Hi, my name is Justin, and I’m an approval addict.
There, I said it.
If you’ve ever found yourself rehearsing a conversation in your head for hours, wondering what someone thought of you after a meeting, or feeling inexplicably deflated when your work went unnoticed, you might know exactly what I’m talking about.
Some people call it people-pleasing. Others call it conflict avoidance. Some frame it as a performance treadmill. The hamster wheel. Different names, same thing: a deep, sometimes desperate need for others to validate that you’re on the right track. That you belong. That you’re wanted.
The question underneath
I recently took an assessment based on Mike Foster’s book The Seven Primal Questions. The idea is that we each carry a core question from childhood that quietly drives our adult behavior. When life answers that question with a “yes,” we feel okay. When the answer is “no” or even “maybe,” we scramble.
My result? Question 4: “Am I wanted?”
Core fear: being excluded or left out. Kryptonite: rejection.
That landed. Hard.
Here’s the thing though: when Mark and I first discussed these questions on our podcast, I hadn’t taken the assessment yet. As we read through the seven questions, I remember my gut reactions. Questions 3 and 4 — “Am I loved?” and “Am I wanted?” — both felt icky to me. Weak. Needy without much benefit. I could relate to the negative parts of those questions (the fear of being dismissed, the sting of feeling unwanted), but not the positive parts.
I even said on the episode: “I would not want to be in that quadrant.”
And then I took the assessment. Q4.
The question I recoiled from the most turned out to be mine.
That’s not a contradiction. It’s evidence. The question that feels most repulsive is often the one you’ve been running from the longest. As I said in that episode: “I’ve worked very hard to find a place where I feel loved and wanted… the idea of not being there is repulsive to me.”
Exactly. The thing I’ve worked hardest to overcome is the thing that’s still driving me underneath.
I also carry a strong dose of Question 6: “Am I good enough?” And these two questions blend together in a way that creates the perfect storm for approval addiction. Approval is the “yes” I need to answer the “Am I wanted?” question. If you approve of me, it means I belong. If you affirm me, it means I’m enough.
Foster describes a wounded Q4 this way: “…feels like a chronic outsider and doesn’t know why. They subconsciously wonder, Am I good enough to be a part of your world? Will you let me belong? Am I considered? Will you accept me as I am, or do I need to perform?”
When I’m not healthy, that’s exactly where my head goes. Chronic outsider. Always performing to earn my seat at the table.
The stick, again.
I recently wrote about something I call “the stick” — a simple idea that’s become one of the most useful lenses I have for understanding myself and others. If you haven’t read that post yet, go read it. I’ll wait.
Back? Good.
The short version: your strengths and weaknesses are often two ends of the same stick. You can’t have one without the other.
Approval addiction is one end of my stick. The other end? Empathy. Attentiveness. The ability to walk into a room full of strangers and make them feel comfortable, to read the emotional temperature, to ask the right questions, to make people feel seen.
Same stick. Different ends.
What I don’t love admitting is this: part of why I developed those skills was because I needed you to like me. I got good at reading people because I was constantly monitoring whether I was measuring up.
In that first stick post, I mentioned how once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. The stick started showing up everywhere.
Reading Foster’s book was another one of those moments. He has a concept called the “Primal Gift,” and when I read that chapter, the stick smacked me in the face again. His insight: what you need is often what you give away to others. The person who desperately needs to feel wanted? They become the one who makes others feel wanted. The person who needs to feel safe? They create safety for others. He even uses a tree metaphor at one point — the same soil that feeds your wound feeds your gift.
Foster calls the Q4 gift “Inclusion” — the ability to create connection and make others feel welcomed. That tracks. The same wiring that makes me desperately need to belong is what makes me good at helping others belong.
For years, I served as the Ministry Leader for our Celebrate Recovery. Every Friday night, my job was to help create a space where broken people could walk in and feel like they belonged, often for the first time. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was my Primal Gift in action. The wound and the gift, working together.
When man’s approval became god
In my early twenties, I had a mentor named Keith. He was like a father figure to me. He had taken me in during high school when my family was falling apart. He gave me a job at his company, gave me wisdom, gave me opportunities. I owed him a lot.
And I spent years desperately trying to earn his approval.
The problem was, my need for his approval came at the cost of other relationships. His own sons could see my transparent efforts to win their dad’s favor. I was defensive, self-righteous, and quick to blame others when things went wrong. I did whatever it took to ensure I couldn’t be found at fault.
But here’s the thing about denial: I genuinely believed I was the victim. Every conflict, every strained relationship — I played the martyr, wondering why everyone was so hard on me.
