Everyone likes you. What happens in a brain that needs everyone to be pleased
You are the one who asks “are you okay?” and who, when asked in return, answers “yes, of course”. You sense the mood of a room before anyone has said a word. You change the subject so you won’t be a bother. You apologise for taking up too much space.
You have spent years training yourself to be likeable, useful, the person everyone relies on. And it worked. You are indispensable, and the people around you like you.
Except that in the quiet you avoid by filling up your schedule, there is an emptiness no appreciation can cover. A like lasts 5 minutes. A “well done” lasts maybe 10. Then the emptiness comes back and you start all over again: do one more thing, help one more person, maybe this time it will be enough.
The text below is not a diagnosis. It is a description of what is already known, and above all of what is still hotly debated, about what the brain does with approval and with its absence.
Why rejection hurts
In 2003, a study published in Science put people in a scanner and let them play a simple ball-tossing game on a computer, and at some point the other players stopped passing to them, with no explanation. The scanner showed activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, the area involved in the unpleasant side of physical pain. The more the participants said the exclusion had bothered them, the higher the activity.
That is where the idea that rejection literally hurts began. You will find it quoted everywhere.
It is worth saying what came next too, because this is usually where the internet article stops. In 2014, another team took up the question again with finer statistical methods. They trained a classifier to recognise physical pain from the pattern of brain activity, then asked it to recognise rejection. The results came out at chance level. And the same the other way round. Their conclusion: at a coarse level the areas do overlap, but the fine patterns are distinct, and rejection has its own circuit.
What still holds after both studies is the part that matters for you. The brain treats social exclusion as a serious signal, not as the whim of an oversensitive person.
The loop that tightens
The second part of the story is less spectacular and much more useful.
Approval comes with a short burst of pleasure, and the brain remembers what produced it. You repeat the behaviour. Up to this point it is ordinary learning, the same kind that makes you go back to a café where you were made to feel welcome.
What changes is the proportion. When approval becomes the main source, the threshold rises: you need more and more of it to feel the same “I’m okay”, and its absence hits harder and harder. People who get to this point describe the same scene. A message without an emoji, a slightly drier tone, and the rest of the day goes on replaying the conversation in your head.
The comparison with addiction gets made a lot and it is tempting, because the pattern looks similar, but the literature does not support the idea that it is the same mechanism, so it is best treated as a useful metaphor and nothing more. What can be said on solid ground is simpler. A nervous system that constantly scans faces, tones and pauses gets tired, and that tiredness shows in the way you sleep and in how hard it is to pull yourself together.
What a brain map shows
This is where measurement comes in. And it is worth being clear about what it can do.
A brain map does not diagnose “validation addiction”, because no such diagnosis even exists. The assessment records the brain’s electrical activity at rest, with eyes closed and then open, and compares it with an age-based normative database.
In someone who recognises themselves in the hypervigilance described above, the comparison usually brings out 3 things.
The first is how hard it is for the brain to settle into rest. The rhythm that normally appears with eyes closed is often reduced in someone who stays on alert, and the difference between the 2 recordings shows it quite clearly.
The second is the reported sleep pattern, set next to the measured activity. Sleep that doesn’t refresh you looks different from sleep that is simply short.
The third is the continuity of attention over the course of the recording. Attention that fades gradually calls for something different from attention that drops suddenly.
None of the measurements says who you are. All of them describe the state your brain is in on that day, whatever brought it there. If you want to see what it involves, we have described the BrainMap assessment in detail.
What training can do and where it stops
Brain training works on regulation. That means how quickly you settle into rest, how well you sleep and how badly a curt message at the wrong moment throws you off. These are things that can be measured, trained and measured again at intervals, with the same method.
The rest belongs to psychotherapy. The attachment pattern, the story behind it and the way you come to relate to yourself are worked on with a psychologist or a psychotherapist. Brain training is added on top, never in its place.
Results differ a lot from person to person. When the measurements don’t move, the plan changes, and that is decided together.
If the pattern catches you mostly in relationships, it is also worth reading about the dynamics of a toxic relationship or about how assertiveness is learned. And if you recognise yourself more in the pressure to be flawless, the subject is covered separately in the article on perfectionism.
References
- Eisenberger, N.I., Lieberman, M.D., Williams, K.D. Does Rejection Hurt? An fMRI Study of Social Exclusion. Science, 2003. [online] Available at: science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1089134.
- Woo, CW. et al. Separate neural representations for physical pain and social rejection. Nature Communications, 2014. [online] Available at: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4285151.
- Eisenberger, N.I. The pain of social disconnection: examining the shared neural underpinnings of physical and social pain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2012. [online] Available at: nature.com/articles/nrn3231.
What the first step looks like
You don’t need a dramatic reason. It is enough to have recognised yourself in the lines above.
The first conversation is free and takes about 20 minutes. You tell us what brought you here and what is getting in your way the most right now. If an assessment makes sense in your case, we explain what it includes. When the answer is different, you get it just as directly.
Write to us at office@institutulbrainmap.ro or on WhatsApp at 0770 390 190.
The bravest thing you can do is not to please everyone. It is to stop trying.
Frequently asked questions
Is the need for validation an illness?
The need for approval is not listed as a standalone diagnosis in psychiatric manuals. What the literature describes are attachment patterns and styles of emotional regulation, which can appear in people with no diagnosis at all. A text like this one describes a pattern, it does not put a label on anyone.
How can I tell that I have gone from being kind to depending on approval?
The practical sign is the cost. Kindness leaves you with energy, while depending on approval drains it: you replay conversations in your head, you put off what you have to do and you feel guilty when you say no to something. When the pattern starts to affect your sleep or your work, it is worth talking it through with a specialist.
Does brain training replace psychotherapy?
No. Brain training works on regulation, meaning on sleep, on how quickly you settle into rest and on how badly a curt message throws you off balance. The attachment pattern and the story behind it are worked on with a psychologist or a psychotherapist, and the training is added on top.
What exactly does a brain map show in this case?
The assessment compares your brain’s electrical activity with an age-based normative database. In someone who is constantly on social alert, it usually looks at how hard it is for the brain to settle into rest, at the sleep pattern and at the continuity of attention. None of the measurements makes a diagnosis.