I shared this with my mailing list the other day and decided that I wanted to flesh out the thoughts more in an article here.

All throughout my life, and I think that most people will be able to relate, I have felt absolutely tormented by the idea that I care about what other people think of me. It’s not really something that I feel is bad or wrong or pathological. Of course I care what other people think. The Aquarius rising in me comes out and says in a super dry tone “humans are social creatures.” LMAO. But it’s true. Humans are social creatures. Somewhat.

There’s nothing morally wrong about caring about what other people think so it mostly remains unchallenged. In fact, I may worry about what other people think precisely because I want to be ethical.

And then it can feel debilitating. Sometimes caring about what people think prevents you from doing things that you otherwise want to do. It can feel confusing when you’re not sure whether someone else’s opinion of you is really supporting you in creating the humanity that you are here to create. Caring about what other people think can feel a lot like you are being covered by anxiety and a lot less like being heard or seen.

What I realized the other week was this—other people’s opinions of me is not what dictates my behaviors.

My opinion of myself is the only thing that governs my behaviors for me.

This means that my opinion of myself is what creates my sense of self and, with it, my own future. This sense of self is made in relationship with other people but it is not decided upon by other people.

The part of me that doesn’t give a shit about what other people think of me knows this—it also trusts my opinion of self to guide my own behaviors for me.

I don’t know. I felt a lot of relief when I realized this and a lot of joy about this feeling of growing up. I felt liberated in a sense but also solid in my own sense of self responsibility.

Knowing that I am able to guide my own behaviors is important to me. A lot of my social anxiety was around the prospect that someone else thinking that I am stupid or belligerent or obnoxious would somehow means that I begin to behave in ways that are stupid or belligerent or obnoxious to myself even though the meanings of those judgments are quite different from person to person. It’s less important to me that people think I am a certain way. It’s more important that I can trust myself to behave in a way I can live with.

I still care about what people think but I trust the part of me that really doesn’t give a shit about what other people think a lot more than in the past. I used to distrust this part of myself, suspecting it of selfish motives or of some kind of apathy. I want to be ethical, you see, and I wasn’t sure if I could be while not caring what other people thought of me.

The part of me that cares about what other people think often feels like a really childish part of me. It really wants approval! It wants to be encouraged and taught by an older and more mature teacher about what is ethical and what is not.

That part of me is satisfied with self-direction even if I don’t always know what I’m doing. No one knows what they are doing. It is satisfied knowing that my own ethics can’t be taught to me by someone else because they’re something that I have to explore on my own. When I show that I can guide my own behavior, the part of me that thought it needed other people’s approval to be a good person can grow with me.

So I can hold the opinions that other people might have about me much easier. It’s okay that people have opinions! People might have opinions about me for any number of reasons. A lot of the time, inhabiting racialized identity feels precisely like inhabiting someone else’s projection of you. I’ve done that my whole life. Even close friends can have opinions about me.

Those opinions do not dictate what I do. They don’t dictate what I say. Other people’s opinions of me don’t dictate how I behave.

They can’t. Deciding how I live my life isn’t anyone else’s responsibility but my own. This is joy that only self responsibility can give me!