It’s part of our genetic make-up and probably goes right back to the time we first crawled out of the primordial sludge and had to hook up with a crew to survive. What’s more, there is a substantial body of scientific research that proves just how important social acceptance is for our mental health, self-esteem, emotional regulation, and academic performance. We do not react well to being disliked by others.
I stated that very confidently, but the truth is that this is a skill I haven’t quite mastered yet. I am a chronic people-pleaser in recovery, and it has been a hard, old road to hoe. For most of my life I felt an intense discomfort if I knew someone didn’t like me. Even if I didn’t like them in the first place, I couldn’t stand it if the feeling was reciprocated. It made me feel so insecure and any perceived slight or nasty comment could send me into a spiral for days. “Why don’t they like me? I’m an absolute delight!” I would wail to myself.
Of course there are limits to this. If you truly don’t care what anyone ever thinks about you, then you might be veering into psychopath territory. No, I am talking about accepting that there will always be some people who dislike you and what you do. In fact, if you are ever going to do anything worth a damn, there will be criticism. And I would go one further: if you have made it to adulthood and have no enemies to speak of, you must be rather dull.
square KATE LISTER
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I am not a famous person. I have never been invited to the Met Gala, I don’t get followed by the paparazzi, and no one has ever thrown their knickers at me while I am on stage, but I do have a profile. I write this very column, for example, I also write books, have a podcast, and occasionally pop up on the telly box. All of this means that I have a level of visibility and am exposed to more people and their opinions than I have ever been before, and that can be absolutely terrifying.
You don’t get any kind of training for this. You just open your phone one day to see that one person thinks you are “common as muck” and another thinks you should be “put on the ducking stool”. I’ve had men comment on my articles, telling me to “keep your opinions to yourself” – on an opinion column. Then there are the people who just disagree with what I write about and chat amongst themselves about how awful I am and what a traitor to feminism I turned out to be.
It is bizarre to see the levels of hatred I can elicit in people I’ve never met. The immediate temptation is to clap back and point out how wrong they are, but that rarely ends well. Embarking on a flame war with random internet trolls just eats through your mental energy and won’t change anything anyway.
It can get to you, which is why it is so important to let go of the fantasy, fairy-tale world where everyone adores you and thinks you’re amazing. One thing that helped me is realising that there isn’t anyone who has achieved something worthwhile that doesn’t have their haters. There are even people out there who don’t like Dolly Parton, for goodness’ sake. Mad, deluded people that I don’t want to know, but they are there.
What you can’t do is live and die on public opinion. You can’t let someone, be that a random person on the internet, a family member, or a work colleague, disliking you stop you in your tracks. There is no magic switch to achieving this, you just have to lean into the discomfort and resist the urge to try and fix everything. You have to keep telling yourself that this is a “them” problem and not a “you” problem. If you have spent your life people-pleasing the first time you say no to someone, ignore a nasty comment, or hold a boundary, it will feel intensely uncomfortable, but stay with it. It does get easier.
I opened this column by observing that humans are social creatures, and indeed we are. Acceptance is central to the human experience, but that never meant everyone. My tip is to lean into the acceptance of those you love and ignore the criticism of anyone else.
In a strange way, you need haters. What you don’t need to do is let the haters dictate the terms.
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