#213: How to Care Less About Others' Opinions & Trust Yourself More
If you’ve ever found yourself obsessing over what others think of you, replaying conversations in your head, or changing parts of yourself to win approval—you’re far from alone.
Most of us have, at one point or another, handed over our sense of self-worth to the opinions of others. But while seeking connection and acceptance is deeply human, there comes a point when caring too much starts costing us our peace, authenticity, and self-trust.
So how do you begin to loosen that grip—to care less about what others think, without swinging to the extreme of not caring at all? Let’s explore.
Why We Care So Much About What Others Think
From an evolutionary standpoint, caring about others’ opinions makes sense. Belonging to a group once meant safety and survival. Rejection, on the other hand, was dangerous.
But for many of us—especially those with anxious attachment patterns—that ancient instinct has gone into overdrive. We become hyper-attuned to others’ moods and feedback, believing our safety, worth, or lovability depends on being liked or approved of.
It’s not unusual for people with these patterns to:
Constantly read between the lines of others’ behavior
Avoid conflict at all costs
Take responsibility for other people’s emotions
Feel like they’ve failed if someone is upset with them
This way of being can feel like self-protection, but it actually leads to deep self-abandonment. You begin outsourcing your self-image—allowing others to define whether you’re good, kind, successful, or enough.
The Cost of Outsourcing Your Self-Worth
The longer you prioritize being liked over being authentic, the more disconnected you become from yourself.
Over time, that can look like:
Chronic indecision because you’re trying to please everyone
Burnout from overcommitting and overperforming
A vague sense that you’re living someone else’s life
Feeling anxious, hollow, or “off,” even when things seem fine on the surface
Dr. Gabor Maté describes this as the trade-off between authenticity and connection. As children, we’ll always choose connection—because it’s essential for survival. But as adults, continuing to abandon ourselves for approval becomes soul-depleting.
The turning point is realizing that true connection doesn’t require self-betrayal.
What Shifting Looks Like
Caring less about others’ opinions doesn’t mean becoming detached, arrogant, or dismissive. It means cultivating discernment and anchoring into your own sense of truth.
Here’s what that shift can look like in practice:
1. Reclaim Your Internal Compass
Begin asking yourself:
What actually matters to me?
What do I value in relationships, work, and life?
What kind of person do I want to be, independent of others’ approval?
It might feel uncomfortable at first—especially if you’re used to orienting around others—but this is how you begin rebuilding trust with yourself.
2. Notice When You Self-Abandon
Pay attention to moments when you override your own feelings to keep the peace, say yes when you mean no, or pretend something doesn’t bother you. These are small acts of self-betrayal, and each one erodes self-trust.
When you start catching these moments, you can begin choosing differently—honoring your truth even when it’s uncomfortable.
3. Be Selective About Whose Opinions You Value
Not every opinion deserves equal weight. Seek feedback from people who:
Share similar values
Have walked the path you’re on
Speak from love, not judgment
If someone’s life doesn’t reflect what you want for yourself, their opinion doesn’t need to carry authority over your choices.
4. Build Integrity with Yourself
Self-trust is built by keeping promises to yourself, even small ones. When you consistently choose alignment over approval, you send your nervous system a powerful message: I’ve got me.
That sense of internal safety softens the need for external validation.
Caring Less Isn’t Cold—It’s Centered
You don’t have to stop caring about others entirely. That’s neither realistic nor desirable. Instead, the goal is to care more about being someone you’re proud of—someone guided by integrity, values, and authenticity.
When you anchor into that, others’ opinions lose their power. Criticism feels less like a threat and more like information you can take or leave.
It’s not about building walls; it’s about building a solid foundation within yourself.
A Final Word
Learning to care less about others’ opinions isn’t an overnight transformation—it’s a gradual process of returning home to yourself. It takes courage to choose alignment over approval and to prioritize self-trust over people-pleasing.
But the freedom that comes from living in integrity with who you truly are? That’s worth everything.
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:04]:
You're listening to On Attachment, a place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience relationships and where you'll gain the guidance, knowledge and practical tools to overcome insecurity and build healthy, thriving relationships. I'm your host, relationship coach, Stephanie Rigg.
