How to (Almost) Stop Caring What Others Think

Charles Chu Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jun 11, 2017

For the eight years from age fifteen to twenty-two, my face was marked with a “red smile” — spots of acne vulgaris spread across my face from cheek to cheek, making me look like some dark-haired reincarnation of Batman’s the Joker.

One day, I came home after a particularly bad flare-up of acne. My father took one look at me and angrily exclaimed, “What, acne on your face again? Have you been washing your face?”

My father, of course, meant no harm. He was worried. But I was miserable all the same. I felt I had committed a terrible crime; it was my fault that I was ugly.

Another time, during a family reunion dinner in China, my grandmother — with the brutal honesty of the elderly — said to me: “Boy, you were so ugly when you were baby. I’d walk you around in a stroller and look at your face and man oh man, you were so ugly.”

Grandma laughed loudly. I looked at my shoes. Then, the rest of my family started laughing too.

A decade passed before I went to China again.

I Am Your Opinion of Me

Psychological pain is real.

The part of the brain that “flares up” when your grandmother prods you with a pair of red-hot tongs is the same as the part that reacts when she stabs at you with a fiery remark.

Why is it, though, that we care so much about what others think of us?

Alain de Botton gives an answer in his excellent book Status Anxiety:

“The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others’ appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among. If they are amused by our jokes, we grow confident in our power to amuse. If they praise us, we develop an impression of high merit. And if they avoid our gaze when we enter a room or look impatient after we have revealed our occupation, we may fall into feelings of self-doubt and worthlessness.”

Indeed, the teenage me was completely unsure of how to see himself. My only source of self-worth came from the opinions of others.

That’s good to know.

But the more important question to ask is: what can we do about it?

Enter: Philosophy as a Shield

For guidance, de Botton suggests we turn to the ancient philosophers, who used philosophy to “bullet-proof” themselves against the opinions of others:

“In the Greek peninsula early in the fifth century BC, there emerged a group of individuals, many of them with beards, who were singularly free of the anxieties about status that tormented their contemporaries. These philosophers were untroubled by either the psychological or the material consequences of a humble position in society, they remained calm in the face of insult, disapproval and penury.”

He follows with a few examples of how these philosophers carried themselves through life:

When Alexander the Great passed through Corinth, he visited the philosopher Diogenes and found him sitting under a tree, dressed in rags, with no money to his name. Alexander, the most powerful man in the world, asked if he could do anything to help him. ‘Yes,’ replied the philosopher, ‘if you could step out of the way. You are blocking the sun.’ Alexander’s soldiers were horrified, expecting an outburst of their commander’s famous anger. But Alexander only laughed and remarked that if he were not Alexander, he would certainly like to be Diogenes.

Antisthenes was told that a great many people in Athens had started to praise him. ‘Why,’ he answered, ‘what have I done wrong?’

Empedocles had a similar regard for the intelligence of others. He once lit a lamp in broad daylight and said, as he went around, ‘I am looking for someone with a mind.’”

What is it about philosophy (remember, ancient philosophy was nothing like what is studied in schools today) that gave these persons a special power?

Let us take a look at the faces of some of these philosophers: