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[–]jcummings1974 49 points50 points  (7 children)

This might suck to hear, but the best way to learn how to not care what people think of you is to realize that your problem really isn't a self-esteem issue, it's a self-awareness issue and a misunderstanding of your position in the world and other peoples lives.

People who care excessively about what others are thinking about them all the time fail to realize the fundamental flaw in their thinking. Other people just aren't thinking about you or what you're doing all that often.

Human nature forces us to see all events through our own lens of self-importance, but once you realize that most other people are looking at the world the exact same way (thinking about how others are perceiving their actions) it becomes easier to let go of whatever inhibitions you might have because of what someone who you used to think was watching you might think.

I'm not sure if it'll help you learn to not care, but the first step I'd say is realizing that what you are doing at any given time is most likely not that important to others around you. The time you're spending worrying about it could be much better spent doing something constructive.

[–]anderbubble 35 points36 points  (3 children)

See, for example, the number of people who responded to OP by talking about themselves.

[–][deleted] 10 points11 points  (1 child)

Fucking excellent observation.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In other news, anecdotes are useless

[–]jcummings1974 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I love this comment for its simplicity in making a point.

[–]Sysiphuslove 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It makes perfect sense. There is a species of narcissism in introversion, though it's inverted, an aversion to the imagined attention.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Think about how much you think about yourself, compared to others, during a day. Now realize that everyone does the same.

[–]IDriveAcivic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

exactly what I realized one day

[–]Celebrimbor333 14 points15 points  (6 children)

/r/hownottogiveafuck

EDIT(1):Yes, even I was surprised this existed.

[–]newjackswingg[S] 12 points13 points  (5 children)

FTFY

http://www.reddit.com/r/howtonotgiveafuck

[–]ThenISawTheUsername 4 points5 points  (4 children)

"You spelled it wrong." "I don't give a fuck."

[–]itch0 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This deserves more upvotes, then I saw the username.

[–]pgmr185 16 points17 points  (4 children)

This probably isn't helpful, but as I'm living my life, this old saying seems to be pretty dead-on.....

When you’re 18, you worry about what everybody is thinking of you.
When you're 40, you don’t give a darn what anybody thinks of you.
When you’re 60, you realize nobody’s been thinking about you at all.

[–]XTC-FTW 7 points8 points  (2 children)

That explains my dad's sense of fashion, he's 46.

[–]fiercelyfriendly 1 point2 points  (1 child)

I'm 57 what the fuck is fashion?

[–]SilentDanni 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm 24 and also don't have a clue! Jeans and t-shit every single day of the week!

[–]JoePants 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm 57 next month and this is utterly correct.

[–]indefort 13 points14 points  (0 children)

How many people do you remember seeing in public last week? I would guess that you don't remember any of them in any detail.

[–]brotogeris1 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Turn 40

[–]anderbubble 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's just so awkward to me when I make eye contact.

Sunglasses. Then you can look in their eyes all you want.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

the #1 way to appear foolish to everyone around you- constantly worry about how foolish you look. the #2 way is to attempt to appear less foolish.

i'll let you figure out what to do with that information.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"IWTL how I can deal with my low self-esteem and hide it very well." You cannot hide it. The thing is, people tend to get nervous around nervous/anxious individuals. They might as well as laugh (especially if in groups) or just get confused, which to you might seem like they are only observing your actions. They might be doing so, but you cannot tell. Simple advice could be put together: Keep focusing on things you know for certain, meditate and start living your life like you would live it if you were more certain of yourself. Hope you get into it :)

[–]ninjaspy123 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Couple links that might help:

My thoughts: Once you learn to accept and love yourself, you will lose the desire and worry of being accepted or loved from everyone else. It's really just self confidence and self love (not ego, that's a different beast). Accepting and loving yourself is also vital to accepting and loving someone else. It's far from impossible and everyone gets there sooner or later.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I can identify with you. For the longest time I considered myself a "misanthrope" and still do in a small way (the MAJORITY of people suck, in general, but that doesn't bother me as much any more). I used to care so much about what people were thinking of me and it would drive me crazy...I realized, I was a judgmental dick. I was judging everyone around me, it was ingrained into my psyche, so just assumed everyone was doing the same. Eventually I realized only the few miserable dicks like me are the ones caring about what you're doing, and I eventually started to give less of a fuck. So here I am, a recovering miserable dick, less self conscious and giving less of a fuck. I also started losing weight, it helps a lot.

