from Wayne State University described that children’s early emotional tendencies may be integrated into their sense of self at an early age, and that temperamental proneness to distress and family interaction are direct and independent predictors of children’s self-concepts. The study showed that children that are prone to distress tend to incorporate perceived affects and social responses into their self-views, demonstrating a fragile self-concept that has incorporated and is thus dependent on external validation to define itself. When our parents teach us that love and approval is conditional on the meeting of their expectations, we become conditioned to feel and to understand that our inherent value is also conditional on the meeting of external expectations. This is the basis for the Devalued Self-Concept. Our early and formative relationships with others outside our immediate families tend to be based on this conditioning, and so they serve the purpose of further validating in us that our value is external to us, that this is how the world is, and this is the nature of love and relationships. But this is of course a grand exercise of confirmation bias. The only reason that our relationships chip away at our self-esteem and teach us that we are not inherently valuable is because we sought out people that would communicate this to us, especially in ways that were familiar to us during childhood.
When our sense of self is characterized by a need for external validation then our emotional lives tend to become characterized by insecurity and its manifested forms of worry and anxiety, both during social situations and also when we are alone. Recent neuroimaging research supports this observation at a neurological level. A 2023 study published in Translational Psychiatry found that individuals with social anxiety disorder showed altered brain connectivity during a specific type of thinking known as “reflected self-appraisal,” which is thinking about how others might perceive you, but they did not show these differences during “direct self-appraisal” or thinking about oneself. Specifically, those with social anxiety exhibited greater excitatory connectivity from the posterior cingulate cortex to the medial prefrontal cortex during reflected self-appraisal, and they also demonstrated reduced intrinsic connectivity in the brain’s default mode network at rest. This suggests that the tendency to define oneself by the reactions of others is not merely a psychological habit but is literally neurologically embedded, wiring the brain to prioritize others’ perceptions over one’s own sense of self. This finding aligns perfectly with the description of the devalued self-concept, where the individual’s sense of reality and existence feels dependent on the gaze and approval of others.
The sense of dissatisfaction with attainment, with what you have, is ever persistent, no matter how great your amassment. In other words, the feelings of bereftness, of poverty, remain always, and thus you still perceive yourself as impoverished, of failing to meet false expectations that have existential significance. Because it is existential in nature, there is something deeper happening here, it speaks to the process of being and becoming that is generating the self, in this case, the false self. This false self is generated by the heart that is missing something fundamental to itself, the knowledge of its essence. This is largely because we have internalized expectations that we assume others have for us, which is to say from a metaphysical perspective that it is the gaze of others that bestows upon us the attribute of existence.
Our existent state is characterized by depersonalization because we essentially are looking through the eyes of others by orienting our mind state around their existence rather than our own. We perceive their “reality” as more “real” than our own thereby diminishing our own existence and sense of value. Our existence on a deeply metaphysical level is perceived by us as being dependent on others. The answer is not the overcompensation into narcissistic outbursts and extravagance, raging against the world in self-deluded empowerment narratives. This is merely the childish protest response to feeling devalued. This hearkens to the childish state of relying on one’s parents to affirm our existence, who in this early developmental cognitive state, the child views parental figures as not mere human parents but as these transcendent caregivers whose words, whose very gaze, has the power to validate or invalidate its existence. The answer is not to demand from the world its validation as adults therefore. In children, that is natural and normal, and it highlights the fundamental role that caregivers play in the very formation of children through how they respond to the child. However, when maintained in adulthood, it is unnatural and paves the way for ever increasing neurotic dysfunction, representing a disruption in the identity formation process that opens us up to being preyed about by predators who can sense this need for dependency. This opens us up to more easily being attracted to personality types that would facilitate for us abusive and toxic relationships that reflect, and thus ultimately confirm and validate, our devalued sense of self and the perception of how the world and relationships are supposed to be. We victimize both ourselves and others because being a victim of life is what defines us.
