How do I stop needing everyone's approval before I finish anything?

You need several rounds of sign-off from several people before you can release anything, and you have seen the honest truth about it: the approvals are not really about the work. They are about your own anxiety. Each signature is a way of borrowing someone else's certainty so the decision does not have to feel like yours alone. There is a real cost to this. All that approval-seeking slows everything down, spreads the responsibility so thin that no one, including you, ever fully owns the outcome, and, worst of all, it never actually cures the anxiety. The relief each sign-off gives fades fast, and you reach for the next one. You are treating a feeling with a process, and the feeling keeps coming back because the process was never the real fix. So practice tolerating the discomfort of deciding. Pick one low-stakes thing and release it with fewer approvals than usual, on your own judgment, and sit with the anxiety instead of resolving it away. It will rise, and then it will pass, and the work will very likely be fine. Each time you prove that to yourself, the need for the chain of sign-offs loosens a little. Confidence is built by acting before you feel ready, not by collecting permission until you do.