How to stop caring what other people think of you

[Chips73]

thanks to everyone for their comments, all positive and helpful!

I'm starting to recognise my negative feelings and address them instead of just letting them grind me down.

this was very good :

If you worry about your personal finances, it’s time to start caring about them. If you worry about your health, it’s time to start caring about it. If you worry what others think of you, start caring about their thoughts. And behold, your worries vanish into thin air once you’ve taken care of these issues

[The Probabilist]

I appreciate your appreciation.
All the best to you.

[LindaF]

I just came back to this thread after a break, and was surprised and excited to see a whole new page of helpful posts! Thank you. I'll read all the comments and check out the article someone posted today.

Linda

[Assistant]

It does matter what other people think of you. It matters in terms such as whether or not you get the job, get the promotion, make the sale, get the date, get invited to the party and so on. What other people think of you affects how they treat you just as what you think of them affects how you treat them.

You can take comfort in knowing that no matter what anybody thinks of you, including yourself, it cannot change your true worth. At the same time, what others think of you and what you think of yourself does affect behavior.

A better goal would be having a healthy perspective and concern for what others think of you. For example, its healthy to have a pleasant appearance but it is unhealthy to have your whole day ruined because someone did not compliment you on your appearance. Its healthy to give your best effort but its unhealthy to try to deceive others into thinking your somebody your not.

Here are some techniques I have found helpful in dealing with my irrational unhealthy emotional thinking about what other people think of me.

1. Meditation
2. Journaling
3. Evaluate and adjust my goals (ie. make mental toughness the goal)
4. Distraction
5. With paper and pen do my ABCs as follows:

A- Adversity: Write down an objective statement of the event that triggered the thinking. For example, so and so laughed at my opinion on x

B- Belief: Write down what you believe about A. This is where you vent. Write it all down. Get it all out of your system.

C- Consequence: Write down the consequences of B. For example, I am angry and depressed, I can't focus, I am losing sleep, etc.

D - Dispute B: Pretend you are someone else. How would you counsel yourself? Write it down. There are many excellent comments in this forum from which to draw. Keeping writing until you get to E.

E - Energized: You have relief and are ready to proceed on a positive course.
Write down the positive course you will proceed on.


Best Wishes

[Mark Lapierre]

Ooo I like that Assistant, ABCs. That's something that I've done in my journaling, but in a less structured way. That is, without something specific to guide me. And it did help, though I'm sure it would have been even better if I'd had that guide to follow. I tended to go around in circles a bit

[Assistant]

Interesting. Thanks. Have not had a chance to read it all yet.

I am not trained in psychology. My belief is that we learn early on in life and receive constant reinforcement from society that to be inferior in some way is usually bad, even dangerous and we develop our own strategies to minimize our weaknesses and maximize our strengths, in order to optimize our material and social success.

We learn to care very much what other people think of us because that is what we have been taught to do.

I am very interested in techniques that allow one to keep the influence of the groups in which one operates in a healthy perspective, a sort of accept it, deal with it but don't be adversely dominated by it mind set, if you will.

[bbox]

Hi Guys

I'm new here, but this site looks awesome from what i can see. People looking to further themselves positively, nice, very nice. Anyway back onto topic your story just made me think of a quote that totally changed the way I think about self consciousness and what people thought of me and all that.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” - Nelson Mandella from his inaugural speech.

Just made me think about how we perceive social interactions in a sense of "I have to care about what others think of me and shrink to their standards", wheras we should think to ourselves 'who am I not to stand out and say what I think and feel', as the quote says you really bless others by doing this and let them do the same. Mind you people won't always like it but who cares really? Are you really going to shrink yourself and not live your life because of someone else?

Other people don't have to live your life and if they don't like what you have to say, then they don't have to listen. The irony of it is that people are more drawn to you as you speak your mind and drop the baggage of over concern with what others think of you. For sure you can be aware of how others might respond to what your saying but it dosen’t mean you have to be overly concerned with it.

I think that's the attitude we should come to when communicating with others: being aware of how they might react instead of being worried about it.

anyway that's my take on it.

bbox

[Vee]

This is what I do -

1) Remember that most people are as scared as you a lot of the time

2) The best way I get through this is J.E.R.M - Jack ever really matters!

In the totality of it all - what really matters? As long as I'm not dead I'm ok. I can fall over in front in front of a crowd of people, be abused, buy a car, lose all my money, fall in love - it's all part of life.

I know this is easier said than done and it takes a lot of practice. But doing one stupid, new thing every day really helps me xxxx