How to stop caring so much about what other people think of me

Oops was meant to quote @MatildaTheCat

100% same. I’m 44 and well into peri. Now on HRT that has been a wonder at dealing with the negative symptoms but somehow not touched the brilliant new self who doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks of her anymore. Miracle of miracles!

People say this to me too 😬, because I don’t really care what people think and I say things as they are…no tip toeing around. I don’t have many female friends tbh because I find a lot of them are just people pleasers and they are often nice to peoples faces and awful behaving their backs.

I think a part of learning not to care what people think is about learning to enjoy your own company and enjoying doing things that don’t involve being nice to other people. I like going to the gym, swimming, walking…I can enjoy these on my own or with others (mainly on my own), I don’t need people to like me to enjoy myself. I have also learnt to say ‘no’ to people when they ask if I can do things.

I am 39 and worse than ever in my anxieties about what people think of me. But then in many peoples eyes I am the poster child of being a total loser in life.

I am 60. I came to a realization that everyone, including me, is boring and annoying sometimes, and I put up with it in them so they can put up with it in me - we're all just doing the best that we can. DH and I have retired to a place where there are plenty of groups I can join based around crafts, bell ringing, volunteering for the church, volunteering at the local nature reserve. Instead of being stuck at home all day on my own I am socializing with a lot of different people and am seeing that they aren't perfect, neither am I, and it's perfectly fine.

I was a terrible people pleaser until I was about 50. Then like PPs I started to care less . I think it stemmed from a chaotic childhood . Unhappy marriage ,partly because of bullying by sisters in law who were jealous and horrible. ( not just to me) But then in later years I was bullied by a manager at work but disguised as " concern" . I followed correct channels until it became unbearable . Other people commented but were afraid to help because they thought it would be turned on them. One day I suddenly felt that I didn't give a damn what anyone thought of me and I loudly and publicly challenged her. Publicly in that ,that is where she had bullied me .
Next day a colleague was very sarcastic and unkind to me in a meeting because she " felt sorry " for the manager. So I replied firmly that she herself had noted that I was being bullied and was now victim blaming. Honestly it was like a small timid animal had grown teeth and claws . I have never cared about peoples opinions since . I would never deliberately upset anyone but I deserve respect ( as we all do) and will never put other people before my own needs again . Most people only care about their own lives anyway.

I don't know what happened but I used to worry about people not liking me and now truly don't give a hoot. I just ignore anyone unfriendly, like they don't exist. I always get on well with a cousin of mine but it has always been up to me to suggest meeting. I now think if she wants to see me she can suggest something, but if not, I'm not desperate!
I have cut off another toxic "friend" who often made me feel insecure. My other cousins used me as a taxi service for my elderly aunt but now I say Sorry, no, I can't.
I'm 64 and this happened gradually but I now feel that my time is my own to spend as I like, not to worry about people who don't care about me anyway.

I’m 52 and certainly haven’t noticed any changes in my psyche I could ascribe to menopause. I think you need to look at yourself. Ok, you think you’re obsessed with people liking you because you experience your sister as rejecting, but how does that actually affect your behaviour? Would you behave differently if you felt everyone liked you? How exactly would you behave differently?

How old are you, @Woopdoggysycamosiy ? I’m mid 40s and would say the fucks I give started to decrease dramatically from mid 30s onwards.

Am still not really experiencing peri-menopausal symptoms so can’t really blame it on that.

Ask yourself this: would I like myself more if I cared less about what others think of me?

Gotta like yourself first, because without that none of the rest matters.

Have you heard of the 1967 book I'm OK, You're OK? Despite its weaknesses, the premise is strong:-

The phrase I'm OK, You're OK is one of four "life positions" that each of us may take. The four positions are:

1. I'm Not OK, You're OK
2. I'm Not OK, You're Not OK
3. I'm OK, You're Not OK
4. I'm OK, You're OK

This naturally leads to a fair amount of sadness - we apply harsh judgements to ourselves while judging other people as far more OK than we are. The crazy thing is that the other people are mostly doing the same in reverse! We can't all be right about that, eh, it wouldn't make sense? So maybe the truth is that we're all OK in our own ways.

There are a few individuals who really are Not OK for various reasons - but, unless you're their doctor or lawyer, the details needn't bother us. We can just carry on being OK in our own ways, letting everyone else be their version of OK too.

Read this OP https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/aug/24/oliver-burkeman-book-extract-meditations-for-mortals-people-pleasing

Im pretty social and get along with most people aside from OTT people pleasers! It's a sad irony that working hard to make people like you is actually super off putting.. Hope this perspective helps!

My mantra in generally I can't possibly like everyone I meet so I can't expect everyone to like me.

I don't actually like people pleasers.
They are insincere and I much prefer someone who tells me what they think, if I have asked.

I imagine a lot of people really prefer genuine responses, so that might help you a little.

I have never cared and I will admit because of that I have been told on more than one occasion I’m a bit like a man which sort of feels like a complimentary insult.

I think it's partly getting older/loss of estrogen, and partly just accepting and appreciating that I'm generally doing my best, and if people don't like that or don't like me that's entirely their problem. I know I'm a decent person most of the time. There are lots of people I don't think are decent... I don't care what they think at all.

To be fair I haven't been hugely bothered about what other people think of me since I was a teenager, but it's definitely ramped up a gear in my 40s.

