Extinguish Emotional Exhaustion Through Not Worrying
About What Other People Think
Episode #18: Extinguish Emotional Exhaustion Through Not Worrying About What Other People Think
Even in her 30s, Dr. Prianca admits to still seeking her parents' approval. As she reflects on her own experience, Dr. Prianca explains how growing up as a people pleaser will leave you emotionally exhausted. She explains why social media is fake, why looking inward is essential, and how to sit well with other people's disapproval.
What you will learn:
Other peoples' opinions can drain you
Social media is fake
It takes discipline to live life intentionally
Why the book Untamed is so popular
Instead of worrying about what others think, ask yourself this instead…
To end burnout and exhaustion and get your peace of mind back, check out her free masterclass on 4 steps to overcome burnout, get rid of overwhelm, and get your peace of mind back.
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[FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:]
I want to talk about this today because many of my clients feel paralyzed in several areas because they are worried about what others would think.
Areas of paralysis include: making a change like leaving an abusive spouse, letting people know what is really going on inside their houses because they're embarrassed. They're afraid of the external façade being extinguished
They're afraid that if their friends knew what was happening…addicted spouse, abusive relationship, toxic work environment that they would judge them for staying or tell them to leave when they're not ready. So they isolate themselves
They think they're the only ones in this boat. They think they have an abnormal situation and no one could relate.
SO then they're even more isolated an lonely sometimes in addition to having a spouse who tries to isolate them further.
Worrying about what people think causes the following problems:
Wastes time and precious brain energy
It isolates us
It makes us feel bad
It can keep us stuck
Why do we worry about what people think?
We want to belong
We want a sense of tribe
We want external approval
We are people-pleasers…please refer to episode #4 on combatting people pleasing.
Many of us worried about what our parents would think of our life from a young age into adulthood as well.
Our parents train us to not air our dirty laundry and brag a lot (this is pervasive in South Asian culture)
When people judge what we are doing or don't like it, it's uncomfortable because we all just want to belong and be liked. Once we can actually sit with this discomfort and notice it-it's often a vibration in the body-keep noticing and by noticing we can neutralize it. Once it's a vibration we can identify it for what it is and soften its power over us. Actually, we empower ourselves and begin to take hold of our own experience.
I encourage you to practice sitting with discomfort or tell your parents something of which they wouldn't approve. Tune in to your reaction, the discomfort in your body. Stick to your guns. See how it goes.
The concepts in life coaching are very simple, but they must constantly be practiced in order to actually implement. Our patterns the unhelpful and unhealthy ones that we've engaged and have been occurring for so long but of course it takes discipline an offer to transformer selves. But we can most certainly fake it 'til we make it and embody a different method.
I want to discuss how to stop worrying about what other people think because this will remove one major contributor to emotional exhaustion and stuckness.
Here's what to do:
Look inward
It's simple but not easy.
It's so much easier to project our own judgments and fears on to other people. Often we do something that we know is the right thing to do, but might be against the grain of how we were raised. Which I do talk about in the previous episode-episode number 17 "How to Move Forward When How You Were Raised Conflicts with Your Current Values." And when we have this dissonance within us, it's much easier to fixate and perseverate on what this person's reaction would be because then we are off the hook. We don't have to look inward and take a good hard look at ourselves because that's much more difficult and painful. That is a part of the deep internal work we must do to get to a better place.
And to judge ourselves is one of the hardest things to do. It's easy to gossip and judge other people's actions when we don't want to examine ourselves. So the second step in not worrying about what people think includes asking yourself why you care what that person thinks and I turned inward and ask yourself what is my opinion about this? How do I judge myself? How do I reflect poorly in front of myself?
Take some time to write this down-maybe in the notes app of your phone and run through this exercise when your brain starts going down the road of what will he think or she think. It sucks but it is SO helpful in the long-run to build a sense of self, self-confidence, self-love, and focus. This practice helps to keep your brain out of spinning and confusion and not deplete energy which none of us has any spare to waste!