10 steps to scientifically not give a F***

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Hello ladies and gents. Welcome back to my main channel. We're here in Bodram, Turkey, and I'm still filming a YouTube video for you. It's actually freezing cold. Like, what happened to Euro summer? This is Euro winter. Anyways, today we're going to be talking about how to stop caring in 10 steps using proven methods from research papers.

[00:00:19]Because if you're new to my channel, I have a psychology background and we love to talk about psychology, spirituality, science, even religion, and we love to mix it together on this channel. So, why do we actually care so much? It's not that there is something necessarily wrong with you or that you're too sensitive. Caring is actually evolutionary. For most of human history, if you were not liked, it meant you were exiled from that tribe, which meant death. So, you had to be liked, which means you need to care about how other people think about you. You need to care about other people's opinions. And this is interesting. We talked about it in I think my second to last video. We talked about how when we actually get socially rejected, it triggers the same parts of our brain as real physical pain. And Dewall 2010 found that Tylenol actually reduced feelings of emotional pain. So it goes to show how our brain processes emotional pain the same as physical pain. Secondly, why do we care so much?

[00:01:20]There's something called social media theory and this theory basically says that our self-esteem is based on how others feel about us. It's an internal gauge basically tracking how acceptable we are to our group. And lastly, our attachment patterns. We love to talk about attachment theory on this channel.

[00:01:37]Depending on your attachment style, it's also going to determine how much you actually care about other people's opinions. And more importantly, if you're able to discern whose opinion matters more than others. Attachment theory shows that depending on your attachment style and whatever happened to you as a child, it's going to determine whether you're able to feel safe and yourself around other people.

[00:01:58]So, those who are anxious and a fearful avoidant, they will have hyper sensitivity to other people's opinions.

[00:02:04]For example, if someone rejects an anxious, they're going to immediately be like, "What did I do wrong? What is wrong with me?" While someone's secure, they will probably just think, "Hey, it wasn't meant to work out." They'd have their own opinions. I still have healthy self-esteem. I still see myself in a positive light, but an anxious person is immediately going to blame themselves and be like, "I'm the problem. What did I do wrong?" And that's because when they were a child, they basically had to perform a song and dance for their parents in order to get attention. So they were taught that they needed to perform in order to be valuable and to be loved. So when they are rejected that hits that core wound that their parents essentially gave them. Now this is where we have our game plan guys. 10 steps to stop caring about what other people think. And more importantly, it's not that we want to stop caring cuz going back to point one, we need to be liked. You can be like, I don't need to be liked by other people. You need to be liked at least to some degree and by the right people, but you don't need to be liked by everyone. If you're needing to prove yourself to every single person, even if their opinion doesn't matter, you're going to be very anxious and very stressed. So, number one, we need to recognize something called the spotlight effect. Let me read from my notes. So there was a study in 2000 where the researchers had people wear embarrassing shirts and they estimated that 50% of observers saw them wearing this shirt, but actually only 25% of people noticed.

[00:03:28]What does this mean? We overestimate how much other people actually think about us and see us. So even if you're feeling watched and like you're being criticized, you're still projecting this and you're overestimating. People are too busy worrying about themselves to care about you. And I've mentioned this in so many of my videos and people always comment when I'm at my school.

[00:03:50]Someone cares. They always care. I always say to myself, other people don't care. They care. I feel like being in high school is a little bit different.

[00:03:57]Kids are ruthless and they have nothing better to talk about than the people in their school. But when you're an adult, people have all of their own problems to deal with. No one cares. No one's going to go home and gossip unless they genuinely have no life. And that goes back to the whole point of this video.

[00:04:13]We want to teach you how to discern if someone's opinion is even going to be important. And if it's not going to be important, then you really shouldn't be caring because would why would you care what someone thinks if they have nothing better to do than to gossip about you?

[00:04:26]That person clearly has no life. Let's think about that. Okay. So, recognize the spotlight effect. You're overestimating how much people care. And that in itself should calm you down. You know, when you go out and you're thinking, "Oh my gosh, is my is my hair good? Is my makeup good? Uh, my my nails chipped. Everyone's looking at my nail.

[00:04:43]Bro, that girl over there, her nails chipped as well. Now she's thinking everyone is caring. Everyone's going to care. She's not thinking about you.

[00:04:50]People are thinking about themselves.

[00:04:52]Point number two, you should practice self-compassion, not necessarily self-esteem. So, Kristen Nef's research shows that self-compassion predicts lower anxiety, lower depression, and lower social comparison than self-esteem. And that's because self-compassion is unconditional. while self-esteem requires being above average, which is mathematically impossible for most people. Number three, and we talked about this two videos ago, whenever you're having a thought that someone is watching me, or I'm really stressed thinking about whatever this person thinks, you should say to yourself, I'm having a thought that I am caring about what they think.

[00:05:32]It separates you from your mind. It creates observer distance and it's actually shown to reduce amygdala activity in the brain. Amydala is responsible for feel. And guess what?

