Clients ask what they can do to care less about whether people like them.
It’s normal to want people to like us.
Think about how we evolved: we needed our tribe to like us so we had their protection to survive. We are primitively driven to want to be liked.
What you can work on is the degree of upset you feel when someone doesn’t like you. Is the person someone you care enough about to try to repair the breach? When you care about the person, assess the dynamic between you to figure out whether you’re doing something that causes the person to dislike you; ask them what you’ve done to make them pull away.
Are you willing to change this behavior, and can you do so without compromising your values? When the relationship cannot be salvaged, you’ll feel grief over the loss; the more you cared, the more intense the grief. Distract yourself from obsessing about the loss and focus on the relationships that work.
It’s impossible to have everyone like you.
Dr. Jankovich has been working as a psychologist since 1974. She works with a range of areas, including relationships, depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, grief, trauma, and struggles with life transitions.