Envisage

  In my previous piece, I discussed how seeking healthy as well as unhealthy external validation affects your mental health in the long run, as well as your daily functioning. Let's speak about how to evaluate, introspect, and comprehend your behaviors, reactions to criticism, and the underlying causes of your emotions today.  Let us first examine where our emotions come from and what types of emotions we can experience on a regular basis. Anger, anxiety, fear, trauma or emotional memory, and social cognition are some of the emotions we all experience to varying degrees. Our limbic system, which is part of our nervous system, controls and regulates all of these feelings.  When it comes to our nervous system, it has been divided into three parts: the Central Nervous System (CNS), the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS), and the Autonomous Nervous System (ANS). Because the limbic system is so closely linked to the autonomic nervous system and the endocrine system (hormones), it...

  Seeking validation literally means seeking approval of others' opinions, thoughts or an agreement with what you say or do on a daily  basis.  As human beings, we are wired to be in a social setting and hence, believe to receive approval or validation in most aspects of our lives. Usually there is a tendency to seek approval from the opposite sex and at every stage of our human life, we want support and attention and this need starts from our childhood. For every child that seeks validation from their parents, family members and even friends. Seeking healthy validation is extremely important and this is a process that we learn as and when we grow. When a child doesn't receive the emotional support and the desired love it expects, it tends to overachieve itself, thereby affecting their long-term goals, important life decisions, their friendships and also their stability in relationships. Such children also tend to walk on eggshells and never seem to feel at comfort in any...