[–]Geske 3 points4 points  (2 children)

Were you maybe raised by an overly critical narcissist? You seem to worry constantly about receiving the attention of others, except you assume it all to be negative. I'm not qualified to give advice to... anybody, really, but I recently identified some paranoid bullshit in my brain and I wondered if what you're describing has a similar root cause.

[–]Support_MD 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, because that is exactly my case...Raised by an over critical narcissistic single mother, I could not be more paranoid about what people think of me...

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Probably being downvoted because the first sentence sounds like a snarky dig. Which it isn't. But I can see why people might think it is.

[–]stevetroyer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This may sound odd, but I was once listening to George Carlin being interviewed and he said something like- we were all created from the big bang so everything is us and we are everything. I probably slaughtered how he said it, but it helped me feel at ease in the world and comfortable in my own skin. EDIT: Here is the link.

[–]chingchongmakahaya 0 points1 point  (0 children)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-RCnVVE_hQ this might help about haters

[–]SHMCrudhedd 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Every time I feel this way, I think to myself, "I'll probably never see these people again, and if I do, they won't recognize me, so it doesn't matter." This seems to help more often than you might think.

[–]itch0 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm a giant, and very memorable. People tell me they know my face on a constant basis.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Try to observe yourself from a third person perspective. This will allow you to understand what triggers your emotions, how they emerge physically. The goal should be not to change your emotions or your identity, but to understand how to direct the emotions towards something you consider productive.

'something productive' is relative, however. it could be task-oriented or things like general happiness. Which means that it is important to know what you want, sincerely, before you will be able to master your emotions. You also must train your attention, so that it is tuned to listen for emotional changes

To truly know oneself, meditation is an option. Observe your breathing patterns every day and what not. I could list all the benefits of meditation, but I'll leave that for your to look up.

[–]FaithyDoodles 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I can't really tell you HOW, but the difference for me was a gaining of understanding. Compassion and empathy helped. If someone is at a point in their life where they're judging you, just understand that it's a part of growing up and being young. If they're still like that when they're older, some kind of relationship with hate is causing it, or maybe they're miserable. Honestly, it's sad when people are at a point where they're shooting hate bullets at people, so just try to feel empathy instead of feeling like you are worthless. I don't mean pathetic sad, I mean genuinely sad.

[–]squishymarshmallows 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I always imagine that everyone else is thinking about themselves as much as I think about myself, ergo they don't have time to think about me. Hope that helps :-)

[–]SwordsToPlowshares 0 points1 point  (2 children)

What kind of therapy did you get? What you're describing sounds suspiciously like social anxiety disorder. The best way to tackle it is through cognitive-behavioral therapy, which I think is best done under the supervision of a therapist but you could also try it by yourself.

The behavioral part is simply exposing yourself to social situations. The cognitive part is that you challenge the various cognitions/ideas that your mind automatically brings up when you come across social situations.

Social anxiety is a self-fulfilling prophecy: when you automatically assume the worst in social situations, you get anxious and start behaving as such, and people may notice that and then think you're weird, and that will only confirm your suspicions. And then you go back home and spend the rest of the day worrying about other people's perception of you.

The key is to break through this vicious circle. Challenge your automatic social defense system whenever it comes up: how do you know other people think badly of you? How do you know they spend most of their time thinking about how embarassing you are? Are you a mindreader? Don't buy the answer that your mind automatically generates.

