External validation cycle
Reward → Withdrawal → Repeat
External validation is addiction.
Not metaphorically — structurally.
Whether consciously or unconsciously, you keep seeking confirmation from friends, family, partners, employers, social groups, communities, or wider environments.
What you are looking for is not truth.
What you are looking for is validation — validation for your assumptions, your conclusions, and your performance.
If you pay attention to how you feel when validation is withheld,
you will understand why others use substances to suppress the exact same state.
External validation = psychological substance.
Withholding = withdrawal.
Praise = high.
99% of people are dependent on validation.
Most do not know they are.
Layered on top of that:
Trauma, anxiety, depression, addictions, and environmental influence.
Then teachers, therapists, employers, peers, partners and culture add imprints.
Imprints become experience.
Experience becomes structure.
Structure becomes decision-making.
We can track this through pattern analysis.
People repeat identical loops in relationships, careers, and identity.
Repeating loops is not clarity — it is imprint.
When you think in terms of reaching, achieving or advancing, you are already inside the validation-seeking pattern.
Receiving validation gives you a high.
Not receiving validation triggers withdrawal symptoms.
The difference to substance addiction:
The cycle is slower, stretched across months or years.
But the mechanism is identical:
Reward → Withdrawal → Repeat.
External validation overrides clarity.
External validation overrides self-direction.
External validation overrides agency.
External validation is not confidence.
External validation is dependency.
The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is self-alignment.