How do you stop caring about what people think of you?

[Pinksparklyhat]

My counsellor has said I need to stop caring about what people think of me and stop worrying whether people like me or not and just be myself. I spend/waste so much time worrying about whether people like me or not. It's ridiculous. As a result I come over as needy.

How can I stop caring?

How do you think of yourself? Do you like yourself (I mean truly like yourself)?

I found that when I stopped being overly self critical I stopped caring so much what others thought of me. It's still a work in progress, and I've been in therapy for over a year, but I've found that as I've addressed the issues within me that made me dislike/judge myself the approval of others isn't so necessary as I have self approval.

Are there particular things you worry others will disapprove of you over? Maybe look at a way to address/accept those things in yourself as a starting point.

I think my main worry is that I will offend someone. I don't know why I feel that way. I don't like rejection and then in turn I'm scared of someone thinking I'm rejecting them. I end up holding back about how I feel. I want to stop worrying all the time about whether I've upset someone or offended them or not.

I don't think I do like myself a lot really.

Your last sentence makes me so sad! Have you said that to your counsellor?

In my experience, particularly with the 20:20 vision of hindsight, those who take offence at what is said/how you say it are arseholes. Other people can tell when you're nervous or just put your foot in your mouth or similar and 99% of them won't be offended by pretty much anything you do or say. Unless of course, you call them a cunt or insult their mum or something.

Maybe a way to think about it is to put the responsibility for upset onto other people. Only you can affect how you feel, so it follows that only others can affect how they feel, so it's their responsibility to not be upset (not being very eloquent, I hope you get what I mean). Just be normal and engage normally with them - allow others to talk about themselves a lot is a good trick - and try to stop any negative thoughts and panics before they have a chance to set in.

I think the crux of your issue is your self-criticism though, and you will have to find a way to stop doing that in order to stop feeling the way you do.

Can you say 3 things you like about yourself now?

Hit 45 :)

I don't know the answer...I suppose I just suppress it when necessary, and hide indoors the rest of the time.

I still care massively, but I try to avoid being around other people - that's the only thing that helps.

Going back to school this morning was really hard.

My mother worries about this a lot - I grew up with it. I'm not sure there is one answer to this but my random thoughts are:

1. I don't think there is a big problem with being concerned about what other people think of you provided its in perspective. Provided you are happy who who you are and what you do, not wanting to be a social pariah isn't that abnormal. When you are worried about what others think to the exclusion of how you feel about it shows (to me) a lack self esteem and and inability to value your own opinion - even about something that you are an expert in - YOU!
2. Worrying about what other people think of you is, when you think of it, really quite egotistical. Why would people be spending any significant amount of time thinking about you? In my experience people essentially worry about themselves and other people outside of their very close freinds and family are quite peripheral.
3. Does someone else thinking a particular thing about you make it true? Is their opinion so much more informed and valuable than yours.

A counsellor telling you to worry less about other people doesn't sound very helpful to me!

A serious suggestion for you. We can't help how we feel, by and large, but we can help how we behave.

Something you may like to try, therefore, is to consciously create a different persona for yourself that you can separate from the current you. On MN you are Pinksparklyhat rather than your real name. So, like an actor on a stage, decide what characteristics Pinksparklyhat would posess right down to how they would stand, how they would talk or what they would say in a given situation. If you'd like Pinksparklyhat to be a confident, fearless, forthright character, run with that. Rehearse a few scenes as this persona & try out a few lines. Then put on Pinksparklyhat when you go out in the morning, the way others would put on their make-up.

It may sound rather artificial but we are all different things in different situations. We all play different roles in life and adjust our behaviour a little to suit. Wear your confident persona out and about and it will eventually become second nature.

Cognito - hitting 75 didn't work for my mother - so not sure hitting 45 would do it for everyone!

I was just thinking did you have someone who has criticised you a lot in the past, for example an abusive ex or toxic parent who would have told you that you were offensive, whose comments you have now internalised? It may be something that has been externally reinforced, so you now believe your "power" to upset/offend is greater than it actually is.

Think about when someone has offended you. Did you think about it for a minute/a few minutes? Did you tell your friend/partner/relative? Did you then forget about it and move on? I bet you did.

I find it helpful to think in detail about what exactly you are scared of. Imagine it has happened. You have offended someone. THEY will now think about it, tell their partner and forget about it. Just like you did when the situation is reversed.

I also tell myself IT IS NOT FATAL

I got to the point when I realised that if someone thought me stupid, then they thought me stupid. AND IT DIDN'T really matter. Suddenly I was free! And you know, people probably aren't thinking that really.

Good post Kewcumber

I think it's a really good question and I've often thought that if I could care less what other people think about me then I would be a lot more free.

It's tricky though. If you don't care at all even the slightest bit what other people think of you then you are an insensitive arse like my father

I also think that almost everyone is worried about what others think and how they are seen by them. We all have our insecurities. It's getting it in perspective that's important. So you do the 'self-talk', to remind yourself not to angst about it too much.

My mum sometimes says to me "X hasn't called I think are offended because I (fill in random act of your choice)" My reply (when I'm feeling up to it "actually I think X probably hasn't called because they have otehr things going on and you aren't high on their list of priorities"

It sounds harsh but really - aren't we all much more interested in how we feel and the things happening to us immediately to spare much time for others feelings and actions?

I'm not trying to suggest that you go through life being totally selfish and assuming everyone else is totally selfish but can you see what a disproportionate influence you are ascribing to your own acts on other people?

I sound like a cow dont i?!

I just wanted to thank you all for the responses. I've got to reply quickly now as I need to do the school run but I just wanted to say that you are right Foxtrot that I had toxic parents that have done nothing but criticise me all my life, telling me how evil, nasty, ugly, horrible I am/was, and saying I was weird and odd and no one would ever like me.