This self-victimization is characterized by assumed expectation. But because these are assumed expectations, they are generated by the false self in the first place and then projected onto others, and the world, who we then use to judge ourselves. It is a circular process that uses the external world as a form of internal confirmation bias. We use the world as a mirror to see ourselves. But the mirror we created in the first place was already cracked and misshapen, guaranteed to skew our image reflected upon its surface. It is also because that very process of internalization itself is our normative way of processing our experience of ourselves and the world; our normal way of interpreting and thinking involves the active devaluation of ourselves in relation to others. We are conditioned to look outside ourselves for our heart’s sustenance, and so we are always hungry; but to seek the heart’s sustenance from what is external to it is to necessarily sustain its emptiness in the first place, to perpetuate the false perception at the start of the process.
This way of existing is taught early on in life as children, making us highly prone to distress later on in life as adults. As the Merill-Palmer study from Wayne State University described, “…it seems that children’s early emotional tendencies may be integrated into their sense of self at an early age.” Tempermental proneness-to-distress and family interaction are direct and independent predictors of children’s self-concepts. The Merill-Palmer study showed that children that are prone to distress tend to incorporate perceived “affects and social responses into their self-views.” This demonstrates a fragile self-concept that has incorporated, and is thus dependent on, external validation to define itself. We thus define ourselves by the reactions of others. We become ultra sensitive to displeasing people, and from this we turn into what is described as “people pleasers”. We are trying to please people not for the sake of pleasing them but for the sake of avoiding being hurt by their displeasure. In the context of romantic relationships where this most powerfully shows up, it inverts the very purpose of romantic lover and deeper connection with a mate. Instead of these relationships being places of healing, growth, nourishment, and refuge from the chaotic world, they become chaotic places of spiritual malnourishment and stress.
Whether it is in the form of approval or rejection, individuals with such a self-concept, echoed in Erikson’s description of the immature “identity-diffused” self-concept, are reportedly high in self-monitoring. They thus exhibit inconsistent patterns of behavior between social interactions, even to the point of contradiction. Our behavior, rather than being predicated on universalized principles that define the self that would make our behavior, in essence, consistent and coherent with who we are as a person in different situations, we are instead defined by the particulars of each social situation in a way that would result in us receiving the desired form of validation from others. Although validation is what is universal in our behavior, validation itself is a contingent particular to each situation, hence the inconsistent forms of self-expression towards others.
One key characteristic of the immature self-concept is the lack of confrontation with moments of crises. Moments of crises are described by Erikson as challenges to one’s self-esteem and self-concept. By confronting and overcoming those moments we are able to derive from them their underlying wisdom that leads to the personal growth of our self-concept towards the more mature states of identity-synthesis and self-actualization. The Merill-Palmer study echoes this understanding, describing that children that are highly prone-to-distress are unwilling to confront novel and/or challenging situations that challenge their self-esteem. As adults, this shows up in dysfunctional forms of conflict avoidance. While we may delude ourselves into thinking that this is virtuous behavior where we demonstrate patience in the face of ill behavior of others, in reality it is a type of cowardice that belies any such virtue that is simply meant to protect ourselves from collapsing before any form of pressure from others. When this is present, it can cause us to unconsciously avoid close relationships with others. This of course leads to dysfunctional relationships that provide enough surface interaction that we can convince ourselves that we are in relationships, however, the lack of that very important human need for connection remains unmet.
amThe paper contrasted these findings with the self-concept of children that were low on proneness to distress, described as temperamental boldness. Temperamental boldness was not directly described as related to children’s self-concepts, indicating that overall, these children did not associate their emotional tendencies or the reactions of others with their self-concept as much as those that were prone to distress. Essentially, they recognize people’s reactions, including negative ones, as natural parts of the world, as cues that help them to navigate the external landscape of experience instead of internalizing them as having existential significance with respect to their sense of self or indications of their human value and worth. This also means that there is a healthy relationship with anxiety. Feeling anxiety, fear, or pain in situations that warrant them are not sources of shame, they are not interpreted as a weakness of character or a sign of devaluation. There is, for them, a sense of simply being ok with who they are, regardless of imperfections and flaws, and understanding that there is a wisdom in every state. It is not a narcissistic disregard of any feedback, including for objectively negative or blameworthy behavior, but rather an understanding of the natural order of social feedback in relation to true ontological first principles that formulate the self and which connects the self to being. Whether articulated or not, it could be said that this intuition was formed during early childhood experiences with highly responsive and attentive caregivers, those that exemplified a healthy balance between authoritative presence and nurturing affection, letting them know that it is ok to feel angry, frustrated, scared, etc. Together, these produce confidence and strength that is capable of holding the warmth of love within the heart.