[00:00:23]:
And I'm really glad you're here. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, we are talking about how to care less about other people's opinions and trust yourself more. So this is one that I know probably 90 plus percent of people who I work with and teach have some version of this struggle of being so overly invested in the thoughts, opinions, beliefs, feedback of people around them and often to the detriment of our own internal sense of right and wrong or good and bad or what's best for us. And so we can end up really outsourcing not only our decision making, but our own self image. And whether or not we are doing okay, whether or not we're a good person, whether or not we're acceptable, we let other people be the arbiter of that. And naturally that takes us further and further away from having a healthy relationship with ourselves because oftentimes we neglect that in favour of being whoever we think we need to be in order to secure the approval of others.
[00:01:30]:
And while that makes a lot of sense as we'll talk about today from a few different angles, I think that it can really cost us a lot. And so I want to talk about that and I want to talk about how you can maybe shift away from being so externally oriented and find ways to connect with your own sense of who you are and what's right for you so that you've got more of a sturdy base within yourself and you're not so subject to being thrown off centre by whatever else is going on out there. And I think that this topic is one that really straddles romantic relationships, but also friends, family, work. It's really the whole gamut because I think it shows up in pretty much every area of our lives. And so hopefully the advice that I'm sharing with you today will apply irrespective of your individual circumstances around relationships or whatever else. Before we get into today's episode, a quick reminder about my free training on how to heal anxious attachment. It's a really great resource if you're someone who struggles with anxious attachment and you want to know what the path to a more secure way of being not just in your relationships, but within yourself. And that's really, in my mind, the most important first step is healing that inner relationship and allowing that to then trickle out to your external relationships.
[00:02:47]:
And I share all about that in this free training. So it's definitely worth checking out if you're someone who struggles with these things and you maybe have been doing a lot of work and a lot of learning, but you don't really have a clear sense of what the framework is, what healing looks like. My free training is a really great place to start, and you can find the link for that in the show notes or by heading directly to my website. Okay, so let's talk about how to care less about other people's opinions and trust yourself more. Now, notice that I didn't title this episode how to Stop Caring about Other People's Opinions, because I actually think that that can be a bit of an overcorrection. It can be a way that we maybe puff up and feign indifferent difference when that's not really honest. And that's certainly not what I want to encourage you to do in today's episode or elsewhere, because I think that there is a very natural, evolutionary, even adaptive inclination towards seeking the counsel and feedback and guidance of the people around us and taking that on board and processing it and letting that guide our decision making steer the ship to a degree. So I don't think that telling ourselves that we should not care at all about what anyone thinks or says about us.
[00:03:58]:
I don't think that that's honest. I actually don't think that's healthy. I think that can lead us into almost avoidance and denial, blocking out the feedback of others in our lives. I think what we really want to focus on is can I cultivate enough discernment within myself that I am seeking out the guidance and the input of people who I trust and whose opinion I value? And I'm taking that on board alongside my own assessment of what's ultimately right for me. I think that's what healthy looks like in this circumstance, and that's really what we want to be aiming for, the healthy middle ground. It's not. I care so much about what everyone thinks and I'm taking on all of that as true. And I have no idea where my own sense of rightness sits in amongst that sea of voices and opinions.
[00:04:46]:
And it's not the other extreme of I don't care what anyone thinks. I'm just going to do what I want. So with that in mind, that kind of is the North Star of what we're aiming for here. I do want to talk about why, particularly if you're someone with anxious attachment patterns, you might find yourself being very invested in what people think of you. You. So there are a few pieces to this. One is that we know anxiously attached people are very other oriented, very externally focused, and that often manifests in our relationships as being hyper fixated on what the other person is wanting, needing, thinking, feeling, and telling ourselves that if we can manage that and preempt that and control that, then we will be okay. And we can see that if that's kind of the template, whether we realise it or not, oftentimes that is running as a bit of a subconscious programme.
[00:05:34]:
But if that's the template, that tells us that the way to protect ourselves is to be so tuned into other people and so good at preempting what they want and need and giving them that. That we make ourselves useful or that we keep them happy, or that we please them, we get their approval. We can see how that would really quickly extend to being very, very invested in what other people think of us because we've convinced ourselves that that's where our worth and value lies and that's where our safety lies. So while we can see that play out in the romantic relationship arena in really clear ways, I think that can also really naturally extend to friendships, to family, to work, to even strangers. We just want everyone to like us and we have this sense of, you know, I'm only okay if everyone likes and approves of me. If every person that I interact with has a positive impression of me, and to the extent that they don't or I sense that they don't, I take that as some personal failing and I feel the need to fix it because so much of my identity is wrapped up in being this person that everyone likes and approves of. So there's a lot there and this stuff can run really deep. If you listened to my episode a few months back with Lael Stone, she talked about the good girl imprint that so many of us women carry.
