How To Piss People Off And Be Okay With It

Advice from a people-pleaser

Hello! I’m Amy, a therapist, writer, and photographer. I am passionate about helping people create the lives and relationships they want, and tap into their own creative impulses. I explore all of this in By Amy Clark, and hope that by me sharing my own journey, I can help you do the same work in your own life. Most of my newsletters are free for everyone. A paid subscription ($5.00 per month) gets you one full poem every month, plus full access to all podcast episodes and courses, in addition to all the free content.

There’s this idea that I keep running across, both online and with my clients, and it’s a really dangerous one. It’s the idea that we are supposed to not care about the opinions of others. This expectation that “being healthy” means being completely disconnected from and apathetic to what people think of you. I see it in memes, in reels, and in articles, this feeling of “I’ve grown beyond caring what people think of me”. My clients often make comments in sessions along the lines of “I know I shouldn’t care what people think of me”, often after telling me some appalling thing their friend or family member said to them. And now they are judging themselves for being hurt by a comment that was, quite frankly, very hurtful.

Photo by Dev Asangbam on Unsplash

They are equating being healthy with feeling unaffected by hurtful and rude treatment, as if the epitome of health is a complete shutoff of anything that involves feeling concern over maintaining the connections with the people in your life.

Let me be clear. It is definitely not healthy to run around worrying about what every single person in the world thinks of you. It’s impossible to make everybody happy, and not every person in your life deserves to have an opinion on your life choices. For the most part, people need to keep their eyes on their own paper, make the decisions that are best for them, and everyone else can mind their own biz, or at least keep quiet about it. Trying to make choices that will please everyone around you is a recipe for unhappiness. Give it up, peeps, it ain’t gonna work.

As a self-proclaimed people-pleaser, I have spent way more than my fair share of time worrying about what everyone thinks of me and what I’m doing. I have chased approval, I have bent myself in half trying to make people happy, I have abandoned myself for the sake of others more times than I can count. And if I could, I would take back every moment, because every choice I made that was based on what someone else might think was a step away from myself. Trust me when I tell you, it was not worth it.

But. In trying to not get swept up in the codependent current, we seem to have thrown out a very important element. We are social beings. Biologically speaking, we are wired to depend on each other for survival. Back in nomadic days, we were tribal people. We hunted, cooked, slept, cared for babies, and did everything else in groups. You stuck with your tribe, or you were dead. If you pissed someone off enough, or your people just decided you were too weird for them, then they kicked you out, and you were ostracized. Left on your own, with none of the tools needed to sustain life.

Belonging, fitting in, was literally essential for survival.

Now, most of us are not living in that world anymore, obviously. We aren’t going to get voted off the island if we make someone mad. We will still have our homes, keep our jobs, our fridges will still be full of food. Our pets and the rest of our people will still love us. We are technically still safe. But our biology hasn’t changed. As far as our survival instincts are concerned, we are in mortal danger. Because the oldest part of our brains are wired to believe that safety=belonging, and there is no way of changing that.

This means that we will have some level of anxiety when we upset the people closest to us, our most important tribe members, as well as the ones who are directly connected with our survival (think of your boss, for example). Feeling that anxiety when specific people in your life are unhappy with something you have done is actually very normal. It does not mean there’s something wrong with you. It’s just your biology at work, and the reality is that there are some parts of biology we just can’t evolve beyond.

And this isn’t even considering the effect of childhood trauma. That brings a whole other complication to the mix, and those reactions are deep-seated and just as instinctual. It takes a ton of work to process old traumas, and often the result of all that work means that you are still noticing the old reaction, but you are now able to not react from it anymore. But having the initial reaction does not mean that you are broken, or that something is wrong with you. It just means that you are feeling the lasting impact of some overwhelming experiences, and your nervous system needs a second to be reminded that you are actually safe.

The reality is, sometimes people act in hurtful ways. Sometimes that hurt lingers for days, weeks, months, or even years afterwards. We can unknowingly trigger pain caused by someone else in our words and actions, and I know for sure that if someone touched on a wound that I have, and their response was that I was wrong to feel a kind of way, I would absolutely be a little more guarded around that person. If you can’t respond with kindness to my feelings, then I don’t particularly want to share them with you. It doesn’t feel safe anymore, because I no longer trust that you will be gentle with them.

My friends, how often are we that person to ourselves? How often do we tell ourselves that we shouldn’t feel a certain way about something? How often do we bully ourselves simply for having emotions?

The thing is, your nervous system doesn’t know where the danger is coming from, all it knows is that it doesn’t feel safe. So when you tell yourself that you shouldn’t feel something, when you try to act as if you don’t care, you are now actually the person making you feel even more unsafe than you already did.

In a world that tends to pathologize everything that isn’t bright and shiny, let’s not tell each other that we are somehow wrong for having normal human emotions. We can validate our emotions triggered by other people’s disapproval and still be healthy individuals. Moreover, we can validate emotions without giving them full rein. We can also validate emotions without agreeing with the story they are telling. It’s amazing how far a simple “I’m so sorry that happened, of course that feel that way. What do you need right now?” will take you. Say it to a friend, say it to yourself. Then, as much as possible and where appropriate, do the thing that your nervous system is needing. And then watch your system calm down, followed by the realization that you are actually safe, even when someone is upset with you.

Funnily enough, this does in fact lead to the ability to be okay with someone being upset with you, not because you don’t care, but because you know you can care and still be okay.

Love,

Amy

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