Dear Emilia:

Most recently, it happens to be yesterday that I accomplished a deeper understanding that I expect will contribute significantly to my mental health, an understanding that has a lot to do with your current thread. I will explain, following quoting you:

“my biggest goal for myself- letting go of how other people view me. For as long as I can remember, back to .. probably around 3rd grade.. I have been so wrapped up in being accepted and liked by everyone. If I wasn’t, I took it as though something was wrong with me.. Today, I’m not perfect and still have these passing thoughts”-

– I too was upset about how much I cared about “how other people view me” and I tried hard to not care. I thought there was something wrong with me for caring how others view me, as if a mentally healthy person will not care. I was angry at myself for having “these passing thoughts” about how others view me and what-is-wrong-with-me when I perceived not being viewed well.

My deeper understanding of yesterday is that there is nothing more natural for an individual human (as well as other social animals) to care how other members of the social groups view him or her.

For a social animal to remain in the protective and cooperative social group, the individual social animal (be it a coyote, a wolf, a monkey or a dog) has to be liked by the other members of the group. If the animal is disliked, it is in the danger of being rejected from the group, which means likely death.

We are born with these genes, so no way an individual human can not care what others think of him or her. A person may act as if he or she doesn’t care, but we all care.

So now, when passing thoughts run through my mind regarding how others view me, positively or negatively, I don’t get angry at myself anymore for… yet again having these thoughts, I understand these thoughts are most natural and are here to stay, as long as I am alive.

anita

Dear Emilia:

Your boyfriend makes sense, I like his thinking. Just like he said, “everything was life or death” and is so for humans as it is for other animals. When a social animal is disliked by others in its social group (or in an adjacent social group), those others will abuse the one that is disliked, chase him  out  of the social group territory, and/  or kill it.

For example, I witnessed a group of young pigs in a farming event, one in the group was bigger and whiter than the others, this may be the reason why the other young pigs continued to poke and harass the bigger-whiter one who kept moving away from them as they kept chasing him. I wanted to jump in there and stop the harassment!

Another example, a nature movie I watched, a single hyena trespassed  into a territory of a group of hyenas that is not its group, the disapproving and angry hyenas chased the trespasser, biting its behind until it died in a horrific way.

We humans, when someone dislikes/ disapproves of us, we don’t respond from a modern, logical place, thinking: oh, it’s okay, I can live without that person’s approval, that person doesn’t pay my bills, that person is of no consequence to me. Instead, we respond from the old, primitive, instinctive, non-logical place: this person might kill me!

anita