Tell me your 'I really don't care what you think' moments!!

[Nocares]

Soo.. something very liberating has happened in recent months.

Started a new role in a new team a year ago.

In all my previous jobs I have had many colleagues that were also friends and I got on well and liked everyone and in turn they liked me back (at least I think!).

Because we all got on well and I enjoyed their company I wanted them to like me too. We were all friends in and out of work(still are). So we all let petty things slide.

In my new job its very different. Not the same buzzing and welcoming atmosphere. It has cliques and weird dynamics.
At first I really struggled with this and couldn't understand why it was so cliquey. I was used to work friends and banter.

Then I kinda realised 6 months in... actually none of these people are my kind of people. I wouldn't choose to hang out with any of them outside of work. Even if I met them in a different setting I wouldn't want to be friends. All nice enough people just not my kind of people.

Therefore I didn't care whether or not these people liked me I wouldn't hang out with them regardless if they loved or loathed me. Realising that suddenly changed everything.

Suddenly I have become 'neutral'. Rather than trying to avoid confrontation or stress out about how to word things without being rude. I just say them. As I have no horse in the race of office politics/networking or friendships, I can see things more objectively.
If someone does something that I don't like, I just say "please don't do that". If someone tries to undermine me, I just say "don't do xyz, it's undermining so stop".

I literally speak so freely. It feels so liberating!
I'll always be my polite approachable self as that's how I am, but i don't mince words about anything. I just say them.

Is this how it feels not to care?!!

Please tell me your "actually, I really do not care" moments. Whether in work or not. Tell me your stories of really not giving a fuck!

Its so liberating!! I hope to try and harness this attitude in other areas of my life. Its liberating.

I haven't had the full epiphany but occasionally get small windows of time when I just think Fuck It. And I usually say that too. In fact, thinking about it now, it's actually worked quite well as most people know me as a team player, not popular but reliable, steady, polite so the times when I'm not I usually get my way because people see it's out of character.
Must do it again soon.

I’ve just started a new job.
I have decided that I need to perfect how to say “no” to stuff clearly but respectfully.
So I have. Twice. To my superior.

Good lord it felt good.
I also told them today that “no” I don’t do Christmas or secret Santa. Not due to religion, but due to me being a miserable bitch.
True story.
Yes, I’m a delight.
No, I don’t give a fiddlers fart.

Well done op. Welcome to a whole new world 😁.

I feel the same OP, not sure whether this has come with perimenopause but it has been an epiphany for me too. I remember a management trainer years ago asking if we wanted to be liked or respected and I spent years trying to achieve a balance. Now I go for respected all the time and it has paid dividends! I still care about my team’s wellbeing but has removed so much personal pressure. Keep going!

This sounds great OP! I hope you manage to be free like this in other parts of your life.

I can’t say that my example is of me not giving a fuck but it was also liberating. One of DH’s 3 sisters added me to a WhatsApp group of all his Irish cousins. I’d only ever met one or two of them. I’m happy to participate in his immediate family WhatsApp, but I was really not interested in a bunch of people I don’t know reminiscing about their childhoods.

And what irritated me more was that only I got added to it, none of the brother in laws, as it is obviously my duty as a female to care.

I told DH I wanted to leave the group and he was all worried I would offend people. So was I. But I made myself do it! Sounds so silly but I left and it was also totally liberating! I so enjoyed feeling that my purpose in life is NOT to make sure other people don’t get upset.

I had a job that was fairly stressful and required a fair few difficult conversations. Periodically my boss would remind me that I wasn't at work to make friends - I was at work to do a job for which I was well paid. It really helped.

Funnily enough since I've left I'm actually very good friends with several old colleagues, and a year ago one of them rehired me as a contractor to get them through a big project.

Ex-partner.

We were in the pub (separately) and barmaids kept saying it was awkward cos we weren't speaking to each other . I made the effort to speak to him and he started saying how everything was basically my fault and our mutual friends had all judged me the way he had (pretty sure he'd lied about me to them and he was definitely trying to upset me)...I said "people are always going to judge and if they don't like me as I am, they can fuck right off". He said "we've got 2 options. We can forget everything that's happened and be aquaintences or I can fuck right off as you put it, but I will NEVER apologise to you" so I said "OK, you can carry on fucking right off"

I remember such a moment when I was nine years old. My school was very fond of whole-class or whole-year punishments, for the actions of a few. During one of these (after there had been a few of them that term, which always seemed aimed at my year) I suddenly let rip with a tearful rant about how I felt about this, in front of the whole year. There was a stunned silence, and a teacher took me aside "to calm me down". I stood my ground, and maintained that I did not think that punishing the whole year was right. They didn't relent, and just told me I was being "rude". I knew that if I actually walked out of the school (this was before primary schools became fortresses) it would make them panic, but I never went that far.

It wasn't a breakthrough moment, though - all it did was reinforce my view of how "unfair" childhood was, and I didn't crack being confidently assertive until my late twenties.