My sister's gone NC with me. No idea why, she's given different 'reasons' to each family member that asked. We were close. Anyway, here's the point: I expect she wanted me to be all distressed and grovel to have her back in my life, so she could give me a thorough evaluation of everything that's wrong with me and how saintly she's been to put up with me all her life.

What did happen: I asked once, have I done something? Can I put it right? Didn't get an answer. I didn't pursue it. I felt hurt ... and I also felt that, as an adult, I must respect her adult choices on the company she keeps. So that's that; I have one sister less and I accept it.

An interesting thing happens when you start seeing other people as absolutely separate individuals. It so happens that I find people endlessly fascinating, but it's the same if you don't give a toss about them. Each of the eight billion humans on this planet lives in their own personal world, unique to them alone. I'll try and explain ...

If you and I were standing next to each other in the market square this chilly afternoon and something happened - I dunno, a giraffe galloped up one of the paths, knocked over the tables outside the café and hoofed it out into the high street - we'd experience it differently. We'd agree on the giraffe event (though some wouldn't!) One of us might've been more shocked, more scared or more amused by the whole thing. You might be worried for the animal's wellbeing, I might be concerned in case it caused a traffic accident. We would each remember completely different things about what else happened in the square at that moment and how other people reacted.

So, if you feel like you know what other people are thinking about you, you're wrong. Weirdly, most of them aren't thinking about you at all 😄 A more interesting question (to me, ymmv) is what are they thinking about? What's it like inside their personal world? I can spend hours people-watching. An equally valid point of view is that everybody else's personal world is their business, so who cares?

With regards to ageing: it happened to me very fast. Years of living 'intensively' caught up with me all at once; I went from conventionally attractive to raddled within a year or so. There was an extended double-take moment while I got my head around the fact that people's responses to my appearance would change. When it comes down to it, though, there isn't much difference. Everyone's still going about their own lives and I go about mine. The fact that nobody's labelling me "pretty" these days has zero effect on my day to day.

I honestly hadn't realised this was going to be such a ramble! Sorry. It really does come down to respecting everyone's right to do their own life their way and your right to do yours. Acceptance 😎 ... and watch out for giraffes!

I was lucky enough to have an epiphany in my late 20s - I got really upset following an altercation with a fellow student I didn't like very much and my friends on the course dropped everything to take me to the student bar for coffee and fags. We were having such a lovely time chatting about this and that when it suddenly struck me. I've got such lovely friends, so what the hell does it matter if I've incurred the disapprobation of someone I dislike? I don't like everyone in the world, so why should I expect everyone to like me?

You're specifically talking about your sister though, so that's a bit different, as it's hardly unreasonable to wish for a close relationship with her. Were you closer growing up? Does she perhaps think 'My DSis and I have the best relationship, we can go months without contact but whenever we see each other it's as if we'd never been apart'? Or is she just happy with a less intense relationship? Why is it you assume dislike on her side, simply because you would like more frequent contact than she seems to?

I think the no longer caring now I'm older, is only part two of the story. Part one is liking who you are yourself. Being at peace with yourself, your choices, behaviour and opinions. Accepting you have flaws and limitations, but that these are balanced by qualities and strengths, and overall, the complete person is someone you're happy to be. Part two flows naturally from that, because if people think negatively about you, you don't care, because they're not the sort of like minded person you'd want in your life anyway.

It’s a really interesting question @Woopdoggysycamosiy . I think for me ( early 60s) it was a very gradual process of getting more confident in my own judgement about things. If I was sure I’d had good reasons for acting as I had, I learnt to feel less undermined by others’ reactions. I also gradually saw that you really can’t please everyone, all the time.

My family had a very painful rift which went on for many years. My sibling became very distant and often blanked me. We’d previously been close. Their behaviour was very rejecting and sapped my confidence over many years but very gradually I saw that someone who could behave like that, made very different choices and judgements to me, and was not the sort of person I aspire to be. So why was I giving their judgement of me so much room?

Once their opinions started mattering less, I became less bothered about desperately trying to re- capture the relationship that we’d had, treated them a bit more offhand, didn’t chase them so much and interestingly, our relationship got better around that time. Of course things may have changed for them as well, but I’m sure that changing my behaviour played a part. This all fed into my confidence and not caring as much what others think of me.

You could wait for that hormone moment but you could experiment with reaching out to your sister less often and see what happens. It might be interesting!

I know it seems insane but I also think there was a shift in my hormones or something and one day I simply realised I could not give a damn anymore!

In my teens and 20s I cared a lot about what other people thought about me and how I came across. As a result my self-esteem was actually rock bottom. Things started to change in my 30s and now I'm 44 I am a very different person.

I wish I could give you advice about how to get to there but it honestly just happened to me a few years ago. I think I'm just too tired to care anymore to be very honest. I iust be myself and I try to be a kind person and I think that's all you can do. If someone doesn't like me and I've not given them a reason not to, I just shrug it off these days. You'll always click with some people and not with others, that's just life and that's okay. I also tell myself I look fabulous at all times, even when I probably don't...I live in jeans and rarely wear make-up. But walking around telling yourself that you look great is very liberating.

I do think there's something about getting older where you just accept you are who are you as well and stop trying to be something different. That helps. But being too tired to care is definitely part of it ha

Perhaps I am lucky in a sense, in no way minimising your feelings. Other than family opinions I never cared what other people thought of me.

Sorry therefore I cannot offer any useful advice to you.