[00:06:52]:
And this pattern that I'm talking about is not exclusive to women, but certainly I think many women have that sense of like, I just have to be good and pleasing to everyone and then I'll be safe, then I'll be valuable, then I'll be liked. And from that place, of course, we're so invested in what people think of us because the stakes are really high. If someone doesn't like us, then that is tantamount to us feeling like we've done something wrong and that we're maybe unsafe. And so naturally that takes precedence over liking ourselves or having a clear centre, because that feels way less important than keeping ourselves safe. And so if that feels like the trade off, we'll always choose safety over being really true to ourselves, being authentic to what's right for us. But of course, that trade off has consequences, as it always does. Dr. Gabor Mate and others talk about this trade off between authenticity and connection.
[00:07:46]:
And that while it makes sense and while in some ways it's adaptive, and particularly in early caregiving environments, if you have to choose between, like, belonging and connection or being true to yourself, you'll choose belonging and connection every time. And that makes sense because not belonging or not having connection with your caregivers as a child, as an infant, is life threatening. But as we move through the world and as we become adults, constantly sacrificing what's right for us, what's true for us, in favour of garnering the approval of others, that starts to really wear us down. And it takes us so far away from our centre to the point where we don't even know who we are. And I've heard this more times than I could count, more times than I could tell you from students in my programmes, when we'll go through exercise around identifying your needs or identifying your values, what do you want? And people just draw a blank. They don't know how to answer the question of, like, what are your needs in a relationship? Or, you know, what are your non negotiables? How do you want to feel in your relationships? People don't know how to answer it because they are so unaccustomed to actually tuning in and knowing what's right for them. You know, sometimes even things like, what do you like to do in your spare time? People don't know how to answer the question because they've spent all of their life just deferring to what the people around them want and prefer and like and enjoy. And so this can be a real process of getting to know yourself again and getting clear on your values and what's right for you.
[00:09:20]:
Not having regard to all of the people around me and all of the obligations that I've picked up and all of the roles that I've been playing, because I think that can really lead us into living a bit of a borrowed life or waking up one day and going, like, how did I get here? Whose life is this that I'm living? Because it doesn't feel very, very meaningful or aligned or purposeful to me, and yet here I am, I've worked so hard and invested so much in getting here, but it feels very hollow because it doesn't really feel like it's mine. I think the other really common side effect of living in this way is chronic self doubt, indecisiveness and paralysis. So when your decision making is guided by I have to make everyone happy and do the thing that's going to get me the approval of everyone around me, naturally that's going to feel like a really, really wobbly foundation upon which to make decisions because you've big tension between what I think might maybe be right for me. But also I don't trust that I know what that is or that I'm allowed to prioritise that. And I have to balance that against keeping everyone else happy or doing what everyone else is going to approve of and making sure I never disappoint anyone. And so trying to feed all of those factors into the equation and come out with a clear answer is likely to feel very overwhelming and I think can lead into this place of total decision paralysis and frozenness. And just like it's too much, I can't figure out the answer. Oftentimes it's because there is no answer to an equation with that many variables in it.
[00:10:51]:
And we actually have to simplify it, strip it back to what actually matters here. What am I actually trying to solve for what's most important to me, rather than trying to solve for 10 variables in one. So with all of that as the backdrop, what does a different approach look like? I think the key is really finding an anchor within ourselves. And that is a process. It's not something that you're going to be able kind of switch back into overnight because it's not just building and finding. It's actually a stripping away of all of the things that are not you, all of the parts that are maybe a mask or a performance or, you know, constant efforting to try and keep everything afloat and intact, connecting all the dots, bringing awareness to the roles that you've played that are maybe not you or maybe not serving you and actually coming back to what do I want my life to look and feel like? What's important to me? What kind of person do I want to be? How do I want to show up in this world? You know, how do I want people to remember me? Not from a place of vanity metrics, but like, how do I want to have impacted people? I think that that can really orient us back to what matters to us. And for some of us that will feel like a remembering and for others it'll feel like a Discovery of things that we've maybe never landed on before. But either way I think it's a very, very worthwh because it can shine a light on not only what matters but what doesn't.
