The most common sign that you care too much what people think
How do you know the difference between being an empathetic person who’s cognizant of the world around them and caring too much what other people think?
Nobody wants to be the person who lacks self-awareness and is hurting, upsetting or offending people accidentally.
But I can guess if you’re here reading this article, that’s probably not even close to who you are. You’re probably on the complete other end of the spectrum - you probably have the kind of spidey sense where you can tell when somebody is upset just by minor facial expressions. You are probably one of the more emotional or sensitive ones in your family. You might deal with some anxiety.
Am I on the right track? Then you are not alone because you sound like the majority of the women I work with inside my coaching business.
And now, I want to tell you about the most common sign that you probably care too much what other people think and it’s getting in the way of the very connection and sense of belonging you’re searching for…
How to tell if you care too much what other people think and what to do about it
The number one sign that you care too much what other people think is if you spend a ton of time trying to predict what they’re thinking and feeling.
In short, trying to read minds.
Now before you click away, you might be thinking - “uh, yeah, stating the obvious, if I care what other people think, I spend time trying to figure out what they think.”
And there, my friend, is the issue.
It is subtle but you can be a kind empathetic human and NOT spend significant mental energy trying to figure out what’s going on in the heads of other people.
In short, you basically operate on the assumption that things are fine unless you’re told otherwise. That people like you unless you’re told otherwise. That you’re doing what’s expected of you unless you’re told otherwise.
Sounds pretty nice right?
I promise this is real life because you are actually already doing this in some parts of your life. Think about something in your life that’s habitual, the things that you almost don’t even have to think about to do - driving a car, brushing your teeth, making Kraft mac and cheese, whatever.
Now how much time have you spent recently thinking about what other people’s opinions are of how you brush your teeth, or how much salt you put in the pasta water.
Probably none, right?
But if you were to be happy with your mac and cheese and then somebody were to taste it and say, “uh, hey, you might want to taste this again?” your next thought would probably be something like “huh? I wonder what’s off?” or “I wonder if they like it creamier than I do?”
You wouldn’t completely dismiss them saying something and would try to understand what’s going on in the situation but it’s not something you’re actively thinking about until somebody raises it to you.
You’re being empathetic, sensitive and/or kind but you weren’t actively spending time analyzing your recipe for making mac and cheese because this is something you know you’re good at!
The thing is that we only care what other people think on topics that we’re not sure what WE think. The areas where we have doubts about ourselves, like are we pretty enough or have we worked hard enough or are we on track to be happy like we want to be, these are the areas where we look to other people to try to validate us.
But before we go further down that topic, let’s pause for a second, because there’s something really important you need to understand…
Why we’re way worse at reading minds than we think
I know before you read that sentence you probably would have evaluated yourself at being pretty good at telling what other people are thinking and feeling.
But you know those situations where you get completely caught off guard? The date seemed like it went well and then you never heard from him again spiral. You were really proud of the presentation and then your boss blows his lid about it being completely off from the strategy he was envisioning.
These aren’t random accidents.
You see, when we are working to figure out what other people think, we’re basically projecting our view of the world onto them. When we have similar views of the world, it’s likely that you feel pretty good at guessing what they’re thinking. When they have a fundamentally different view, you’ll be suprised more often.
This is why you’re probably really good at telling what your family and closest friends are thinking - not because of some mind reading superpower but because these people helped you form your world view, so the “patterns” that you run your life on are similar to theirs so you find it easier to predict.
We give ourselves credit for the times that we are right and then it’s super common to get in an absolute spiral when people don’t act or aren’t thinking/feeling the way we expect because our brain is aware that something doesn’t fit our own mental model and it needs to either make it make sense within your existing model or figure out what in your existing mental model is wrong so it can be updated?
Why do our brains do this? Why do those overthinking spirals kick off with such a vengeance and what drives us to try to figure out what other people think to begin with?
Why we try to figure out what other people think in the first place
It comes down to one thing: safety.
Your brain’s entire biological imperative is to keep you safe. This is why the majority of our systems evolved the way that they did - mission is “keep human alive.” We fine tuned our hearing so we could hear a tiger sneaking up on us. We learned how to spot when Uncle Joe was turning purple and how that meant he was angry so we could run to the other room before he started yelling. We learned how to assess how the other kids in class went down the slide so we didn’t get bullied for doing it the wrong way.
While we’re not cavemen anymore dealing with the extreme danger of saber tooth tigers and lions, the brain operating in our heads is the same. But even back then, in caveman days, they were still scared of rejection.
Yes, that fear goes all the way that far back. You truly are not alone.
Because in caveman days, to be rejected from the pack meant that you had to fight saber tooth tigers and lions on your own. Basically, rejection meant death.
Body no like death.
So we started developing the emotional sensitivity to navigate social situations so we could keep ourselves in the pack and safe from death
And those skills are still with us. You want to be in the pack so that you will feel safe. This can be in terms of being in a relationship, friendships, a family situation or even just, you drive on the correct side of the road because it’s more likely to keep you safe if you go “with the pack.”
But safety is not the same as belonging. It’s not the same as acceptance.
And while you have objectively succeeded at making yourself safe - you’re alive, aren’t you? You’ve got a roof over your head and food on the table? Things are getting done?
