Are You Mad at Me?: How to Stop Focusing on What Others Think and Start Living for You

by Meg Josephson

I

adore. Thank you, legs, for carrying me through my life so effortlessly, for transporting me from one place to the next, for allowing me to move my body and stroll through the forest and walk...

Every second of every day, our bodies are working endlessly to allow us to live. Consciously choosing to stop being at war with our bodies and instead work with them, thank them, understand them, pay attention to them, and ca...

This is called personalization—a cognitive distortion in which we blame ourselves for an event or situation even if it has little or nothing to do with us.

How can I soothe myself through the discomfort of them not liking me? What do I need to be okay?

You are not responsible for the version of you that exists in other people’s minds. You can’t control how others perceive you, but you can manage how much mental space you give their perceptions. You can’t control other people’s behaviors, but you can control your decision to tolerate them or not.

Let’s find people who know that, too.

The greatest result of realizing that nothing is personal is that it frees us from the belief that we’re unworthy of love because someone isn’t able to give it to us.

What lingered beneath the defensiveness was a lack of trust in myself, a sense of not having all the answers, and a fear of people noticing this. When I made the decision to go back to school and dedicate my career to supporting people in their healing, that persistent feeling started to recede, and it has continued to disappear as I step into what I now believe is my purpose. I never actually knew what people were thinking about me. I just created a mean version of other people in my head and used it to torture myself.

Conversely, judging other people can be another way of creating a false sense of control. It temporarily relieves us of the discomfort of our own insecurities. We tend to judge people when they do something outside our own comfort zones, and maybe even for something they do that we wish we also could do. If you believe

there are parts of you that must be controlled or shamed, then you’ll relate to the...

Things naturally feel less personal when we realize that they’re not permanent. Taking something personally simply becomes an uncomfortable thought, with uncomfortable bodily sensations that eventually pass. There’s nothing truer about being alive than the impermanent nature of absolutely everything: the intensity of our thoughts, the discomfort of conflict, the mood that we’re currently in, the appearance of our bodies. Everything changes. When things aren’t going well, it will pass. And when things are going well, it will pass. Extra suffering comes from (1) clinging or grasping onto something because we don’t want it to go away or change or (2) resisting or having an aversion to a change because we don’t want that change to happen.

When things aren’t going well, saying “This will pass” allows us to be present with the pain and discomfort while acknowledging that it will subside. Even when we’re in periods of pain that are lasting awhile, we can notice the ways in which that pain is subtly changing and fluctuating. When things are going well, saying “This will pass” invites us to bask in the sweetness of the moment, appreciating that it won’t be that way forever. The mind may then say, But I don’t want this to end! Why does it have to? We can acknowledge that inner voice as yet another experience that’s temporary. Everything is always changing—how comforting, and how heartbreaking. I feel the comfort of impermanence when I’m seduced into an anxious thought spiral, or when I’m enduring physical pain, or when I’m feeling stagnant in life, or when a wave of grief washes over me and I suddenly find myself clinging to a version of reality that’s no longer here. This will pass, I tell

myself, and that reminder allows the pain to move through me and the tears to flow more freely because I know that this fleeting pain isn’t my destiny. There’s no need ...

This practice is called maranasati, or mindfulness of death.

I’m simply reminding myself of the truth that everything changes. I used to feel so petrified of death, and I still feel tense around it sometimes, but in accepting it as a fact of life, I’m met with more spaciousness to be with the person who’s living and breathing in this physical body, in this earthly realm. It’s by acknowledging the impermanence of life that I’m able to meet myself fully. Do I really want to spend my entire life trying to please other people? I’m going to die one day, so I want to live, in a way that feels like living, to me.

“Nothing is perfect” means: Of course life is going to suck sometimes. Of course people are sometimes going to be mad at you. Of course you’re going to have your heart broken, and get sick, and lose someone or something close to you in this lifetime. Of course. Because that’s what it means to be alive, to have a beating heart in this body. Acknowledging that nothing is perfect means being realistic about the nature of being human. This work isn’t about not having challenging emotions; it’s about changing our relationship to those emotions, not adding an extra layer of suffering on top of them.

“Nothing is perfect” means being honest with ourselves about that reality.

We can Notice when we take something personally and see where the mind starts going with it, the stories it starts sucking us into: They must hate me. I’m the most awkward person on this planet. I should never be allowed to leave the house again.

We can notice that the mind is going there and Invite this scared part of ourselves to stay, saying, You’re allowed to be here, knowing that fighting those thoughts won’t make them go away. We can then get Curious about the story the mind is creating: What part of me was activated by this story? Is this story even true? Is there actual evidence to back this story up? Remember: People sometimes will be mad at you. People sometimes will not like you. We’re not lying to ourselves about that inevitable truth but rather soothing ourselves in the midst of discomfort. We can then Embrace this part of ourselves: I know this is uncomfortable. You’re safe. We’re going to move through this together. We can then Return to what’s real and true right now as a way to get out of the mind’s stories and into the present. Notice your breath, any sounds in the room. Come back to now.

No. To practice acceptance of this moment means to see it clearly. It means to see our reality through a clear, grounded lens and say, “This is what’s happening. Now what?” We can release our grip on what’s not in our control and turn our focus to what we can change. Acceptance means being honest about our reality and saying, “Okay, this is what I’m feeling, and these feelings are allowed to be here. Does something in my world need to change?” It’s a balance between leaning back and allowing

life to unfold as it’s going to and knowing where we can take action. Release expectations of what this moment “should” look like and instead meet it right now, as it is. Instead of saying, I shouldn’t be feeling this way! or This shouldn’t be happening! we can practice soothing the part of ourselves that’s resisting reality and say, Okay, but this is what’s happening right now. It won’t be this way forever. Now let’s see what happens next.

So many women, understandably, are petrified of conflict. The greatest irony is that in an attempt to avoid conflict and keep the peace, we create so much more tension within ourselves. When we shove our emotions down—our resentments, our frustrations, our needs—they don’t go anywhere, they don’t just disappear. When we can accept, or at least acknowledge, that conflict and rupture are inevitable, we can expend so much less energy trying to run from it and more energy working through it. Running from conflict and hard conversations reinforces the belief that these are things we should be scared of. As we continue to show the scared, protective parts of ourselves that we can have an uncomfortable conversation and still be safe, conflict will start to feel safer. We can’t spend our lives running from close relationships, from conflict, because then