Why do I care so much about what other people think? Dial Emma: What am I Missing?

This week on Dial Emma, I'm tackling a question I suspect most of us have asked ourselves: why do I care so much what other people think?

We're often told we shouldn't. "Stop caring," "you do you," "other people's opinions are none of your business." But I'm not convinced that's actually the goal. I care what my children think of me, what my friends think, whether the people I love feel respected in their relationships with me. Other people matter to us, so their experience of us matters too. The more interesting question is why, for some of us, other people's opinions become so powerful that they start to override our own.

Today's dilemma comes from a listener I'm calling Sophie. She's 38, confident by most measures, with a good job and a lovely group of friends - but she constantly monitors how people respond to her. If someone's quiet, she wonders if she's annoyed them. She struggles to say no without a lengthy explanation attached. She asks everyone's opinion on everything, and once someone questions her choice, she loses her own sense of it. She thinks she should be past this by now. She wants to know how to stop.

Dial Emma is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Lauren Brook.

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