Worrying about what other people think

We ALL care about what other people think of us at least in some capacity, and this is important! You need to be able to assess other people’s responses to your behaviors so that you can gauge whether or not you are acting in a way that people will appreciate and not acting in a way that will make people not want to be around you. Who doesn’t want to be liked or make sure they aren’t making others feel alienated? And how else can we know that without paying attention to how we think our actions and words are impacting others?

However, you can probably relate to how easy it is to let this assessment of what other people think of you run away from you. It’s so easy to get caught up in ruminating on something you said or did and worry about other people’s perception of you. This, in my opinion, is one of the most underrated issues people come to therapy for. So much content in therapy is around my client’s concerns over what others think.  The good news is that as common as this is, with consistency it’s relatively easy to work on and address. I offer a four step thought process to consider if this is something that you struggle with. 

A) You don’t know what people think. Research has shown that we are wildly inaccurate when it comes to our assessment of what other people think of us, yet we convince ourselves that we can read minds and can assume what other people are thinking accurately. Think about it like playing  the lottery. If you’ve ever played the lottery, chances are you either do the QuickPick, chosen by the ticket machine, or you have your lucky numbers that you go with. I would argue that even if the jackpot is for a billion dollars there is no anxiety in purchasing a ticket. The reason being, you are aware that the chances of winning are slim to none and either you’ll win or you won’t. Similarly, I’d encourage you to look at worrying about what other people think in the same way. It’s not worth the stress given the unlikelihood that you’ll be accurate. It’s so incredibly liberating to let go of this.

B) Nobody is really paying attention. In basic psychology there’s a well known phenomenon called the “Spotlight Effect”. The spotlight effect is the tendency we all have to think that people are focusing on us more than they actually are and when you sit back and reflect on it - it makes sense! Think about the last time you spent any real amount of time thinking about somebody in your life and how dumb they sounded or how quiet they were in a conversation. Chances are at most, it’s a fleeting thought you’ll have and then you're back to worrying about your own life. Of course it’s the same with anybody else! They’re worrying about themselves, not you. 

C) If anybody is paying attention it’s likely not negative. Now let’s say for whatever reason, somebody does decide to spend some time thinking about you, you might have the tendency to assume you are being heavily scrutinized and judged when the reality is, people are way more graceful in their assessments of you then you might think. Flip the script for a minute, when was the last time you were so hyper-critical of somebody for the reasons you are worried people are being critical of you?

D) if it is negative then who cares. What if your concerns are true though? What if you happen upon somebody who IS paying a lot of attention to you and IS judging you for every little flaw or error they see you make. The idea here is challenging that you should actually care about this. Let’s say you found out somebody only liked you because you were so particularly flawless in your social interactions. Is that somebody that you’d want to be friends with anyways? Is that somebody of whom you’d care about impressing? Frankly, I’d hope not and for that reason, if you are having an off day, or told a story that didn’t land - let whoever is judging you for it judge you for it, you likely have no interest in impressing them anyways. 

If you struggle with social anxiety or worrying too much about other people think, maybe therapy can help! Contact Philadelphia therapist Noam Dinovitz at 484 424 7722 or Noam@Dinovitzcounseling.com