You’ve probably realized that safe isn’t actually your ultimate goal - that’s where belonging and acceptance come in.
Deep down, we all want to be accepted. We want to belong.
And that means being accepted for who we actually are and being loved for it.
And those mind reading tendencies… they’re getting in the way.
Why it’s such a problem to try and figure out what other people think
When you are on safety watch, trying to identify what other people are thinking so you can figure out what to do to succeed most in the situation, you are making sure that you fit into their world.
But by doing this, you make it impossible for you to feel a true sense of belonging.
As long as you have to alter your behavior or reactions to feel safe with somebody, you cannot feel like you are truly accepted or belong.
Let’s think back to some of those earlier analogies of the things that are habitual that you don’t feel the need to overthink… like driving a car.
If you live in most of the world, you are used to driving on the right side of the road. This is so habitual to you that it requires basically no mental effort to decide where to drive when you’re pulling through a stoplight going straight. And if a car is in front of you with a right blinker on, you’re not spending any conscious effort wondering which side of the perpendicular road they will drive down, you just know.
But imagine that I dropped you in the UK where they drive on the left side of the road. All the sudden, anytime you see an oncoming car with their blinker on, you’re questioning whether you’re in the right spot for them to be able to turn in front of you effectively.
You’re not sure that you’re in the right, that you’re acting as a part of the pack so you’re spending significant energy making sure you are.
How likely is it that you would feel like you could relax and that you’re truly accepted for your driving there?
Never gonna happen, right? Because you can’t do your natural habits and be accepted in that country. You’d be causing traffic jams right and left!
And real life is even more complicated than a driving analogy because we are all operating on different “driving laws.”
A big Italian family has a very different volume comfort level than a seventy year old couple living on a farm.
One guy is looking for his power couple partner - both working big high powered jobs by day, where both partners have the same responsibilities but just half and half.
Another guy has been dreaming of being the provider in his marriage and is looking for a partner that would be comfortable with more of a specialized approach - his partner would focus on childcare and caretaking and he’d focus on the financial caretaking.
If you are looking for a relationship that sounds like the former, there is literally no way that you would feel accepted and like you truly belong with a guy that wants the latter.
When we spend our energy constantly monitoring whether ew are operating the same way as the world around us, our only option is to chip away at and erode who we would be naturally if nobody was watching, judging or regulating.
What you should do instead when you catch yourself trying figure out what somebody else is thinking
Now that you know this is such an unsustainable pattern, what do you do about it?
One of my favorite reminders, even from the very beginning of when I was working to heal my patterns of people pleasing, overthinking and perfectionism was:
“Worrying just forces you to experience the bad thing twice. Once when you worry about it happening and again if it actually happens.”
Now don’t get me wrong, planning is valuable. Thinking ahead is valuable. But there’s a difference between planning and worrying. Here’s how you can tell…
Ask yourself this: Can I do something to change the outcome here?
If the answer is yes, do it. Study for the test, pack an extra pair of clothes just in case, rehearse the presentation one more time.
If the answer is no (usually because it’s about the thoughts, feelings or actions of somebody else), it’s worrying.
There’s a beautiful passage from the Daily Stoic Journal (which I love), that I truly could not have said better myself so I’m going to include the passage here (bolding is mine!):
“In her page-a-day book Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much, the writer Anne Willson Schaef makes a distinction that the Stoics would have certainly agreed with—there is a difference, she writes, between trying to control everything in your life and taking charge of your life.
“Trying to control our lives puts us in a position of failure before we start,” Anne writes, “and causes endless, unnecessary pain and suffering. Taking charge of our lives means owning our lives and having a respond-ability to our lives.”
“Respond-ability” is a great word, and one we should add to our vocabulary today. The same goes with the distinction between taking charge and taking control.
As the Stoics tried to teach us, only a fool thinks they can control fortune or prevent bad things from occurring through worry or endless work. Only a tyrant thinks they can determine everything other people do and say. A wise person, on the other hand, takes responsibility for themselves and says, “I might not be in control of what happens to me in life, but I am in charge of how I respond to it.” A wise person is both responsible and respond-able.”
So when we catch ourselves trying to analyze or predict what other people are going to think, there are a few very simple rules of thumb that you can come back to in order to keep you from going down the mental spiral of overthinking.
Ask yourself…
What about this situation is under my control vs. the things that somebody else controls?
What part of myself feels vulnerable right now? What am I hoping that this person or situation will make me feel safe about?
Once you identify this thing, focus on what you can do to support yourself in this area, without needing to get validation from them
If the best case scenario happens here, how will I respond? If the worst case scenario happens here, how will I respond?
Once you’ve answered those questions, the last and only thing you can do is to decide to let it go.
Your brain will tell you that “you just can’t” and try to keep circling back to the topic. You have to decide to override it. The best way to do this is to focus on something else. Good ol’ fashion distraction can be your friend here.
And if you do that in combination with the deeper work to strengthen your self-love or self-trust in whatever area is feeling vulnerable, the need to know what other people think will slowly (or quickly) fade away.
If you need guidance on how to address your own thoughts about whatever is feeling vulnerable, I’d encourage you to check out one of my programs so we can start healing at that deeper level so you won’t feel tempted to analyze what people are thinking in the first place.