[00:05:43]Studies show that diffusion actually reduces the believability and emotional impact of our negative thoughts without arguing it. So, we're having this negative thought. You might start to find reasons why this is a truth or reasons against it. But still, your brain might not necessarily believe it.

[00:05:58]While when you can separate yourself from this thought and create some distance that has been shown by studies to reduce believability and therefore to calm you down. Let's go to the next point. Number four, you need to determine what your values are.

[00:06:12]Self-determination theory shows that acting from your values actually predicts higher well-being and happiness than controlled motivation. So, you should write down your top five values that you want to guide your entire life by and then live by it. And then before any decision, you want to say, "Does this guide my values or am I just trying to seek approval?" So you might find if you're a people pleaser and you have your values, you might actually not be living by it because depending on who's coming along, you want to please them.

[00:06:41]So you're changing your values for them.

[00:06:43]Next, we want to shift from exttrinsic to intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is anything that is outside of us and intrinsic is internal. So Desessie's 1971 experiment showed that external rewards undermine intrinsic interest in tasks people previously enjoyed. This is called the overjustification effect. When approval becomes the reward, the activity actually stops being enjoyed and we become dependent on the signal. What this means is we need to reconnect with what brings us joy without relying on any type of approval or validation.

[00:07:18]Next, build self-concept clarity.

[00:07:22]Campbell 1996 showed that self-concept clarity which meant how clearly we defined ourselves and how stable our views are of ourselves predicts our well-being independent of our self-esteem. So if you have very low clarity about who you are, you're going to be highly reactive because every opinion threatens to redefine who you are. While if you have high clarity, no opinion is going to threaten you because you know so well who you are and what your values are. So here's a prompt. You want to write out I am someone who without referencing your jobs, your looks, or what others think.

[00:07:56]Next, we want to reframe rejection as data, not a verdict about who we are.

[00:08:02]James Grass's emotional regulation research showed that cognitive reappraisals reduces amydala activation.

[00:08:08]Remember the fear part of our brain. And cardiovascular stress more effectively than suppressing how we feel. We always say in my videos, if you suppress your emotions, it will come out later on as illness. Okay? So when we get rejected, we just want to think about this as data. We don't want to internalize it and be like this is because I am XYZ type of way. They rejected me. Everyone rejects me. I'm someone who's not worthy of anything. D you know you spiral. You want to just look at it as data about information of fit. Like this person is not fitting for me. Not that person rejected me so something's wrong. Next you need to develop shame resilience. So this is really interesting. I'm going to read this study. Bren Brown's qualitative research. They had over 1,000 interviews showed that shame thrives in three conditions. Number one, secrecy, silence, and judgment. Speaking shame to an empathetic listener reduces its grip neurologically, which links to polyagal theory and also co-regulation research. So the listener matters. The wrong audience will actually reinforce change. So it means when you're sharing vulnerable parts of yourself, you want to choose the right audience. You want to choose someone who actually can hold space for you and listen. Otherwise, it's just going to reinforce the negative feelings about yourself. Point number nine, train your metacognition through mindfulness. So, Teasdale and Seagull's NBCT research show that 8 weeks of mindfulness reduces rumination and reactivity by strengthening the observing self. Name one video where I haven't talked about meditation with you guys. Even 5 minutes a day will be so powerful for you. I've talked about this myself. When I do not meditate, my thoughts are spiraling. I will genuinely be like so reactive talking to myself aloud all day long. And when I meditate, it's like I'm a whole other person. I can get a negative thought and I will have control over it because my brain actually feels calm and my nervous system is less reactive. And then Tong's 2015 research showed that mindfulness alters our prefrontal admdula activity, connectivity, increasing top down regulation. 10 minutes a day is all it takes for 8 weeks. Set that as a challenge for yourself. And lastly guys, you want to use graded exposure to disapproval. Meaning meaning avoidance actually reinforces our fear and maintains it while exposure extinguishes it. And that's where exposure therapy comes from. Deliberately going out of your way to get rejected in small ways actually recalibrates our threat system.

[00:10:29]By giving repeated evidence that disapproval is survivable, I actually have a list on my phone of things that I've been rejected, bad things that have happened to me that I thought hurt me so much. I won't get through this. And when I read through the list, it just reminds me that I can get through anything. I like to have evidence lists on my phone for anything. And that's a quick tip for you. I want to quickly say a lot of these videos talk about how to just stop caring. And it's usually like suppress your pain, suppress your thoughts, go get busy with something else. And there's nothing wrong with that. But I really like referencing research papers with my background because it gives you a proper game plan to change your brain to get over this because you need to know that caring what others think or not being able to get over someone is not your weakness. It is human weakness.

[00:11:18]It is our brain's weakness. And if you know how to kind of hack your brain, per se, you will be able to get over it.

[00:11:25]Like you have an edge over other people who are simply trying to suppress how they feel. Anyways, check out this view, guys. Look at that. How beautiful. House tour. Hey guys, I will see you in my next YouTube video. I'm going back to Istanbul this week. I love Istanbul. Yo, I should move to Istanbul, guys.

[00:11:43]Anyways, I'll see you next time.

[00:11:45]Choose.