To ask how you stopped caring what other people think

[user1471507295]

I find I spend a lot of my time thinking about decisions (big or small) based on what others will think - friends, family, even colleagues. It’s exhausting ! Has anyone got any tips on how to train your brain not to do this?

Age and confidence - less head space due to having kids.

Also less time spent with family/people who undermined me.

Realising you are in that thought pattern - stopping and trying distraction to avoid re-starting. Otherwise if to and froing pro/con list on paper rather than rehash in head on loop.

Also refuse to get drawn in to discussing or justifying decisions if I don't really want the person's input.

Yep people really don't judge as much as others think. More than often people are too busy worrying about themselves.

Therapy and anti anxiety medication

Age.

The more miles on the clock, the less I care.

Age, like lots of others have already said. I've found being postmenopausal very liberating, the 'Fuck-It-Fifties' (love that phrase) as someone described it above. Doing my own thing is much easier now.

Snap.

Menopause was a head fuck, but being post menopausal is a dream in comparison. It's like emerging from a cloud of anxiety.

A bereavement of a close family member.
I was a chronic worrier /over thinker and now I’m so far the other way that I quite honestly don’t give a fuck.
The amount of time I’ve stressed wondering about other people’s opinions etc.
Tips to train your brain, just think to yourself this really is such in insignificant thing I’m not go spend time thinking about it.
Also , you can’t change other people but you can change how you respond to it.
Try it with something small to begin with.

There are some decisions where I care about other people's opinions, usually because the decision affects them so I wouldn't buy a new sofa without discussing it with my husband. I wouldn't run the decision past anyone else though as it's none of their business and I wouldn't expect my sister to let me have a say in choosing her sofa.
I choose my own hobbies etc. I think I don't expect other people to be that interested in the minutiae of my life and decisions. If someone asks me what I've done today it's just a conversational gambit and they really don't care if I've been gardening or reading a book.

Why is what other people think more valid to you than what you think?

It's a genuine question, and for me, it was worth A LOT of thought. If you can find out the answer, you'll be quite far towards 'retraining your brain'. For me, it was to do with thinking that there was some sort of set of rules I was supposed to be obeying (like, I'm not supposed to sit in my pjs all day and read) When I realised there are no rules, that brought the knowledge that nobody knows better than me about what's the right thing to do for me.

MASSIVELY liberating. And suddenly, in my mid 40s, I felt like one of the grown ups! (and could sit reading in my pjs all day too!)

Far too busy to care what others think. I am living my life how I want to live it.

Equally I don’t care how other people live there lives.

Live and let live, as the saying goes.

I would say age too. I’m only in my early 20s but always felt somewhat insecure about my appearance and abilities thanks to shitty people in my past.

It’s only now where I’m starting to see the first signs of ageing, that I look back at old photos and realise how attractive I was/am and how good I had it at the time. Feel like I wasted my youth being insecure as there was nothing wrong with me, it was just people getting in my head.

Realising the hard way that no one is ever going to care about you as much as you will. No one will ever have to deal with the consequences of your decisions as much as you will. No one will be held to account for your life, only you will.

Lots of people want the glory but in the end it's just going to be you suffering the consequences of their manipulation.

I do think we don't do a very good job of preparing young people (teens/20s) for the reality that they will ultimately be responsible for themselves. Myself included.

Simply, the older I got the less I cared.

The competitive mummying in the play groups and school run here absolutely decimated my already fragile self-confidence. As soon as my youngest was in school I got myself a part-time job, and over the years, at a pace that suited me and my family, have worked my way back up to where I was before DC.

When I first got a job it was very much frowned upon and they all assumed we must need the money. Getting over their opinions at that stage was a real turning point for me, and the IDGAFs came easier and easier after that. I think realising that they were being nasty based on nothing and over something they knew nothing about made me realise how worthless the constant appraisals and criticisms were. I'm back to being confident and feisty, and feel so much happier in my own skin. I'm a much better role model for my teenage daughter than the submissive, desperate-to-please wreck I once was.

Don't get me wrong, I care deeply about certain people's feelings, but if you're outside of that preciously small inner circle then your opinion is simply for your own amusement.

OP you will have your own 'oh really' moment, and it will all drop into place thereafter.

Get some counselling OP. These are deep rooted issues that need dealt with.

How old are you, OP? I’d put it down to age and experience. I had to make some very big and serious life choices from quite a young age. All my friends regularly tell me that any smidge of IDGAF that they have has been inherited from me. I’ll come in time.

When I reached 50. Decided that I wasn't going to put up with shit anymore, so bloody liberating.

@Silenceisnotgolden I’m mid 30’s so time I got this way of thinking sorted out really.
@Eckhart that’s a really good question and has got me thinking ! There’s lots of food for thought on this thread. I very much grew up with my mother and her phrase ‘ don’t you think you ought...’ followed by whatever unsolicited advice she wanted to give. I have never really got past the idea that I ‘should’ be doing x , y and z. I was a rebellious teenager and wish I could get that mind set back. As an adult I shouldn’t see any legal, normal activity of life choice as rebellious of course. Lots to ponder here.

I stopped worrying what other people thought when I realised no one actually cares what I do.

I used to be like this - a lot. What made a difference was the lightbulb moment - a realisation that other people are every bit as flawed as I am, sometimes more so, and that their opinions or views are not more important than my own. It was driving, actually, that made me realise this, when I visually saw how many dickheads there are behind the wheel of a car and I suddenly realised that all the other people out there are not perfect, they all make mistakes, they all do the wrong thing sometimes, and it made me stop feeling inferior. I used to not trust my own judgement and held the opinions of others higher than my own - I don't any more. My feelings are every bit as valid as anyone else's and I realise that actually, I do my best to be a good and decent person, if others don't appreciate that then sod them.

Realise that most people probably aren’t thinking anything about what you do or don’t do!

When none of my supposed friends contacted me when I had dvt. 6 months of just me, a budgie ,my parents if i needed some help and now ex fiance. I tried so hard to get people to like me, sod them I have my budgies and parrot , my family and a better fiance.

My dad once told me when I was a teenager and fretting over something, that people only really think about themselves and their lives.
For example, if you attend a meeting and afterwards analyse what you said and worry about it, you can be sure no one else from that meeting is sitting at home that evening, thinking over everything you said. They'll be thinking about what they did and said!
It was like a switch in my brain when he said it and with age and experience, it has proven to be very true. That's not to say others opinions can't be valuable but people think about and judge others in normal everyday life a lot less than we all might expect.

I’ve got to be honest and say it never really occurred to me to worry about what other people thought. But I did used to have some anxiety at work, getting things wrong and the like.
That has disappeared with age. Completely. Too much probably.

To the point where if I start reading an email and it looks too lecture like, I delete. Or if a teams meeting at the mo sounds the same I turn the sound down. Am just not interested.

I start from the basic assumption that most people are idiots. The older I get, the less evidence I see to contradict this premise. Quite the opposite, in fact.

I further assume that most people are so self-obsessed that they have very little interest in me. Observation of social media provides ample confirmation bias to support this assumption.

Why, therefore, should I give a flying fuck what a world full of self-obsessed, know-nothing idiots thinks about anything I might say or do?