Excerpt: Faith Salie's "Approval Junkie"
In her new book, "Approval Junkie: Adventures in Caring Too Much" (Crown Archtype), "Sunday Morning" contributor Faith Salie explains the difference between a perfectionist, and someone who merely craves affirmation from the rest of the world -- and there is a difference!
Read an excerpt below.
Fail again. Fail better. -- Samuel Beckett
If you've come seeking advice on how not to seek approval, I'm afraid I'll disappoint. I do not have a twelve-step program to alleviate the desire for approbation. However, I can offer you something that's the exact opposite of a cure, because I'd hate for you to leave empty-handed:
12 Steps You Might Take to Win Approval
1. Make good grades.
2. Go to church or pay a lot for High Holidays orchestra seats.
3. Refrain from having sex to be "good"/Be good at having sex.
4. Casually, and only semiaccurately, reference Schrödinger's cat in conversation.
5. Run in place in a dark shower for forty-five minutes at 4 a.m. every morning so you won't gain weight on an African safari.
6. Do things to make your parents proud.
7. Do things to make your therapist proud.
8. Enlist Michael Jackson's choreographer to plan your first wedding dance and a Broadway veteran to choreograph your first second wedding dance.
9. Say yes (e.g., "Yes, I'll provide three dozen nut-free kosher cupcakes even though I'm not Jewish!") when you really should say no.
10. Moderate a small, jovial panel discussion as you spend two hours pushing your baby out, so you don't make this whole giving birth thing about you you you, even as your child rips a hole in your labia, forever ruining your chances of going into porn at the age of forty-one.
11. Stay in a relationship with someone whom you're determined to win over.
12. Refrain from ending your sentences in a preposition.
I am an approval junkie. When I told people the name of the book I was writing, some immediately smiled and said, "Great title." No questions asked; they got it. A few looked concerned and said, "Really? I wouldn't have thought that of you." At which point I put down the cake I was frosting for them while simultaneously breastfeeding my daughter and doing squats and explained that I'm not ashamed about wanting approval. It kept my high school GPA very high. It's kept my BMI somewhat low. It's kept me on my toes when I wasn't already wearing heels to elongate my legs.
We all know someone who says, "I got to where I am by not giving a s***." I believe this can be true of psychopaths and Buddhist nuns. But of everyone else, I'm a little admiring and a lot skeptical. How can you not give even a little tiny s***? Kanye West tweets, "I don't give a f*** what people think because people don't think." Then he incites a Twitter war with Jimmy Kimmel after Kimmel has kids read a transcript of Kanye's own words announcing that he is the number one rock star in the world and invented leather jogging pants. On the flip side, we have Sally Field, accepting her Oscar, beaming while crying, "... you like me, right now, you like me!" Who's more honest -- Yeezus or Gidget?
Famous people I've interviewed -- powerful people, brilliant people, people whom you look at and think, Seriously, do you not have pores? -- have turned to me after interviews and asked, "Was I okay? I hope I was okay." Even Jesus wanted to make his mother happy at the wedding in Cana with that water/wine mind freak.
Approval may not be your raison d'etre, but it never sucks to feel it. It connects you to your audience, which is the human race. Approval makes the world go round even if many of us want to transcend our hunger for it.
Wanting approval is a naked thing. It says Listen to me, love me, understand me. Those are vulnerable requests. A junkie keeps requesting.
Being a true approval junkie does not quite equal being a perfectionist. A perfectionist won't try for fear of falling short. An approval junkie stumbles, trips, and falls again, each time taking a bow for trying. A perfectionist won't leave the house without her face on. An approval junkie leaves the house to face the next challenge. She knows no one ever created something applause-worthy-something new or compelling or hilarious -- by playing it safe.
While a junkie laps up smiles, it's also too simple to label her a people pleaser. Pleasing people can feel deeply gratifying when it doesn't involve, say, letting someone pee on you (more on that later, unfortunately). But caring too much about people liking you will confine you forever to mediocrity and second-guessing yourself and may force you to engage in meaningful conversation about following one's dreams with your Uber driver so he'll give you a five-star rating. One doesn't want to become a short-order cook of a pleaser, catering to countless individual likes and dislikes. Nor does one want to sling a bland offering meant to appeal to a mass palate. An approval junkie knows, "You can please some of the people all of the time and you can please all of the people some of the time, but you'd have to spend an awful lot of time figuring out what pleases the people, which is time you could be spending on getting your candy striper uniform altered so it fits more flatteringly." I mean, just for example. Ultimately, an approval junkie desires most to please her toughest critic, which is herself.