Lets just say they didn't do my self worth much good at all

you need to work on believing that just because they said it, doesn't make it true. Good luck.

Taking away the power of toxic parents' words is hard! Try to think like Kewcumber points out - just because they said it, it isn't true. Going a step further than that, you appear to have accepted that they were awful to you and therefore not rational, functional adults. If you apply that you could say that precisely because they said it, it can't be true.

My voice of self doubt is affectionally considered my internal toxic mother. I find now I have realised how awful my mother is the internal one is much easier to ignore!

My mum still says things all the time; I try to limit my contact with her but she just spreads her vile-ness. Even a phone call to see how I am turns into her insulting me in a passive aggressive way.

I think I am going to have to cut contact with her. It's a shame as my dad is okay now, although he was horrible when I was a child and always ready to hit smack me.

Head just feels messed up tbh

I don't have any advice, but I understand your problem. I was taught to care about what people think - it's a big theme in my family, and covering up family secrets. When I left home and moved abroad I stopped bothering. I had a couple of long term boyfriends who were fairly obsessed with what other people thought of them - and us as couple - and I found their obsession very irritating and claustrophobic - didn't feel I could be myself as they were going to point out what others might think and how that might reflect on them. Which is pretty much how it was with my family.

It is possible to get out of that mindset though. Start small. Limiting your contact with your parents even more may well help, and keep repeating to yourself that what your mum is saying reflects on her, not on you. I used to be so self-conscious it was just ridiculous - blushing over everything and nothing when in company. Now I feel more secure in both my relationships but also more at ease with myself it isn't any longer an issue. My family are still obsessed with what people might think / say.

Maybe working on self esteem with your counsellor might help and be a more realistic goal than "stopping caring". better self esteem will help you stop care, but you can't just stop caring. One day your mum or whoever will say something and you'll just shrug it off. It'll take time, but you'll get there.

I can't really pinpoint a time when I stopped caring. I suppose it was when I hit my early 40's and a close friend lost her baby daughter Ruby. I realised that life is too short to spend time having coffee with people that I can't stand and worrying what they think about me/my house/my kids........etc.

I have dropped all the negative/non-stop moaners/woe-is-me (one SIL and a couple of 'friends') people from my life and surround myself with the people that I really care for and who I have a two-way relationship with rather than being a constant shoulder to lean on.

I started running to deal with the grief of losing Ruby (a way of getting my angst out too I suppose), lost weight and just feel better and more confident about the way I look which helped my overall self-esteem.

I was soooo concerned with what people thought of me. My DF had been an alcoholic and my cringing humiliation at his behaviour as I grew up left me constantly wanting people's respect and approval.

Wasted alot of my life doing that. Now late 50s and realise people are concerned in themselves way way more than they are interested in anyone else. I spose they might make denigrating comments about others but that is because they need to boost their own self confidence and the people who do that are worrying about how they appear to others the way you do OP, so who cares what they think, they have issues too!

This is going to sound really ridiculous but my mum always has done this thing if I talk for any length of time (more than 3 or 4 words) she starts nodding her head really impatiently and saying Ok Ok or yep yep in a really exasperated tone. Or she just huffs and rolls her eyes.

Consequently I always feel/imagine that everyone I talk to is doing or saying the same, even though the rational side of my brain knows that they're not. I've just been on the school run and quite a few people come up and talk to me but for some reason I imagine they are all exasperated and bored when I utter more than a few lines. So then I end up giving one or two word answers to people.

If you don't care at all even the slightest bit what other people think of you then you are an insensitive arse like my father
Nonsense. That suggests that sensitivity and treating people properly is about others' opinion. They are two entirely separate issues.

I don't care what other people* think about me at all.

I do care about causing offence and hurting people.

• with exception of very close friends and family members

You need to find a mechanism by which you can ignore your mother - whether that is actually ignoring her, or coming up with a response to her tutting/passive aggressive nonsense. My FiL has a mad challenging sister who he agrees with every time she is rude about him, just saying "I know" which takes the wind out of her sails and makes her stop going off on one about him/DH/anyone in the room. It's quite an effective technique with her, and works to an extent with my mother, so may be worth a try?

My DH suffers from anxiety it manifests itself with worrying about his health. He has been to a lot of counselling but has finally started making decent progress since he cut contact with his mum. She came across as a timid little lady, but now I realise that she was/ no doubt is, a nasty, self centered, manipulative, bitch. She has undermined him at every stage of his life, nothing is ever quite good enough, his clothes, manners, car, house, choice of uni, grades, ability to support her financially and emotionally and ability to parent his three younger brothers. She was so bad at coping that the family went to therapy when he was just 11, dad was very ill and the result was he was told to man up and support the family. His three brothers are spaced just over a year each. They have been brought up to treat him badly and expect him to pay for everything and run them around.

I didn't understand really believe in toxic parents/ families until he started unravelling in therapy. I hope that if he feels strong enough he can meet with his mother in the future but for now the distance means he is able to hear some of the compliments and praise he receives at work and home, his self worth is growing, he is starting to understand friendships and acquaintances rather than trying to be everyone's friend.

You come across as a very eloquent communicator, by the way.

A completely different thing but when I was at a low point in my life my aunty suggested a happy box. I made one. It's an old jewellery case but I squirrel away little note lets from friends and memory provoking snapshots, letters from relatives etc. when I'm feeling low I go through it sometimes and it generally helps me find a smile.

Any of these little tricks that can remind you of your value to those around you have got to be worth a try.

Try going on you tube and searching 'mindfulness" x