For when you can't stop worrying what others think of you

As someone who has thought a lot about what others think of her.

I’ve made a lot of big life decisions lately. The biggest of all was quitting social media as a business. That meant walking away from over 300,000 followers between TikTok and Instagram. Millions of monthly views. Years of effort.

Why I made that choice is complex, and I’ll save the full story for another post.

But I’ll tell you this: making that decision, and a few others in the past couple of years, took me way longer than I’d like to admit. I went back and forth. Spent too many hours frozen in anxiety. And if you think it’s because I wasn’t sure whether it was the “right” career move, you’d be wrong.

I knew, deep down, it was time.

What kept getting to me were thoughts about what everyone else would think. My identity had become tangled up in being the girl who gave dating advice on the internet. That’s how my friends introduced me. It’s what you’d find if you Googled my name. It was the first thing people brought up when catching up with me.

People told me they admired my consistency. The hundreds of hours I put into my content. And I’m not going to lie, my ego loved it at the time. It was like a stamp of approval, one that could easy rub off with a little water.

Walking away felt like I was letting those people down. Like they’d see me as a quitter. Someone who wasted her time. Someone who just couldn’t tough it out.

My anxious brain ran wild with every possible reaction, every imagined judgment. To the point that I ignored the one thing I knew for certain:

I was fucking miserable doing social media.

When I realized the only thing really holding me back was the fear of being perceived, I paused. Delayed the decision. Allowed myself time to consider what truly mattered. That’s when I remembered a little tool that’s helped me make some of my biggest decisions. A thought. A question.

“On my deathbed, looking back at my whole life, will this matter to me?”

Not just the decision itself, but the worst-case scenarios of how people might react.

Would I care that someone thought I was a quitter? That I was weak? Unimpressive? Making a mistake?

Would those opinions matter more than choosing to go back to school? Moving to China at twenty-two? Marrying my best friend? Prioritizing my mental health?

You probably know my answer.

I’ve used that same question for all kinds of things—what to write about, what to say yes to, what to let go of.

Even when I say something awkward at a party and the other person literally walks away. Yeah, that sucks. But is that going to haunt me on my deathbed?

Probably not.

Anxiety is a sneaky little bitch. It takes the insignificant and makes it loud. It drowns out what actually matters. It chokes out your intuition.

And that’s why it’s helpful to have small reminders, perhaps even questions, that help center you back into yourself. They ground you in the version of yourself that isn’t ruled by fear or shame.

So the next time your brain replays that awkward interaction at the grocery store, remind yourself what matters in the long-run.

Because someone’s opinion of you? It’s fleeting. It lasts a few minutes, maybe a few days. But your life is yours to carry. To live. And letting someone’s passing thought become your permanent burden? It’s not worth it.

I’m not saying this single question will fix your overthinking. What kind of anxious girly would I be to claim that anxiety has any kind of one-stop-shop for quieting its relentlessness?

But if it helps, even a little, the question is worth asking yourself.

Because you’re not your anxious thoughts. They lie. Loudly and often. They’re a broken survival system that hasn’t figured out you’re safe now.

Your opinion of yourself is the one that matters most. And you’re allowed to change it. Rewrite it. Believe better things.

Anytime you want.