One day, Keith came to my house to talk about my uncertain future at his company. Instead of listening, I lit into him. I told him how unfair he was being, how he just couldn’t see how great I was. My wife jumped to my defense because she’d been hearing my side of the story for years.
And instead of firing me on the spot, Keith melted. He told us how much he loved us. He explained that everything he’d been doing was to help me grow out of my pride and into the man he knew I could become.
That was the first time I was hit with the stinging reality of my denial. I had firmly believed that the fault was 100% on the other side of the fence, and it hit me like a ton of bricks: the problem is with me.
It took me years to fully name what had happened. Through Celebrate Recovery, through working the steps, through hard conversations with accountability partners, I finally put words to it:
I had conflated “God’s will” with “is everybody happy with me right now?” If I was having a hard time keeping people happy, I automatically assumed God was telling me I was doing something wrong.
I had allowed man’s approval to become god in my life.
I don’t recommend this.
The scramble
Foster calls it “the scramble” — what we do when our core question gets answered with a “no.” We do whatever it takes to force a “yes.”
For those of us wired around approval and belonging, the scramble looks like this:
- People-pleasing
- Over-giving
- Saying yes to everything
- Perfectionism
- Transactional love
- An inability to say no
Sound familiar to any of you? It certainly does to me!
The scramble is exhausting because it never ends. There’s always another person to please, another performance to deliver, another moment where you’re wondering if you did enough. Foster puts it this way: approval-seekers are “always just one disapproval away from worthlessness.”
That’s the performance treadmill. You can run as fast as you want, but you never actually get anywhere.
What I’m learning
I wish I could tell you I’ve conquered this. I haven’t. But most days I’m “struggling well,” and I’ve learned a few things
Name it. You can’t address what you won’t acknowledge. In CR, we quote the TLB version of Jeremiah 6:14, “You can’t heal a wound by saying it’s not there!” For years, I thought of my need for approval as just an annoying neediness I wished I didn’t have. Naming it as an addiction — something with roots, patterns, and real consequences — was the first step toward freedom.
Keep the stick balanced. When I’m feeling the shame of this tendency, I remind myself it’s attached to something good. My empathy is real. My care for people is real. The goal isn’t to kill the gift. The goal is balance.
Stop outsourcing your worth. Foster talks about moving from asking “Am I wanted?” to declaring “I am wanted.” Not because everyone agrees. Not because I’ve earned it. But because my worth isn’t determined by your approval.
He frames it this way: live “from being wanted, not to be wanted.” That’s the shift. Stop trying to earn the answer and start living from it.
Get honest help. I can’t see my own patterns clearly. I need people in my life who can reflect back what I can’t see. Counselors. Sponsors. Accountability partners and friends who aren’t afraid to call it out.
Why I’m writing this
I’m exploring something new right now. I’m enrolled in Foster’s coaching program, Primal Questions Pro, and am considering the (scary) idea of adding “life coach” to my list of hats at some point in the future. This post is partly me processing that out loud.
Here’s what I know: understanding my own stick — my own Primal Question — has been transformative. And I’ve seen similar transformations in the men I’ve walked through recovery with over the years. When someone finally connects both ends of their stick, when they see that their wound and their gift share the same root, shame starts to lose its grip.
I don’t know exactly where this leads. But if helping others find that same clarity is part of my path forward, I want to walk it with honesty about my own ongoing journey.
The good news
The performance treadmill promises peace through perfection. It lies. No amount of approval will ever be enough to silence the question underneath.
I don’t have to wait for everyone to answer “yes” before I can rest. Foster’s whole point is that we can move from asking the question to living from the answer. From “Am I wanted?” to “I am wanted.” Not because I’ve finally earned it. Not because everyone agrees. But because the God who made me already answered that question. And His yes isn’t contingent on my performance.
That doesn’t make the treadmill disappear. I still feel the pull. But now when I catch myself running, I have a different option: I can step off. I can remind myself that I’m not one disapproval away from worthlessness. I can choose to believe that the approval I’ve been chasing was never going to satisfy anyway.
Here’s the irony: even writing this post makes my approval addiction tingle. You write to be read. That means promoting, hoping people see it, engage with it, maybe share it. Approval, basically. Part of me wants to just stop — stop writing, stop sharing, abandon the whole idea of coaching with all the visibility that involves. Just stay safe.
But I think that’s the scramble talking.
Some days I believe the good news. Some days I don’t. But that’s the work.
If this resonates with you, you might want to check out The Stick That Stuck or take the Primal Question assessment yourself. You can also hear me and Mark unpack the 7 Primal Questions on our podcast.