How to Stop Needing Approval

The Purpose Show

Allie Casazza

Self-improvement, Education

4.6 • 4.5K Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2026

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, we're breaking down how to stop needing approval, and why approval-seeking isn't a personality flaw or a confidence issue. It's an identity and nervous system issue.

You can make thoughtful choices, act with integrity, and still be misunderstood. That's not failure. That's part of being human and being perceived. The problem starts when your sense of safety, worth, or direction depends on how other people respond to you.

When that happens, disapproval can feel overwhelming. One comment, one reaction, or one opinion can trigger anxiety, self-doubt, or a spiral of overthinking. Not because something is wrong with you, but because your nervous system has learned to look outside of you for safety and validation.

In this episode, we talk about:

Why needing approval creates anxiety and emotional instability
How the nervous system interprets disapproval as danger
The difference between helpful feedback, personal preference, and projection
Why treating all feedback as truth keeps you stuck
How to stop outsourcing your identity to other people
The neuroscience behind writing things out for clarity and regulation
Practical steps to build self-trust and emotional stability
How to tolerate being misunderstood without abandoning yourself
Why boundaries are not cold or inauthentic… they are self-respect

We also unpack approval-seeking patterns, people-pleasing, and the habit of adjusting yourself to feel safe. And I share the real-time process I'm using to become more grounded, regulated, and anchored in who I am (without numbing out or pretending not to care).

This episode is for you if:

You struggle with people-pleasing or fear of judgment
Criticism or disapproval easily rattles you
You over-explain, over-share, or second-guess yourself
You want to feel calmer, steadier, and more self-assured
You're ready to stop needing approval and start trusting yourself

This isn't about becoming immune to other people's opinions. It's about belonging to yourself so your nervous system no longer depends on external validation.

New mantra from this episode:

Preference is not truth.

My links here:https://alliecasazza.com/tpslinks

Becoming Her Blueprint

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, my loves. Welcome back. We are going to have a conversation that's got me kind of
0:13.2	amped up today. This is like a very spur of the moment recording. I never do this, but I had a situation come up today and I'm going to use it as kind of like
0:24.4	the catalyst to this conversation because I know that this situation came into my reality today
0:31.3	because it's something that I've been really focusing on in myself and in my personal life
0:36.0	and something I've been really working on. And it's something
0:38.7	that, oh my God, we probably all could use. So here's what happened. I posted something today.
0:49.6	Nothing like, you know, crazy controversial or anything like that. If anything, I'm surprised a lot of my other
0:55.3	posts don't get like people really amped up. This was literally just a post about me. And I got
1:04.4	like different feedback and reactions from it. A lot of ones that I didn't expect, which is neither here nor there.
1:12.7	But it was interesting to me because there were two particular responses that really
1:20.8	like stuck out to me.
1:23.2	Person A told me, you're too polished. That's why your audience doesn't relate to you anymore.
1:31.3	I miss the raw you that shared way more. Person B told me you're not professional enough. You need
1:41.2	to polish yourself. Stop cursing. so literally the same word was used you're
1:48.3	to polish and you're not polished enough and this is such a great example the post and the
1:55.5	conversation is like not the point of the reason i'm bringing this conversation up. It is because this is the perfect.
2:04.6	Literally, they like lobbed me the perfect example of something that I have been working on very
2:12.1	specifically and that is such a big nervous system conversation because when you have like you have
2:20.3	something that you do or say so for example I posted something and then one person is
2:26.5	like oh this is way too polished we miss the raw you and the other person is like
2:31.5	you're way too raw you need to get polished stop cursing
2:34.6	etc etc then it's kind of like okay cool so like which one do i fix which one do i do oh i can't
	...

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