This is not to say that such individuals never experience anxiety. Rather, when they do, they experience it as a signal to attend to something in the world that requires their attention, not as an indictment of their worth as a person. The anxiety is located in the situation, not in the self. This is possible because their sense of self is not contingent on the outcome of the situation; it is grounded elsewhere, in something more stable than the flux of social approval.
The difference between a mature self-concept that expresses high esteem in the true metaphysical foundations of being and an immature self-concept that expresses low self-esteem is in how they conceptualize and derive from this notion of ontological power. Whereas a mature self-concept manifests from within a strong sense of power over one’s state through a grounding in an agency that is ontologically transcendent to the contents of conscousness and its full array of emotions and thoughts, and thus has the capacity for discernment and judgement, an immature self-concept derives its sense of strength from its own self-perception. But because their self-perception already holds the belief that others have power over their inward states, they hold others accountable for their own inward states, particularly with regards to feelings of happiness and contentment.
A person that is on the higher end of the identity-synthesis spectrum believes that they are ultimately responsible for their own happiness precisely because they know that it is in their control. But this control isn’t based on controlling external material variables but rather on an ingrained metaphysical belief about the nature of their being, that its state is not conditioned by material phenomena but by an agency that transcends it. This agency pertains to the mystery of consciousness and has to do with the transcendence of the human spirit, but what is the human spirit? What is it that ultimately grounds reality? For this objective perception of one’s own state to arise, there must be grounding in reality, there must be the ontological ground of being. Traditionally, we understood this to be God, which is the Necessary Being, the ontological ground of reality, existence itself that qualifies the existence of “things” in reality. This qualification by the Necessary Being divests all power from other people, who themselves are merely contingent beings who have borrowed the attribute of existence from God, who is the True Existent. This divests power from others and instead grounds us in that which is greater and more authoritative than all else. This sense of power grounds us in our own sense of reality, as if the gaze of God upon us instantiates us, making our existence more and more intense as our awareness of this gaze increase. It is an activation of our long forgotten cognitions during early childhood that were active when our parents would gaze at us lovingly. It is said that to the child, nothing is craved more than the loving gaze of its parents. The important point here is that we recognize that our reality is real. While this sound self-explanatory, it is not so clear for those in a state of depersonalization. If our sense of reality feels diminished and devalued, where we sink into a state of unconsciousness, then automatically we perceive that other people have a truer reality than we do, that their gaze upon us pushes us down into the realm of reactionary unconsciousness, and thus we fall into the trap of trying to live our lives vicariously through their gaze in the chaso of approval and disapproval. Their version of events, of life, their ideas, will all seem more important than ours, as if we are causing them to gaslight us from being able to believe our own eyes and ears.
Brilliant post. Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts. Reading this provided me with a lot of insight into the issue of self-actualization.
Great read. I really needed to find this
Thank you for this, you stated in clear terms what a lot of us feel but can’t articulate. Being able to read it makes it feel tangible, and thus makes it solvable.
holy shiz, this was very helpful. i’m glad this came my way
This was an incredible read!
Really helpful!
This is really cool. I will say this even if it is true that the sense of power coming from a mature and star state is what really matters it still might be difficult to convey to others ones intimate feelings. I’ll give an example to illustrate my point. Even if one has a healthy self concept and does not need approval of others for instance being satisfied by the process of an activity like painting, drawing, music, etc. And not requiring validation there is still an element of wanting to showcase what one has done. After all I enjoy entertaining as a means to spread my joy, talents, gifts, in a way that is contagious and also just to express. I might express through the craft verbally just as you have in this blog post.
The thing is let’s say I didn’t need external validation and played music for my own sake. I would still enjoy it if I could communicate or connect with people in a way that was engaging and interesting on fb, reddit, some media etc.
I know that your primary point is the need for validation is primarily taught based on expectations but it’s still inherently more enjoyable to connect with people in a non superficial way so what are some effective strategies for that.
Thank you so much for articulating how I’ve been feeling, on a deep level. There’s so much to digest and interrogate.
Thanks
Hey I come from reddit you are amazing…love from india