The very first thing I want you to keep in mind is that you can never really know what somebody else is thinking, even if they tell you and they think that they’re being very accurate in what they have told you. The words that come out of people’s mouths are just a way to try and explain what’s going on inside their head and actually putting words onto the experiences that we’re having inside our heads is a really difficult thing to do. We’ve all been lost for words sometimes right? We’ve all had a situation where you couldn’t quite find the right word for what it was that you wanted to say, even when you find what you think are the right words they’re just a label so they’re not really true to the experience themselves. Even if someone tells you what they really think, it’s not going to be a hundred per cent accurate; it’s not going to really line up with what they’re thinking. 

The point is, you can never really know what somebody else thinks, even if you think that they have expressed it and told that to you. There’s a good reason for not knowing what other people think because our thoughts really do need to be personal and private in some ways. You have personal private thoughts that you wouldn’t want other people overhearing and nor should you be overhearing what other people are thinking about you. It would be a bit like reading somebody’s diary, even if you have someone that’s your absolute best friend. 

As best friends, you may be on the same page in every single way in life and you agree on most things and you get on really well. There’s still sometimes when you might find them a bit annoying and if they were to overhear that thought and if they knew that’s what you thought about them in that moment, they’d probably be deeply hurt by it. However, it’s not really the overall way in which they think about you or the overall way in which you think about them on the whole. Most of the time, you really love your best friend. Every now and again though, they’re annoying but they’re going to be having similar thoughts about you. No one is going to be completely annoyed with you all of the time, completely put off with you all of the time, completely happy with you all of the time. There’s always a sort of mishmash of different emotions that we’re feeling about different people and this is another reason why it’s a good idea that we don’t really know what other people are thinking about us. 

The interesting thing, however, is that when you think someone is really thinking about you, most of the time they’re probably thinking about themselves so if you are worried about the impression you are creating or that other people are thinking about you in a bad way. A way for you to reframe this and to think of it differently inside your own head is that actually most people are doing what you’re doing. Most people are thinking about themselves. They’re thinking about how they show up rather than how you’re showing up and most of the time people are very distracted by their own thoughts. They’re very busy inside their own heads. Just like you are too so they maybe don’t actually have the brain space to think about you as much as you might think that they are thinking about you. 

I’m going to assume a couple of things. I’m going to assume that the people that you are interacting with and spending time with the most are good people. If you are spending time with people that are not good people; you do not enjoy their company, then I think you have a different kind of problem. I think you need some new people to spend your time with and maybe to distance yourself away from the people that make you feel uncomfortable or anxious in some way. Assuming that you have good people around you and that they are useful and kind and that they are supportive friends, then I think it’s probably safe to assume that most of the time when these people are thinking thoughts about you, they are thinking good thoughts about you and that might be a really helpful thing for you to remind yourself. 

Most of the time, we become troubled by the thoughts that someone might be thinking about us when they are someone that we like or when they are someone that we respect. If you don’t like them and you don’t respect them and they think bad thoughts about you, you probably don’t care all that much because you never liked them or wanted to impress them in the first place. 

The people that we are most concerned with what they think about us are usually the people that we like and the people that we respect. If you like them and you are respectful towards them, the chances are they are not thinking bad things about you. The chances are those are the people that are thinking really good things about you.

The final thing I’m going to ask you to remember is something that we refer to as perception is projection. Now, here’s what this means. I am someone who wears contact lenses. You can’t see them because they’re on my eyeballs but basically from time to time, I might get a little a bit of dust or something that gets in the way of my contact lens and then when I’m looking around at the world, it looks like the world is blurry. Actually, the world is not blurry it’s my contact lens that has gone blurry and that’s a good example. It’s a good way of explaining our experience of how we interact with other people. Sometimes we might be having unpleasant interactions with other people or we might be worried that they’re thinking bad thoughts about us because of an interaction that we’ve had with them or a way in which we’ve communicated with each other. 

The chances are that actually that’s not what is going on out there in the real world. They are not thinking bad thoughts about you and they’re really not all that troubled about what’s happened but if you see it as something that’s gone a bit blurry and a bit bad, the problem isn’t with them in the outside world.The problem is with the way that you’re seeing it through your own personal contact lenses. So my challenge to you is this. If you are worrying about the way in which people are thinking about you. It’s probably got more to do with how you’re thinking about yourself than what those other people are thinking and so I’m going to encourage you to think about yourself from a place of loving kindness. Make sure that you are telling yourself good things about you. Make sure that you are encouraging yourself and you may be surprised to discover that the more you feel good about yourself and who you are, the less worried you are about what other people might be thinking.

By Gemma Bailey
www.childtherapisthertfordshire.nlp4kids.org