I’ve always been a bit of a people pleaser until earlier this year.

A situation in DH’s family (too long winded for this thread) put a lot of unnecessary stress on me and one day after a particularly upsetting exchange with his parents I decided that was it. I pressed the “Fuck it” button and disengaged from the lot of them.

I’m now what you would call polite but detached and they don’t get their own way / upset me anymore because I simply don’t let them and I couldn’t give a fig what they think of me.

This has also spilled over into my work life (assisted by pregnancy hormones). I’m polite but firm. Wondering why it took me to the grand old age of 38 to have this “epiphany” as others have described it.

Most liberating and refreshing.

I crossed this bridge in my mid 20s.

I was abused as a child by my mother. My father knew but abdicated responsibility and was mostly busy, and they were divorced anyway. My brother and sister joined in. My sister even held me down to be sexually abused. A good example story is that I wasn't allowed a towel to dry off with after a bath. I was made to stand up naked in the bathtub for say 40 mins whole they all sat downstairs and mother made the dinner. If brother or sister came into bathroom to wash hands after using the toilet, I would try to cover myself up, being 12 or so, and they would shout downstairs 'Mummy, she's covering herself up!'

So cut to my early 20s and I'm in therapy and trying to work out the future of these relationships. I wanted acknowledgement and an apology. My sister said 'we've discussed it and we'll never apologise to you.' So I cut them off. I went for a long walk and thought it out and concluded that I didnt give a stuff what they thought, but I did need to respect myself, so they were all ditched and I moved on alone.

My mum is wonderful at this. She now just says 'no' to things she doesn't want to do, not rudely but firmly and without lots of excuses and reasons. It's great to see her in action as the other person literally doesn't know what to say.

I'm not quite there yet but I've not done secret santa for years. You give tat and usually receive tat. I have enough accumulated tat in my house! I rarely go on work nights out especially at Christmas as I'm usually too tired and want to focus my energy on my family by that point (work in a school and we always go out at the end of term and I'm just ready to go home and crash by then). People ask me if I'm going and say 'ahhhh you should come' but I don't, for one minute, think my absence is noticed once they get there. If I don't want to do something, I generally don't. Years and years ago, I was watching Loose Women one day. Jane Mcdonald was on and she said she'd got to the point in her life when she didn't do anything she didn't want to and, instead of tying herself in knots trying to come up with excuses and forgetting what she'd said, she now just says 'No, that doesn't work for me.' I like that, and I've taken it on board myself a few times.

@something2say I'm so sorry this happened to you, I hope you're living a happy life now

Thank you xx life is much better without them yes, but it does hurt sometimes that most people have some family members and maybe even one who loved them and wouldn't have stood for anyone hurting them. I'd have liked that.

I have always been like this as an adult once away from my abusive childhood.

People do view you in a peculiar way because women are supposed to be nice and compliant. MN has been great over the years but the threads about struggling to say no to a date because people don’t want to offend or not go on a hen night or whatever are absolutely fascinating for me because I have just never been like that. I don’t fret I just say no thanks. Plus if I offend a man well I feel like it’s a job well done quite frankly because they are not used to it.

something2say read your post after I posted, I suffered every type of abuse as a child. A very difficult part is not being able to join in when people start sharing childhood memories, the not having anything normal to share. The happiest day of my life will always be the day my paedophilic stepfather died. Wishing you some peace.

My grandmother told me she didn’t want me to go back to university , would rather I stayed at home to continue as a carer to my mum and sibling full time as I’ve done since I was a child .

When I told her I’d be doing it anyway, she made some sort of comment about, she doesn’t why know I’m bothering, I can’t have children anyway (I have gynae stuff) and no one would marry me looking like that .

It was at that moment I suddenly realised how bloody awful this is, how dreadful that she would actually say that and how as much as I love my family, I’m getting no thanks for sacrificing my own needs and wants for helping them, and I’d be happier and better off doing what I want - and indeed, they’ll find solutions come time, I will still help but from a distance . A bit of a breakthrough as I’ve previously taken it very seriously and apologised profusely for wanting to do something for me !!!

Felt a bit like Bridget Jones when she walks out of work with whatshisname telling him to go fuck himself ...

@something2say I am so so sorry!! How did they try and justify it now your an adult? Denial it ever happened?

Nocares a mixture of..
You deserved it.
It never happened.
You're a liar.
You have mental health problems.
Just shut up about it and pretend it didn't happen, and we will carry on speaking to you like shit.

I wrote a self help book because I was a charity worker helping people escape abuse for many years and got to grips with what best to do. You can see my sister's one star review. Its called Purple Dragon Mother.

Thanks for the support on this thread. It was the turning point for me, to reflect on actually taking actions like they did to me and never saying sorry and wanting to continue on like it.

@something2say what a terrible person she must be!

I hope you are happier now without them.