Is it healthy to need other people’s approval?

Rabbi Landau teaches that needing compliments and validation is not the cure for being hurt by people. It is the same problem. “You need someone to compliment you, to approve you, to validate you. That’s the same addiction just dressed up as happiness.”

The danger is simple: “If they can lift you, they can drop you.” When you give people the key to your self-worth, “when they withhold it, it feels like death.”

He cites the Navi, “Cursed is the man who puts his trust in people,” and explains that the pain isn’t them, “it’s the curse of depending on them.”

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

Craving approval is the same dependence as being crushed by criticism.

Deepest human truth

In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that giving another person the power to decide what you are worth is handing him a hammer.

More questions from this teaching

• Why do other people’s words and attitudes affect me so much?