Approval-Seeking
Approval-seeking is the habit of shaping what you do and say to win other people's approval and avoid their disapproval. Your sense of being okay rides on how others respond to you.
Everyone likes to be liked. Approval-seeking is when that wish runs the controls, deciding what you wear, what you say, which opinion you offer, whether you can rest. The other person's reaction becomes the scoreboard for whether you are doing all right.
It often grows from a childhood where approval came and went with your behavior, where being good, quiet, or useful earned warmth and anything else earned distance. A child learns to track the adult's mood and supply whatever keeps the approval flowing. That tracking becomes second nature.
In daily life it sounds like checking faces after you speak, softening an opinion the moment someone stiffens, or feeling crushed by mild criticism. The hunger for approval is a signal that your sense of worth got wired to the outside. It can move inward, slowly, as you learn that your own read on yourself is allowed to count.