[00:12:19]:
And certainly for me, back when I was grappling with what do I do with my life for anyone who's listening, who doesn't know my story. I used to be a lawyer and I've had a bit of a reckoning and decided to change careers and pursue this, which I actually cared about and was interested in. But there was a lot of stuff to unpack there. There was a lot of disentangling my ego and my attachment to what people thought of me and what are they going to say and what are people going to and all of that. And I had to hold the fact that there was a big part of me that was really, really scared about stepping away from the well trodden path and what people expected of me and doing something that was a bit out there and risky and unexpected. I had to get to the point where it was like I don't care or at least I don't care enough about what people might say that I'm not going to do this thing that feels right for me. And I think that's what we want to find is like the point at which we care more about our wellbeing, living in alignment. That starts to trump the other stuff, the approval, the attention, the acceptance, the fitting in in places and circles where maybe we don't actually belong on a soul level.
[00:13:30]:
And I think there's a difference between belonging and fitting in. And so as we start to get clarity on that then it takes some courage to maybe make hard decisions or maybe start setting boundaries or choosing ourselves in ways that we haven't before. But in doing that we build self trust in really profound ways. Because a really, really reliable way to erode self trust is to just outsource everything to other people and try and chase affection, approval, attention, acceptance of others, particularly when it's not in alignment with your values. That lack of integrity or that self betrayal really does erode trust much in the same way as it does in a relationship. If you can tell that someone is not honouring their values then that's much harder to trust that person than if they feel like a real person of integrity. So becoming a person of integrity and learning to care more about that than what other people think. Again, it's not about pretending that we don't care at all.
[00:14:28]:
It's human to care about what Other people think, but learning to care more about being someone that we are proud of being and a person of integrity and values and alignment with our own internal compass. I think that's really what we want to shoot for. And just to emphasise, as I said at the start, we want to have discernment around whose ideas and opinions and input we take on board. And I think it's really valuable to have trusted counsel. You know, people who you go to when you're struggling with with something and whose take you really do value. And part of the discernment around that is going like, do I admire this person? Do they seem to have similar values to me when it comes to this particular issue? You know, don't take relationship advice from people who have a shocking history of relationships. Don't take parenting advice from people whose parenting doesn't really align with yours. Don't take financial advice from someone who's gone bankrupt three times.
[00:15:19]:
Right? Be discerning, be really clear and have that inner clarity and sturdiness that you aren't just this mesh like being that's taking all of it in and doesn't have any sense of boundary around that. That's a really, really important part of your growth. The clearer you get around that and the more comfortable you become in who you are and the choices that you're making, it naturally solves for that tendency to overly identify with other people's opinions of you, because it does tend to feel like water off a duck's back a little more. Sometimes when we are really sensitive to other people's opinions, it's because we're not really clear. And so someone being crit of us feels like it's holding up a mirror to the criticism that we have of ourselves or the doubt that we have around our own choices. So the more we can become really steadfast and value aligned and clear, then I think we naturally provide a buffer for ourselves against other people's criticism or other people's judgement because it just feels less relevant. We see so clearly that it's about them and not us. Okay, I really hope that that's been helpful, guys.
[00:16:23]:
I know it's a big one, I know it can be pervasive and all encompassing, but I think if you start to reflect on the things that I've shared today and start to just make even small changes in the direction of more value alignment, more self awareness, more backing of your authentic sense of what's right for you, and that will mean tolerating some friction and some disappointment and some discomfort. As you start to shift into a new way of being, but that is all part of the process. So sending you lots of love. I really hope it's been helpful and I will see you again next week.
[00:17:00]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you want to go deeper on all things things, attachment, love and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com and if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a five star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here and I hope to see you again soon.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
attachment styles, anxious attachment, self trust, other people's opinions, relationships, insecurity, approval seeking, self image, external validation, decision making, discernment, healthy relationships, romantic relationships, friendships, family dynamics, workplace relationships, healing attachment, self awareness, values, authenticity, boundaries, self doubt, indecisiveness, decision paralysis, self discovery, people pleasing, good girl imprint, belonging, connection, self alignment