> Worse, it left me with a debilitating emotional and intellectual dependency on their approval. I'm not a therapist, but maybe one can back me up: The "thing

> Worse, it left me with a debilitating emotional and intellectual dependency on their approval. I'm not a therapist, but maybe one can back me up: The "thing" driving this emotion is essentially hard-coded in the author at this point, from early childhood. More central than rationally spelunking into the nature of what they currently consider "breakage," the author would be better off acknowledging and accepting (i.e., sitting with) the feeling when it arises as part of their own rich emotional life. This, ironically, will dissipate the negative impact of the feeling over time. (But this doesn't count as "fixing" one's emotional "breakage" any more than accepting that humans have belly buttons makes belly buttons disappear.) Am I close here? Edit: get rid of unnecessary and false dichotomy