The Therapy Edit - On how to be less bothered by other peoples' opinions

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

In this Monday solo episode, Anna offers listeners therapeutic advice and guidance on how to feel less bothered about the opinions of others.If this resonates with feelings you've battled with, take ten minutes to listen to this episode and reap the rewards in your life. 

Hello and welcome to the Therapy Edit podcast with me, psychotherapist Anna Martha. I'll be bringing you weekly 10 minute episodes to encourage and support your emotional well-being. Hi, I am with you this Monday morning with some thoughts on how to be less bothered by other people's opinions. I mean, it's something I'm forever working on. I don't know about you. I wish I didn't care what people thought. You know, I think it is good to care. Let's face it.

It's good to care what people think because it makes sure that we're good people. It makes sure that we take people into account. Recognising that we have an impact on people is really important. Caring about people is really important. But the kind of bothered I'm talking about here is when you are just so. Or uncomfortable, maybe even hurting, confused, just ruminating over someone else's opinion of you. Perhaps it's not even opinion you know really exists. Maybe you imagine what they're thinking about you.

Maybe you've read into a message or a look, but it's sitting with you. And you want to do everything you can to change their mind. You want to do everything you can to feel more understanding. Now, a real turning point for me in this was a while back, a good while back. When I'd shared something on social media and now, yeah, when you've got a public social media account, you do, you quite often get misunderstood. And I've had to become comfortable with that. And it's actually been one of the biggest benefits for me with my.

quite public social media account is that I had to become less bothered by other people's opinions. And as someone who has historically been a chronic people pleaser, there's been a real, it's been a ride. But actually, my goodness, how liberating it is. So I want to, yeah, I want to encourage you on that journey. I will hold on to the word journey, by the way. It gets a bad rap, but I haven't found a better replacement. So we're calling it a journey. But this, something someone said to me once really, really pushed me on this journey of being less bothered by people's opinion.

And I can't remember what I shared, but I just remember she wrote this. I just thought you were an overprivileged toff. You can't handle motherhood. And it was a backhand compliment because apparently her opinion. and had changed after becoming a mother herself. So my memory is, yeah, hazy on the exact context. But it was meant to be this kind of backhanded compliment as this is what she used to think,

but then she had a child and challenged her opinion. But I just remember it. I remember it. I just remember how I felt as I read that. By the way, a Toff, I think is like a really posh person. That's how I understand it. I should probably go and search on. Google look at you know the slang dictionary or whatever it's called but I knew that yeah I just

felt so acutely misunderstood I felt this massive tidal wave this desperation of urge to share my truth my story my upbringing my acute gratitude the details of my parenting reality the details of my childhood financial circumstances all of that I felt like I wanted to share it all to change her mind. She was a stranger, you know? And I realized that if I did that, I'd have to do it to everyone. And even then I'd be misunderstood.

Even then, some people would need to see me through their own lens of judgment and assumption. Even then, I still wouldn't and couldn't be everyone's cup of tea. I could throw open my most challenging moments and deepest pains and the areas of lack. and I could never be relatable to all, end of story. But, yeah, so this wave rose up in me, and it was so tangible.

I remember it, it felt like shame. It felt, it felt hot. It was almost like I couldn't think of anything else. I just was desperate to justify myself, really. But then that wave passed, and instead of finding me scrubbling to be understood in a world that we will never be understood by everyone, and this is one of the chapters in the uncomfortable truth. And it's, we will be misunderstood.

I will be misunderstood. That is a truth. It threw me, this comment, this comment, I thought you were an overprivileged Toff who can't handle motherhood. It threw me into this brand new, deeper acceptance of the fact that those who really know me are the ones who truly get, accept and care about me. And really everything else is just subjective opinion. and feedback on a single line of a book that they've not read.

And as I've worked to get, accept and care about myself over these last years, I feel so much more at peace with being misunderstood by people and social media, by friends, and sometimes even my family. And it really has been totally liberating, wildly liberating. It's led me to actually live less. fearfully and more authentically. So yeah, who knew that being so wildly misunderstood could be such a key to living more fully? And perhaps you have something that rings in your ears, sits heavily on your heart, always really sharp in your memory, a time when you have felt

really, really misunderstood. And perhaps you still. have that craving, or perhaps you've spent years trying to change someone's idea and understanding of you. But no matter how misunderstood you felt, the most important thing is that there are two or three people in your life who have read the most important chapters of your life's book and that you seek to develop compassionate acceptance and understanding of yourself. Because as you accept yourself as you think, you know what? I get me. I mean, I don't actually know if I'm ever going to fully get me, but I get the fact that I'm probably not going to fully get me and I get the bits that I get, if that even makes sense. I accept me. I know my journey. I know my story.

I know my past. I know my nuances. I know my toxic traits. I know these things. And the people closest to me, they know all of those things too and they still accept me. So if they accept me and I accept me, then actually it really starts disempowering all of these little misunderstandings and the big misunderstandings that come our way. And remembering that actually some people need to misunderstand you. Some people need to see you through their lens so that It can perhaps reinforce the narrative that they have for themselves. Maybe they need to feel that you are, I don't know, don't have a right to feel the way that you feel because their situation's harder. Maybe they need to do that in order to be able to validate their situation.

Use that kind of leverage, that comparison. That's the only way that they can validate their situation because they can't do it for themselves. So there are so many reasons why people will misunderstand. you but if you can start to find a greater acceptance of that then it's so i promise you it's so liberating and it's not say that i don't get those waves of urge that those those feelings that arise sometimes in me because these things run deep these things they do run deep but a lot of the time things wash over me and they don't hold the same power that they used to so yeah people will misunderstand me and they will misunderstand you and that's why it's one of those uncomfortable

that I address in my new book. So yeah, come and join me in this place of newfound acceptance because it's great. And it doesn't mean that you don't care what people think. It just means that someone's opinion will not drag you on that desperate train of adrenaline and, yeah, shame and a desire to prove them, to prove to them who you really are. And actually, they're not in a way. they're not in a position to be able to see you for you, but you are. So I hope that's helpful and I'll speak to you soon. I am so excited to announce that my brand new book, The Uncomfortable

Truth, Change Your Life by Taming Ten of Your Mind's Greatest Fears, is available for pre-order now and is out on the 8th of August. And in this book, we tackle some of life's big, unavoidable, uncomfortable truths such as some people don't like me, I am going to fail. Life isn't fair. Bad things will happen. And in this book, we tackle these big, uncomfortable trees that rob us have so much headspace and energy as we try and control and avoid them. And as we move into a place of radical acceptance of these truths, you will find yourself living more freely and intentionally with more presence and confidence than ever before. So come on this journey with me and pre-order now at Wardstones in Amazon.

We can celebrate together.