Lewis Howes and a guest explore why people-pleasers constantly seek reassurance through questions like "Are you mad at me?" or "Do you still love me?" The relief is temporary, and the need resurfaces daily or weekly, prompting a deeper look at reassurance versus validation.
What is the difference between validation and reassurance?
Well, reassurance seeking as a behavior is very common for people pleasers. It can sound like, are you mad at me? Do you still love me? Do you think I look pretty in this? Are we okay? It's a lot of yes or no questions. And the other person might say, no, I'm not mad at you. Yes, I still love you. Yes, I think you're beautiful. And temporarily it feels like, okay, we're good then. But then it comes right back every day or every week.
It's like, why?
It comes right back.
Why do people need that reassurance constantly?
Because we're not getting to the root emotion beneath it. The anxiety, the insecurity, the feeling of deficiency versus seeking validation might say to the other person, well, we're first, we're, we're slowing down. We're saying, I'm feeling insecure right now. Hmm. What triggered this? Okay. Let me think about this. Like, what, what's happening here? We're, we're looking inward first, but we're having a conversation. So that might sound like, hey, I've been feeling kind of distant from you in our relationship, and I just wanted to check in about it. I wanted to see if you were feeling it too. And it's, it's a conversation. You're not asking the other person to diminish the anxiety for you. You're letting both people share their emotions. Mm-hmm.
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