Thomas Doherty reflects on his lifelong chase for external validation, especially in Hollywood, and how it left him exhausted and underdeveloped. He realized he needed to stop seeking approval and build self-validation instead.
To live a happy life for me is to be able to validate myself. I lived my whole life constantly being validated externally, from a child in circumstances to then coming into Hollywood, which is either the best place or the worst place for someone that has an inability to self-validate. Because when you're validated externally, it doesn't match how you actually feel inside. There's no substance to it. There's no— you can't develop. You're in a constant state of survival. You know, you're looking for all these people to basically give you permission to be alive, to live, you know. And so it's like, it's exhausting. And you're constantly, you're just constantly, you know, it's like eating sugar all the time for energy. And yeah, so nothing specifically really happened. I was just fed up of being fed up. I was tired of being tired. And I realized that that was the real crux of it, that I wasn't developing as a human being. I wasn't growing, really. I was just surviving, you know.