An approval junkie appreciates being noticed but isn't a wanton attention whore. One craves attention for the right things, like instant improvisational skills or long eyelashes. I personally do not want attention at any price. For example, I was never one of those Goth teens (although I played one for a season on a sitcom that TV Guide named number 30 on its "50 Worst Shows of All Time"). And now-while I'm delighted when people occasionally recognize me on the street or when I'm buying support hose to fly while bulbously pregnant to interview an NBA player about his unibrow -- it's a double-edged sword. I almost wish they wouldn't recognize me and would rather murmur to their partner, "Doesn't that lady who's inexplicably humming show tunes look like a tired version of that gal on CBS News Sunday Morning?" Or the kids at the Apple Genius bar who recognize my voice from Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me! -- I feel sad for them that they must be thinking, She doesn't sound like someone who wears clogs with sweatpants.
Women are blessed with lots and lots of extra ways to win or lose validation. If you're a woman, you'll be judged on your beauty and your wit and how often you smile. You'll be judged on how much hair you have in some places and not in others. You'll be judged on whether you can get away with that outfit. You'll be judged on whether you're funny or just think you're funny. You'll be judged on the color of your wedding dress and whether you have an opinion that matters or a husband or children. Speaking of, you'll be judged on when you want children and how you have them. You'll be judged on who helps take care of your children in a way your husband or butch wife is not. Culturally, traditionally, historically, no matter how far we've come, most of us still put ourselves on pedestals to receive (or not receive) tiaras and wedding proposals.
Some books will tell you to accept yourself and all your flaws. To embrace your curves. You should probably do that if you can. That kind of ridiculous, enlightened talk never got me where I wanted to go unless where I wanted to go was my refrigerator to binge on Reddi-wip straight into my mouth and then to the couch to binge on Benedict Cumberbatch. (Curves are great on other people. Me -- I'd like to look like a flapper with a touch of dysentery. Sorry for the digression; that's the stevia talking.) This is a book that tells you you're okay just the way you are if the way you are is someone with a palm that doesn't mind being smacked with a high five.
Still, it's fair to call myself a recovering junkie. I (finally) married a man who loves me the way I am. This is a dubious choice on his part, but I'm going with it. Not trying to get him to love me frees up a lot of hours in the day that I used to spend trying to dominate in yoga class after eating fat-free ice cream in my car during my first marriage. Also, I got older. Increasingly, people making decisions about my talent are my age or younger, and seeking approval from someone who can't sing The Facts of Life theme song is not a good use of my time.* And then, not easily, I became a mother. If you seek approval from someone who thinks it's hilarious to do downward dogs in his diaper while he farts, you are an approval masochist.
* As a tiny approval junkie, I was a tragically obedient child. So much so that when The Facts of Life premiered, and my parents told me I couldn't watch it, I didn't. Even though they were out of the house, enjoying their disco lesson. Somehow, though, soon after that, I did start watching The Facts of Life. Obviously there was nothing to worry about since it took me thirty-three years to realize that it was Cousin Geri who was the lesbian and not Jo.
I don't think hitting rock bottom as an approval junkie means you stop questing for the big O[vation]. I was on my hands and knees, quite literally, when I hit rock bottom, the realization that I could never truly please my first husband (now wasband) having left me gulping for air, because I finally stopped gasping for love. Hitting rock bottom means you stop trying too hard, too often, and for the wrong per son. There is a point when groveling for validation is dangerous. The extremes -- such as questing for physical perfection or absorbing emotional abuse -- can hurt you. Yet if you harness a fraction of that needy energy, you can prove something to yourself, rather than seeking the approval of others.
But if you've tasted any success, you still want to chase the dragon. I, for one, don't want to totally re-cover. Because I like staying somewhat exposed, a little raw. It means I stay open, to be wounded, yes, but also touched. It means I get to surprise myself by becoming more than I am. I'm wary of total self-acceptance. I'd rather fail dramatically than risk complacency.
Let's be honest, an approval junkie can get pretty tedious
if she's constantly asking for appreciation but not dancing like a monkey to earn it. She'd be a busker with no instru ment. You're not going to put money in her guitar case un less she's strumming something.
So here's my song. These are my stories. Maybe some of them will speak to you, even if you didn't welcome two different national news crews to follow you to your egg retrieval or crowdsource what to wear to your divorce. While I'm pretty sure you didn't ask your gay brother for a demonstration of how to give a killer hand job, I do feel certain that you, too, have occasionally yearned to be loved or applauded or laughed at in the very best way. And that you've striven to be more than you are before learning that approval of your own life is called gratitude.
I hope you enjoy this. Obviously.
Excerpted from "Approval Junkie: Adventures in Caring Too Much," Copyright © 2016 by Faith Salie. To be published by Crown Archetype, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, on April 19.
For more info:
- "Approval Junkie: Adventures in Caring Too Much" by Faith Salie (Crown Archtype); Also available in eBook and Digital Audio Download formats
- faithsalie.com