How to Stop an Addiction to Likes and Validation
I have an addiction. My drug of choice isn’t a controlled substance, and it can’t be bought in the stores or at the pharmacy.
My drug is the little red circle that appears whenever I check my Wattpad. It’s the email I receive notifying me when someone had liked, given kudos, or reviewed one of my fanfics. I am addicted to validation.
Confession time: although I no longer write fanfiction, I still occasionally check back to Wattpad, Fanfiction.net, and Archive of our Own to see if the masses are still reading my stories.
The brief hit of seeing that someone liked something I wrote is always nice, but what really gives me my dopamine high is when a person takes the time to write to me to tell me how much my fanfic is “OMG THE BEST THING EVER!”
But here’s the messed-up part: no sooner do I take in that initial rush of validation, the high is gone, vanishing into the ether like so much smoke dissipating from an opium pipe.
The joy is fleeting. So I’m constantly looking, constantly checking for new instances of validation to sate my neverending hunger.
It’s the same for when I post on the Medium or to other sites. I keep going back, hoping to see that someone has shared my thoughts on social media, or has left a comment of encouragement or…
