Dr. Aziz explains why you care what others think: you can't tolerate their negative feelings. Instead of preventing their judgment or disappointment, practice sitting with those feelings. Then you can say no, ask for what you want, and stop punishing yourself for their reaction.
When you're overly worried about what other people think of you, it's extremely restrictive in your life and causes you to hold back in all kinds of relationships, conversations, work, social dating. And we got to shift that. And the biggest problem is not what other people think. It's that right now you currently have an unwillingness. It's like unacceptable if someone thinks negatively of me. It's unacceptable if someone wants something from me and they don't get it and they're disappointed. And so the way to free yourself and to really not care so much is to give space and let people have a feeling or have a thought. Someone might judge me, someone might want something for me. And I say no. And they feel disappointed. Now in the nice person world, it's like, oh, no, they're disappointed. Ah, I gotta jump off a bridge. And it's like, wait a minute, just slow down, okay? They want something, you say no, they're disappointed. Can we just be with that? And when you be with that and you focus on that writhy, crawly, freaking out feeling inside of you, over time it'll calm down and you realize, oh, I'm free. I'm free to say no. I'm free to ask where I want. People are free to judge me and we're all okay.