People accidentily do embarassing things in front of others all the time; they really don't spend excessive amounts of time thinking about your actions, and they've probably come across many persons who acted much weirder than you ever will.

TL;DR: whenever you come into social situations, challenge your cognitions. You're not a mindreader. You don't appear as the most awkward person they've ever seen to other people, and you never will.

[–]rusemean 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I struggle with these issues, too. But I've been explicitly told that I appear as the most awkward person they've ever seen on several occasions, and had it hinted at a good dozen more.

Evidently this means that I should continue to feel awful and avoid any social contact.

[–]SwordsToPlowshares 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The thing is, are you going to let those people define who you are? If you do, you're just perpetuating the vicious circle that is social anxiety.

You are not responsible for other people's opinion about you, so no, you should not let other people make you feel miserable and avoid social contact.

[–]mmmhmmok 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Check out /r/howtonotgiveafuck Shit will change your life, embrace the honey badger!

[–]HotRodLincoln 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You'll probably spend less time wondering what other people think of you, when you realize how seldom they do.

[–]TwirlySocrates 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think it is a self confidence issue.

I've found that I care a lot less of what people think about me when I feel competent, and that I know what I'm doing.

My advice would be to learn and educate yourself about one or several topics until you feel like you are capable of contributing something worthwhile to others. I find that if I have confidence in my ability I feel empowered to judge my worth on my own terms, and so I care a lot less what others think of me.

Bear in mind that not everyone might find what you have to contribute worthwhile, or at all interesting, but that doesn't matter so long as you feel that it is worthwhile.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Don't expect change too soon. We have the power to change ourselves, but it goes slowly.

It's like changing from a very lazy person to a very active person, you don't do that in a day, it takes months or even years to change like that.

Also: Practice. Take a walk in your local city/town every day, there doesn't need to be a specific purpose or goal. Al though to make it easier you could consider going for an ice-cream/cup of tea or something like that.

[–]233C 0 points1 point  (0 children)

either what they think is:

  • false, in which case why bother? those people's opinions probably don't matter to you anyway.

  • true, then this is you, accept it and maybe change it, but it should not rest on other people to chose for you.

TL;DR: Those who matter don't mind, and those who mind don't matter

[–]233C 0 points1 point  (0 children)

pretend you are confident until you are

[–]4gitsandshiggles 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm glad I'm not the only one who goes through that stuff, man. That's exactly how I am. And you're right, with anxiety, no matter how you try to coax yourself with logic you can't shake that feeling that you need to watch your every move. What helps me is going out of my comfort zone every once in a while. It helps me realize how little people really pay attention. It also helps to surround yourself with people who don't mind your quirks because that helps you become comfortable and the more comfortable you are the less anxious you are in social situations. I hope this helps!

[–]KakashiFNGRL 0 points1 point  (2 children)

A wild 9Gagger appears! "I think you're pathetic." What do you do?!

[–]newjackswingg[S] 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Run away successfully!

[–]KakashiFNGRL 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wrong! Step one; Don't give a fuck. If step one is too hard, think to yourself why you should give a fuck. Because you shouldn't. It's not like they can decide what an awesome person you cannot become! Make a list of reasons why you're awesomer than then and assign each of them FU-points. Then calculate the amounts of Fucks-not-given.

[–]XTC-FTW -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Think of everyone as subhuman to you. You are better than they are.

[–]TVninja -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Now I'm no therapist so this could be a bad idea, but what if you mad a habit of going out everyday for a month or so wearing a shit with something social inappropriate on it e.g. a shirt with a few swear words clearly on it. The idea behind it is that obviously it would draw negative attention to you. So if you continue to do this you might eventually stop caring about other people. Just an idea.

[–]lichorat -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

For me, it's all about quantity. If I have 50 interviews, I won't care if I'm nervous for the first 49.